London Calling

Ritchie at the Cliffs of Dover

Tower of London

Buckingham Palace

Big Ben

House of Commons

It's been a pretty full-on weekend and I'm exhausted but, my gosh, what fun! 5 countries in 24 hours - got to love Europe really. I went with school to London for the day! We left Germany at 3am, drove through the Netherlands, Belgium and France, caught the ferry at Calais, and arrived in England in beautiful sunshine to see the Cliffs of Dover. An hour and a half later and I was in London. I have to admit to being ridiculously pleased to see the sea and loved our calm crossing of the Channel. I also found it very strange to be back on the left side of the road and being surrounded by English speaking people! Driving through London and then walking through the centre was a crazy experience. The impact of seeing places that used to only exist in the T.V. was just amazing. Standing in front of the House of Commons, walking through Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace (cup of tea with the Queen perhaps??), Tower of London, I felt like I was in a dream!

London Eye

We let the students go shopping in Oxford and Regent streets and us teachers went looking for a pub and some food. Got asked how old I was by the security who wouldn't believe that I'm 22. Though according to my year 9 class I'm 35... London at night is SO beautiful, my camera doesn't do it justice and I can't wait to get back in June (still haven't seen The Globe). Bit of drama at the end of the day though. Bus was supposed to pick us up at 9pm but the drivers got lost, then got caught up in demonstrations in Hyde Park, then directed 10km out of London. We waited 2 hours for the them and made the ferry in Dover at the very last minute. Very tired students and teachers and we're all glad to have Sunday to sleep before school on Monday.

The weather is just incredible, I was walking around without a jacket and today I'm sitting outside in 20 degree sunshine to write this. Winter ain't coming, hello Spring!

St James' Park

Tower Bridge

Karneval in Köln

So Karneval is finally over and I seem to have been in shock through most of it. Köln was ridiculous! I went for the first day of Karneval which is a giant street parade. I may have started out feeling silly walking the streets in a penguin costume but not for long. It was pretty cool to have so many people out having fun and in crazy costumes too! Not just students but kids, families, grandparents and parents. But, naturally, also a lot of alcohol! I met up with Zsofi and some of her students from the polytech and we wandered the streets for most of the day. In all the squares all over the city there were parties with thousands of people, live bands, and, you guessed it, lots of alcohol! I was glad to see it but probably wouldn't want to do it again.

Looking out over the crowd

On Sunday I checked out the parade in one of our neighbouring villages. Think Christmas parade but without the Santa at the end and everyone in the parade drinking. Saw some of my students from school who found it rather embarrassing to see the teacher with her camera there! On Monday I went into Köln again for the Rosenmontag parade. The place to be on this particular day of Karneval. Over 1.4 million people watching, over 500 horses and 5 HOURS long!!!! The main goal? To collect as much candy as possible (young and old alike). I have so much chocolate, biscuits and lollies sitting in my room right now it will probably last until next year.

No school on Tuesday as it was also technically still Karneval but I went rock-climbing instead. Pretty fun 6 days really. But this is when Germans really let their hair down and go crazy (in this part of Germany anyway).

with some of the other language assistants

Steffen, Tiago and Vera

Plenty of music bands in crazy costume!

Loved this outfit

Check out our haul!

Effeld Sitzung

Entry march

The Prince and Princess (gosh I want his hat)

So I've survived my first ever Karneval Sitzung and now I am going to attempt to describe it to you. I did manage to take some pictures (and a video) which will hopefully help but this is not going to be easy! Right, first my part of the evening. The orchestra's job is to provide music in between acts, to play a march for people to walk in and out to, to provide music as part of acts and to highlight jokes made by people on stage. There a Karneval group who organise it all and a Prince is picked from the group who oversees the whole thing. Then there's basically an MC and a variety of acts. The comedy acts I didn't really understand because they were often very "in" jokes - about the village, the surrounding villages, current events, Dutch people etc. Or they were making fun of the accent by speaking in their very strong dialect and then I understood about 40% of what was going on! Apparently very funny though!. Then there were the dance groups who dance specifically for Karneval. Their style is a mixture between aerobics and cheer-leading and is done either as individuals or in groups. The theme for the evening was fairy tales so there was a skit of Hansel and Gretel which involved a LOT of cross-dressing, also hilarious. Everything was very relaxed, the audience also came in costume and got up and walked around throughout the evening. Everyone drank large quantities of beer (I had lemonade) and sang along to all the songs. By midnight it had just turned into a big party and, I suspect, continued long after the thing actually finished. The evening was sort of a mixture between a dance show, stand-up comedy, concert, Last Night of the Proms and Gang Show I guess. I had more fun than I was expecting and I hope you enjoy the photos and the video. This is a video of the Dreamboyz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLX4_o1GuCA&feature=youtu.be

Solo dance

Orchestra!

Group dance to , you guessed it, Singing In The Rain!

Hansel and Gretel...

This was very good. These are people's feet which then had their own dance routine

This place is starting to go crazy...

We are entering the Karneval time and our corner of Germany is going slightly crazy! Karneval celebrates the changing of the seasons from winter into spring and is a HUGE festival in the Rheinland part of Germany. Cologne is the place to be and I will be heading there at the start of March to join in the party. However, Sitzungen (concert type things) have been starting all over the place and our village one is in a couple of weeks. The bands play, there is stand-up comedy, dance groups perform and of course, plenty of beer to drink. One of the main parts of Karneval is dressing up in costumes. I was in Cologne for a couple of days this week and met up with one of the other NZ language assistants. We went costume shopping - not to buy - but to try on and take photos. As many of you know, I love dressing up and we had a very fun time finding a selection of costumes to show you all. So please enjoy!!!!

Bumblebee

Medieval

Joan of Arc

Pirate (if you look closely you can see the skull and crossbones)

Wizard

Clown

Gothic/Victorian???

Pretty...

Flamenco dancer

Frog (my personal favourite)

Bavarian

50s???

ABBA!!!!

Holiday Highlights

Holidays are sadly over and I have 3 months of school until the next ones (far out their school year is badly planned!). After Christmas both my host-sisters, their boyfriends, Ariane and I went to Heidelberg for a couple of days. The weather was a little stormy but we still had a good look around the ruined castle and the old part of the city.

Heidelberg castle

Goethe's seat

New Year is a big deal over here and we celebrated with a large group of family and friends. The traditional meal is called raclette and is a really fun and social way to eat a meal. Basically a small bbq is set up on the table and everyone has a small pan. You then load up your pan with meat (fried first on the top of the bbq), mushrooms, capsicum, broccoli, corn etc and then a layer of cheese on top. Your pan then goes inside the bbq and cooks. The end result is vegetables and meat covered in melted cheese. Yummy! At midnight we all went out on the street and let off fireworks and then played board games until 3am.

I then went down to Stuttgart for 5 days to see Claudia and Christian and their two kids, Lina age 3 and Klaus age 8 months. Claudia and Christian used to live just down the road from us in Dunedin and Lina was born while they were studying at Otago Uni. It was wonderful to see them again and to meet the new baby. I had a lovely couple of days joining in the family life and seeing a bit of their local area. Definitely a great time away.

Claudia and Klaus

Me and Lina at Ludwigsburg

Me with Klaus and Lina

Visiting a castle

Klaus being totally cute!