May 19 2008
Got my Host Family!
After school on Friday I checked the mail and found an unusually fat envelope from ASSE. The first line said:
Dear Sarah,
Wonderful news! Your ASSE German host family has been found!
A few pages later is my host family placement form, which is filled with pretty basic info (age, occupations, contact info, pets, and activities) about my new family, the Schmidbauers.
Both of my host parents, Thorsten and Heike, are relatively young, and they have a 13 year old daughter named Annika. I’ll get more into all the details later as they’ve already e-mailed me, so for now I’ll entertain you all with some pictures of Haan, the itty bitty town I’ll be living in next year.
stolen from oddtodd’s travelblog
I love the streets! And the buildings. They look so, well, German! Unlike Frankfurt and some other big cities I’m sure. The following is a side by side comparison of San Jose, CA (where I am now) and Haan, Germany (where I will be next year) from Google maps. If you enlarge them (click), you’ll see that Haan is MUCH greener and had much more open space than San Jose. I don’t know if that means it’s farming country or if there will be many fields to frolic in, but I’m fine with it either way. 
it does look very green O.o. well i guess that means that the experience won’t be bland and boring
omg have fun learning street names xP
I`m guessing there`ll be fields to frolic through
Have fun! Looks like an awesome little town.
Yay
Tell me if Germany smells different XD.
Very cool! I am going to Berlin, but I am a little jelouse of the tiny town experience you will have : ) When I was very young, my family was in a very, very, VERY small town in Germany with the military. From what my parents tell me, it is very unique, but great. If it is a farming town, it will smell different…especially if there are cows…make your own assumptions
@Kelly: WOW that’s so awesome! I think you can have an awesome experience anywhere, but it would be so much easier to say “I’m going to BERLIN/MUNICH (or any well known city)” than “This tiny town near Cologne/Dusseldorf.” I’m trying to find out more about Haan in the meantime, though.
Hehe what a bucolic/boring/rural/quaint place!
Well, tell me what germany smells like but, of course, I think the smell of smoke is overwhelming. And in the case of Haan, cows.
Ew. Methane smells like a bouquet of flowers doesn’t it.
Do they have high speed internet in Haan? Haha, you know that’s a necessity of life.
Hehe good luck in advance on your trip
Yeah, and I hope ya know Deutsch, or you’ll get owned. Hahaha
Haha yes, smoking is much more prevalent in Germany/Europe/anywhere than in California. But this summer new smoking policies are set to be implemented in Germany so there’ll be no more/limited (depending on the state) smoking in restaurants, bars, and so on. It’s a slow road to improvement - my school (and many others) has a smoking area for students to smoke…but they just made the area smaller and stated that ‘Students smoking under 18 will not be tolerated.” Hm. Not that we don’t have our fair share of drugs!
They have high speed anywhere people are willing to pay for it. Which is pretty much everywhere in the developed world. Oh…and I would say San Jose is also a pretty boring place.
It’s what you make of it. ;D Considering you Science Bowl peeps spend your time indoors playing TF2, I don’t think it’d make a difference whether you lived in San Jose or Anytown, USA.
Thanks for your good wishes.