Holi Fest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Sunday was AMAZING!!! I went to the Holi fest with the other exchange students and we had so much fun! The Holi fest is a color festival. This means that it is a concert/disco type thing but with colored powder. It was soooooooooooo much fun! The music was awesome, but the best part was the color countdown. We counted down from 10 and then everyone threw colors into the air!! Warning: Do no attend if you have lung problems. It got a little hard to breath because of all of the powder. I spit rainbows for a couple hours. I can't really describe how much fun I had, so here are some "thousand-words" pictures.

 THE BEFORE SHOT: Here we are all clean and ready to start throwing colors!!! 

One of the longest showers I have ever taken was after this event. My scalp was a lovely blue, my face was green, and my ears were a mix between green and yellow. The rest of me had a nice assortment of color as well. 

Did I mention that the color doesn't wash out of clothing??

AFTER!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP7pDSjOWyU

Here is a link to a video the Holi fest people made. I'm in it twice!

Am I fluent yet? Not even close...

My Deutsch Kurs is officially over now. I have finished four weeks of intensive german learning: 4 hours per day. How do I feel?

EVEN MORE CONFUSED... >(

German course has taught me that english is not the hardest language to learn. Yes our grammar is challenging and once you really learn all of the rules english is really hard to learn and understand. For someone who is just starting to learn english, they don't need to know all of our complicated rules, so for them english is way easier. We only have one article: the. We don't really conjugate verbs differently for I, you, he, she, it, we, or they. We also don't have a formal form for you and they. Learning the basics of english to carry out a simple conversation is not hard.

Now the nice people who invented the german language decided to use four different grammatical forms with three different articles. There are no rules when it comes to the articles, you simply must learn them. Depending on which grammatical form is being used, there are different pronouns and personal pronouns.

How do I know which form to use??

Well that all depends on what question is being asked. Wo? or Wohin? Wen? or Wem? Not that hard, just determine which kind of question is being asked. Problem is that Wo and Wohin mean the same thing in english and wen and wem are the same too. To me, there is no differentiation between the questions.

Oh and let's not forget spanish...

My wonderful co-exchangers are South American which means we talk a lot in spanish. Is my spanish improving? Uhhh, no. Unfortunately now I've started to mix german and spanish and english. My sentences sometimes have a mix of all three different languages.
Bespiel:

Martin, un momento por favor I need to finish this Papier über Akkusativ und Dativ für Uli.

Sounds stupid right? Yea it sounds really stupid and confusing too. I mean english is my native language, how can I already be losing my vocabulary? My brain keeps complaining. It's like,
"Mari!!! Pick a language!!!!! No? Ok then I'm going to get really tired and cause you to fall asleep."

Even with all of this added confusion the german course was still extremely helpful. I can understand SOOO much more german than I could before. My speaking abilities are still limited, but they are slowly progressing as well. I've got the best possible resources right here!!


Here's my class. From left to right, top to bottom:

Federico, Bruno, Me, Uli (our teacher), Martin, Aturo, and Eduardo

Calling All Exchangers!! Wir gehen nach Hamburg!!

This weekend was full of exchangers. YAY! haha

On Friday night all the Flensburgers went over to Bruno's house to celebrate his 17th birthday. We ate, sang, drank, danced, and ate again. We got him three combined gifts, one of which was a ticket to Holi fest. It is the festival of colors! We are all going together next Sunday.

Then on Saturday we traveled down to Hamburg and met up with the other exchangers. I'm not sure how many of us went to Hamburg (there were so many). We walked into a restaurant to have lunch and literally took it over. Then about half of us left to go eat from all of the stands on the streets. It was great getting to know the other exchange students, they're all super awesome and fun. I can't wait for the Orientation in September where we will all be together for three days.

After lunch the boys and girls split up. Us girls, explored some of the shopping opportunities Hamburg has to offer, while the boys did their own thing. All in all it was great. I spent a lot of money shopping and I met a lot of great people.

 Mae and Lucas

 Maddy and Isabella

Mati and Bruno

 Best Store EVER!!!

Oldies: They've been here since January...

My delicious lunch

They were walking for freedom, in high heels. I don't know what for.

I could've boughten this for 58 Euros in Urban Outfitters... no way

We were soooo tired on the way home. haha