Last day today!

I am both very excited to be coming home. Warmth! My Bed! and FRUIT! (winter fruit is never that good) but I am also sad to be leaving. Today after school the principal and the teacher who organises the exchanges gave me and certificate, yearbook and school mug to take back home with me. It was really nice and I really have learnt a lot here. I did find school very hard but that is okay because it was mainly in German which was a bit overwhelming to start with.

I have only 20 euros left now... Haha. I seem to have spent a lot with out really buying that much but thats ok because it means it will all fit in my suitcase which is now half packed.

Though I have loved my time here, I am very ready to come home. I think 2 months was a good amount of time because it was long enough to improve my langauge a lot and also to experience what everyday life is like but also short enough that you dont get toooooooo badly homesick.

Looking forward to seeing everyone and hope you have all had a great summer holiday. :)

Penny :)

PARIS!

Paris for the day!

So our day started very early with a 5am start. We had to get on the bus at 6am. The bus took 7 and 1/2 hours to get to Paris. 

We finally got to Paris at 1.30pm. 

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CITY! I am in love. It is so pretty. There are so so many old buildings with beautiful window frames and balconies. The river flowing through the middle. So so cool. It is just like the movies and tv shows. :) 

We straight away headed to the Eiffel Tower! I think I took like 50 photos of it. Haha.Ill just show you a couple of the better ones though. It was huge and very impressive.

EIFFEL TOWER!

Proof that is was actually snowing. :)

Vanessa, Sidney and me :)

I was just a little bit excited to be in Paris by the Eiffel Tower

One more for good measure. :)

 Then we made our way across town to the Notre Dame Catherdral. :) I again got told off because I was holding my bag correctly on the subway. I thought I was but no I had to hug it. What I didnt understand was why I had to hug my bag but none of them did.... Haha.

 The Notre Dame is a beautiful church! As we walked over we came across a whole lot of pigeons. And I mean a whole lot! There would have been at least 200 there. People were feeding them and they would land on there arms and hands and even in the hoods of there jackets.

Does not look like that many in the photos but there was heaps! Promise. Do you think you would like to feed them Mum? :P :)

So pretty in the snow.

Inside

Other side.

Crazy to think the buildings I learn about at school are now buildings I have photos of and visited. :)
We then made our way to the Louvre. Not sure of spelling... The huge museum. And I mean huge!!!!!!!! (Side note, the one thing that was disgusting here was the toilets. I have never seen a toilet so dirty and eewww. It was really gross.)
This museum is the one that has the big glass pyramid entrance. :)

One wing of 10 or 12!!!! It is HUGE! and very pretty too.

This is looking out from the middle of the museum to towards the city. The rest of the museum is behind me. :)

The glass pyramid and fountains are beautiful and magical to walk through and around.

This has to be one of my favourite photos of the day. It took us a while to get it because I was slightly to short and my hand wasnt in the right place but we got it in the end. :)

The snow was so so so slippery! Walking back towards the bus we had to walk along a huge walkway completely covered with frozen snow! We were all slipping and sliding everywhere. It was very funny. I am amazed that none of us fell over! It was a miracle. I was very glad I was wearing mylittle ug boots though because they were so warm!!!! I didnt have cold feet for one minute. It was great! I am also glad I spent the money to get a good pair because the soles were thick and the water didnt come through and soak my feet. :) I felt a bit bad though because all the others had wet, cold feet for various reasons. Glad mine werent though. :P
We then did a bit of shopping. Looked in some VERY expensive shops. Also in an awesome makeup shop. It was like the size of two glassons shops. :O It was very cool. :)
Oh and of course there was a very colourful lolly shop here too.

Then as we walked to meet the bus I took a photo just for Dad under the Arc de Triomphe.

This is me being angry at Lance Armstrong for writing inspirational books that make you admire him when it was all a big lie. I hope this is what you meant Dad. :)

It was a long night. We got on the bus at midnight and I got into bed at home just before 7. I have never been so happy to get into bed.

Magical Day!

Going to Paris

Tomorrow I am off to Paris :) Jealous much?

:)

BERLIN!!!

Better late than never.:) So here is a quite look at my week in Berlin. :)

First night just casually strolling down the Ku´damm. Actually it was more like powerwalking because it was FREEZING! and nothing was open because it was 8pm. Haha

This is me infront of what is left of the Berlin wall. :) It was one of the stops on our fabulous tour with Tom.

Didnt realise that as you walk into it the ground slopes downwards and the blocks get bigger and bigger and the biggest ones were over twice my height. You definitely remember walking through it!

It was pretty cool to stand infront of the Bradenburg Gate. :)  Do you recognise it know Mum????

Me underneath the giant sculpture in the middle of the Ku´damm. :) I cant remember the name of this but I do know what it represents. :P It is the 4 sectors of Berlin. All one city but they never meet. :) I was listening :)

Quick snack at Dunkin´ Donuts :) YUM! They were just as good as they looked if not better. :) At least mine was :)

Whoops wrong way. But to the left is West Berlin and to the right is East Germany. :) So technically speaking the Berlin wall was here. But it wasn´t because this is on a bridge over a river so instead it was a closed bridge with a guarded river edge.

Checkpoint Charlie. It was literally a tiny building on the side of the street with a gift shop of the other side.

From the top of the Reichstag. :)

The Bradenburger Tor was so pretty at night and then as we were walking it began to snow :)

Some awesome street art. :)

I may have slightly gone crazy in the Ampelmann Shop. (traffic light man) :) But it was just so cute!!!!

One of the many beautiful buildings we just happened to come across on our travels. :)

We had the best weather to go to the Victory coloumn. It was so pretty. :)

There are actually a million Smart cars in Berlin! They are literally EVERYWHERE!!!! So that is all the photos from Berlin for now. :) I had a great time! Don´t worry there are about 300 more :P But Ill show you those later. I leave you with a picture of me actually driving the car! It was so weird. Haha. (it was down a country road with absolutely no cars for about 500m)

Bruise from kickboxing :-)

Pretty good bruise that is also quite raised. :-P

Kickboxing

So tonight I went to a kickboxing class. Hahahaha. I have never done anything remotely like that ever before but I admit I had a lot of fun. :)
At the moment I have two brusies and I am sure I will wake up with a few more. :)

Phantasia Land

So yesterday we went to Phantasia Land for the whole day! And I mean the whole day. We were there from opening until closing! :O I had an AMAZING day! I think Vanessa thought I was a bit crazy acting like a little kid and wanting to go on every single ride. :)

So the day began will an extremely boring ride on the Silbermine (silber means silver) It was very slow and there were scenes of Mexico with moving robots and stuff but honestly it wasnt a great way to start the day. Then we went on a ride called the Race for Atlantis. I was definitely not expecting a simulator ride tht feels a bit like a real rollercoaster! As we were leaving a man in costume snuck up behind Vanessa and gave her a massive fright. It was very funny but he was very nice.

We then went into the Chocolate house to the Maus au Chocolat attraction which we had to go through a maze to get to. But it was totally worth it. :) You get into this car thing with a piping bag shooter infront of you and as you go around the track you stop and you have to shoot as many mice as possible with your piping bag and it is competition with the person next to you. Pete would have loved this ride! It was pretty much a video game ride. I of course did my best to shoot the mice but Vanessa beat me by a mile!!!! I have never had any sort of good co-ordination for those type of things. Oh and it was it 3D so I got to wear some pretty cool glasses too.

 Next was the Winja Force & Fear I am actually not sure which one I went on because one is a little bit shorter than the other and that it the only difference. Individual cars with 4 people in each go lopping around and spinning around on this indoor rollercoaster. It was pretty cool. :)

This is me on the Winji Force & Fear. Not that you can tell. Haha

This is the view from a slower ride of the Park.

I then meet some lovely ladies who were kind enough to take a photo with me. Little did I know this would be the beginning of many photos where I had my eyes closed.

I then went on a ride called the Wellenflug by myself. I just had to go on it because it was the one in all the videos on youtube. :) It is like a big spinning top and you sit on a swing and spin round and round and as you go round there is a water feature below you.

We then went to on of the big rollercoasters!!!!!! The Black Mamba. WOW! I officially love ROLLERCOASTERS!!!!!!!! It was so fast and you went upside down heaps and OMG it was simply AWESOME! I went on it twice haha. No one else wanted to come the second time. This is one of the upside down bits.

Cute little lolly shop

Apples, bananas, grapes and strawberrys covered in chocolate! YUM

Then we went on another rollercoaster called the Colorado Adventure. Very very fun and quite fast. Again I LOVE ROLLERCOASTERS! So much fun!

And I forgot to mention earlier that we also went on the worlds longest dark rollercoaster. That was pretty cool but no photos because a picture of black would not be very interesting. Haha. It was pretty crazy though because you had no idea what was coming next. :)

It was absolutely beautiful in the evening! So many lights and then to top it off it finished with a fireworks show :)

What a wonderful day :)