Foreign Bodies

Yesterday marked our first full week of support group. It was definitely a Freitag Feiertag, or "Friday Party-day." Not only did I have the first currywurst of my stay so far, but we also watched a movie about kids tar and feathering their teacher. So all in all, a pretty awesome day.

What a photogenic group!

This morning everyone signed a good luck card I'd bought for one of the guys in language camp because he's going to a very special picnic this Sunday-- a naked picnic! I have to give it to him, he is taking it like a champ and being pretty good natured about the whole thing. Still, he's praying it will be cold and rainy so that it gets cancelled, but everyone in class is dying to hear about it so we hope it's beautiful this weekend. We'll see on Monday how it went...

Apparently there'll be badminton and grilling at the picnic. How fun (naked)!

After sharing our feelings and all that, we got to watch the 2013 hit German comedy Fack Ju Göhte (pardon my French, but it's seriously called "Fuck You Goethe"). It was a good movie, but it took place in a German ghetto so the slang was pretty impossible to understand. The title is actually meant to be in English, they just wrote it in uneducated Berlin ghetto English. As for the view into high school here, it was kind of unrealistic (or at least I'm hoping!) since it was a slapstick comedy. Also, I'm thinking my private, Protestant school here in Aachen will be a little chiller and more put-together than the school in the movie.

One of our teachers, Jessica, brought snackies for during the film.

During the movie I got a tattoo! It was only apropos for such a film. One of the other girls in class used a ballpoint to draw a flower on my shoulder, a Lily I'm assuming. The only reason I'm mentioning this is because today I got the chance to check out many German tattoos at the swim center/park. I wasn't all that surprised by all of the tribal tats. Dolphins and other nature-y things were also well represented, especially by 30-year-old women and older. The tattoo culture here feels pretty similar to the US's. On the news the other day there was even a story about the pains of tattoo removal-- Statesman Journal Living Well section circa 2013 anyone?

Beautiful as it is, I might wait to get a permanent tat.

This evening I'm chilling at home with my host brother and host cousin. They're both set on watching some German TV show called Schlag den Star, which sounds Minute To Win It-ish. On TV here they have reality shows and trash TV like we do back in the Land of Opportunity. Our language camp teachers told us we should watch Deutschlands Next Topmodel and Der Bachelor so that we'll be able to keep up with conversations at school. So I guess that means watching TV can now count as homework?