Off to Germany

It's very early in the morning here, but I figured I had some spare time. This won't be too long of a post due to the ridiculously busy day that I and 74 other CBYXers have coming up. I've had thoughts of excitement, fear, joy, and all of the above really. All that I can say is: "I can do this!" I'll be flying from Dulles International Airport to Frankfurt, Germany in about 9 hours. Nothing is surreal anymore, what I mean is, I think it really finally hit me. I hope to keep you all updated. Bis Dann!!

Final Week in America!

This past week has been the longest and shortest week ever. I was lucky enough to have a great lunch with coworkers and be able to hang out with my 3 childhood best friends. Times were great with them, more than a 1000 stories to tell with them! Washington, DC has been an amazing city. It’s full of life and culture, it has a much different feel than Cincinnati has. It is really interesting to walk into a crowd of people and hear 8 different languages, it shows how diverse this nation has become. Yesterday, July 28th I met with 10 other CBYXers. All of them were amazing peoples, from all different walks of life, though we still have the same goals with this program! Germany is coming up so quickly as I write this morning. With it nearing 10 A.M I have only maybe 6 hours until I leave family to stay at Georgetown University. The campus is really awesome from what I have seen of it. I will make sure to get many pictures and video of it while I’m there. I can’t promise that this coming week’s video will be on time with this orientation, and all this other hectic stuff like going to Germany and whatnot. I will try my best, but I can leave you all with this past week’s video, my final full week in America!

www.youtube.com/adventuresingermany

Less than 2 Weeks Left!

I sure can't believe it either. To think that next week on Thursday I will set foot upon a foreign land, so many feelings, a few I might not be familiar with. I'm also sorry I haven't been keeping up with my blog as well. I've realized over the course of this past month of doing videos, that I do a select bunch of things, and then I do them again. I don't believe it's a bad things, I just seem to repeat the things that I like. I'm ready to get away from all that and constantly be doing new, exciting things. This upcoming week will be full of some of those new things. Leaving for Washington DC at 4 A.M on Saturday morning. Oh, that will be joyous. (Warning: May contain slight trace amounts of sarcasm) This week will be weird for my video, hopefully the hotel WiFi will allow me to upload at a decent rate. Although, I cannot make any promises.

Luckily, I have all my important stuff done, just need to pick up a few things from the store and I should be good to go. This week's video includes kittens, a visit to the Cheesecake Factory, a visit to my Grandma's in a pretty little town and lots mores. Without further ado, Allons-y! (According to the 10th Doctor, in Doctor Who, it means "Let's go!" in French)

Less than 3 Weeks Left

Less than 3 weeks until I will be in the beautiful city of Cologne, Germany. I've whined for quite a while about how slow the time was going. Now, it seems as if time has flown, and I have to say, I'm ready to go. I am ready to start the adventure of a lifetime. And a shoutout to the 29th year PPPlers, I hope you guys had a fantastic year. Thank you for all the tips and help that you've given to us 30th year PPPlers. You all make us feel much better about taking this journey, although it seems that no amount of pep talks could 100% ready us for this adventure! I must say I have also much enjoyed speaking with many of my fellow PPPlers. You all are wonderful fantastic people, and I cannot wait to make this journey with you all! You all must know, none of you are safe from my videos, I will be that guy always taking pictures of everything(and everyone) along with video too! Be ready Germany, 30th year PPPlers on our way!

Less than 4 Weeks Left

I can start counting down the days now, wow it's getting so close! I've been talking with so many CBYXers and it's all getting pretty real. In 25 days I will be flying in to Frankfurt, Germany. I believe after a day or 2 of staying there, all of the CBYXers will be transported off to their respective language school cities. I will be in Cologne, Germany for language school and then for my other 9 month placement I will be somewhere in the state of Saxony.

I've also been practicing my video editing/filming and I have to say, I think even within a week I've improved a bit. It's very fun, so you can be sure I'll be making weekly videos right up until the very end. Here is this week's adventures!

For all other videos: www.youtube.com/adventuresingermany

Waidmanns Heil

The title "Waidmanns Heil" was an old saying by German hunters. It translates something like "Huntsman's Salute" or wishing luck on the hunt. I've chosen the above title today because the nature of what my brother and I were doing today. Although, we were not literally "hunting" anything, we went shooting (in various forms) like we do every so often.

Target shooting is a great way to let off stress or anger (done properly of course), so we chose to go shooting back at our normal spot down near the Licking River, the only other river besides the Nile that flows north. Not too interesting, but worth mentioning. My brother brought along his 60" (1.52m) Shakespeare recurve bow. I brought along my Marlin model 60 .22. I would've brought something of a larger caliber, but living somewhat near others, I didn't want to scare anyone with the noise. I will miss these fun little times with my brother. With only less than a month to go until Germany, time is precious.

He is a good shot, we were pretty far off from that target, and archery is VERY difficult.

 

Shot the piece of that fork off with my .22 about 50-60 feet off, not bad eh?

Drawing back the bow

Props to Tim for this photo, it makes me look SO much more epic than in reality

Gathering more material for this week's video, I'm going to see what sorts of adventures I can get into. Time left here in the U.S is short, but plenty of Germany to come! Bis dann!