Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Germany!

Hey everyone!!

I know,  it has been ages since my last post :O I feel sooo so sorry about that!!!! :/ As I am in my last year of school, it's very stressful at the moment and I often even have to spend weekends and holidays learning for school and doing homework :( I'm sure you guys know how time consuming school can be, so I beg you pardon again for letting you wait for so long.
Anyway, let's now jump back in time to the end of summer when I came back from pretty New Zealand.


When I got on the plane that brought our group of students home, I felt sad at the beginning, sad that all these lovely people I had to say goodbye to in the last few days were gone now and would be separated from me by over 18.000 km after the flight, sad that these 6 months I had been so much looking forward to were already over and felt more like 4 weeks, sad about the fact that I don't know when I will see the country and my new friends I have made again.
There are still situations in which I often think about all these things and I get unhappy. But the thought of keeping the contact and then coming back to Aotearoa after school cheers me up every time!

After the flight there were my parents and friends at the airport who cheered me up and made me feel warm and welcome again! They had even organized a suprise welcome back party at my house and they had invited a couple of my friends! Really neat! I felt so happy about that :)

At this first night I was so surprised about how long the sun was up because I was still used to New Zealand winter where the sun sets at about 6pm. In Germany the days then lasted until 10pm and we had about 30 degrees, very adorable!

During my remaining 4 weeks of summer holidays, I enjoyed being with my friends nearly every day. We baked a lot, too. Since my stay abroad I love baking! Before I never had enough time and I thought it was boring, but now I am really into it. Together with friends or family I like baking cakes, cookies, scones and decorating them. Here's a picture of our oreo cupcakes:

Back at home, I also re-celebrated my 16th birthday with my German friends (:

It was my cousins and aunties birthday, too. Here you can see my cousin Paula, Emma and Johanna (from the left to the right):

I really appreciate spending time together with them again!!

... and our family came together another day when my grandparents, my mum's parents, had their Golden Wedding!! (: Exciting!

Johanna and me

my aunt Kirsten, my mum and my uncle Jens - the three of them are brothers and sisters

mum and me

all the guests :)

my grandparents and their grand children 

the yummy dessert

Another day I went to the Mainuferfest (a festival at the Main, the river that passes Frankfurt) together with my friends Chiara (who you can see on the photo) and Vicy. It was so hot that day! We would have loved to jump into the water! :D

Here you can see the 'Römer', a well-known place in Frankfurt:

Frankfurt's skyline from the 'Eiserner Steg', a bridge:

You can also go shopping very well in the city of Frankfurt, for example on the 'Zeil', a big street with a lot of shops:

Alina and me

As my friends and me are all over 16 years now, we enjoy going out and on going to parties together. Here's a picture of Sara, Sandra, Alina and me at the party that our year at school has organized in a club in order to raise money for our school ball.

in another club, in Frankfurt

at Alina's birthday, in a limousine :)

Our group of girls also likes to spend a more chilly, relaxing evening together ar a table, drinking cocktails and talking all night long. Here we are at a Mexican restaurant (:

What I had really missed in New Zealand was the sport I've practised here in Germany for over 15 years - dancing and gymnastics! And of course the people in my groups who I usually get to see 1-3 times a week. I was very happy going back to sports and whats was even cooler: A furniture store in our area had organized a flashmob where my dancing group and other groups many friends of mine are part of participated! There were two balley groups, a hip hop group, a tap-dancing group and others - we practised our choreographies separately and then came together that day. It was quite a lot of fun. (:

my videoclipdancing group FMDC (:

My friends and me also went playing Lasertag together, I can honestly advise that to you, it's so much fun! They play songs like 'Ghorst busters' while your 'shooting' and you feel like you're on an important mission haha
Inside the arena, there's a kind of castle where you can run up and try to shoot the other team from above. When you are hit, you lose one life, you've got 5 lives and when you're 'dead', you can reload at your team's base. Lasertag is really cool, we all loved it even though we're girls and we're not addicted to violent computer games :D

I bet some of you know Germany for its beer and the Oktoberfest in München / Munich. Well, my friends and me didn't go there, but we went somewhere else where (even though it's smaller then the Oktoberfest) the theme and the atmosphere are the same. It's called the 'Horbacher Kerb', people are wearing 'Dirndel' and 'Lederhosen', German traditionel music is played and people are dancing on tables :b

At our school, they even came up with the idea to celebrate this event as a 'motto-day' where our year dresses up for one day at school, that was pretty cool and also the teachers had something to laugh about!

Because everyone enjoyed this motto-day so much, they introduced a second one: the Halloween-day! Here's what we looked like:

New teacher?! ;)

Anika, Chiara and me at a Halloween Party later that night:

My friend's mother gives yoga courses and as she has just designed a yoga collection, she needed models to present her clothes. My friend Alina and I are of the same size and the clothes fit us both well, so she decided to take pictures of us two. You can't imagine how funny it was! At the beginning we were taking our 'job' quite seriously

... but towards the end pictures looked like this:

Well, yeah, as you can see we're always photogenic!! :D

... Do you know iST? It's the organization I went to New Zealand with. In Germany they are well-known and popular, they offer stays abroad for 3-12 months for example, or short trips for 2 weeks in the holidays to nearly every country in the world you can imagine! It was my organization who also organized the preparation week in Wellington, who is in permanent contact with a partner organization in the other countries who you can turn to if you need help during your stay, and iST is in charge of even much more. That's pretty handy because you don't need to organize all that stuff and the people simply explain everything to you. :D
As I wanted to share my experiences with other people because I looove talking to people I contacted iST and they send me to their fair in Cologne (Köln) to welcome the visitors and tell something about my stay:

I find it quite impressive what they do for their 'students'. They also organize a 'returnee meeting' every year where you can meet people from your flight / preparation week / school again. 

The next day some friends and me stayed in the city of Cologne for another couple of hours

in front of the Cologne Cathedral

Well, then it got cold quite quickly in Germany...
November, December... these month came very fast and the end of the year was nearly there.
- No time to worry though, it's time for Christmas! :)

... and time for the annual **Christmas concerts** of our school choir and 'Mädchenensemble' (our choir's girls group)!

Our big choir at school:

...Another year has passed by, a big, special, new and different, long but short year on two ends of the world.

At this point I want to thank all those. Kiwis, Japanese, Chinese and Germans; family and friends, everyone who supported me this year, who made me smile, made me get up and go on every day even on the hard days, everyone who I spend unforgetable moments with, who made me enjoy, love and remember 2013 or good. Thank you! Dankeschön! Merci beaucoup! Xièxie!

Let's make 2014 another great year!!

Love, Yoko xoxo