Easter, Haircuts and Verlängerungen

I know it's a bit late, but I wanted to post a quick description of Easter in Germany. It really isn't too different from Easter in America. There are Easter baskets (loaded with delicious chocolate), Easter eggs (real or plastic) to look for or that are hung in trees and bushes, and an Easter Bunny who hides the goodies for the kids to look for on Easter Sunday. However, what is different is the Osternfeuer (Easter fire). This is a huge pile of wood which is set on fire. It's an old tradition that is supposed to symbolize the coming of spring and to banish the evil spirits of winter. Mostly, people just go to watch things burn and drink some beer.


 Today, I was adventrous. Today, I walked into a hair salon, alone, and got a haircut (in a foreign language, mind you!!). I think it went pretty well. She understood what I wanted and let me know what she was doing and double-checked if what she was doing was okay. Maybe it's a little bit shorter than I would have liked, but it will grow, and I do think it looks nice. I also had a nice talk with the hairstylist about the fact that I'm an exchange student, where I'm from, where I live now, how long I'll be staying... The usual. She also wanted to know why I even bothered to go to school when I only had two periods (Remember what I wrote a while ago about if the teacher's not there, we just don't have class? Yeah, well that was today. Instead of 4 periods, I was down to two. Some people had no school at all today). Overall, a good experience!


 I now have an official departure date. I'll be leaving here on August 1st. I was supposed to leave on July 6th, but I wanted to stay longer, because my school here goes until July 27th, and I wanted to stay until the end and get a taste of summertime here. To any (future) YFU exchange students reading this page, if you have questions or want help with the extension process, let me know! I'll help you through it!


Also, I've got a 4-day weekend coming up. Tuesday is a holiday (Tag der Arbeit), and since the Germans find it silly to go to school for a day and then have another day off, we get to have Monday off, too. Cool, wa?

Bis später!