Max the Egg

Max the Egg. Friday afternoon. The teachers and RAs would not tell us what this activity on our schedule even meant. We all met outside the school at two. We separated into groups of five and they explained our task. Each group got an egg with a face drawn on with a Sharpie. We had four hours to trade that egg for the most valuable and interesting items we could. My group went out to the local community soccer field and started by playing soccer with some younger kids there. Halfway through our little soccer game another group came by and they had already traded their egg for a 400€ pair of skis. My group decided there was no chance we could outdo that in terms of monetary value so we just decided to have fun with it. What we ended up with was easily my best day so far in Germany.

After explaining our contest to the kids at the soccer field, an eight-year-old (or, almost-nine-year-old, as he said) named Alex decided he would try to help us. What started with a simple game of soccer and a conversation turned into a whirlwind tour of Johannisberg (the nearby town) from the outgoing and cute Alex. As we were walking, he biked lazy circles around us on his bike and demonstrated some of his English skills ("onetwo...'leventwelvefourteenfiveteen...twentytwotwentyfour"...he seems to have a problem with threes). He took us to all of his friends' houses. I was amazed by how happy all of the Germans in Johannisberg were to let us in, make trades, and just talk to us. We even got a full tour of a house originally built in the 14th century with engravings and paintings on the wall from 1636. Realizing that this woman's house was about three times as old as our country was kind of a funny observation for me and my friends.

After four hours of running all around Johannisberg with Alex, we ended up with a giant cast iron rooster, three books about the area, a clock that also measured humidity and temperature, a hat from the World Cup 2006 (I'm wearing it in the picture), two bottles of wine (one from Alex's dad, who is vice president of the Johannisberg Castle Winery, as it turns out), four jars of home-made jelly from a sweet grandma who invited us all in, a private tour of the wine cellar at the Johannisberg Castle, and Alex, whom we brought back to the barbeque.



Leslie, Phoebe, Ben, me, Anna, with Alex in the front row. Germans don't seem to smile in pictures quite as much. Click for a bigger version.

It was just so awesome how friendly and welcoming everyone in Johannisberg was. It really made me look forward to moving in with my host family (which I do next Saturday, by the way) and really being immersed in German culture. The rest of the weekend remained awesome and we got to know and talk to lots of Germans all weekend in the restaurants and bars in the town. We've been keeping to ourselves less and less and we're becoming more and more outgoing and it's really worth it. Talking to Germans in German is very rewarding and I've already learned so much from everyone I've talked to. I hope they're learning something from me as well.

Hope everything is good by all of you. Feel free to send me an email anytime.