Day 1

So we arrived in Hamm, Germany on May 21, 2012 at about 10 o´clock in the morning which would be around 4 o´clock in the morning Signal Mountain time.  The plane ride was pretty cool, but it was eight and a half hours long. I sat in the middle of the plane between Madison Drennan and Riley Boerger.  I didn´t sleep very much on the plane maybe an hour or less.  I got to look out the window at one point and East coast of Canada which was very cool.  The ocean looked amazing.  We had an hour train ride to Hamm from Düsseldorf, so I got to see a little bit of Germany on the train ride. Of what little I have seen so far from the train ride, Germany is very beautiful.  I love looking at all the archietecture. There is a lot more graffiti then from what I am used to seeing in our town, but it is so interesting to look at.  Germany is different from what I pictured it to be.  After arriving in Hamm, I got to see Pia and her father.  Then we went to her house.  Her house is so cool.  It is four floors, but they only live on the two bottom floors.  Her grandmother and another lady live on the other two.  I am staying with Pia in her room. I really like it.  Most of her furniture and all the furniture in her house in from Ikea.  They have a garden in their back yard that is very pretty.  Her grandmother doesn´t speak much German, and her mother speaks a little.  It is a little hard to communicate with them, but not as hard as I thought it was going to be.  Her younger sister is funny and is always jumping off the walls.  So far, it is very fun here.  We walked around the block to see a little bit of the city and to give Jil a book she forgot at home.  For lunch, her dad, her sister, Pia, and I went to her grandmother´s house to eat.  We had potatoes and some sort of chicken from the skillet with a sauce that I don´t know what kind it was.  When her mom came home we went to the market.  The market reminded me a lot of Aldi that we have in Tennessee which makes a lot of sense because Aldi started in Germany, but the market here was a lot bigger and had more things. It also had some different things inside, but it was mainly the same things we have. After going to the market, we watched some tv in German and then I feel asleep.