Germany: A land of the past.

Hello guys,

So I'm back and I've come back from Germany.. and wow.

Germany gets a bad reputation because of what happened during the war and I know a lot of people are turned off from visiting this fucking amazing country because of it.
Now, that happened, and I'm not going to deny it, it was bad beyond words.
However.

Germany has come to terms with it's history and embraces it. It doesn't run from it's history as other countries do, I won't start to list them because I don't mean to offend during this post.
There are a lot of memorials and everyone is aware, to my knowledge, it's compulsory for a student in high school to attend a concentration camp at least once.

They are truly sorry for their mistakes and nobody around me seems to get that.
Only now that I have gone to this country of my dreams and taken pictures of their apologies, (which mind you, stand in plain sight, not hidden one bit) and listen to the stories, I realize. I finally see.

This exchange trip has open my eyes so much on Germany and has sky rocketed my respect for this country.
Now I am not a holiday adviser, nor am I a travel expert, so I will leave you with these few words, knowing that these are not enough to tell you how much they mean their apologies, nobody just wants to look, and those who dare look and pay attention, have their mind blown, eyes opened, and a guaranteed sky rocketed respect for the Germans and what they are doing.

Germany, is indeed, a land of remembrance, living, the new, and most importantly- the past. 

More to come about Germany later.

Airport Wait

Hey guys!!

I'm updating from my phone AT the airport, GERMANY IS TODAY!!!! I'm sitting here next to my newly made friends; Grace, Michael and Nick!! So the German trio has changed from trio to German quadruples...? Okay so it doesn't exactly fit 'German Trio' little sing song I had going but I blame that on Hetalia anyway!

It's going to be about an hour and a half wait until I actually made my start towards the dreamy as ever GERMANY!!! 22 hours to go!

There's not much I can day for now but THANK GOD!! It's finally here. It still doesn't seem like it's here though which kind of sucks. Suppose it hasn't sunk in yet... But me and Nick think it will sink in once we step into Munich and feel the crunch of the snow under our boots. (Which all of us are wearing happily), our fur jackets all lined up on our bags and everyone in high spirits, but we all know by the time we get to Munich we'll be dead tired!

But no rest for the awesome as we have an all day walking tour!!
(We arrive at 6am!!)
Wish us a safe flight, we're boarding soon!!!

Excelling Exams

So, past two days I've had exams and been quite busy-Despite this, thE WEEK IS GOING SO SLOWLY GOD DAMMIT.


Also, watch as Willow tries not to swear because she's writing this blog post in a classroom filled with year ones!



So tomorrow is Friday which means Germany is two days away and that's probably why this week is going so slowly, HOWEVER-


Saturday is going to go extra slowly because I'm waiting for the time to come around! I've got everything packed part from Nico's present but I've got a lot of Australian chocolate and the forever famous, lord and saviour of Australia, vegemite.


I've also got Milo that (apparently) according to (a quite fucking rude) American, "tastes like dog food."


FIRST OF ALL, HOW DARE YOU.


My childhood just melted away.


Okay so I'm getting weird looks from some of these weirdos oh and a year seven boy that looks like he's on meth just walked into the classroom.


SOMEONE SAVE ME I WANT TO GO HOME.


But alas, I have no way to go home and so I can go on the internet (yay!) but not on twitter (aw D:) it won't be too long, only an hour to go and well, at this point, everything seems to be like a waiting game and the game is like a game of monopoly.
Bah... :/


I have a test in German AND Cooking tomorrow which sucks major ass because those are the last two sessions I will have of my favourite subjects before I got to Germany AND I have tests.
No rest for the awesome.
That's the quote, right?


Anyway, my exams were kinda easy, I did my best on my maths exam and I'm feeling quite confident, I think I aced my Science exam, I'm not too sure on my English exam and well.
I bullshitted my way through my Humanities exam.


You know you're royally fucked when you open your exam paper and the first word you think is 'Fuck.'.


So much for not swearing.


"C'mon Willow, you've bullshitted your way through life, you can bullshit your way through one more essay."
   -Me, 2014


Which brings me to another point, scary isn't it?
It's not going to be 2014 soon and all the fucking memes of 2014 will hopefully go OUT the window.... but we all know the internet never forgets anything.
It's like an immortal elephant in a way, isn't it?


So now I face the... choice on what I want to do.


Do I get off the computer and see if I can play a game with the little kids and be a little kid or do I put up kid-friendly youtube videos and hope that one hour passes quickly?


...
But seriously, who am I kidding?

This Star Won't Go Out #2

So, some of you might have read the blog post 'This Star Won't Go Out', if you haven't click (here)

Here I talk about a girl named Esther Earl and her and her family's story struggling through their lives.
So I check twitter this morning and funny thing is, her mum is on twitter. (For people who follow me on twitter, you will know I post a #BlogPost every time I post a post up on this blog.)



This makes me kind of nervous but at the same time, proud. I wrote that with the mind that only my blog readers would read that post and some of my twitter followers, apparently she must have scrolled down twitter and searched 'This Star Won't Go Out' and probably read it, which is slightly scary because I talked about her daughter in a way that kinda said I admired her, and I do, the thing is I'm unsure how she reacted, she must have thought it was... good? In a way? I mean, her daughter was an incredibly happy and energetic girl and I'm sure she misses her daughter a lot, but I never intended her to read it and it makes me jumpy for some reason. Please ignore me.

Now I'm kind of glad I didn't take the approach on that post that I was going to, it might've made her angry and possibly upset. I did my research into it and watched a few of Esther's YouTube videos.

 (Now excuse me, my brother has just come in and told me that I need to get ready to go to the markets to grab a few extra things for Germany so I'll be rushing to finish this blog post.)

I just wanted to say that you should think about the blog post and if you're unsure the mood or attitude I have towards certain blog posts to tell me because I normally mean all my blog posts in a good attitude, apart from certain blog posts like

-Midnight Anger
-Simply egotistical

To everyone that reads my blog at first glance, please know that this is a safe place I have decided to put my thoughts and to very much, keep it as a public online diary that can't be ruined or destroyed unless I want it to. So, none of my posts are actually going out to offend anyone.
(Not saying that Lori was offended whilst (if she did) reading the blog post "This Star Won't Go Out" but I'm still unsure on how to react to this.)

Anyway, that's if for me, I'll post tomorrow since we're approaching lift off from Australia to Germany and I know I shouldn't be this excited but it's kinda a big deal for Australians to go anywhere because we're so isolated.

Anyway, Willow signing out.

This Star Won't Go Out

If you ever have a spare few hours of your life and you're looking for something to use your time wisely, please read the book "This Star Won't Go Out"

This book is one of the most touching stories I have ever read and I wish I had met this lovely girl named, Esther.

Esther Grace Earl.
She was born August 3rd, 1994 and left this world, suddenly and peacefully on August 25th, 2010. She was 16 when she passed.



I would not class this book as a Biography.
More like a story.
Not a love story. Not a story of loss.
But a story of the human struggle and the will to be alive.
A story of the test of faith and happiness.
I will hold Esther Earl's story forever close to my heart for as long as I am able.


I will not spoil anything of this book- nor will I make the emotional post I was going to. I spent a lot of time pondering on how I was going to allow myself to respond. But I've come to accept that I'm going to see the anger that John Green-a beloved author and not really surprisingly a friend of Esther's-did; with anger and frustration.

The story of Esther is touching, special and to be treasured.
The story of Esther also a story and proof that the world is cruel to sweet things. If the world finds a ray of sunshine, it will crush it mercilessly. I am not referring to Esther Earl as being crushed, nor did the rare ray of sunshine that she shone so brightly become crushed either. Even in her last days, she was said to be extremely lively and happy.

 Her story and her life lives on in the hearts of people who knew her, her mother, Lori Earl, her father, Wayne Earl and her siblings, Evangeline Earl, Abraham Earl, Abby Earl and Graham Earl.

John Green, being a friend of her, shortly after posted the book titled "The Fault in Our Stars" which I believe, he wrote to honour Esther. He did not write it based on Esther and he (rightfully) refuses to talk about Esther in the context of "The Fault in Our Stars", he denies any connection, apart from him wanting Esther to read his book.


Below is her last, ever video that is on her YouTube channel. (Cookie4Monster4), you can still see, that even so close to her returning home to the God she believed in, she was joyful. In this video, she tours us around her house and still bounces around, you see her brother, Graham and her. There is also another video on her channel called "Just Feelings" that I urge you to watch too.

Please remember this is not a fictional story, this actually happened. 
Esther Earl is just as real as her death was. And I can't possibly imagine the pain that her family and her friend-John Green goes through with every memory they have of her. Do they smile? Do they cry? Do they sit in a corner and reflect on her life? Only they know and I hope they got the privacy that they deserved to come to terms with their grief of losing such a precious young woman.

Midnight Anger

Lately I've put myself on this workout plan, I've wanted to get onto a plan and I've found one on the Aussie Navy site and I've put myself on that. I've had to modify a few things in order to suit my knee but everything has been going well.

Apart from the fact that I've been really extremely lazy with it and I was slowly getting angrier and angrier with myself for missing work outs, since a step on the scale to figure out I was heavier than I would've liked, I put myself on it. 

And probably starting tomorrow I'll put myself on the same diet as my mother so I can lose some weight there. Either that or I'll put myself on the Dukan diet, which my grandmother and grandfather were on and had really great success with. The thing is, as long as I eat the right foods I can eat as much as I want, which is really good for me because normal diets that restrict me from eating as much as I need to in order to get full never work for me.

But anyway, I'll go into what I put into the title.

About half an hour ago, (probably about 45 minutes after I post this) I suddenly got extremely angry with myself as someone reminded me about my plan, and I got pissed because I was meant to go for a 1.7km run today and I fell asleep after school, I was also meant to cook dinner and I should get to bed earlier in order for me to do this but I can't. Insomnia's a bitch kids.

So, I looked at the plan I had to do, and I had sit ups, squats and push ups to do. 

I've forgiven myself partly by doing two times the amount of sets that I needed to do, totaling the amount of sit-ups, push-ups and squats today is

Sit-ups: 240

Push-ups: 240

Squats: 40

And I'm quite surprised because I didn't total up the amount of exercises I needed to do, I didn't question it.

Ah yes, gut you better watch out because soon you will all be gone.

I've also put myself on a swimming plan, my swim days are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

But I'm probably going to change the Tuesday to Friday because there's a lot for me to do on Tuesdays and there were swimming classes there and in a whole no. 

"Too fast for the slow lane, too fast for the medium lane, too slow for the fast lane."

Well fuck you too sir.

Anyway, we had a little too much drama in the groups lately, the group has split in two, someone slept with someone and someone isn't happy that that someone slept with that someone and someone said this and someone said that! Blah! Blah! Blah!

Yeah nobody gives a shit, I would be surprised if you did too to be honest.

Twitter shit, uh, something about the Hetalia verse or something, I don't know, I haven't been paying attention and there's nothing going in on the Free! verse either. At the moment everyone in the Free! verse is just too happy about Free! getting an English dub.

Beauty.

 

I've sat in my room for a little bit and worked on my voice, trying different voices to see if I could go into voice acting when I grow up instead of acting, maybe I could do both but who knows.

Anyway, that's my post, expect more posts to come because we're nearing Germany (17 days) and all this stuff.

Now just eagerly waiting for Nico and Sam to get home so I can Skype them for an hour or two before I go to bed and say hello to my Wednesday timetable.

Sport, Social Studies, Lunch, Health, English, Science, Home time.

No school on Friday, thank GOD.

I'll try to keep up with my exercises so I don't get frustrated and angry and time to go onto twitter and try to fix everything up, people slowly getting tired of my shit. I feel it.

Anyway.

Cya.

Thanks Rin.

Germany will be back soon.

Chuggin' Em Down.

Today, in German we had a competition.

Who could
 
   -1) Hold a beer stein in front of you for as long as you can.
   -2) Drink the water from the stein as fast as you could.

I would like to say that I won both heats of drinking the water from the stein.

Gotta stay in practice for Germany.



So, we did that ant then went onto making some sort of poster about Goettingen, which I didn't do much about but eh.

Um, nothing else really interesting to tell apart from I got Sam and Nico's package today and it was filled with German sweets.

I must say I've gotten to love the hanuta sweets a lot but I haven't dug into many of the sweets yet anyway.

But if you can, I suggest somehow trying hanuta, I love it personally.

Lets hope I just don't get fat from them.

I'm also just gunna leave this here.



Gou: Alright guys, the bathrooms are a little weirder in this area.
Seijuro: How so Gou-kun?
Gou: [glare] It's /Kou/. And, you'll have to pay for it.
Kisumi: Oh? How much?
Gou: For you Kisumi, you'll only need 10 cents.
Momo: What?! Not fair!
Gou: [secretly smirking] Momo and Seijuro, you're going to have to give two euros.
Seijuro & Momo: Not fair!
Gou: You could always pay 10 cents but you might get in trouble.
Kisumi: I just get discounts because I'm cute.

**Later**

Kisumi, Momo & Seijuro: *sees sign*
Kisumi: ....
Momo: ....
Seijuro: ....
Kisumi: GOU.
Momo & Seijuro: [grinning]