The redhead is long overdue for writing a new post.

And I don't really have any excuses as to why either because I had this whole week and I have the whole of next week for vacation. Now a LOT has happened... and as many of you know, I have quite a difficult time being brief, so instead, I am going to write two posts tonight.
   In this one I will be detailing the irritation with me getting my Aufenthaltserlaubnis or, for those of you who can't really pronounce that, let alone understand what the hell it means, the peice of paper that says that I can stay for the whole year for studying and such.
   I need this little peice of paper because if I do not, I am officially a tourist and after three months they can deport me. And I know you are thinking,"Deni Anne, how on earth could you, Miss Never-got-a-detention-in-her-life Tobin, possibly have ever been denied staying in Germany for a year when all you want to do is learn, AND you don't cost the German government a penny, IN FACT you are giving more money to the government?"
   Well, (I would say) first that was a horrendous run-on sentence, and secondly, because Baden-Wurtemburg is very funny.
   A few weeks ago my host family mom scheduled an appointment for us to apply for this Aufenthaltserlaubnis. What happened was this: Katerina (my guest Family mom) called the Auslander office thing at 6 in the morning to accomodate them. She explained about how we had a scheduled date for getting an Aufhaltserlaubnis, how I am a private exchange student, etc. The woman proceeded to say something along the lines of, "You cannot have an Aufhaltserlaubnis because she is not an exchange student working with an official exchange program or school program." I'm not sure how the rest of the call went but Katerina was very angry about it all. As I awoke that morning (8 minutes earlier than I had planned) she explained to my bleary-eyed unshowered person what was going on. Later that day she explained it to Christian (my guest family dad).
       Christian also knew (because he researched it before I came) that the law states something similar to: When you are in Deutschland studying you can stay,  because it costs next to nothing for the government to have you so it isn't really a problem. Katerina and I have also already got this thing signed that I am living now in Rommelshausen, and so Waiblingen, our "county" sent us a letter that told us I must attend a school or I am breaking the law. At that point I was already attending Fredreich Schiller Gymnasium. Then Christian, who is very good at reasoning things out, called the boss of the lady that Katerina spoke with on Monday and explained to her everything that was going on. First she said that in the states of germany they have special regulations of how they should read the law. In Baden-Wurtemburg the law previously described is more specific and says basically that they do not except a lot of exchange students unless they are in these special programs or with a school for these programs. Christian then told her about how I am attending a school like we were told I must and she pretended not to hear him because at the time in the STATE of Baden-Wurtemburg I was only a tourist. Meaning I may only be here for three months and then they must deport me. Even though in the TOWN I was living here officially.
     After all the careful stepping and fingernail biting, we finally got a new meeting to apply for the Aufenthaltserlaubnis. We went, and the lady we were supposed to meet was mysteriously sick, she was the first lady we talked to, the one who said that I couldn't stay at all and deportation was the only option. Which we thought was great because we went to this other lady who was very nice and even, upon hearing about what had happened with her colleague, hinted that she would probably get in trouble for doing that. the whole application process took about an hour, or less, and dashed my hopes of missing gym class. A few days later i was approved and now i have this cool thingy in my passport. It's pretty cool.
    The only really lame part about me finally getting it was, I was classified as a "special case" meaning normally, they wouldn't let a private exchange happen, and they let me because they felt like it.
    So now it's kind of funny. i was almost deported from a country, guys! And for what? Wanting to learn to speak their language.What a criminal I am!

The redhead doesn't know what to name this one....

What happened since last thursday?
I went to Ludwigsburg! (That place with the freakin' huge garden.)
Twas quite fun with my host mom and the babykins. We went to the garden there first and stayed to look around. They had creative entirely pumpkin- and gord-carved masterpeices and huge scultures made of pumpkins for fall. Then we went into Märchenland. For those who do not know what the heck that is it is basically an old Fairy tale land that takes all the Brother's Grimm fairy tales and other popular ones and brings them alive in little mechanical displays that kids go nuts over. It was cute. I really can't wait until next year when my nephew comes over because he might beable to actually enjoy it.
Sunday we hung out and did nothing of great significance besides watching Tatort.
Monday I had my first English Vocabulary test, which I am sad to report I got stumped on two questions with. I couldn't think of a great synonym for "to try very hard" so I just put "attempt with great determination", which isn't wrong but I'm sure isn't what everyone else put down.
After school we had soccer practice, where we ran alot and on our water breaks belted dumb pop songs at the top of our lungs so everyone stared.
Today, I was almost late to school, because my bike broke five minutes before I was supposed to be there and my hair looked like I had recently been in a wind storm at sea.
By the end of the day everything was cool though. I volunteered for the first time in my bio class, fixed my bike, and had a very yummy supper. As we explained to my host dad about the Visa (we were speaking in English) he said,"Why did they say we can't keep you?" which made me sound like a lost puppy they were hoping to keep and made me laugh.
Babysitting and math homework!

The redhead should write a long post but...

...she has a butt ton of homework, so here's a brief summary:
Today, Thursday, was my friggin' long day which means ten hours in school .(Yuck)
I had a very good sleep last night though about 9 hours! Score.
I biked to school, got there just in time for Religion, which was okish. I learn a lot of cool words in that class.
In Politik we talked about Versicherung or Insurance for various things in Germany. Which was cool because frankly, I like their insurance system, nay, I like their freakin' government system better than ours.
French... not gonna lie, I day-dreamed through. No grade= virtually no motivation to pay attention... at all.
Math was mathy. Lunch was yummy. NWT was fantastically boring as usually, except for the part where we play with fire. Chemistry was pretty  good today because I understood things much better. Basically the school day was awfully unremarkable.
On the way home: My bike chain freaked out and twisted this strange way, then I fixed it with the fantastical skills acquired from my father. then later somehow managed to run into a parked car.... (clumsiness points= another flawless ten) But luckily I only hit the rear view mirror, the owner was right there and he said it was ok and smiled at me and told me to go home. He was very nice, I liked him. Then I got home, saw a cute baby, understood my homework, and got MOCKINGJAY in the mail a DAY after I ordered it! Go amazon. More updates coming soon... sorry for this post, i know it's kind of boring and dumb but I have deutsch homework!

The redhead had 29 freakin' views yesterday.

Woah. Go people. it's nice to see in the stats how many views I have each day, but I would surely enjoy comments and feedback when anybody feels like it....
But aside from blog craziness, I had a week of craziness. Well, not really, it was pretty typical apart from it being the week of my Libra Gastfamilievater's Geburtstag (My host family dad's birthday, yo!). So, the most important adventures of the week included cookies, cake, chocolate, and Schnittzel eating! Some of the less pleasurable adventures, however, are brand new additions to our favorite series,"The redhead is the clumsiest person on the face of the earth." In this addition we will visit the notion of how a person could possibly accidentally drop their toothbrush in the toillet while in the midst of brushing their teeth. And how someone can get a flat tire on their bicycle by no apparent means.
Let start from the beginning. this week was pretty awesome as far as school, I understand my math class on a regular basis now, and because of that it has certaining become my favorite class. My other elected favorites at this point are Politik and Physik. I know, your thinking, "Politik? Wouldn't that be really hard with all the big German words and slightly different Democratic Socialist government?" And I would say,"Why, yes, however, I have the most fantastic Politik teacher who can speaks German the entire class, but will translate crazy big complicated words for me so that I understand and explains differences between American government and German government when they arise. Plus she can keep the entire class actually quiet. A quiet class at perfect attention here is quite a feat. Physik, I like because last year in German class we did this awesome thing where we studied what we were doing in Physical Science in German class so, not only do I know basically everything we're doing, I also know all the german words for those things! 50 gold stars for Herr Wert yo!
Tuesday, I got to skype chat with my two sisters, my nephew, and then later on in the evening, my mommy and daddy! That was great! I loved seeing their faces and hearing their voices together like they were there. However, I certainly felt the distance between us as my nephew jumped up and down and screamed in joy and asked if I could read him a book. I certainly made me cry. We used to read books over and over again, with him sitting on my lap and one day, he won't fit anymore. One day he won't want to read books anymore and I'm missing a whole year of it.
Wednesday, was my host family dad's birthday as I disclosed before. I was also the day I rode my bike to school, like every other day, but found on my return trip that I had to walk because I had a flat tire. How, may you ask, did I get a flat tire? I have no freaking clue. But then I got home, ate lunch, did homework, and we were off to Onkel Otto's Schnittzel joint. (Which is supposedly the home of the best schnittzel around.) We got lost and the baby was angry and screamed the entire way, but it made the schnittzel taste that much better once we got there, as the baby slept. And to top it all, after all our eating, as I finished brushing my teeth and went to go rinse my mouth out, I thought I had placed my toothbrush on the ledge above the sink, but instead as I stooped to cup water to my mouth, I heard an ominous sliding, clattering, and plunk. And found as I looked up with my shining clean fresh mouth, that my toothbrush was currently taking a bath in the toilet. Awesome. And it's another ten from the judges!
Luckily, my gastfamilie had an extra toothbrush. Today, has been pretty awesome so farsince I slept ten hours, woke and ate amazing jam for breakfast and now I'm talking to you lovely people. First soccer game I play in today! Hope it doesn't freakin' rain!

The redhead is the clumsiest person on the face of the earth.

So far Deni has tripped over the same doorstop three times outside her classroom building while holding the door for people. She has managed to trip over the soccer ball twice on the turf field while trying to look cool and skinned the same knee badly in two different places. She also somehow knocked over a flour jar with her butt while washing the dishes and dropped the serving spoon, full with dinner on the way to her plate on her place matt three or our times.
And her gracelessness acquired tens across the board. Thank you, thank you.

Please join us again for another report on "The redhead is the clumsiest person in the world!"

The redhead has seen Harry Potter und Der Stein der Weisen.

For those of you who have no freakin' clue what that says above... It means I saw the first Harry Potter movie in German yo.
(I'm not sure why I added 'yo' to the end of the sentence...)
In doing so, I also found out that the word for Earwax is "Ohrensmalz". Weird huh?
And in the time that has passed between today and the last time I wrote a post for those of you across the puddle, I have discovered that sometimes I feel like a baby being here. (a wittle tiny baby as my sister would so rightly proclaim.) There are a couple reasons for that. The first is that I cannot remember my dreams at this point, mostly because, my dreams are unsure whether they should be in German or English. I only dream pictures like a baby. Secondly, I pride myself with accomplishments like,"Answered a Question in History Correctly" and "Did Math Homework Without Help" or even simply "Understood". Not that I'm saying those are the accomplishments a baby strives for... but you get what I mean, they are simple things that not only happened regularly in the life before but were almost like breathing for me. You see in school it used to go like this: Teacher ask a question, Deni volunteer, Teacher picks Deni, Deni answers. Repeat, until of course my teachers would stop picking me because they wanted other people to volunteer.... Now, I am the person who asks about everything two or three times. the person who needs someone else to explain. And also lately, I've been getting songs stuck in my head from Kindergarten and the like such as,"Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere" when we're done with a chem lab or "Can you feel the love tonight" from The Lion King, which I am still puzzled as to how I got it stuck in my head...
  (I think this baby analogy sounded better in my head than it does here...)
But there are a lot of things that make me feel much more independent and adultish too. I have taken the bus on a number of occations by myself and nothing has gone wrong yet. I rode my bike to school everyday this week and only got lost once only for five minutes and I wasn't even late for class. I clean my room on a regular basis. I try to do my homework by myself most nights. I help with dinner almost every night and I have money which I actually (mostly) spend on only things I need. I have a money card that I can use with the magical money machine and get cash!!!! I know, I'm so adult-like that you can't even stand it. (:

Oh and some good news: I am not going to die! (sorry, that was in Deni language, let me translate) I'm not going to be graded in French! YAY!
now have a lovely goddamn weekend, I know I will, even if it's raining because all I have to do for monday is English homework!

The redhead has had a week of school already! Weird.

OHMYGOD.
I know what you're thinking, I've been slacking a little with this blog things seeing as something incredibly big in "The German Experience"  happened... and that was... I went to school!!!!
Boo-Yay! (It's both.)
My first day was weird... for me. Because I did many things I had never done before. I used public transportation (and have been successfully all week), I experienced my first "Pause" and many afterward, I experienced math in German, I sat through a class I knew absolutely  nothing about (French), and I managed to lug about 13 books in my backpack.
First public transportation. Public transportation means it's crowded, sometimes loud, and most of the time it smells weird. My first day in the bus I got on and it was so crowded I was basically pressed into the windsheild. Mostly the other breif inhabitors of the bus were students like me and early morning workers. It was pretty loud and it smelled like a mixture of too much perfume and cigarrette breath and it wasn't exactly pleasant. When we got to the school we waited in the office until someone knew where I was going, then I went with my German teacherto sort of my 'Homeroom' ish. It's where I have the majority of my classes. I was told to sit next to the window and met my first schoolfriend, Carolin. She helps me in a lot of my classes, she's very smart. I met all the people around me and then suddenly after getting my schedule from the teacher we had a "Pause". This one was short 5  minutes or so. There is a pause every hour (I think). The pause after that is a longer pause for 20 mintues or so. When we have afternoon school we have a lunchpause for about an hour and the weirdest thing about pauses are that you can go anywhere. You can go anywhere and do anything as long as it's not against the law and you get back in time for class.
As of today I've had all my subjects all of which I sort of understand except French. I know how to say two things in French: Wi and Bonjour. That's it. The class I'm in has had French for about 5 years. Great. Luckily the teacher is very sweet and after I explained the problem decided that I would learn what I could learn what i could and that was that. Math we learned about functions, which was interesting the first two days because I understood nothing! luckily, my host family dad is a math super genius so he helped me understand it better and now i'm doing pretty good and i kind of understand my teacher!
another weird thing is that my schedule here is different each day of the week and depending on the day I could be home at 12ish or I could be home at 5ish. Today was a long one and I know that my blog posts are getting lame and I'm sorry... My next one will be SUPERMEGAFOXYAWESOMEHOTT, but right now... I'm tired. Guten Nacht.