 | We have been in lock down for a long time now. I don’t exactly know which day of lockdown it is anymore. Some years in school have gone back to school. Sadly, not my year but hopefully it means that I’ll be back to school soon enough. A lot of shops are now open but it’s weird because you have to have a mask to enter and most shops ask you to take a basket, trolley or chip to make sure that the shop isn’t overcrowded. There's also a new rule in my district now. Everyone has to wear masks in shops or public transports. If not you could get a fine of 50 euros which is almost as much as not having your transport card on public transport. |
 | Despite the lockdown, my host family still celebrated easter. Easter is a lot bigger in Europe than in New Zealand or at least my family. I mean there is a 2 week holiday just for Easter. We had an Easter brunch and then an easter hunt. We also painted eggs to give to other people and to eat at brunch. My host family also made lots of typical German food I could try. Like hefezopf, schnitzel, grüne Sauce, semmel kloesse, germknödel, handkase und musik and of course my first German mcdonalds. With the weather getting better and better because of Spring we recently had a lot of barbecues and which reminds me a lot of the barbecues we used to do in New Zealand. |
 | We have also been going on a lot of walks, runs, and bike rides. A couple weeks ago, Luis and I went on a 22 km bike ride around the neighbouring towns. My host family and I also sometimes do circuit exercises in the garden to try to maintain all the weight we put on from lockdown. The whole situation with the virus also impacted the outbounds from Germany. They have to choose a half year, or a year from January to January. Which is almost impossible with the German schooling system because they can’t skip the 12th or the 13th. I was with my host family when they had the video conference with all the outbounds because I didn’t want to make the wifi break by doing something else on the internet and it’s not as if I had anything better to do. It was good practice for my German listening skills too. It was a little scary though when they mentioned that the host family has the option to not host the kid. Which is totally understandable but not a good situation to be in. It was really nice because I talked to my host mom about it and she said I was welcome to stay on with them if any problems like that were to arise. That offer made me feel very assured and grateful to have such a good host family. I am going to be moving families on the 21st of May and school is supposedly supposed to be open to more grades in 2 or 3 weeks. Hopefully this means things will slowly start to get back to normal. |