Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to anybody who still reads this. I had a really good Christmas and will explain what I've been doing lately/put up pics in a few days. I have off of school till the 9th, so I'll have some time to upload pics and make really big update post.

My Address:
Chaston Scarborough
Anschuetzstr. 5/307
Luebeck, Germany
23562

Photos!

TLC!

Pumpin it up for TLC!

So this weekend was amazing. The Schleswig-Holstein(the German state that I'm living in) cheerleading championship was on saturday. We had practice on Friday and then had a team bonding/sleep over thing. After practice we all went to this YMCA type place that had a bar and restaurant and training facilities and all that. We had some champagne, ate some food, talked. Then we all got ready for bed, had a motivational talk with the coach. It was a good night. The morning came quickly, we had to get up at 6 to get ready and eat breakfast. Then a 2 hour bus ride to Kiel(state capital). In Germany, cheerleading isn't a very big sport. Even though this was a state championship, it reminded me of a city competition in the states. There were only about 10 teams, and none of them were very good. The scoring system is completely different here, I haven't decided if it's better or worse.

The good news is, we straight dominated everybody. Our youngest team, TLC Candy, took 1st place out of...1 team. The pee wee team, TLC Cutie, took 1st out of 7 teams. Our junior team, TLC Goody, took 4th out of 10 teams. And the team I help, the senior team, TLC Temptation, took 1st out of 5 teams :) :). Not only did we take 1st, we beat the 2nd place team by 15 points, which is A LOT! I am very proud of them. Especially Klitschko, who near the end of the routine ended up falling on her head doing a round off back tuck(flip). She got up, finished the routine, and promptly passed out and had to be taken to the hospital. Luckily she only had a concussion and not a broken neck. She spent the night and is now recovering at home. If she hadn't had the strength/adrenaline to finish the routine, we wouldn't have won. Bus ride home was fun. It was a very emotional night.

The people that were old enough and still had the energy to go out, went out to the club and danced all night. I had to take my moped, and it was raining, and it was a 6.5 mile ride, in the dark, and I got a bit lost on the way there. Not fun. Dancing with my team was a blast though. One of the girls didn't have a way home, so I made a seat out of a towel on my storage rack thing on the back of my moped, and we drove home, in the rain, it was quite interesting, but we had a nice talk, but she lived about 5 miles past my apartment, which made it an 11 mile trip to her place, and 5 miles back to my place, in the rain, I was cold.

Today I slept...a lot. Did a lab report with my lab partner, and prepared for our lab on monday. Watched a really good movie called Martian Child. Now it's bed time. I will get pictures of my Italy trip, and of my cheer team posted soon...

Italy is dirty

So, last weekend 14 of my american friends and I flew to Milan, Italy. The entire trip ended up costing me 250 euros, which isn't bad for flight, hotel, entertainment and food. Too bad Italy is really expensive and dirty and I didn't have a very good time. It reminded me of a really expensive Mexico. Milan is the fashion capital of the world, so there was lots of Gucci and all that crap. It was a very touristy town. The food was good, but not what I expected. I paid 25euros to get into the "best" club in Milan, which was also the worst club I've ever been to. All the guys looked gay, literally with their slicked back hair, large diamond earrings, big designer glasses, and "fashionable" clothes. The only reason I would want to go back is to see the original painting of the Last Supper which is in a small church there, but has a month waiting list to see, and to see an Italian opera, but I might just see one in Rome or Venice which I plan to travel to this spring.

The good part of the trip was seeing the Duomo, which is the world's 3rd largest church. It is absolutely beautiful. You look at it and it doesn't seem real. It seems like you are looking at a postcard. There was also a castle that was pretty neat. I have lots of pictures that I will post after I filter through them and upload.

Pictures!

Holstentor

City Hall

Downtown

Inside Churches

I've been really busy with school and practice lately. The Schleswig-Holstein championship is in 9 days. I'll try to get a bunch of pictures and maybe some video. Basically the only school work there is are lab reports, but there are a bunch of them. I had my first test last week, and it went well, I don't have the grade back yet but I only need to get a 30/40 and I know I got at least that. My moped was stolen from practice 2 weeks ago. Luckily the police found it 5 days later so I got it back. I should have pictures of it later today. I've done a bit of work to it so it goes faster and doesn't make funny noises. There's a lot of stuff I want to do to it but it's too cold. For the record, doing laundry here sucks. I'll post more pictures of my moped, cheerleaders, and things that I find quirky about Germany sometime soon. I also plan on making a list of things that I love/hate/miss about being. Tchuess!

Chaston

Sick

Basically the last few weeks have been filled with school, parties, practice and thats about it. The first weeks we went on some tours of Luebeck, which is exactly how I pictured Europe in my head. The buildings are all right next to each other, built tall instead of wide. A lot of the roads are made out of brick. I started practicing with a new cheer team, which is a lot of fun. One team is an all girl team that I'm basically coaching and the other team is a partner stunt team that I coach/am on. They're are pretty good I suppose, hopefully after a year of coaching them they will be great. I hope to get some pictures of them performing soon. I've learned a lot of german from them because not all of them can speak english. Most of the time they speak german to me and I speak simple german/english to them. So far it has worked well. I understand them, they understand me. It's weird, because I'm starting to speak "Germish" which is a combination of German and english. I use english words, but german grammar structures, it makes it easier for the germans to understand me.

School is going alright. All of my professors are really boring, and seem to make quite a few mistakes that we have to correct. This isn't very good for me, because these are the classes that I actually need for the future. Hopefully I will be able to get some use out of them. Labs are pretty intense here, more so than at MSOE. The lectures themselves are easy, but an hour and a half long and sometimes we have doubles, which means the same class back to back.

The Germans know how to party. Enough said.

Pictures will be shown soon, I bought a moped :). Currently I have a cold, which ruins my weekend. I have to do a bunch of homework because I have 2 labs next week and a lab presentation, and I have a large pile of laundry/my room is a mess. Unfortunately all I feel like doing is sleeping.

Long time

So I haven't posted in a while I know. Been quite busy with school/it took a while to get internet hooked up in my room. I absolutely love it here. Everybody is really nice, and I've met a ton of people from a bunch of different places. I hope to be able to make a blog every night so I can catch everybody up on what I've been doing. I don't have all(any) my pictures uploaded anywhere yet but I will do that soon.