Mid Year Orientation in Ahrweiler!

This past weekend (Thursday Jan. 23 - Sunday Jan. 26) was probably one of the best weekends of my exchange year so far. The remaining 48 out of the original 50 CIEE CBYXer's all traveled from our host families in various parts of Germany and met in a youth hostel in Ahrweiler, a town about 30 minutes outside of Bonn. It was so great to see everyone again and it's hard to believe that it's been over five months since we all said goodbye at the end of language camp. Everyone has grown and changed so much and become considerably more German, so much for some people that it was hard to recognize them at first. I don't know if I'm really supposed to talk about what happened at mid year so it isn't ruined for future CBYXer's who may be reading my blog so I'll just give a basic outline. A lot of our time was spent in meetings with the entire group and meetings with our small groups from language camp. We talked a lot about all the experiences we have have had the first half of the year, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It was really good to hear about everyones experiences and how they compare to my own. On Friday, we took the train to Bonn and toured the Haus der Geschichte (history museum). After the museum, we were given the rest of the afternoon to have free time in Bonn. Katy, Aaron, Ashley, and I had such a great evening. We found a British/American food store and it's safe to say we got a little too excited. After loading up on American products, we went to this adorable Irish Pub for dinner. It was probably one of the coolest restaurants I've ever been too and I wish I had a picture of the entire inside. Basically, it looked like this old library on the inside and it had all these little alcoves with tables. It's hard to explain but it was super cool. Anyways, after a great meal and lots of yummy apple beer at the pub, we went down to the Rhine river. After spending a little while at the Rhine, we headed back to the train station to go back to the hostel. Like us, most people decided to take the last train. Our group were pretty much the only people in that section of the train so everyone was being so loud and crazy and it was such a fun ride. Saturday was out last full day together. In the afternoon, we walked into downtown Ahrweiler and it was such a cute town! It was super old and very typical German. That night all 48 of us plus the five teamers and Julia (the head of CBYX in the CIEE office) went to the bar in Ahrweiler and just had a great time. After going back to the hostel, everyone was running around and staying up so late and just really making the most of our last night together. Sunday, after sad goodbyes we all parted ways and headed back to our host families. Being in Berlin, I had about an 8 hour trip and didn't get back until around 9:30 at night. So all in all, mid year was an incredible weekend with incredible people and it was so nice to have a little "American" break.

Tschüss,
Dani♡

I love my Americans! <3

So much enthusiasm in the British/American store

The Irish Pub with Ashley, Katy, and Aaron! 

Ahrweiler