Amy's Spanky Fine Journal of Lurve

I am such an LJ slacker

2006-01-02T09:38:25Z

I am very very slack and have decided as a result to do a post! Woo!
New Year's Eve celebrations were muchly fun, with many amusing and interesting things occuring. But I really cannot be bothered to explain them, so I shall start with today.
today I woke up rather tired after a long long sleep that erased my NYE tiredness, and toddles off to Bakers Delight where Martin and I engaged in a fabulous game of Brennis, which everybody joined in, even Emma the new SUPERVISOR!!! Haha. This Brennis game (Bread Tennis) involved finding a piece of crust in the slicer tray or on the floor and putting it in your apron, the corners of which are being held out by your hands, creating a sort of loose trampoline/sack. Then you pull your hands out sharply flinging the bread up into the air for the next person to catch. It is great fun, especially in front of customers who are getting slightly narky even though you are serving them.
Anyway, I kind of feel like I don't really want to explain my life, so I'll toddle off.
Toodles!

Update! Finally!

2005-07-14T11:04:51Z

Instead of doing a usual update, I will personalise this random list I found on Harry Peppitt's MSN Spaces blog. Amusing.

(x) been in love
() been dumped
() shoplifted
() been in a fist fight
(x) had feelings for someone who didn't have them back
() been arrested
() made out with a stranger
() done more with a stranger
() had a crush on a teacher
() seen someone die
(x) been on a plane
(x) met someone in person from internet
(x) been moshing at a concert
() been in an abusive relationship
(x) love someone or miss someone right now
(x) laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by
(x) made a snow angel
(x) had a tea party
() flown a kite - I am a freak for not having done this
(x) built a sand castle
(x) gone puddle jumping
(x) played dress up
(x) jumped into a pile of leaves
(x) gone sledding
(x) cheated while playing a game
(x) been lonely
(x) fallen asleep at work/school
() used a fake id
(x) watched the sun set
() felt an earthquake
(x) touched a snake
() slept beneath the stars
(x) been tickled
(x) been robbed
(x) been misunderstood
(x) petted a reindeer/goat
() won a contest
() been in a car accident
() had braces
() felt like an outcast
(x) eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night
(x) had deja vu
(x) danced in the moonlight - Lou! Moonshadows!
() hated the way you look
(x) witnessed a crime - man filming freakily at Chatswood...remember Pb?
(x) pole danced - sort of. Not professionally
(x) questioned your heart
(x) been obsessed with post-it notes Houdini cockroach
(x) squished barefoot through the mud
(x) been lost
(x) been to the opposite side of the country
(x) swum in the ocean
() felt like dying
(x) cried yourself to sleep
(x) played cops and robbers
(x) recently coloured with crayons/colored pencils/markers
(x) sung karaoke
(x) paid for a meal with only coins
(x) done something you told yourself you wouldn't
(x) made prank phone calls
(x) laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose
(x) danced in the rain
(x) written a letter to Santa Claus
() been kissed under a mistletoe
() watched the sun rise with someone you care about
(x) blown bubbles
() made a bonfire on the beach
() crashed a party
(x) gone rollerskating
(x) had a wish come true
() humped a monkey - what the hell?!
() ate dog/cat food !
() told a complete stranger you loved them
() kissed a mirror
(x) sang in the shower
(x) have a little black dress
(x) had a dream that you married someone
(x) glued your hand to something
() got your tongue stuck to a flag pole
() kissed a fish
(x) worn the opposite sexes clothes
(x) been a cheerleader - in a performance
(x) sat on a roof top
(x) screamed at the top of your lungs
(x) done a one-handed cartwheel
() talked on the phone for more than 6 hours
(x) stayed up all night - almost
(x) didnt take a shower for a week
() pick and ate an apple right off the tree
(x) climbed a tree
() had a tree house
(x) are scared to watch scary movies alone
(?) believe in ghosts - not sure yet
() have more then 30 pairs of shoes
() worn a really ugly outfit to school just to see what others say
() gone streaking
() played ding-dong-ditch - um?
(x) played chicken
(x) got pushed into a pool with all your clothes on
(x) broken a bone
(x) been easily amused
() caught a fish then ate it
() made porn
(x) caught a butterfly
(x) laughed so hard you cried
() cried so hard you laughed
(x) mooned/flashed someone
(x) had someone moon/flash you
(x) cheated on a test
(x) have a Britney Spears CD
(x) forgotten someones name
(x) slept naked
(x) French braided someones hair
(x) gone skinny dipping in a pool
() been kicked out of your house

Just a reminder that some of these include childhood moments.

That is all.

Oh, and life is a stressful and confusing duck-pool-at-the-carneval-bit-at-the-Easter-Show pool. It is so because there is a pool of emotions and things to deal with which you can see and pick some out and put them back then get them again, then get others and it leaves you feeling a bit exhausted. Explanation - a dog in need of surgery, host parents splitting up, post-Bundanoon tiredness, excitement, joy, desire, despair, love, amusement, empathy...they are fleeting and endless.

I fell poetic. I might write something.

Love Amy

New Photo Albums

2005-05-24T10:31:27Z

By the way, there are new photo albums up here:

http://photos.yahoo.com/gerroff_me

including from Easter Show, Christmas in March, Star Wars, Phoebe's Party and....that is all. You'll see when you get there.

Myra-heee!

2005-05-24T10:30:06Z

Why hello there! I seem to have done a toilet on your floor!
And it has been a while, a little while, too long a little while...and so I come here to update.
Well, today was the land of unevent, yet event at the same time. In German I realised how much I have become the food girl with my Baker's Delighting - Fiona said, "I have food to bring in aswell, but seeing it was Tuesday I figured Amy would have bread so I didn't bring it." But sadly that trend is lost, as I have had my Monday evening shift SNATCHED away from my VIPER GRASP and FLUNG into the lonely night. Sorry guys, no more bread on Tuesday.
English was a slight amusement - I got scolded again for trying to redecorate the boring plain-arse classroom with my Van Helsing postcard thingo, then we did group work and then came back into the room where my classmates were discussing the Nerd Olympics and how I was like, "Sure I'll be fit and healthy enough to go" the day after my neck operation, cos the doctor was like, "you'll probably be fine." Fine my eye. It involved last minute ringing of Dr Kamperos and Mima to go for me as I was tired and pained in my delerium, which Lauren and Leah experienced first hand when they visited me that arvo - I spent the whole time laughing about the poor lady next to me and trying to show them my drip.

Recess - lamo netball meeting

Physics - land of great pain and lack of listening. I always fall asleep in Physics. I think it is actually the lab. Except that time we were in room 13 and I fell asleep. That was cos of musical. And that time in Kirkham Room watching the video was cos of that and heat. Half the class fell asleep that lesson. Anyway, today my back has been paining me and continues to do so as I type. I have no idea why. Bah.
Art - garrrasrgh land of frustration. Had issues with photograms - they're easy enough but I can get the bloody exposure and developing time right! It pisses me right off. I get the coolest shapes - they come out like sillouettes (whatev with spelling) but I am always too late to get it out of the developer and they go all unclear and undefined and it SUCKS.

Lunch - eating of soup and reading of lovely acrostic poems Lauren and Kaycie wrote for me using Will's full name, but they didn't get up to Atkinson, so it will be finished tomorrow. Also involved maths homework and chemistry speech reading and observing of at least half the class finishing it in the library.

Maths - I hate constructions. Compasses are crap to the max and I suck at them. But otherwise was ok. The chem oral was shite, I went mega-overtime and didn't end up doing the whole liven-up-chem-with-lycra thing properly but what the hell. I really don't care. And back to maths where we played with the awesome program again and made kaleidoscopes! Mine kicks arse.

Then I rejoiced the lack of chemistry assessment by watching a bit of the Dare DVD which kind William so wonderously gave to me yesterday and then got bored in the speech day section so left to do homework. And now I go do that again.

It just never ends, does it?

PS New word: zuparupped. Meaning rejuvenated.

My favourite website

2005-05-18T11:59:26Z

Just thought I'd share the joy I discovered the other day.

To experience it, click here. Man, it's exciting. I love it.

Also, this one is pretty cool. (Not the same as the other one, don't fret.)

Actually, just realised the second one is better. It's ACTUALLY really awesome - my fave, definately.

Actually, what would be REALLY cool is if both could combine.

Anyway, after that fabulouso adventure, who can deduce my favourite metal? Prizes for first person guessing correctly....

Shopping Hoo How!

2005-05-14T07:54:40Z

Woo! Shopping today! I shall begin to recount the adventures of late from the day of yester.

School and play rehearsal - it was great, Lynne and I were talking about the Tom forcing himself on Meg (I play Tom, Lynne plays Meg...earcgh) which Ms McNair cut, but it turned out a bit munto cos it's like:

Tom: Do you want to sit down?
Meg: Aren't we going to the headland?
Tom: Eventually. Sit down.
[pause]
Meg: Ummm. No. Let's keep walking.
[pause]
Meg: Why are you crying?

See the strangeness of a randomly over-emotional Tom who can't deal with Meg not wanting to sit down? So then he goes on to try and force her and she gets freaked out then he's like "I want you to let me do it to you" and she's like "No!" so it gets creepy, so we didn't add that, but there's a little bit we were working on and it was getting full good, and suited and everything, and we were all excited but then we realised we hadn't acutally asked Ms McNair if we could add it in yet. But LUCKILY she agreed, except for the last line, which is totally abominable:

Tom: Bull!

Wtf mate?! What the Sparticus is wrong with our school?! We changed it to "Don't be stupid!" (riight...) but you shouldn't have to change a script at all. the playwright writes it how it is for a reason - every word is important to the creation of a character, so it sucks. Other words cut out are ones such as "shit", "bastards", "fucken", "bull" (which are all from my characters lines, funnily enough. Pisses me right off) and no doubt a few "Jeez"s, seeing as the full version of that swear would be Jesus Christ. My gosh what a land of conservative censorship we live in. It so crap though! Will's play was like "fuck shove your finger up his arse fuck i fucked my sister and my mother and i can't get an erection turd and fuck some more". No way would our school allow something like that!

So anyway, rehearsal was otherwise good. Then Becky popped around and we kicked bear arse and watched a bit of whatever that movie is and I can't beilieve it was actually accepted into cinemas, it was so lame. Napolean Dynamite, that's the one. My gosh Naoplean is the most annoying turd ever to live. Some bits were pretty funny, I admit, but overall...thumbs down. Sorry Becky. I did enjoy bits of it, such as the bowling and his brother's "Yessssss." Hahaha. We then went on an adventure to Jeremy's house where we observed Military Tattoo and Jeremy's nicely rearranged house and then looked at his photos from France. Becky told us this hilarious story about Diana and her cat and it was indeed hilarious. Ask Becky to tell it to you sometime. I also put Jeremy's L-plates in his camel-toe shoes and took a photo.

Then this morning I went to Paddington to go shopping with the mother and the father and it was great. I got some new jeans (skinny leg, tight, stretch, hipster Lee Denim) and some kick-arse boots (turqoise, suede, black thin heel (perhaps a little too high for comfort)) and a glass dragonfly brooch thing and THEN we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch and I had the fajitas (DELICIOUS) and wandered around looking at the memorabilia, such as a cabinet of picks (Brian May's was an English coin), Annie Lennox's red lace bra (*shudder* I hope it was never worn. Seedy man-lady) and many a guitar and Elton John suit and Elvis record thingos. It was great fun.

So in farewell, I would like to thank my parents for the coolness clothes. I now leeave to have a power nap before I do some more chemistry assessment which I forgot about and then go to meet the William.

Goodnight!

no subject today

2005-05-12T10:15:30Z

I am feeling lame and uninspired. I cannot think of interesting subjects nor create interesting entries any longer, as Becky so kindly pointed out.

Alas alah...perhaps I shall outline events of recent...

EVENTS OF RECENT

Today, school - ho hum as usual. Got art exam back, same with English speech. Dr Kamperos had a Chuppa Chup for anyone who could find the quote "Rich girls don't marry poor boys" in The Great Gatsby (but it's not in the book, it's from the film, sneaky lady) and Leah wrote it in pencil in my book and showed Dr Kamperos, who gave her the Chuppa Chup! Good work to Leag!
Lumchtime was supremely amusing, as usual. I am awaiting Lou's amusing quiz that will pose the question of what we DIDN'T discuss at lunch today...ah man, good times. I remember when we had the lengthy two or perhaps three day discussion about siamese twins and how they would manage with all aspects of life, including sex. Seriously, how?! Not nice.
And after an afternoon full of various group members' renditions of "Every sperm is sacred..." by Monty Python and some rubbing of perspex rods with lovely silk shirt material in Physics and hilarious conversations in German about all manners of things I toddled over to my most favourite place in the world (the library) and went to good old Film Club! Haha, it sounds so gay, but it's quite fun. This director came today to teach us some stuff, and then we were having discussions when we were supposed to be editing, and Ali Kvisle, Mel, Meg, Steph and I developed this hilarious plot for a film we are planning to enter in the MLC film competition in September some time. Oh dear...September...the land of exams and "HSC Prep" and birthdays and film deadlines...my oh my. But it is also the land of holidays, which pleases me. w00t!

And now I am feeling rather...irate, seeing as no doubt some sperm were wasted today, and millions of kids died from or became infected with the HIV AIDS virus today...not a happy thought. I will do the 40 Hour Famine again, I claim. Just try and stop me. I kind of want to do it differently, like, that Jonothon guy's "40 Hours Without Furniture" example! How cool would that be?! Really annoying, expecially during term, but very hilarious. You'd have to sleep and eat on the ground, and work on the ground and it would be odd. I will have a think.

So farethee well all my ogres, and I am off to see if I can develop my ideas from my ideas draw into scripts or stories or artworks or something. Ideas are a WASTED if they are not UTILISED.

Wireless Wonder

2005-05-05T09:09:47Z

I am just having a spiffy and speedy update to celebrate the joys of wireless internet which was installed on my computer of joy as of this afternoon! It's fabulous! I can use the internet EVEN when the parents are doing boring accounting crap on the other computer! How fabbo. But I am getting rather distracted. First MSN, then iTunes and the recent internetised skill of automatically knowing which songs are on a CD without me having to type it is as usual. It even found every song on this German Christmas CD of kiddies singing cute Christmas songs. I was impressed.

Anyway, I think I might abandon this lovely tool of procrastination and...go and...study...

Man it's just so boring...

rather like this enrty

Sorry.

whoppo

2005-04-21T02:27:39Z

I could think of no witty and relevant subject so whoppo will do. Huzzah!

Just a quickie while I take a break from Physics and Snell's Law.

In the days of late I realised that I have hardly done anything this holidays, partly cos I don't really feel like doing much, all I want to do is relax and be able to do NOTHING but NOOOOO exams loom on the near horizon...but since last time have not really done much studying...

Did I mention the softball party? Aye, I believe so. ANyway, it was great fun. Then I went to visit my grandma on Wednesday, then my Newcastle/Germany/London buddy Sarah visited and we were joined by Jeremy at 10 then we caught the awesome 261 to the awesome city where we met Will and Pat and went to Alan's music to get Will's banjo picks (which are freaky and metal and claw-like and you could just grow your nails long like Saruman but that's just seedy). We then made our way down to the Opera House, discussing what would be most effective at destroying the world e.g. soiling rice in Asia or destoying America which would in turn destroy the world. Nice. We then snacked on pre-lunch snacks and were joined by Lauren and Leah and Celeste and went to the Botanic Gardens for a spot of Twister and soccer and carving up the chicken with Jeremy's handy pack of 24 plastic forks he just happened to have in his bag, hahah!

Friday was a day of study for me, I think, quite productive, and packing for CAMPING!

Then Saturday through Tuesday was spent down in the lovely region of bushland called Coolendel where many things of amusement occured, including playing French Snap like they do IN THE LEAGUE and learning to Johnny Depp dive off the rocks and the development of the two new pick-up lines:

"Why don't you uh...come over here and uh....cut my fleece..."
and
"Why don't you uh...go down to Nazareth and uh...preach my word..."

Hahahahaha!!!

Then yesterday Will and I went to Lane Cove in search of a pyjama jumpsuit for moi in Double Bay Clothing Warehouse where Steffi said you could buy them and found only mini sizes, but they were soooo cool! I will not give up my quest! We then went to look at all the hilarious stuff in Vinnies and in the kids section I found.....(drum roll)

A RED LYCRA JUMPSUIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hahahah! It is soooo hilarious! It's like size 3 (American, maybe?) and this dance brand with a zip up the front and the feet closed in and it was only four dollars so I bought it! Hahaha funniest item of clothing ever! I will RULE the lycra gang in my spanky fine new jumpsuit!

We then headed back to Will's where we made this awesome ice cream dish called "New York New York". We were trying to use a melon baller to make balls of ice cream but that failed so we just scooped it normally and added Milo, then Will put about five sundae wafers on vertically (hence the name) and we put on a sprinkling of rasperry jelly crystals. Never try it. Then Will's brother Xave tried a spoonful and it was soooo hilarous - his face!!! - and he was like "It's burning!" cos they were so strong. As soon as we opened the packet you could smell them. We then ate the wafers and broke them up and Will renamed it "September 11". We then ate it and it was delish.

Later on Luke rang up Will to say that his family was all down at their Kiama holiday home and would we like to come over and help him amuse himself. So he picked us up in his P-plated car and took us to get lollies and movie and Tim Tams and KFC for dinner and we ate them and watched the movies on his awesome humungous plasma TV. Very very nice house he has. We were then playing basketball and the crazy lad was like, "Ok. It's best out of three, and whoever loses has to go swimming." But we were all very hesitant and decided in the end to all go swimming in his freezing pool at night. In the end it was not that cold, but it would have been nice if I had had my swimmers and didn't have to stand around for ages afterwards in a towel and wet underwear waiting for them to dry. But it was hilarious all the same. Then Luke kept trying to raise the stakes and get us to do a nudie run if we lost but we were like "No!" So thankfully that was the end of that.

And now I have soreness of the wristness and should probably go and think of some answers for my German speaking examination of next Friday.

Bye!

Gar and Bah

2005-04-12T01:36:35Z

Amy dislikes exams. Amy dislikes studying for exams. Amy dislikes obligations. Grrrrrr.

ANYway, instead of a grumpy ramble, I will briefly account for my weekend:

+ Shoreshocked with Will and Pat on Saturday night. Spiderbait were groovy and I made a man on a bike stack it with my flailing elbows. They hit the spokes and he crashed onto Pat and a handle bar attachment broke off and he noticed but just went wandering off to buy some vegetable curry (from the place where they had a massive off watermelon and where we received books on spiritual yoga). Will claimed the bit of metal tubing for use as a guitar slide. Very hilarious moment

+Baker's Delight sunday morning. Boo hiss. My throat was v. sore and I v. tired and then watched Lord of the Rings and fell asleep and didn't go to Lou's house cos I felt crappers.

+Haircut on Monday. I don't really like it. But whatev. Then to Luna Park for softball party (ahahaha awesome fun! Tango=best ride EVER!!! A total crack up) then back to Steph Giubin's house where we stayed the night. Watched Hitch and Million Dollar Baby (soooo good. I recommended it to all. V. sad but sooo good. Go Clint, you old man river who just keeps rolling along) and some OC episodes and played pass the parcel and talked etc etc. Not much sleeping done.

And hence my weirdo dazed state. Amy is off to research Gatsby now. Stupid Gatsby. I am actually really scared about this assessment. Shite. I should have started. Aaaaahhh. ok ok it's ok, I'll just start now.

Ok toodles all.

Can it be true - is this an...update?!?

2005-04-09T03:41:42Z

Ba baaa! Amy is updating! My my it has been months. But there is good reason to the lack of updatingness (school, sport, musical etc etc) and now the fabulous holidays have arrived. So w00t to that!

Much has been a happening but if I recount it all we'll be here until the sun expands so much is gobbles us all up and we frazzle to our deaths. So I will recount today.

I awoke to the melodious joys of sunlight (at 6:45, can you believe it?! But I slept again, of course) and then ate breakfast and showered and got ready to go shopping for a present for my softball coach, which could prove difficult, but we have few ideas up our sleeves. Then on discovering my companion could not make it today, I held my head high and tuned the guitar I borrowed from school to the correct notes this time...heh heh whoops. I made an acronym so I can remember them:

Every
Becky
George
Dobs
Amy in
Everytime

And there are the tuning notes of the strings of a guitar from highest to lowest. Huzzah.
I then found some fabulouso tabs for Crazy Little Thing Called Love on the net and taught myself to read them and now I can play, dodgy as it may be, the intro to Crazy Little Thing Called Love! I am so pro to the max.
I then rang Lauren to gloat about my musical talents and display them for her when I heard some crazy man yelling some warbled warble from what sounded like INSIDE my house! This was incredible disconcerting as my parents were not home and the dog was quietly sleeping on the mat. So I said to Lauren in a near whisper,
"Shhp! I think there's a freak in my house!"
And Lauren was like, "What the hell?! How could there be a freak in your house? Where are your parentals?"
Me: "Out!!!"
Lauren: "Maybe it was Toto."
Me: "Nope...crap where's the freak?"
And I had no weapons except the school's guitar which I couldn't break if I needed to attack the freak so I armed myself with our Vax, one of those hand held vaccuum cleaners and explored upstairs and found no freak, then armed myself with my softball bat instead, and with Lauren's encouragement I went downstairs and didn't find a freak. BUT the backdoor had been left open by Mum and Dad before they went out...so that was creepy...but no freak, so it was ok, and I went back to playing the guitar.

I then decided it might be time for me to do my physics homework from two weeks ago and began that, then got bored and ate lunch (mmm...spaghetti sandwich...) and here I am. And I better go off to do my HW then my art HW then my maths HW and then decide which character my Gatsby speech will be on and then I am off to Shoreshocked with William and Pat. Hurrah. Perhaps there I will see Pinkie and Carly. Perhaps not. But it is a possibility. And now I am a rambling fool so will depart.

Farewell and welcome back to Amy's LJ (in desperate need of a re-vamp)

Greetings Down Under from Up Over

2005-01-23T13:26:28Z

A-hoy-hoy everybody, how’s it hangin’?

I believe you should all be very impressed with my restrained writing of emails the last few weeks, I am very impressed with myself for that effort. But now I pick up where I left off – the journalist? I cannot remember if I wrote about that already, but I have a sneaking suspicion I did so I will just briefly say this: twas just he normal questions about differences in culture, how I like it, what my hobbies are etc. and the photographer photographed me on the step with the two doggies. No big exciting wardrobe of costumes.

BUT on the subject of costumes, we lead on to the only other interesting event since my chocolate purchasing spree – Karneval!

Karneval is some random celebration that every German town does. I am not exactly sure why, but it is very orientated around town spirit and history. In Nettetal there is a celebration for each of the mini towns within it (Kaldenkirchen, Leuth, Lobberick, Breyell and Hinsbeck), and the especially famous one is in Cologne. So last night (Saturday 22nd) Corinna and I donned our tiger fur skirts and joined the gang for a night of Germanish excitement at “Büttenabend” in this pub with a funciton hall in Leuth, for the Leuth Karneval night.
The night began when we rode to the abode of Thomas and Bernd to meet the others and change into our skirts (from bike riding in jeans) where we sat around and chatted and what not until it was time to leave. We walked a few streets away (it was coldness) to the pub and fanned our way through the smoke to the hall and found our table and marvelled at everyone’s hilarious costumes. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, Karneval is a seriously crazy time where everyone has to wear fancy dress. Its really random, but they have THE coolest costumes in the shops here – in Venlo there was this massive one, and it was soooo cool. Could have some seriously mega lycra gang adventures here, as well as pirates, cheerleaders, Bavarians, animals, and millions more things. So we were all wearing our costumes (Corinna and I in tiger skirts, Sarah was a zebra thing; Lena a baby in overalls and pigtails (was v.cute!); Nan in a rabbit costume which was a jumpsuit (that was also extremely cute!); people in devil outfits; Thomas, Bernd, Jan (Sarah’s boyfriend) and Patrick (Lena’s boyfriend and Jens’ brother) were monks.
The night was basically a show of things in relation to Leuth and traditional Karneval things, aswell as a lot of unrelated stand-up and dancing and singing and skits. The Pastor from the church in Leuth was hilarious! Well, I assumed so from the way everybody was cracking up at his jokes. But amidst the stream of dialect-and-accent-riddled German I understood two of his jokes! Not just understood the words, but GOT the jokes, and was able to laugh along like a fellow Nettetalian! There was this song performed by middle-aged me dressed as clowns which was about the Köln Dom (Cologne Cathedral), a cheerleader dance by kids, this hilarious dance by women dressed in old hag costumes that was to Britney’s “You Drive Me Crazy”, and that was pretty funny, then the song changed to “You Can Leave Your Hat On” or whatever it’s called – the stripping song anyway – and they began to shed the layers of granny clothes and it was also rather amusing! It turned out to be younger than middle aged women wearing skirts and black tops and stockings and then they did a bit more feather boa dancing. Random.
Then the finale item was the Leuth town song, anthem if you like, and everyone (at our table at least, plus a few others) were standing on their chairs, linking arms, swaying and singing along at the top of their lungs. It was so cool, spirit and fun galore. Then the band began to play more songs, we danced for ages on our chairs, did a bit of partner dancing (and received apprehensive glances from people attempted to get passed us and our vibrant dancing), did a big congo line (reminiscent of the one we did in year six and congo-d around the whole school, feeling very rebellious for continuing it through the office! That was totally random, why on earth did we decide to do that?! Was sooo hilarious though) danced some more on the chairs and on the floor then went home for a nice nap.

Then I got all sad because I realised it would be my last German party.

But I try not to think about that.

So that is the end of the adventure of my Karneval experience – it was a little boring at times when I couldn’t understand the German, but they used the old dialect a lot and Jens and Bernd and Corinna all said they found it hard to understand too sometimes, so I felt a litte better. But overall is was a hella cool night. I took photos and videos so you can all see the crazy yet awesome and top notch celebratory ways of the Germans.

Oh yeah, and on Saturday we went to Sabine’s mother’s house for lunch where we had this traditional Rheinland specialty called “Rheinisher Sauerbraten”, which was beef or something, I think, with sauce, and with that we ate these potato balls that were a bit odd called “Klößen” and you put gravy on and it is yummo. Then afterwards we ate this extreme berry pudding with cherries and rasperries and strawberries and blackberries in a little bit of sweet jelly to hold it together, but it was mainly berries, with vanilla custard. It was really nice cos it was four generations of women, from Corinna’s great grandma (102), Corinna’s grandma Sabine and Corinna. I got a photo of them all together, and apparently it was extremely rare for Uromi (great gran) to let herslef be photographed. Sabine said that maybe she though it was cool that people in Australia would see her all the way from modest Kaldenkirchen!

Hope you all had a ruby dazzler weekend

Love
Amy xoxo

Het Hallo <--- dutch

2005-01-19T16:57:01Z

Hello all, and welcome back to the life of Amy, which has quietened down a bit since the last email. Indeed, that would be the reason for the last email being sent approximately a week ago. Seems like an age, doesn’t it?!

Anyhow, things are still wondiferous. Scattered amongst the hours spent sleeping, eating and going to school, I have: received a massive Hard Rock Cafe München Tshirt, not the same type as the others which I collect, but a man’s medium with a huge pic on the back that will be used as a nightie; read The Great Gatsby twice; performed with the school Choir in Duisberg, a land of factories and smokepipes; and had a few other adventures which I will now describe.

Friday: the afternoon was spent with members of Sabine’s family to celebrate her mum’s birthday. We ate cake and drank coffee, played mini air hockey and Twister (the kids, not the grandmas) and went out into the field to play soccer. That was great fun, I scored goals for the first time in my life, which put my team ahead quite a few, but then I swapped teams and ended up being the cause of my new team losing. Blast.
Then I toddled off to Lena’s house for a DVD fest sleepover. Corinna had a headache and didn’t go, but I am glad that I went, it was lotsafun. We watched some random Disney Sing-Along-Songs video ( I wonder where my Lion King one got to, I loved that), Grease (also a sing along session), Ocean’s Twelve and The Incredibles. All in German. All understandable except Ocean’s Twelve. But it was still excellent. Haha Linus is a crack up.

Saturday: blobbed around mainly, but rode over to the border where I had photos taked in two countries at once, and we saw the coffee shop (place where you can buy drugs over the counter like a coffee cos it’s not so illegal in the Netherlands) and i wanted to take a picture, but Sabine didn’t want me to get drugged or raped by some stoned Netherlandish freaks. But my rape defence system would have saved the day, had I been in danger. Thank you, Rape Man a.k.a. Brent Sanders!

Sunday was Rainer’s birthday, also a blobbing around day, we had a nice lunch and played this game which is like billiards but on a square wooden board with pucks that you have to flick with your fingers (it wrecks).

Monday went to the Choir concert, it was this night in a school that was „All About Music“, and some of them were pretty crap...but at least they did it. Twas probs just nerves shaking up the vocal chords. One group was so quality, they did this funk street dance thing, with 4 dudes and 3 ladies, it was a bit like a battle, and it was sooo mad, they could have been professional dancers. And this other dude who was pretty quality sang „Angels“ by Robbie Williams, and it was good, except he kept saying „lets zeir vings unfold“ and „do zey know“ etc, it was really cute!

Today was cool, we only had 3 periods of school, then came home. But it was pouring rain, and all the others had rain jackets and rain pants but no, not me. So I’m riding along like an eskimo with my little hood down protecting my eyes and head from rain, and ended up so completely and utterly soaked through that I decided to ride and splash through all the puddles cos I was so wet it didn’t matter if I got wetter. I don’t think I could have got wetter. Anyway, that was awesome fun, I think life must be so much more fun when you don’t care about things. So then I pryed myself off my bike (I was frozen) and went inside to discover that every item of clothing I was wearing was wet, except my beanie (which my eskino hood protected) and my bra. So that includes jacket, scarf, jumper, tshirt, singlet, jeans, boots, socks, stockings, scungies and underpants. The only part of me jeans that weren’t wet was the bum and top area. Plus they are covered in mud at the bottom from the more gross variety of puddles I drove through in the morning before I realised I could tuck them into my boots.

So once I had dried off and changes and recirculated my legs (they were pink from cold and wetness – how rare!) we ate and went to Venlo in the Netherlands again, where I bought so much chocolate, it’s really quite ridiculous! I can’t believe how much I bought! Haha. Omg omg it was coolness galore, I saw this shop called „Australian Ice Cream“ and was like „Cool! So going in there!“ So we did, and it was an Australian ice cream and chocolate shop. We told him that I come from Australia, and I asked what made them Australian, and apparently they are home made from Australian recepies. The chocolates also have aboriginal art pictures painted on top, with cool fillings. I got a taste of mango sorbet, bought a hot chocolate (which had ice cream in it – man it was good) and a pack of 3 chocolates. I think the man saw how fascinated and excited I was, and gave me another chocolate in ist own little box for free! Cute. Then we wandered around and I saw so many cool shops and wished that I was rich and had endless luggage capacity – they have the coolest shoes and winter clothes here, I really want some hella cool boots. Hella cool boots, that’s what I want.

So now I am home and warm and dry – thanks heaps Harriet for the postcard, and Lauren for the letter from Hong Kong! Excitement! I also here that some certain JEREMY is home from land of lack of Frogs – thanks for informing me! Hope everyone’s summer/winter is delightful and full of interesting events.

Now I am off to rest my weary head and hopefully rid myself of the under-eye baggage, as a journalist and photographer are coming tomorrow to interview and photograph me! Hahahah talk about random. He’s one of Sabine’s friends or workmates or something, and heaven knows why he wants to interview me, but I agreed, and now apparently a photograper’s coming too – how cool if they brought a fat wardrobe and I got to dress up and pose! Haha unlikely. However, I shall let you know if that occurs.

Loving you all
Love amy xoxo

Alrigh' luv? BEWARE - seriously enormous

2005-01-17T14:03:46Z

Hello everybody! Long time no speak, eh? Well it is indeed Monday night, and I should indeed have gone to school today, but did indeed not, seeing as a got back from London late last night and was completely pooped with pains running from my feet to my hips from walking everywhere and droopy eyes and what not.

So here cometh a list of things we did – tha’s right, a LIST, not a detailed explaination. We did everything possible in the short amount of time, so I am only going to briefly jot them all down, and perhaps explain some of the highlights, though there were many of those too…we’ll see how it goes.

THE LIST

Thursday, 6^th Jan, 2005

Arrived in London Stansted (not actually IN London, in my opinion. Just like Niederrhein Düsseldorf airport is not actually in Düsseldorf) in the morning went to hostel with Sarah and Katja (her host sister)
Went on the infamous London Underground (which Dumbledore has a map of in the form of a scar…how random is that?! I wonder how he got it) to Tower Hill
Went in a really pretty war memorial park and took photos of this nice old biulding which turned out to just be an insurance company
Saw and photographed the London Tower (which is more like a castle than a tower if you ask me…there are many smallish towers, not just one) and the Tower Bridge and tried on armor in the souvineer shop
Went to St Paul’s Cathedral, which was huge and pretty and awesome but we only staying in the foyer, we didn’t go right in
Underground to Westminster, (it was dark now) where we saw Big Ben and Houses of Parliament, walked across Westminster Bridge to the London Eye (that huge Ferris Wheel where the London fireworks are), looked in tourist shops and had cravings for pancakes
Went and looked at Westminster Abbey by night
Walked down Victoria Street towards Victoria Station and stopping in McDonald’s for dinner (I had McChicken Premiere, it was so quality, I was very impressed. And on the menu, the “burgers” section is indeed titled “sandwiches” haha weird poms) and we all bought these Munchies McFlurries which was crazy cos it was freezing when we went outside again
Went back to the Tower Bridge to see it at night
Back to hostel
To a nearby cinema to see Bridget Jones 2, which was still on, surprisingly. It was very hilarious! I enjoyed it. Funny story that reminded me of the magic mushrooms bit, which will be told later…
Sleep time

Friday, 7^th Jan, 2005

Free brekkie at hostel, I made a jam sandwich to take with me so I could save money on food
Caught a double decker bus to Trafalgar Square
Walked along The Mall for a bit and then veered off to watch the Horse Guards Parade, which we left early
Walked to Westminster Abbey, and went inside this time. It is full of tombs! There are people who’ve been dead for centuries buried in there! In crypts, in the floor, and a few probably wedged in crevasses between the stones in the walls and ceiling as well. And really famous people, like…a few Henrys and Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots and a couple of Edwards. So I did end up seeing boxes full of bones of Kings after all. It was really beautiful and amazing and I lit a prayer candle.
Went back to see Big Ben in daylight
Bought “Mind the Gap” stickers in a tourist shop – the underground announcements are so hilarious! With the acccents and the ever repeating “Mind the Gap” haha.
Walked through St James’ Park to Buckingham Palace – the Queen was home. But they’ve got a bit of a pansy flag if you ask me.
Walked a few more miles to the HARD ROCK CAFÉ! This was a highlight, so I will write a special section for it.

SPECIAL HRC SECTION: The shop and the café are across the road from each other, and we went into the shop first, where we bought T-shirts and I went on this huge trek to find an ATM but didn’t need it in the end. Grrrr. We then went underneath the shop into what used to be a bank vault, to “London’s only Rock’n’Roll Museum”, called The Vault. And it was soooo incredibly cool. The dude running the tour thing was so crazy, as British rockers are. He was mental, but really nice, and quite hilarious. He was bearded and wearing leather pants with straps on the sides, a head scarf and a leather vest over his rocker T-shirts. I can’t remember his name, so let’s just call him Crazy Bob. There was this young American dude there too, who the older guy called Jimmy Future Guitarist Jones or something like that. They were a crack up.

So the Vault was this little room full of what I would have thought is priceless memorabilia, but they were just picking them up and playing them and dressing up in the famous people’s clothes and stuff! It was mad fun! The Vault is home to Eric Clapton’s guitar – which was THE first piece of Hard Rock Café memorabilia EVER. Mr Clapton sent his guitar to his favourite bar, the Hard Rock Café, and like a week later, some other famous dude heard about how they displayed it and sent one with a note saying, “Mine’s as good as his!” So basically Eric Clapton made the Hard Rock Café what it is. I would be pretty proud if I was him! And anyway, I HELD his guitar, and wore Bob Dylan’s hat, and looked at and touched other awesome things, like Jimmy Hendrix’s Flying V guitar and Elvis’s jacket and John Lennon’s glasses and hand changed lyrics to Imagine and Keith Richard’s guitar etc etc. And here is the story with the Magic Mushrooms: Jimmy Future Guitarist Jones and Crazy Bob played us a ditty on some famous people’s guitars and we had to go back to the café, and Crazy Bob was like, “Watch out for the mushrooms. (to Jimmy) Have you tried the mushrooms?” Jimmy says yes and laughs and shakes his head with a moan as he reminisces. (To us) “Have you tried the mushrooms?” (we say no) “Good, don’t, they’re crazy. Watch out for the mushrooms up there. The mushroom Baguette’s off the menu, ok?” and we are like “Ok…” and slowly edging out of the room…nah, it was so funny. Then we went and ate at the café (massive nachos, not Mushroom Baguettes) and I photographed a Queen guitar and was entertained by kickin’ songs like Under Pressure and Bohemian Rhapsody and some others that were good but not as good cos they weren’t by Queen.

Walked to Picadilly Circus, which is the intersection with the huge TV screens with ads on them that says things like “Go Bridget Go” in Bridget Jones’ Diary
Walked around the West End towards Soho for a bit, and went briefly into China town. There was every musical you could ever want to see on there! Not in China town, in the West End. It was really annoying, I had the biggest craving to grab a half price ticket to We Will Rock You and Fame and Mamma Mia and Les Mis and all these others, but alas I had not the time nor the money, more relevantly.
Home again

Saturday, 8^th Jan, 2005

Bus to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guards. It was so cool! Very touristy. I loved it! We got there really early and went to get Starbucks drinks, which was an adventure in itself, then when we got back, realised how stupid it was that we got cold drinks cos it was the coldest day we had there, and we were freezing. But then we got mashed up against the fence (prime position) and watched the hilarious guards in their hilarious fluffy hats doing their hilarious marching. Except they were wearing the grey jackets, not the red, which I think they wear only from Autumn to Spring. But was still good.
Walked through this totally rich and really really nice area of London to Harrods where the New Year Sale was on! It is seriously THE most massive store ever. Blimey it’s huge. There were so many people there, and lots signing up to get a Harrods card, cos that weekend had and extra 10% off for people with a Harrods card. I wanted to buy heaps of things, but couldn’t so I bought some coolio purses with “Harrods” on.
Walked through Hyde Park to Speaker’s Corner which was disappointing cos there were about 5 people there, and noone was speaking. But we did meet a very tame and cute squirrel there.
Walked along Oxford Street for a bit, and Sarah haggled with this cool man at the fruit stall, and got a bag of grapes for 2 pounds instead of 2.10!
Went to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum!!! Another highlight, here comes a deeper explanation

MADAME TUSSAUD’S: I learned how to pronounce the name, AND was supremely amused and terrified all in about an hour and a half. There are a few sections, Blush, Premiere Night, World Stage, Chamber of Horrors, Spirit of London, the Auditorium and Chamber Live, which was next to Chamber of Horrors and you needed to pay an extra 2 pounds to get in, which we did and it was soooo worth it. But first, the rest.

In Blush, were all the celebrities, such as Brad and Jen (would have been better without Jen, but what can you do. Hey, it was on the news in London that they are splitting up – then the anchorman said “And those are the main stories for this morning…” Pffft, main story , along with the tsunami and the floods in northern Enland. Sure sure. Bit ridiculous), Kylie, Elle Macpherson, John Travolta, Beyonce, Tom Cruise, and heaps more, including George Cloony sitting at a dinner table with a romantic Parisian background so you can sit with your hand in his feral wobbly waxy hand like you are on a romantic date! You would have loved it, Phoebe! I have a photo of my dinner with George. When I went to put my hand in his, I was expecting it to be hard wax like all the other people, but it was rubbery and horrible, and it was such a shock that I jumped up and fully yelled “Eeew!” at the top of my lungs! It was so embarrassing!

Then in Premiere Night were more characters, but also some more celebrities, like Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg, the Hulk (you can go in his hand like he’s crushing you!), Elvis, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Charlie Chaplin and Robbin Williams. Then was World Stage, with tonnes of world leaders such as Blair, Bush, even our Johnny, the Queen and co (Katja was disappointed to find there was no Prince Harry!), just about every slightly interesting English King/Queen there’s ever been, Hitler, Nelson Mandella, and others I didn’t know. Also were the Beatles, some really short people from Ye Olde England, Johnny Wilkinson and David Beckham.

Then down to Chamber of Horrors, where there was a Vlad the Impaler and lots of randoms being tortured with various old fashioned torture equipment, like this neck breaking thing that was last used in Spain in 1974, when it was abolished. How horrid is that! The wax man doing the neck breaking looked like he was getting great satisfaction out of it…Gah…there were also skeletons and decaying corpses in cages and on rotating wheels hanging from the roof and a man tied to a rotating spiked wheel, which was pleasant. Oh and can’t forget the people being hanged or beheaded.

But here comes the seriously awesome/terrifying part…Chamber Live…*shudders yet grins at the thought of it* It was this dark labyrinthine chamber that you walk through, and there are actors inside dressed up as murderers and monsters and downright freaks. My God it was so scary…it was a bit like a Haunted House, with the deformed people who do freaky things like lurch at you while jabbering or make slobbering noises in your ear or follow you silently with a walking cane then suddenly whack it on the metal floor and zip over to you speedily, except it was ten thousand times more scary because they were real people, not plastic mechanical unrealistic looking pieces of crap. God it was sooo….I cannot think of another word besides scary or terrifying. Terrifying is closer. The first freak you encounter is this thin bald man with wide staring eyes, wearing a dishevelled suit and with a really pasty face with cuts all over him, who walked around staring at you, then bashes his cane and zooms over to you, and before we went in, we were all like, “You can go first. No you. No, you can. Really, it’s ok, you can” cos we could hear screaming and banging and scariness from outside…and eventually Sarah went in first, with Katja and I following close behind…then this man did the bashing his cane thing to Sarah, and he was in between us and her, and she was walking further down the corridor, and he was following her and she was getting faster and it was sooo funny, then she looked back and was like “Guys! Help! He’s following me!” And we were sort of about to go into a new section, where Sarah had just entered, and the bald man stopped and just stared at us…and we were so shit scared cos we had to go passed him to get to Sarah, and he was just staring at us! When we plucked up the courage, or desperation, we dashed passed and he made us scream and clutch at each other (again) with his banging the pole thing….then there were more freaks, but we got through the rest of the chamber together, holding onto each other the whole time, and at one point, huddled in a corner and tried to convince another small group of tourists to go first, cos we could see a dead looking woman, like Samara out of The Ring, looking at us from a window up ahead…it was so incredibly scary and hilarious and fun and my throat was really sore after from laughing and screaming and all our heart rates were so high…gah…I recommend it to all. Well, not all, just those who want to go to Madame Tussaud’s and be scared out of your skin by scary actors. If I was one of them, I wouldn’t be able to stop laughing at the scared tourists. Maybe that could be my thing, the Insane Cackling Murdress…moving on…

Trekked all the way back to the hostel, and I mean trekked. And I mean ALL the way. It was so far. We stopping at McDonalds again for a buy one get one free McChicken Sandwich and Munchies McFlurries.
Chatted with the people in our room at the hostel. There were two girls from Italy, and one from America (who’s been arrested twice for protesting) and I taught everyone to play cheat, then we were joined later a girl from Hong Kong, and this other American girl who had been mainly hanging out with Australians, who she said “could really drink”! Haha, good work Aussies. And when we told her we were 16 she was like “Sweet Lord you’re only babies!” Twas a lot of fun. Then this random lady from the Netherlands came in, and we chatted a bit more and slept.

Sunday, 9^th Jan, 2005

Some lady stole my toast at breakfast, claiming that she put it there, except I did. I let her have it, I mean, it was only a piece of toast, but if she did put the piece of toast there in the toaster (which she didn’t, I did) then where did my piece of toast go?
Got an Underground ticket again, and were at a more obscure platform of Kings Cross, and we hopped on the train, but I saw the sign as we got on and realised it was the wrong train, we needed the next one. So I quickly hopped off and to my horror, turned around to see Sarah and Katja gaping at me like stunned mullets from the other side of the closed train doors! I swore, and motioned to them to come back to this platform, that I would wait for them, and sat down as the train pulled out, hoping that they got the drift. God it was scary. Not as scary as the Chamber Live though. No where near as scary. So I waited, and thankfully 10 minutes later I saw them coming back onto the platform. That was an adventure in itself I do believe. How lucky that I have such wonderful mime skills. Hey, I just thought of something – on Thursday in the Underground, Katja found a penny on the ground, and we all said in unison “Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck!” and then a few escalators and corridors later, I found a penny! Maybe my luck lasted the whole weekend! Excellent!
Went to Kensington Gardens and stopped at the phone boxes outside, where Sarah and I posed for a series of Superman photos, while Katja photographed. The last two photos required us to wear our brightly coloured underpants on the outside of our jeans and pose in a heroic, manly way, and it was mightily embarrassing, with all the traffic and joggers passing by. But very funny. I will put some pics on the album ( http://photos.yahoo.com/gerroff_me ).
Walked through the garden past Kensington Palace, caught the Underground a bit north
Walked through Regent’s park, which is massive, and has the London Zoo in it. We took a huge unneccesary detour which took us around the far side of the Zoo, which was really annoying
Walked to the top of Primrose Hill, just north of Regent’s Park, to look at the view of London. It is “the best view of London” apparently. Was quite quality.
Walked back to station and went back to hostel to get our stuff, and went to Liverpool Street by Underground to find out the lady at the ticket booth that morning lied to us and we had to pay 15 pounds instead of 11, and I consequently had no money to buy a magazine at the airport, and had to hang around from 3:20 till 7:00 when my plane boarded, and amuse myself by writing postcards and looking in shops. I read heaps of blurbs and a few chapters of books in various bookshops, and realised how much cooler the Accessorize shop is in England than Aus! You can get all these awesome gloves and hats and bags and shoes and hair things and jewelery and I was too scared to use my money card in case I didn’t have any money left. I do have enough money left, and that’s really bugging me, cos I saw these thongs with the map of the Underground on them, and wanted to buy them but didn’t have any money. Was gay.

So now I am home, and that was really really long, even with dot points. Those 4 days took up 17 pages of my scrapbook, with all tickets and receipts stuck in, aswell as entries of what we did. Be thankful that this isn’t 17 pages, it is just 5. Whoops. Sorry.

Hope you enjoyed the latest novel. If you wish to unsubscribe to this mailing list, please email gerroff_me@hotmail.com and/or gerroff_me@yahoo.com with the subject “TOO LONG” and your email will be removed from the list.

So I leave you all to return to your lives in summery Sydney or Melbourne or Perth or various Australian towns or various New Zealand cities or various German towns or various French towns…and I will be thinking of you all in school tomorrow. Thanks everyone who sent me boredom relief! Especially Lauren, who seemed to send me her whole year’s worth of undone review sheets for Maths!

Love Amy

xoxo

Shopping, Snow and SCHNELL Autos!

2005-01-17T14:02:13Z

That’s right, here cometh a telling of a tale of a knight so bold as to take on the BRUTAL challenge that is packing a million things into two weeks of holidays; a tale of Moi and the journeys of old that took me to Cologne (which I will refer to as Köln in the future – its real name!), a ski hall and Go Kart Racing! And this tale that cometh is one to be treasured for an age for it is in CHAPTERS....

Chapter One – Fable of Four Firey Females Poor For Evermore
This tale begins on a dark and stormy night – ok, I lied. This tale begins on the 3rd of Jan at 10am when Corinna, Simone, Nan (Phakwan) and I took the long and lonesome road to Köln by train from Kaldenkirchen via Mönchengladbach. Upon arriving at the Köln main station, I looked like I had been hit in the face with a mallet when I cast my glittering eyes upon the Dom – the Cologne Cathedral. It TOWERS over the city like a tower and DOMINATES everything around it like something dominant. I was so completely overwhelmed, all I could say was, “It’s huge!” In English. I don’t know how to say that in German! And the word for “big” isn’t really relevant for the Dom. Blimey…I am still all stunned mullet-y just thinking about it. So of course I took some photos, and the excited foursome wandered around the corner of the Dom, which took about an hour. No, I joke, but I was re-overhwelmed with the other view of it, where the entrance was. Crikey it was so beautiful, all stone and black and massive and with gargoyles and Jesuses and various other religious carvings on it. So we went inside, and it was so beautiful, a mass was on for the kids who dress up as the Three Kings and carry stars on poles and wander around the city – don’t quite understand why, but there are a lot of things I don’t understand about Germans. We then took upon us the challenge of climbing the tallest tower for 1 Euro pp. And let me tell you, it is not for the faint hearted, the asthmatic, those with knee problems, those with fear of hights, the old, the young, the downright lazy and those prone to dizziness and vomiting after climbing up a steep spiral staircase with 507 steps. I counted to 50 then got too woozy looking down the whole time. And from the top – Gah! From the top you felt like the KING OF THE WORLD! But in a cage, which was a good thing. You could see everything as far as your eyesight allowed. But it was all graffitied on, everywhere, with people’s names, dates they were there and where they were from. At first I thought it was disgusting, and it is, to write stupid things on something so magnificently old and beautiful, but then, if it wasn’t the Köln Dom, if it was just a wall or something, I think it is also kind of special with all the “I waz here”s. Like a massive hundreds-of-years-old guestbook.
After we were finished gazing around in awe and had got our breath back and our legs were no longer like jelly, we trekked back downstairs and were allowed to go into the main part of the church even though the mass was still on. It was ending, but this church man was stopping people going in, but for some reason we were allowed after a bit. There was music playing and kids in King costumes and it was soooo beautiful. But we weren’t allowed to go down to the crypt with the bones of the three kings cos the mass was on. Random and kinda creepy. But how annoying, when else am I going to see boxes with bones of kings inside again? Probably never. And we weren’t allowed! Gar.
So, filled with adrenalin and courage, the four noble ladies went outside to begin the most strenuous task yet – shopping! In short, I bought a jacket (it’s awesome!), a Köln Hard Rock Café Tshirt, a red singlet top, some Kölnisch wasser, which is famous perfume, a bag aaaand…that is all. And now I am broke. Not really. But Corinna is. She bought millions of bras. Which leads me onto the next topic.
Germans are also really obsessed with G-strings. And Snoopy. And Snoopy G-strings. We were in a lingerie shop and I saw all this Snoopy PJs and stuff, and thought that it was fair enough, Snoopy’s cool. Then while looking at the cool cheap on-sale bras, I noticed something. In Australia you look at cool bras, and there are usually matching panites, different panties and a g-string, so you can choose which suits you best, right? Well, here they only do the G-banger, and sometimes normal panties, but rarely. And everyone in the shop was buying them. Corinna and her friends bought a pile each, and also bought matching Snoopy G-strings which they are going to wear to the parties on the weekend (pink on Friday black on Saturday). There’s nothing wrong with that of course, I was just surprised how many German women would rather have their arses hanging out everywhere than tucked away neatly in a nice pair of normal underpants.
And therein lies the end of that excellent adventure – after visiting the River Rhein and after Amy took a really crap blurry photo of the Ford Musical Dome where We Will Rock You is on, the weary travellers went back to the train station and were endlessly amused by Nan saying “parfumf” instead of “parfum” (perfume) and insisting that it comes more naturally, and how she used to wonder about Eau de Toilette and why people would want to put toilet water on themselves to smell nice. Hahahah I was so hilarious that I was crying – it was one of those times where funny things just keep happening and you cannot stop laughing. Ah she’s so cute.

Chapter Two – The Story of A Sexy Beast and Her 5-Star Skiing Skills
This tale begins on the morning of Tuesday the 4th of January 2005, when Amy, Corinna, Rainer and Jens went to a Ski Hall near Mönchengladbach. They waited patiently in the line to be admitted, and began to cry while trying not to laugh obviously at two kids continuously arguing and telling each other to shut up and just plain annoying the crap out of everyone within a 5m radius. And also tried to avoid getting knocked out by the flailing skis and stocks (are they called that? I will call them that) of these two hilarious kids.
We then went in and went skiing which was awesome fun of course, and I was so sucky at first, but then got back into the swing of things. Not much to say, except that Corinna and I made snow angels and a snow man, and went sledding on tiny kid sleds. Perhaps I shall describe my favourite stack. I had many. Ok, well, one was in the morning when I was doing my munted half snow plough half parallel ski turn (I could not yet do a half-real looking parallel turn) and my right ski got stuck over my left ski and I tumbled around. My other favourite stack was much more impressive looking, I’d imagine. There was no real reason for this one, except my uncoordinatedness. I had now mastered the preliminary level parallel skiing (HUZZAH! Skiing is now so much easier and faster and fun and freakier!) and was speeding down the slope and got a bit out of control (as ususal, I am now ok at skiing, I just cannot controll myself – like bike riding) and tried to do a bit of snow plough but went over a hump which skewed my legs outwards and they kept spreading and I kept sliding speedily and suddenly I could legspread no further and I did this munted tumbling over rolling over down the slope stack, and it was so funny!!! Hahahah and once I got out of control (again) and stacked it in the middle of the slalom section and was in a great dilemma. You know how you can’t move properly when you fall over cos of the skis still being attatched to your feet and you being on your side and your hip cramping muntedly? Well that was happening, and it was making me laugh, and I was lying there in the middle of the slalom track wetting myself laughing and trying to pathetically drag myself out of the way of the freaky oncoming skiiers and snowboarders! Ah dear. What fun.

Chapter Three – Memoir of Memorable Moments in a Motor Vehicle
Not too much to say about Go Karting except that it was EXTREME! It was total madness, I got my helmet and hygienic hair net (no jumpsuit necessary, but they were there if you wanted) and we all got in our cars and the Go Kart people started the engines, and I suddenly thought to myself – “Hang on, how do you do this?” I figured the green pedal was the accelerator and the red the brake. I was right. Anyway needless to say I came last, with a best lap time of 44 seconds or something similar. The best in our group was 37 something. Haha. At least I improved on my first lap time of 1:12. Whoops. And I kept screeching and sliding and spinning out around the corners, and once I fully crashed into the wall and half flew out of the car. It was then I realised that there were no seatbelts. But it was so much fun, adrenalin-ville, and I want to go again! It’s very extreme and fast and hard and fun fun fun.

And now the story comes to a close, rest your weary brains until the 10th or so when I write about the trip to London. HUZZAH!

Love ya’s all
From Amy

Silvester

2005-01-17T14:01:11Z

Hello one and all!
Hope you all had an excellent celebration of the New Year – from what I’ve heard so far it sounds like it was a good one. I would very much like to hear about what you all got up to, so if you feel the need, you are welcome to jot down how you celebrated and drop me a line!

But what did I get up to, I hear you asking?

Well. Corinna and I had long sleep that morning seeing as we had got back from Berlin the night before and were quite pooped from our 3 days of sight seeing and late nights. I think I am getting into a bad sleeping pattern, I think every night since Christmas Eve except perhaps 2 or 3 has been late, and resulted in a sleep in the next day. And after Berlin and New Years Eve I think I am now in the pattern of sleeping from the wee hours of the morning to the wee hours of the afternoon. Last night I went to bed at 10 after watching Meet The Parents and didn’t get to sleep till about 2, at least. And I tried various techniques to make myself tired, such as hot chocolate, listening to music (which almost worked, but then I kept thinking about how much I love various songs and parties and friends and family and everything else under the sun) and planning a Christmas in February, then FINALLY fell asleep.

Anyway, enough about my sleeping disorder, let’s talk about NYE –Silvester.

Silvester is seriously cool here in Germany. I have already explained a bit about the Berlin celebrations, but that is on a much larger scale than ours! Jens came over for dinner, and we had Raclette, which is a hot plate thing on which you can grill food on the hot plate and also cook little trays of food underneath. They are awesome, if I have enough money left at the end I am going to buy one. We then made ourselves beautiful (which didn’t take long at all) and got dressed etc etc. I don’t have many (well, any) party clothes, so I wore my Insight jeans (which I have recently realised I am seriously in love with...ah they’re so cool!), my new Rock Star panties (which Stephie and I bought matching pairs of the other day) and my also new Berlin Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt. Excitement! Then we went into the next town within Nettetal, Leuth for the party in the cellar of the school. Twas normal party style, with coloured lights and asphyxiating smoke machine BUT completed by the bar with multitudes of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages free with entry price. Was quite the coolness. Though tis a shame I am not much a fan of beer and wine etc.

Anyhoo, we danced and talked and whatnot, then went outside for 12:00 to give hugs all round – literally,everyone was hugging everyone else that they knew, twas hilarious! So yes, as well hugging everyone, saying “Gutes Neues Jahr”, and taking swigs of grog called Sect (that cost 5 Euro for 100mL at the ice bar in Berlin – RIP OFF ) we lit FIREWORKS!!! And it was sooooooo incredibly awesome ruby dazzler spanky fine and freezingly spantabulous! Damn that we need a special licence in NSW. Here you can buy them when you are 18 and gosh is it fun. Jens was teaching me how to light them and throw them away, or run away quickly before you get blown up my the more dangerous varieties, and he put one of those rocket ones on a stick in a pot ready to light, and this dude called Thomas, who is the brother of Bernd (I only found out about that on Silvester), loosened it a bit, telling us it was too deep in the soil. And then I lit it after about 50 million attempts at the cigarette lighter – man I’m a munt – and it FLEW up high into the sky like an atom bomb about to oh oh oh oh oh EXPLODE! Tee hee I am such a pyro. Then later we set up another one, but when it went off, it spurted a high pressure excretion of sparks back into the pot then exploded into coloured fire a few metres away from us cos Jens had stuck it too far into the soil again! Hahaha was hilarious. I also nearly got blown up by one of these little random ones, that look a bit like the front of a rib cage, and you light the fuse, which, to continue my similie, is like the spine, then throw it away and it crackles off sparks on the ground. You usually light the longest piece of fuse so you have time to chuck it, but on my first one, I accidentally had the flame too close to the blowing up stuff and it started exploding in my hand as I was throwing it away! Was a bit of a shock, but just felt like when sparks from a sparkler land on you.

So the fireworks were awesomeness, and when the excitement and ammunition had run out a group of us went for a walk around Leuth to say Happy New Year to people’s families who live in Leuth – Bernd and Thomas, Jens, Simone aaaand…some other people who I cannot remember anymore. We also did the usual thing and yelled out Happy New Year – or Gutes Neues Jahr – to every other random we passed in the street! It was so cute, Bernd gave me this little figurine that is a traditional New Years good luck thing. It is a Chimney Sweep, and they are good luck because in the Middle Ages houses caught on fire really really easily if you didn’t get your chimney swept often enough, so a Chimney Sweep was a symbol for…well, your house not catching on fire, and that morphed into a symbol of good luck. (Haha, Pb and other various fanfic fans, I always think of “I may be a tiny chimney sweep but I’ve got a broom…” etc !) Pigs are also a lucky symbol, which comes from the Middle East where famine is often a problem, so the theory is that if you also keep a pig/pig figurine you will always have enough to eat, and that also morphed into having good luck. Sabine gave me these stickers off a magazine for New Years Luck (like ones she gave me with Christmas things on) and there are lots of pigs and clovers and chimney sweep accessories (like the ladder and the cleaner and the top hat (random) ) and also hearts and mushrooms. Don’t know why mushrooms are lucky, but there you go.

So on our adventures we visited many a family and wished everyone a Gutes Neues Jahr and got offered thousands of litres of drinks. Its really random that adults are always like,
“Would you like something to drink?”
Me: “No thanks.”
“Beer?”
“No thanks”
“Wine? Sect?”
“No thank you.”
“Cola? Lemonade?”
“No thank you, I’m not thirsty.”
“Fanta?”
“No!”
“Water?”
“NO!!!”
“Whisky?”
“Mmmmm….ok.”

Haha, they never get the drift that you don’t want anything to drink! Gah…and Rainer’s mum is also one of those types who, at Christmas, was continuously offering and almost forcing you to eat more! Ha. But yes, the whisky, that is a new delight that I discovered. At Jens’ little party house out the back his mum passed around these mini bottles and we did the little tapping the top thing and then throwing it back, and I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy the deliciousness and inner warmth of that particular beverage. But the bottles didn’t come around again, or had all been used up, so I hadn’t had enough to drink to feel the urge to go running around the manholes in the road three times per manhole like Corinna and one of her friends!

And that is all to tell of that adventure, and we went back to the cellar and talked and danced a bit more, and attempted a bit more of that partner dancing but the song was too fast and I sort of stumbled and half collapsed over Bernd’s legs, which was hilarious, but we gave up with the dancing. And the night really has not much more to tell. We all sort of ended up sitting around on stools or in my case on the window sill watching the drunk people sing crazily to ACDC Highway to Hell and Thunderstorm. I saw the Stephan who gave me the Franz Ferdinand CD, and thanked him, and he attempted to say something in English, but gave up after two words and said, “I am drunk.” That much, I thought, was obvious. Then 3:40 came and Corinna and I cycled home to meet our 4am deadline. Quite an enjoyable night, but after hearing about Lauren and Leah and Celeste and Max’s night, I wish I’d been at home! I still haven’t seen a wink of the Sydney fireworks, which is gay. On the news they showed clips of Berlin, London and Paris, and I was like, “Hem hem. It’s called SYDNEY.” But I also heard they were kinda crap. Hopefully I am mistaken. Would very much like to hear what everyone got up to, particularly the Lane Cove gang – what did you do this year? The Wilkies are away, no?

So tomorrow we are off shopping in Cologne – Köln – and I plan to now check on the internet if there is a Hard Rock Café there and where the one in London is. w00t! Then the day after we are going skiing – I am borrowing Sabine’s ski clothes. She was saying how I needed to try on her ski suit, and I had previously seen this hideous looking purple jumpsuit hanging on the coat stand, and was terrified she meant that, but luckily she meant black pants and a red, black and white jacket. Phew. Then the day after we are going Go Karting in the afternoon, and for all three days I am supremely excited! And of course for the trip to London the day after Go Karting!!! W00t and HUZZAH and YAY and JOY and I cannot think of any other way to express my delight. Perhaps a smiley face… :D Brill.

So farewell all
Love from your terrific tired and totally tantalicious Amy
xoxo

Whoops

2005-01-17T10:08:23Z

Haha..sorry all about the lack of updating, I have been getting carried away with sending emails. But perhaps today or tomorrow I will upload all the emails I have written...actually no there are too many and they're too long. Perhaps just a few important ones.

Hi Alice and Mel! I read your comments (ages ago, sorry) so if y<ou happen to visit my LJ again could you please leave your email addies too? Anyhoos, tis only 2 weeks and a day till I am back in Australia - and its gonna go in a flash...we have Karnival parties and some random journalist is coming to interview me on Wednesday! Then afterwards a photographer is coming too!!! How embarrassing! Cool if they brought a fat wardrobe with and I got to dress up and pose. What fun. But how weird...why am I being interviewed and photographed?! Sabine seemed to think its just cos I am from Australia and he wants to write about the cultural differences.... anyhoo, shall update on how that goes Everyone enjoy the summer! love amy

Last Sunday before CHRISTMAS! HUZZAH!

2004-12-19T15:50:59Z

Guten Tag, Bonjour and Hello to all my international buddies and pals!

Well well I do hope everyone is well and happy and having lots of fun in the lead up to CHRISTMAS!!! W00t! We got our Christmas tree yesterday – we bought it ages ago, and Rainer jsut picked it up. It isn’t decorated yet, but I will put photos on my geni-ass online album when it is, okees? Everyone should do the same!

AHA! A task! I am setting a few tasks today, here is the first:
Everyone must take a photo of their decorated Christmas tree and upload it to...a Yahoo photo album. I cannot be bothered to make one right now, but I will, and it will be...username=amyistotallyawesome and password=amyisasexybeast . Yes, I think that will do nicely. So it is pretty simple, you go to http://photos.yahoo.com and sign in with the above details, then follow the easy to use prompts and upload your Christmas tree photos! And you can start a new album if you have any pics you so desire to show me! Awesomness! And I have not yet created that album, so if anyone wants to do it for me, please do! The Yahoo wasn’t working on this computer.

Ok, back to talking about myself.

I forgot to mention, but in English the other day, they were doing stuff on Indirect Speech, whatever the hell that is when it’s at home. They had to, for example, change “Mark said, ‘I am going to the city.’” To “Mark said that he would be going to the city” or something, I don’t know what is correct. But it was crazy, all this proper stuff, using the right tenses and forms and whatever. Then there was a section of exercised in German that he made me do, and I was like, “What?! No…!” So I had to read, “Mark hat gesagt, ‘Ich fahre morgen zum Strand.’” Which translates to “Mark said, ‘Tomorrow I am going to the beach.’” So I had to translate it in me head, then say it in the other form, and it took me like 10 million goes to get it right! The answer was like, “Mark said that he would be going to the beach the next day.” And I was like “Riiiiiight….” When I finally got it. It was quite embarassing actually.

And then I went to SPANISCH! And they had to recite the words to the “One Tonne Rodeo” song, except obviously not One Tonne Rodeo! It’s actually “Guantanamera”, which is a town in Cuba, according to my Spanish text book, which is also in German…how crazy. And while Wilhelm was reciting, I observed that he is quite pasty, has an earring, is a leftie, and has a Nirvana and a Fuck Parental Advisory bagde on his bag, from which I inferred means he is a fan of Nirvana and not so much a fan of parental advisory. I also learnt how to say times 8I can’t actually remember how, but it’s in my book) and…some other things. “el cofi” is “the coffee”.

OMG it was soooo cool, more than cool, it was FREEZING, I went to a Russian concert on Friday night, which was this traditional Christmas thingo with the cool costumes and lively music and TOTALLY INSANO CRAZY DANCING! It was the crazy ‘German’ dancing which Phurb and Celeste do, which turns out is actually crazy Russian dancing! And man oh man was it ca-razy! Oh God you guys would have laughed! It was totally mental and jumping and thigh and knee and ankle slapping and foot tapping and scarf dancing and on little stools and it was awesomeness! I got a program, so I can show and explain and perhaps attempt to demonstrate the coolness of it when I get back. I also bought a Babushka nad a pin thing with lots of little babushkas on, which were hand made in Russia! Gah it was soooo fun and hilarity!

THEN I slept for ages on Sat, had lunch, when into town on my BICYCLE for the first time alone (and didn’t get lost) BUT was really narky because I arrived at perhaps 2:02pm and the shops all closed at 2! Like, SHARP! Oh my God was I angry…ararargh. So I didn’T get to buy what I wanted, so I rode over to the bakery, which lookedopen, but wasn’t, then I went to ths chemist shop, and bought myself a king sized Twix to make me feel better. Then I went home.

THEN Corinna and I went to the party of Andreas, this 25 year old dude who is the boyfriend of 17 (maybe 18) year old Simone. Hmm… Anyway that was ok. I got drunk on puch with ice cream 8and more relevantly, vodka) in, began to develop lung cancer from passive smoking and looked for bent chips to make wishes on for most of the night. No, I lied, about the getting drunk on punch bit, anyway. The rest is true. I did contemplate the drunkeness, but it was not particularly tasty, and who knows where I could have ended up if I got drunk in crazy Germania. But I was dying of lack of fresh air and made many a wish on the many wish chips I found! Then I had a note conversation with this Jan bloke from school, which was fun, and then this dude in a man beanie (Man Beanie! I love man beanies!) came over and said something to me, I was fully like… “Um…ar…eh…mmm…I dunno” and this girl said, “She is an exchange student. From Australia.” And Beanie man (Daniel) was all embarrassed. Haha. But then he discovered I could speak some German and proceeded in telling me that he is 19 ( I guessed 23…whoops. But Andreas is 25, so…), has finished school and is doing his military training that all German male youths must do, and telling me to stay in Germany. He also was rather…over friendly, might I say, and most likely a little tipsy. Then this other dude was smoking and offered me a ciggy, and I’m like “No., I don’t smoke.” And he was like, “You’ve never smoked?” and I said no and that I didn’t want to. He said that he understood, and I told him that he should eat Tic Tacs instead of having a smoke and he said that he’s tried to stop but failed, and has been smoking for 4 years. I was looking at the warnings on the packets, and one was in Netherlandish, but I recognised the words “smoking”, “pregnant”, “bad” and “baby”, and the dude was like “Yeah, I think that’s right…but I don’t have a baby.” Lol. He then asked me if I smoke weed, and I said no, and he said that he did once and that it was “very bad” and that I shouldn’t try it. I was like, “And what happened that made it so ‘bad’?” He said he could’t explain the effects of illicit drug taking in English, and asked his girlfriend, who came up with “He loves me, but when he smoked weed, he didn’t love me.” I thought that was quite sad!

Um…And I think that is the end of my adventures.

Ah, but it was very nice, I thought, at school last week, this girl, Jennifer, the girlfriend of the dude who borrowed my Jet CD, gave me a CD, and it was Franz Ferdinand album, and I was like, “Oooh! Cute! Thank You!” She said it was from Stephan, and it was so cute because at Bernd’s party we were talking about music and he remembered that I liked “Take Me Out” and burned me the CD!!! It was just like…you know that warm and fuzzy feeling when you are in a foreign country and cannot speak their language all that well and have a limited number of friends and someone does something unnecessarily nice for you?!

And here is my last TASK for you faithful man servants, if you can take a minute of you time and answer me this question. According to Franz Ferdinand, “It’s always better on holiday”. My Question is Thus:

What is always better on holiday?

Pray, do tell.
Hugs and love
From Amy

Great News!

2004-12-17T17:23:21Z

Great news all!

I borrowed Louise's "geni-ass" and made a photo aldum of my German Adventures for my lovely loyal man servants to view!

That's YOU!

You can find it here:

http://photos.yahoo.com/gerroff_me

Any queries, notify me immediately and I will be delighted to help.

Love Amy

Happy Happy Friday

2004-12-17T16:57:01Z

Hola!

Thank you everybody for the fabulous boredom relief – I spent most of double maths on Wednesday and all of Latin and Art today attempting Will’s inmpossible puzzle, laughed at Lyiee’s awesome comic and chuckled heartily at all the emails!

But hows this for IRONIC – the day after the plea was hump day, Wednesday, I think, and then school was not bad at all. Thursday was totally awesome – the late morning, so we didn’t have to leave till 9, then we only had 3 periods and we came home! Huzzah to that!

Haha and something else hilarious I forgot to mention earlier was that in art last week, when we were supposed to be doing research on the Baroque period, Lena and Sarah and Corinna went on German eBay and were searching for a blow up sex doll to give this Jan dude for his birthday! It was very hilarious, we had to keep an eye out for the teacher, and swap the windows when he approached. BUT THEN, when we were in the closest danger so far of being discovered, the computer froze and the window wouldn’t close! And it was this site with some very random crack up pictures! Hahahahaha we are pissing ourselves laughing, while the teacher looms ever nearer, and the Ctrl alt delete thing isn’t working, so we are like “scheisse!”... and we ended up having to turn the computer off at the button. Ah dear…how hilarious!

And the last couple of days have been not all that eventful…but I will explain what events did occur.

On Wednesday night, I went with Sabine to church. The big church in Kaldenkirchen is the catholic one, of course, and the Klaaßens are Catholic so we went there, of course. But as usual I felt all out of place, and was like what the hell when Sabine dipped her hands in the Holy water thing, and then I realised she was dipping her hands in the Holy water thing. I feel so ignorant…it’s sucky. So yeah, then she knelt in the aisle up the front and crossed herself, and again I was like “Um…” being Anglican and all. Then the Priest and his followers/assistants/apprentices or whatever they are (my ignorance again…someone can inform me if they feel like it) came out and we stood up and prayed and sang and sat down and prayed and stood up and sung and prayed etc etc. You get the drift. And they did the: Priest says something, congregation says something in reply thing, which is Ok when you repeat what they say, and when its in English. Whenever I’m at a Catholic thing it always confused me cos I go to repeat what the Priest says then realise that you don’t repeat what the Priest says…gah. Plus it was in German. So I just stood there and looked solemn. I also gazed around the church a bit, I always find them so amazing. Ok, D&M approching, tune out if you wish. So…yes. So many people are like “Yeah…God…pfft whatever…” and then there are the people who have faith. And I am always all confused because in some people that faith is so strong yet completely non existant in others. And then I go in a grand old church (these are better for what I am about the explain!) and I can like…feel the faith…does that sound completely off my rocker? Does anyone know what I am talking about? There’s something about churches, especially when they are so big and old and amazing, that they just feel…well, Holy. I suppose they are houses of the Lord. I think its so amazing that people build such massive buildings for their God and their faith. I reckon that is what makes them feel like they do.
Ok that was a long and deep and unnessecary babble, but I really quite enjoyed the ceremony. It wasn’t too long and the pews had cushions, and afterwards I got to go up to where the choir stands and the dude plays the organ! And blimey, is the choir bad. It is the Kaldenkirchen Catholic Church’s Children’s Choir, and they are worse then our school choir. Octaves worse. I suppose they are kids, but has anyone heard the Sydney Philidelphia Choir singing? It’s actually Philharmonial or some other strange word – Tom, you know what I’m on about! It’s at the Sydney Theatre Wharf, and when we were in our lovely Acting for Film class, they suddenly start singing and you feel all enlightened! Anyway, my point is that they are kids and they are really quality at singing. Gah, it was freaky, one day when we were leaving atyp we were going past the choir entrance and Cassie was there! As in freaky from the train “my favourist game is let’s tie Cassie to the chair” totally obsessed with Alison Cassie! I have probably told you this already, those who know of her, but man it was scary.
ANYWAY (man I get off track…what a wandering mind I have) so I was up by the organ and it was sensational! There are like 36 knobs which you pull out to make it sound like pan flutes, or trumpets, or about 10 other different kinds of flutes and many other things, such as to raise the octaves etc. The knobs on the left change the sound for the upper keyboard, and the right knobs are for the lower keyboard. There are also knobs for the bass, which you play totally with your feet! Man it’s top notch. I want to be a bonzer multi-talented organ player! The dude who was a bonzer multi-talented organ player showed me how it works and played me a few ditties until he had to go, which was swell. He also looked like Joe out of Bend It Like Beckham but not good looking. He then asked if I wanted a go, and I was like “OK….” So I sat down and was like “Right…where do I begin?” He asked if I play the piano and I was like “No…well, a bit.” And I played him the only decent song I know off by heart, “In Dreams” from Lord of the Rings! But without pedal, so it sounded choppy and crap. But it was grouse, I played the organ, and it reverbarated all around the church! Madness!

Well, that was a short story long. I really don’t know how I manage to turn such simple happenings into long winded encyclopedias. Or encyclopaedias. Whichever you like. Terrific! (Two R’s, one F, Becky!)

How about I attempt to tell the rest of my unadventurous adventures in a short-winded manner. It will be difficult, but I feel like a challenge…

On Thursday after school Corinna and I went shopping for the rents for Christmas (book and choc for Sabine, book for Rainer – Angles and Demons by Dan Brown, except it’s called “Illuminati”. Deception Point is called “Meteorite” – how original on both parts. I finished reading “Meteorite” btw Sam – I was saving it for the plane home but got addicted!) I posted some cards for the family and bought a pressie, and then we went to choir and sang about “wombs” instead of “woomes” of Mary again, it was yet again hilarious. And today was normal, Clarence entertained my before Latin and in the break, and we went into Lobberick in our free and I bought a croissant with chocolate and marzipan in and I realised how much I really dislike marzipan. Eurgh. I had a hankering for a chocolate croissant, the normal type, but I figured I can get truckloads of them at home for free so I decided that every time I go into a bakery I will try something new. Heaven knows there are enough things to try. I just hope they don’t all have marzipan in. This arvo I watched 7th Heaven and laughed about the time Megan and Ali told be I looked like Barry Watson when I had stubble drawn on with eyeliner and also laughed at the kiddies dancing at the Valentines Day party.

Hmmm…I think I can work on the summarising thing some more. I do rather suck at summerising.

Wishing everyone a fantarrific weekend, and a fabstounding holidays – only four days more of school for me! YES! How crazy thoough, they finish school on the 23rd, so one day hols then Christmas. But not really, seeing they do Christmas on Christmas Eve as well. Ah well, I care not.

Adios everybody!
Love Amy

PS – Pinkie – I got a text book from the Spanish teacher so I could learn some simple spanish through German! When I have translated some stuff I will send you some Spanish phrases via email, okees? Its lots of fun, Spanish is my favourite class. Tata!

Save me, Save Me, SAAAAAVE ME

2004-12-14T19:40:07Z

I’m naked and I’m far from home... L Except I lied about the naked part. I am fully clothed, far from home and this time in real, desperate need of saving.

You all know about the boringness of school, and so far I’ve been like, “Nah, it’s ok, really.” Well I lied again. This week all newness and hilarity is gone and I realised how seriously deathy boring it is when one cannot understand a word coming from the mouth of some old fool rabbiting on out the front. Today I tried to relieve the pain by readding Harry Potter (in German) but that being in German was not much of a relief – I can understand what’s happening (Harry, “Hermine” as they like to call her, Ron and Neville have just had their first encounter with the 3 headed dog) but one cannot read in German all day and I was seriously about to burst into tears when there was 20 minutes left of double Religion, the last period, because I could not stand the boredom.

So unfortunately today’s email is not a crackerjack entertaining recount of my ever peachy life, rather a plea for rescuing from a deep dark chasm of eternal loniness and boredom.

And with that comes a rather strange request, especially for you lords and ladies on summer holidays, but can someone (i.e. all of you) send me some maths?! Or some chemistry, or physics, or art or even some work from subjects I don’t do, like music or earth and environmental or biology or…some other cool subject our school lacks the capability of teaching. But not Economics or Business studies and please not German and not English, I don’t want anything that needs interpreting…*shudder*…I really need something too make my brain cogs start ticking again – I am going braindead with the endless sitting and day dreaming and copying and learning things in my head…I need a CHALLENGE! That doesn’t invovle language skills. So any undone worksheets, Review Sets, exercises (don’t be shy, I know there must be a few floating around!) are welcome to be collected into a nice package and bundled off to good old Europe and your darling Amy!

Or emailed. Whatev.

I did go to mcDonalds today, I think that was the highlight. I had a Big Mac and Small Chips and it was greasy and full of fat and it was good. Not the trusty “100% Australian Beef” haha 100% beef my arse. My theory, and I’m sure its yours too, is that they actually mean the miniscule quantity of beef that makes up that mulchy pattie is 100% Aussie Beef, as apposed to the pattie being 100% beef. And also no Mc Oz, Jeremy! I was like, “Wo ist Mc Oz?!” but they completely didn’t get it. Meh.

Haha, and also one other thing of hilarity was that on Monday morning after Jens (the bf) came over on Sunday night, Corinna had a nasty reddish purple “bruise” on her jaw, and she was wearing her scarf high at school all day, and her friends were like, “Oh, what happened?” and she was ll embarrassed and was like “Jens!” hahahahaha it was quite a nasty love bite indeed.

Also on that topic, sort of, more of a tangent from the circle of the previous point, the other day Corinna’s friend Dominic ( a girl) came over to take photos, cos they are each making a calander for their boyfriends for Christmas. They needed to borrow my camera cos the battery ran out and Sabine was there when they asked, and she was like, “Am I allowed to see these photos?” and Corinna said “Maybe March and April…” haha, and tonight we went to Lena’s house to use the computer to touch up the red eyes and make some photos black and white etc, and it is slightly pornographic! I laughed. It was really pornographic, more like one of those slightly raunchy perfume ads, you know? For example, Dominc lying down with a scarf barely covering…things. Anyway, I am sure Jens and Mark (Domi’s bf) will enjoy their calanders.

So now I have cheered myself up with my one sided converstaion and will be over the moon with delight should but one of my faithful man servants reply! Not that you guys ARE my actual MAN SERVANTS, it was just a figure of speech. Which isn’t really widely used. And I always get heaps of replies so thank you and its ok if this one time you can’t be bothered. I totally understand. Just sned me something to do in class!

Lots of Love and Maccas grease
From Amy

5th Email - how consistent of me

2004-12-10T18:54:26Z

Save me, save me, SAVE ME

haha don´t rely need saving just thought i`d enlighten you all with the act thati am over my QUEEN homesickness and have been almost cntinuousl listneing to Queen since yesterday, and i discovered how really really nice the song "save me" is. i love it!

now now now.

now. whats been hapening? i will check my litle bookie... believe ileft off onweds? well, that night i went dancigwith corinna again but this time the lady tought me a bit of the dances, and then brought me into the middle of the circle and went – now you boys can dance with the australian! it was embarrassing! but fun fun fun. i then danced with...Patrick (Jens´ bro (jens is corinnas bf) ), christoff, who we ride to school with, Thomas, who is the music man, usually, and Bernd, the smiling dude. it was very amusing and lots of fun. we then did this other one in a circle al together which invovled alot of turning around and swapping partners and weaving and ´girls in´ -ing and it was also fantastic! I am going to teach you all the dnce when i return from this crazy place.

i bet they would think we are more crazy – they´re actually quite normal excpet for some random things. They don´t do crazy dancing – which i find strange – they do normal party dancing and also their partner dancing which they all learn together. I showed one girl the crazy holding onto ur foot waving an arm in the air shaking ur head and hopping crazily dancing and she was like, ´heh heh....right......´so i don´t think i´ll be doing too much more of that.

Yesrday – thursday – there was choir after school which was hilarious! they were practicing christmas carols, and in Hark the Herald Angels... they all sung ´womb´ like it is spelt, instead of ´woome´hahahhaa they asked me if it was riht, and i told tem the ´woome´ way, the right way, but they sung ´womb´anyway and i coulnd´t help laughing! Sarah was like, don´t laugh, and i didn´t know how to say that i wasnt laughing at her so i just laughed some more.

The shit fields weren´t so bad today. yesterday and today it was much colder – as in there was major frost overnight. not like, pathetic lam arse frost we get in Aus land, but a thin layer of ice on everyhing – like each blade of grass and each leaf, the barbed wire and the posts. The other day in the shit fields i noticed a part in the middle that has larger ugly plants in it, unlike the grass or dirt in the rest of the field area, then yesterday with the first frost i was like, what kind of shitty ugly whimpy pansy plants are these? cos they looked so pathetic, kind of collapsed and deadish under the dreadful weight of the frost. then we had geoggers and i saw a diagram on the page about crops and climate zones, and i saw that they were potatoes! i also learned that taters need to grow in temps of –5 to 5°C, and there is a tater factory just b4 the shit fields, so i think i guessed correct! also, the potatoes here are so much nice than ours. I don´t know where ours are grown, but perhaps not in the ideal freezing climate. I usually hate potatoes, except in potato bake or chips, so i was nicely surprised with the tastiness of them here – haha, The Potato Theory in action!!! But then I thought about how these delicious potatoes are also most likely smothered daily in a massive steaming reeking ocean tanker load of manure, growing in the middle of the shit fields and all. Nice...if that’s what makes them taste so good i think i´ll stick to dodgy Australian taters.

Also this morning on the way to school, i was taking a snff with my nose and i caught a whiff of something good. „Mmmm...shallots“ I thought to myself. Half expecting to see a drug dealer pop out from around the corner, I cycled on, but no drug dealer came. Perhaps smokeable shallot is not one of the many drugs one can buy in Venlo, unlike smokeable garlic. Then I wondered if in Venlo i had just smelled someone’s cooking then the drug man came, and the same happened today, but without the drug man. So I said, „I wonder in Venlo i had just smelled someone’s cooking then the drug man came, and the same happened today, but without the drug man.“ I am now thinking that this is the correct hypothesis, and the mystery of the smokeable garlic is solved.
Please excuse any seriously crap typing errors, i am playing music and it makes the comp v slow and annoying. Stupid Queen – GAH! „Did I just say that?“ I yell. „Did she just say that?“ you yell. „Did she just say that?“ Freddy yells from his grave.

„Sorry,“ says I. „I didn´t really mean it.“

Ah, something else amusing, I had my first English lesson the other day, and they were analysing (yr 7-8 style, but still pretty impressive) this extract from a book where this girl is going to have an abortion but she runs away and meets her bf and they are not sure what to do now they are gonna keep the baby. It was hilarious, the teacher is so random, he taught them how to say “I don’t give a fuck” and when he say my best friend – German English Dictionary – he aid, “You’re learning German seriously? bastard of a language.” and I was a little bewildered but smiled and nodded and chuckled as he walked away.

And now I am le tired, majorly, and will retire to the table to have coffee and wake up a bit more, and then go in to Kaldenkirchen shops, and then to bed, i thinks.

Hope to hear about all your amazingly exciting summer adventures!

Lauren: I got your letter with the photo of that guy with the kid at the beach! Its hilarious! He’s holding his surfboard, and from his position, he could just rotate a little bit and know the kid over into this hole in the sand! He probably did, now I think about what else he was doing to the poor boy!
And I have not much more to say at the moment.

So fear me you lord and lady preachers: I descend upon the Earth from the skies! I command your very souls, you unbelievers: bring before me what is mine – The Seven Seas of Rhye! (being news of all your oceans of emotion and mountains of delight and deserts of pain and rivers of tears etc etc, various other geographically described events in your lives.)

Tune in next time for "The Fantastically Brillant and Naturally Interesting and Entralling Life of Amy".

Until next time, I'm your most hilarious and brilliant friend, Amy Morcom.

Please take care, good night.

A quickie

2004-12-01T09:42:01Z

Hi everybody! Sorry, no email or big update now, i ran out of time cos i was readng Jeremy´s massive eail update thing.
I will write another email later, maybe tomorrow after i go to school :S
Hey! It´s snowing!!!
OMG mad! But not properly, it is not cold enough, it just melts and turns into rain as it hits the ground. Wie interessant!
Have to go now, we are going shopping or something, i dunno.
Tata all

love from Germany

Amy

Another update

2004-11-28T18:12:59Z

i am posting the group email I sent, if you missed out by accident, look hear. excuse the ovelap.

w00t!
I´m in Germany! It is so cool! Shall I take you all on a step by step adventure? I shall.

Thursday: last day of school. Sad, and happy. Lots of fun, go the party hats, Lou! Stupid Taysha. Stupid, stupid Taysha. Then after school went to Riverview and joined in rehursals for Dare!, the random view musical and then auditioned. Prety crapily, might I add, but i got in!

Lauren and Leah: did you guys audition today? yesterday? whenever it was? Was it grood? I really hope u did and that u got in!!!

this section doesn´t have a day because I don´t know which day it was. It is just all one adventure: I am only just getting used to the time thing. It was so weird, the plane left at 5:15 on friday, and we had dinner at like 8, and then they were like *breakfast will soon be served* and it was like midnight! It was insano. The we arrived in singapore at what would be, say, 1:00 in morning, I don´t really know, but was 11:00 Singapore Time. Changi is the weirdest airport i have ever been to. Sure, you won´t get lost and it is clean, but everyone failed to mention, or maybe failed to notice, the multitudes of cactuses - sprry, cacti - everywhere. Very strange. And to add to the decor, there was also a few massive pots of about 15 sunflowers thrown in every so often. Not to mention the cactus man who doubled as a sign for McDonalds and something else. So yeah, at Singapore we met with the other people doing exchange who had come from brisbane and melbourne and got back on the plane. I had already watched The Bourne Supremecy and Shrek 2, then I watched The Notebook and Anchorman, which I thought was pretty crap. The best bit was the random street duel, and man was it random. Ben Stiller was hilarious! Haha, and loserish dude from Legally Blonde was in it too - one of the leaders from all the news teams in the street fight. nad then it was maybe...3, 4 in the morning, syd time and i slept a bit, THEN i watch the notebook, sorry, then i slept a bit more. went on yet another walking up the aisle plane adventure - haha, Plane adventures, jez and becky and co - with my fabulous plane buddy sarah and we wanted to go in the cockpit, but nobody´s allowed after september 11, so the dude ran up to first class and gave us the little toiletry bag with free moisturiser etc in. It is very fancy. Then there was more lack of sleep, and playing games on the controller which was also the place with the buttons for light and air hostess and volume and brightness of screen and channel AND a telephone on the back where you can pay by credit card and call someone on the ground or sms them! How cooll is that?! The games were: caveman, tetris, volcano tetris, chess ( i won! For the first time in my life! I won chess! i spose the computer was set to easy, but i won!) and checkers and backgammon, bowling, and...i think that´s all. Only about half of them were working, so there was more.

Then an uneventful rest of extremely long and boring and uncomfortable journey, and i chnaged planes in frankfurt, bought lou a postcard as i promised, and bought a little kids book called ...i can´t remember...and got a bus to the other terminal and caught a plane by myslef to düsseldorf, on which I listened to Queen on clarence, read about kiera knightly and gazed in awe at the clouds out the window. It was the first time i´d seen sun in ages, cos we had flown around the world with the darkness. That sounds freaky. It was really cool on the map. How mad are satellites?! i think they are totally awesome, how you can find urself anywhere in the world and ok i´m getting off track.

Saturday: Arrived at about 9:30 in Düsselsorf but i have no idea what time it was. Got my luggage, oh, and that reminds me, going through customs was so easy. it was like, walk straight through the nothing to declare line and tat is all. A grin from the guard and you´re in Germany! There was hardly any line. Mind you, it was lik e 5:30 in the morning, german time. The we went on the autobahn, like a freeway, at an average speed of 140 km/h and went through Kaldenkirchen, my town. Kaldenkirchen is a part of Nettetal - nice valley, which is not a valley at all, there are no mountains anywhere, the land is totally falt, everywhere - and it joined up with 3 other towns to make Nettetal. It is so gorgeous, the streets are narrow, and the gutters are stone and the houses are small and cute and have pointy rooves and windows sticking out whic can open in like a door, hinges on the side, or in tilting with the top open, hinges on the bottom. they also have a double layer of glass, like on the plane. There is heating in the floor of my house and heaters and fire, so it is really warm - i´m wearing a 3/4 t shirt and jeans. And outside, it is maybe 5-7°C, not so bad. You are not cold if you wear a jumper and a warm jacket and scarf. and gloves. We went for a walk with the dogs before - tonka nd jill - and i was hot. What else? The house is really cool, they have a wavy ceiling and down lights on wires and millions of turtles everywhere. It is totally random. Near me is a wall hanging box with 45 turtles in it - like trinkets? what are they called? figurines. They are everywhere, even 2 in my room, not including the Finding Nemo poster. Christmas decos are up already - those see through sticker things on the glass and wreaths of pine in vases and today was first sunday of advent so we lit a candle on the 4 candles wreath at lunch time. On tuesday we are going to choose a christmas tree, but we don´t pick it up until later. In the ´city´, the middles of the town, are wreath like decorations hanging over the streets and the plaza, like in the town in the Blue Mountains? anyone been there at christmas? not Leura, Katoomba, That´s it. And lots of houses laready have Christmas lights up, like fairy lights, and pics of st nikolaus - santa. One house still has halloween decos up! And they have Aldi here, we are going there soon so i can buy warm beanie and gloves and these awesome shoes they wear, like knee high ugs, but not so slipper-ish - they have fleece on the inside. Today when I went walking with corinna (host sis) and the baby Katrin (COrinna´s cousin and god child) I went into the Netherlands! I didn´t realise, it was just a change in the bricks in the ground! no guards or anything, you just walk across. And the trees are so pretty! Even though it has been grey and drizzly ever since I arrived, it is still beautiful, with the red and orange leaves and half empty trees and coolio houses. Its so awesome!

well, I think that is quite long enough. My wrists are hurting from typing. Damnation to this blasted keyboard - its really bugging me. The Z and Y have swapped and instead of apostrophe is an Ö and Ä instead of other punctuation. I couldn´t find the " before, so i used *! The ? is next to the 0 and i keep typing _ instead of ?. Man it´s annoying. Ok, now my elbow is hurting as well.

So in farewell:

Sis, Phoebe and Flick - Hallo! Oder, auf wiedersehen! Alles ist gut, ich kann ein bisschen verstehen, und wenn ich nicht verstehen kann, sie spechen auf Englicsh. Die familie Klaaßen ist so nett, und ich bin froh. Ich fühle mich nicht traurig! Ha! Ich habe das nicht vergessen! Wie toll ist mein Deutsch?! Sehr. Sehr toll. I habe eine neue Wörter gelernt - über dach is when something, say a shopping centre, is inside, so "under roof"! Tschüss! Pb, don´t listen to any rumours that might be spreading. Just laugh and thing#k to yourself - "Wanker. Wanker Wanker Wanker" Then laugh at what a wanker the rumor spreader is. k? k.

Lauren, Leah, Celeste? : did you audition for Dare! ? if so, did you get in? I hope so.

Um...Catriona: i think I bought one of the books that you did, like the same brand! haha, i remember, it is Petzi!

Everyone else: time to go! Sabine is amaze dhtat after only one day in Germany I have so much to write! She said I should make a book out of all my emails and that it will be very long. Ha. We are also about to eat, and i must use the piss bucket.

Hope everyone is doing fantastically! I was listening to Queen before, and I was remembering alot of the words in preparation for Kareoke, but it made me homesick and sad, so I had to stop!!! Looking at photos didn´t, but Queen did! Haha. I think it holds a special place in my heart, with all my dear friends!!!

Missing you all!
Write back soo, tell me about your busy lives in 30° weather, and tell of all the goss and happenings and try and enjoy like without me!

Love
Amy

Instant Amy: www.livejournal.com/users/gerroff_me

GERMANIA!!!!

2004-11-28T13:45:20Z

Yes yes, it is i from germany!

I am writing on a very strange german keyboard and it is hard because the Z and Y are swapped and there is an Ä and Ü and Ö in place of punctuation marks and other things like ! and ? and @ are in weird places.

I am hearing things of hilarity from louise, some juicz goss, and am expecting a decent does every few days, k?!

My story: plane was good to Changi, and that was the most ranomd airpost ever. Although clean and easy to navigate, it was full of cactuses. And sunflowers. there was even a cactus man with a McDonalds sign on! The rest of the flight was long and tiring and boring. I watched Shrek 2, The Notebook, Anchorman (pretty crap, Ben Stiller´s cameo was the best bit) and...the Bourne Supremcy. Also got good meals, at random times, like breakfast at like...midnight sydney time. We went and asked to look at the cockpit and the host said that u can´t do that anymore after 9\11, fair enough. So instead he ran up the stairs to business\ first class and gave us the littlefree abgs with LÓcaitneswer or whatever its called, with hand cream and body butter and tooth paste and brush etc. V. Cool. Sarah, my EF exchange plane buddy, and I bought lollies at the airport, like starburst squirts, and there was and orange one left which we didnt wamt so we offered it to this random geramn lady and she DECLINED! How totaly RUDE! But mostly it was very fun.

I arrived at Frankfurt, got luggage, caught the bus to another terminal and got on the plane to Düsseldorf alone, which was ok. I just read about Kiera Knightly in English and German and listened to Queen on Clarence.

I arrived at 9:30, about, and we drove on the Autobahn for about 30 mins, at an average speed of about 140 km\h!!!

It is kinda cold, but not too bad, outside I was wearing jeans, 3\4 t shirt and a thick parka thing and was fine. but it will get colder. it is continuously foggy but its ok. We are so close to the Netherlands that you can see it from the road. And the town is gorgeous, it is seriously awesome. It has cobbled paths and little houses of cool shapes and tiny streets with cars on the right side and orange and red leaves half empty trees!

OMg its so cool! The relatives are here now, Ursula, Ulrich, it hink, and Katrin, who is Corinna´s godchild, a baby. I am going to walk her in the pram with Corinna in a sec, so must be off.

Pb, have not yet discovered who Andreas is, but i think they are in Berlin-i heard some talk!

Must be off, amd expecting many gossip full emails and updates about hot summer Australian life!

Love Amy
P.S. I auditioned for the Riverview musical on Thursday arvo, alone, and got n#in! HUZZAH!

Amy's Spanky Fine Journal of Lurve

I am such an LJ slacker

Update! Finally!

New Photo Albums

Myra-heee!

My favourite website

Shopping Hoo How!

no subject today

Wireless Wonder

whoppo

Gar and Bah

Can it be true - is this an...update?!?

Greetings Down Under from Up Over

Het Hallo <--- dutch

Alrigh' luv? *BEWARE - seriously enormous*

THE LIST

Shopping, Snow and SCHNELL Autos!

Silvester

Whoops

Last Sunday before CHRISTMAS! HUZZAH!

Great News!

Happy Happy Friday

Save me, Save Me, SAAAAAVE ME

5th Email - how consistent of me

A quickie

Another update

GERMANIA!!!!

Alrigh' luv? BEWARE - seriously enormous