On Friday, Me and Ariel got on a train towards Hannover, Germany. There we had the blessing to stay with Cecilia and her family for two days. Cecilia was an exchange student last school year at McNeil High School. Her host family was my good friend Kayleigh and since Kayleigh also comes to the Uprising and Gateway, I met Cecilia when she first arrived around August! Cecilia has such a blessing for a family. Her mother knows English really well and her little sister wants to learn spanish. Her little sister Carlotta borrowed us her room for two nights. She stayed with Cecilia and me and Ariel had our own bed in Carlotta's room. Their house was so cute! It made me want a cute European house! Everything was organized, clean and super cutely decorated. The bathroom was huge! Cecilia picked us up at the Hannover train station with two of her friends, Iliel and Sandra. The girls were super nice! Later on we met more of Cecilia's friends. I can tell they had missed and love Cecilia. The girls were excited for the festival that started that day. It's kind of like a fair mixed with a festival. It is called Schützenfest! Its kind of like Oktoberfest but this one happens in the spring in northern Germany. The main cities have it for a week and we got there in perfect timing for this years! Love when God plans the trip, we had no idea! So me and Ariel were there for about 45 minutes since we had to meet my teacher Christina somewhere else. But at Schützenfest we all rode this one ride that went in circles and all crazy things and had blasting good music! It was a blastttt, we were jamming while screaming haha. It was rly long and super!
The girls were too young but they wanted us to try Hannover's famous drink "Lüttje Lagen." You can only get this drink in Hannover and during this festival, so it's a big deal to them and they all wait to be 18 to be able to drink it. It was pretty good. You have to hold two cups and while you drink one, the other one is pouring on the cup you are drinking....kind of like a fountain! They recorded us doing it haha. After that, we tried Hannover Bratwurst, which was delishhh of course and me and Ariel headed to meet Christina at a fancy looking bar. Cecilia and her friends stayed at the festival since they were so excited for it and we didn't want them to miss out.
At the bar, we met her sister Maren and her friend Alex. We chatted for a few hours. We had a great time! Afterwards, we all went to Schützenfest again! We had roasted pork in a sandwich with onions and Knoblauch (garlic sauce) which was amazing!!!!!!! deliciousssss! and me and ariel bought gingerbread hearts for each other! It is a german tradition to do that and then wear it the whole day. The girls usually keep it forever as a nice memory of the special one. But since we never had tried a legit gingerbread and we didnt have space in our backpacks for both hearts, we ate one the next day and the other one on our way back from rome. They were so good! :) After a great fun day in Hannover we went back to Cecilia's house. We slept so good that night. The next morning, we woke up kinda late haha and had an amazing huge breakfast! It is crazy how much you appreciate food after you haven't been eating as well as you wish. We had warm bread with a ton of options: cheese (all kinds of cheese), some coffee, ham, jelly, honey, white chocolate spread, nutella, and some other stuff that I can't even remember. I tried to eat everything, so good! Then we headed out to with Cecilia and her friends to the Royal Garden!
It was gorgeously beautiful! I felt like royalty! We didn't get to see the whole thing, but we went into the greenhouse, where we saw cactuses from everywhere around the world. I never thought Cactuses could be so pretty! Ariel kept going "PERU" when she found Peruvian cactuses haha. We found some from Texas of course haha. Another greenhouse had flowers everywhere. Tropical flowers, all kinds of flowers. There was one that eats insects! Yeah, they exist! haha. beautiful, beautiful creations of God! After that we headed to see the "Rathaus," which is it the major's office building, which is kind of like the Capitol. It was too late, so we couldn't go all the way to the top but we got to go in. Inside it was so pretty, everything was white. They also had four big city models of Hannover. When it was a tiny town, when it grew a bit, after the war and one of today. The one after the war was so shocking, everything was destroyed, like a fire. I thought it wasn't a coincidence that one church and a few buildings weren't destroyed! I could definitely see a difference between Hannover newer buildings than Erfurt. Hannover buildings are white, offwhite, pastel colors. Erfurt buildings are the typical traditional buildings from a painting. Both beautiful. The light colors in Hannover makes the city look lovely. Hannover is not very touristic but is known, whether Erfurt is neither haha. But stuff like that doesn't really matter, all cities here are just beautiful and worth visiting and enjoying :) They also took us to a big man made river that in the winter, they go ice skating there. It started raining, and after all the walking we went home. For lunch earlier that day we had Döner, I LOVE Döner! So cheap and SO GOOD! I have learn how to it, you have to squish it so it will fit in your mouth haha. Anyways, for dinner, Cecilia's mother cooked us a delicious homemade meal, the recipe was from her grandma! It was kind of like a casserole but not. Hard to explain, but so good! Once again, since me and ariel appreciate food so much nowadays, we ate until we couldn't anymore. And then they offer us some ice cream, how can you turn that down? so we ate it, it was sooooooooooooooo good! Different from american ice cream. It was vanilla flavor with thin layers of chocolate fudge. After that they invited us to go with them to meet another family that had guests from America over but we were so tired we stayed and watched "How I met your mother" episodes and the beginning of Mary Poppins :)
The next day we woke up early (like 6) and had some delicious breakfast again and headed to the train station to pick up Renee! We found Renee and headed to take a train to the Airport. I am so glad God allowed us to go to Hannover, it was such a beautiful city and God blessed us so much by letting us stay at Cecilia's house. Ariel asked Cecilia what she misses most about America and she said the church! Cecilia loved Gateway! And what I have learned lately is that Germany doesn't have modern churches, everything is very super traditional, mostly I think is because the churches look very traditional, super old buildings. One night there, we couldnt sleep for some reason, so we prayed for Cecilia, her family, her friends, Hannover. Please keep Cecilia in your prayers as she continues her life in Germany, that she won't forget what she learned from America. I asked Cecilia if she saw Germany different after being in America and she said she just learned to appreciate her family a lot more and she sees the good things in Germany and in America and appreciates the best from both countries. She said that her time in USA was hard at times but learned so much and is so glad she did it!!
Rome adventure. next blog...is kinda of late over here so I'll write it tomorrow hopefully.
Pray for me, I have my exam on Friday and project presentation on Tuesday!
Love,
Cynth
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Dear Cynthia,