Chor Wochenende!

I spent this past weekend at a nearby youth hostel with my choir! I definitely sang more then I ever have within a 48 hour time period. Despite my voice becoming a little hoarse, and my throat starting to get sore, I had an absolutely fantastic time! Not only did we sing, but we also played a lot of games and talked. And the best part - I spoke close to zero English alllllll weekend! 

Here's a little outline of what we did. I've been having a hard time motivating (and finding the time) to journal, so I'm at least going to try and keep this up a bit so I have some record of what I did. 

Friday, November 20th: 

Came directly home from school at 2:30, ate a quick lunch, and packed my backpack with the stuff I needed to bring. We arrived at the Jugendherberge a little after 4:00. Then we  made our beds (the beds don't come already made up at youth hostels) and then then went downstairs to sing a bit before dinner.
After eating our bread, cheese, and sliced meat with a side of potatoes (very typical for Abendessen in Germany), we headed back to the conference room that our group had for the weekend to sing and play some circle games. Luckily for me, most of the games we played were pretty simple (and didn't require a ton of talking), so I was able to participate just fine. 
After that, we divided into smaller groups and ate some snacks and played some board/card games. I joined a group of experienced "speed cup" enthusiasts, which turned out to be quite an interesting time. Basically, in Speed Cups, each player gets 5 little plastic cups of different colors, and with these little cups the players have to complete various challenges, which are determined by cards that are flipped over one after another. Whichever player completes the  task the fastest wins dings a bell and then they that card. Whoever has the most cards at the end wins. Despite only winning 2 cards (I was actually extremely happy with myself to get those on my first time playing). I've never really seen a game similar to to this in America, so maybe I'll just have to bring it back and start a new trend, haha. ;) Eventually we all went to bed and got a sufficient (sort of) amount go sleep before the next day. :P 

Saturday, November 21st:

I'm not going to go through everything we did in order, but our day included lots more singing, practicing for a musical, and playing many more games. One of the games we played was a card game called "Bohnanza" (you'll only get the pun if you know some German). Anyway, it is a game where each player is acting the part of a bean farmer trying to earn the most money from their crops. There's absolutely no American game that I can even begin to compare to it. It's quite entertaining once everyone figures out how it works!   We sang so so so many Christmas songs, which started getting me excited for Christmas!  :D One of my favorites that we sang is a pretty song called "Mitten in der Nacht", which we will be singing at some of our performances in December. Incase you don't speak German, Mitten in German does not = mitten in English. The name of the song translates simply to "Middle of the Night" 
After lunch, we had a group picture on the big staircase of the youth hostel, which was quite an adventure in itself. Everyone (I think 40 people) just barely fit, and getting everyone arranged so that we could all be seen seemed a little harder than it should have been.   After we finally got the picture taken, we spontaneously started singing a song called "Der Kleine Stern" (the little star). Some other people staying at the youth hostel walked by while we were singing (thankfully they didn't need to use the stairs), and they looked like they rather enjoyed it. They were from a drumming group, so I guess they must have been musical types too. I hope so anyway, because we also sang a bunch in the dining hall and in other common areas of the building. :P We ate all our meals in the Jugendherberge, and the food was very good! I've now eaten at 5 different German youth hostels, and I've really never been disappointed by the food. 

Sunday, November 22nd: 

We did more singing with the whole group, and we also had a "wunsch runde" (wish round) where people could request for the whole group to sing their favorite songs. When it was finally time to go home (at 2 pm) a bunch of us got back up on the aforementioned staircase to sing happy birthday to one girl's mom, when she arrived to pick up her daughter. I think she really appreciated it, and being part of a surprise is always fun. :) 

Sorry for the lack of pictures in this post. I didn't really use my phone during the weekend, so I didn't take any. If I can get ahold of some other people's pictures then I'll post them! 

Schönes Wochenende, everyone! (Have a nice weekend) 
I'm going to the Düsseldorf Weihnachtsmarkt tomorrow! I'll definitely be taking pictures there. :)