I think of everything that has happened so far, my favorite experience I've had was this Sunday. Rosa, Vivi, Cici, and I visited an old World War II bunker that had been turned into a haunted museum type thing.There were three different levels to the museum, the 'Chamber of Horrors'. That was my favorite. It truly wasn't that fantastic, but considering I've gone to a haunted house all of never, it was pretty enjoyable. There just aren't that many haunted houses in Springdale. Not that I know of at least. Anyways, when we first got there, Rosa and Vivi were freaking out some while Cici and I admired the creepy masks they had on the wall. We had to go up stairs before entering the main attraction. Of course, once we were there, we had the long argument about who gets to open the door. Another group, a woman and a handful of boys, had joined us by the time I called everyone babies and opened the door myself. They should think that through better. The one who opens the door gets stuck on door duty and therefore go in last. So naturally, I took up the last place in the group to watch for anyone behind us. The Germans with us, including the group of boys who had joined us, were already freaking out before anything actually happened, and by the time the first person popped out to scare us, the Germans were freaked out and even Cici was getting a little twitchy. I meanwhile dutifully kept my post in the back, laughing at all of them. Anytime anything remotely scary happened, Rosa would jump ten feet in the air and land on Cici, who was right behind her, using her massive bag as a cushion. I laughed and I am not sorry. I love Rosa. She's just fantastic. The second floor wasn't scary per say, rather it was creepy instead. The girls were still jumpy but Cici and I were enjoying the wonderful exhibits on medieval torture techniques and other medical wonders of the 16th century. The exhibits had rather well done automans that moved. The one from the exhibit on people in comas being mistaken for the dead was probably my favorite. He rose up out of his coffin and laughed at us before laying back down again. Nice to make his day. Of course, we knew that there were air blowers in that area to scary those still jumpy from the 'Chamber of Horrors'. Cici and I knew right away when Rosa and Vivi fell for the first one, despite being in a different room. Cici fell for the same one later on, screaming like a little girl when it blew air on her neck. Music to my ears. The one that I fell for, I just turned and laughed at it.... Maybe there's a reason I don't go to haunted houses very often, other than the fact that we have none. The final story was a museum for the bunker itself, sharing plenty of information about the bunker and when it was in use. It was pretty interesting and the big empty rooms echoed when we talked. Cici and I finished before Rosa and Vivi did, so naturally, being the true five year olds we are, we played around in the echoing rooms attacking each other and just being a bother in general. It's okay though. It was just us there so we didn't bother anyone not used to our shenanigans. This was just something Cici and I mentioned we wanted to do, but I did have fun.
Right after this, Rosa and I went home and I made dinner for my host family. Now, since coming to Germany, I have eaten very healthy. A good breakfast, fruit everyday and more water than I've had in a long while. I believe the worst thing I've eaten while here (not including the fried chicken), was when we went to McDonalds and we got some chicken. Both times they were fantastic and tasted much much better than the chicken in America. That being said, fried chicken is a HUGE change to the German diet. Just making the chicken alone took an entire bottle of sunflower oil to cook. That's a lot of fudgin' grease. The whole meal consisted of fried chicken, mac & cheese, mashed potatoes and white gravy, and apple pie, the most Southern American thing I could think of. I wanted to make something for them, kind of as a thank you for letting me stay in their home, but I also wanted to show them some of what America is really like since they've been showing me what Germany is like. Since I'm a foody myself and cook quite a lot, it only made sense to cook for them one night. Also, as a foody, I've noticed huge differences between German and American food. Namely that German food is actually real. They use reall strawberries in their jelly, they whole wheat is real whole wheat, they eat fruit and vegatables that haven't be sprayed with ten different kinds of pestisides and processed. Everything tastes so much better here because it's real. They have fruit stands everywhere, even in the subways. There is a strawberry stand in almost every subway station I have been to, and the strawberries taste fantastic. Certain things are much cheaper here too! For example, if you want to buy a can of nuts, it doesn't cost that much. Even hazelnuts. They have hazelnut flavored things everywhere and if I wanted to buy some hazelnuts, I could without it costing me an arm and a leg. Things are also smaller here. I put a peach in my pocket and it fit in there easily. I couldn't do that with American peaches because they're all so big. And usually not that good. Good produce is hard to find in America, much less good produce for a good price. Here though, bad produce is hard to find and it's all cheap too! It's so much easier to be healthy here than it is in America. Even things like peanut butter is better here. It's much richer and creamier. I like it so much more than American peanut butter. When we were buying meat for the chicken, we had to get more packages because each package only had two or three breasts in them and they were all fairly small because they hadn't been pumped up with loads of chemicals and hormones. They tasted much, much better than chicken I would buy in America. The meal went over wonderfully and they ate almost all of the fried chicken. I had brought over some instant packages of white gravy as well and Rosa mentioned how much she liked it. They decended on the apple pie like starving vultures and I'm honestly surprised it survived to see the light of the next morning. It was gone after that though. It was very interesting to see the differences between a German meal and an American meal though. And I think making a meal like fried chicken after eating very healthy for the last several days really showed that off. Granted, fried chicken isn't something that we eat everyday (much less make it from scratch) but we do eat it a lot and eat a lot of things like it. It's interesting to see the huge differences between the cultures, just through food.
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