What's New in Norden....

We arrived in Norden, Germany Tuesday, May 17. Our visit began with a walking city tour. Norden is a very small but lovely town. In the evening, we visited the Franz Radziwill exhibit at the Kunsthalle in Embden.

On Wednesday, we took a ferry over to an island called Norderney. We enjoyed a very long walk (approx 5 miles) on the beach. The weather was very good to us!

Our presentation at the Rotary club meeting went very well. I think we are all getting more and more comfortable presenting in German. Since we were the only item on the agenda we had a lot of time to speak and get to know many members of the Rotary Club of Norden.

Yesterday, was our vocational day, and I spent some time at SKN, a printing company owned by Christian Basse, Rotarian. I was also able to visit a local hospital. I met with the "Chief Financial Officer," Thomas Hippen. He patiently worked through a lot of useful information in English and I enjoyed hearing about how their hospital operates. I learned a lot from this visit. While they do not solicit gifts for the hospital, they have received donations in the past for Children's Services among other things. He told me one instance where there was a uninsured child visiting from another country and he broke his arm. A generous donation was made so that he could be treated without charge. Often times, these donations are placed in the papers for marketing purposes for the hospital.

And speaking of being placed in the papers.... The GSE Team made the local newspaper for the second time. For the vocational day yesterday, Jaime and Stephen worked with Christian Basse at SKN on an article that appeared in today's newspaper about our team. The article was in both English and German and talked about our stay in Germany thus far and some similarities and differences that we have noticed.

Yesterday was Katie's Birthday and we are all thankful to those that made her birthday celebration possible, especially Christian Basse and his team of assistants! We had a little celebration at the SKN office after our vocational visits and had strawberry cake. This cake seems to be popular in Germany. Stephen and the team went out for an Italian dinner and Katie was able to exercise her Spanish with the server. Needless to say, that was an interesting experience. After dinner, the girls had a night out with Charlotte Basse. A special thanks to Charlotte for taking us out. Katie, hope you had a special day!

For me, our time in Norden seems to be flying by. I cannot believe it's already our last day in Norden. Tonight, my host family is having a cookout at the house to celebrate our last night together. My host family (Kerstin, Henning Niemann and son, Johannes, 13) has been so wonderful to me! I will miss them very much!!

Posted by: Alexandra Yates