Washington D.C.

On our last day in the USA, we went to Washington D.C. To see as many sights there as possible, we started at 5.30 am. Nearly all students slept until we stopped at McDonald’s to grab breakfast. During the remaining bus ride, we watched Transformers.

At about 11 am we arrived in Washington and started our tour with the Capitol that houses the Senate. Mr. Tower, our Knoch Security Officer, was the tour guide and showed us the National Gallery of Arts next. It is a huge, nice building with a beautiful fountain inside and that displays one of the world’s finest art collections.

Our next sight was the Washington Monument. As it was such a nice and sunny day we took the opportunity to make some nice group pictures in front of it. Then we went on to see the White House that was heavily guarded so we were not even allowed to advance to the huge fence surrounding it.

Afterwards we took a walk through one of the many parks of the U.S. capital and went to the Memorial of the Vietnam War, which is a huge, seemingly endless wall with thousands of names engraved in it. Each name stands for a dead soldier. It was very sad to see how many people died in this war.

The last stop before heading to the airport was Lincoln Memorial with his huge statue in it. It reminded us all of the Walhalla in Regensburg. Then we had to get on the bus again and to say goodbye to our American hosts. It was a very, very sad and tearful moment! But we are sure that we have formed many deep and long-lasting friendships. Before this trip, we would not have imagined how close you can get with people in such a short period of time!!

Your German GAPP students

We proudly present the US capital J:

Julia’s last day in Saxonburg

Yesterday was our last day in Saxonburg and we could choose what we wanted to do. I went to a High School volleyball game instead of wing night because I wanted to watch Summer, Mindy and Jessie (some of our host partners) play.

Unfortunately I was late because of rush hour traffic. When I finally arrived, the score was 15:11 with West Allegheny High School winning. All the matches were really close and the Knoch Knights played very well, but sadly Knoch High School only won the second match.

Although it was sad to see the Knoch Knights’ season coming to an end, it was very interesting and fun to watch the game!

Tanja’s last day in Saxonburg

Today was our last dinner with the Americans and their families at the Quaker Steak & Lube in Cranberry, PA. It took us about 40 minutes to get there.

As it was “wing night”, we went there at about 5 pm because later it would have been packed. The restaurant was decorated with old cars and CDs on the wall.

For just 12 $ you could eat at the “All you can eat” buffet. A bunch of different kind of wings and flavors like “Arizona Ranch” and “Barbecue” were offered.

Fabian ate the most wings, altogether 37 pieces!!! We had so much fun and talked about the past two weeks and our experiences.

Sadly tomorrow we are going to leave Saxonburg at 5:30 am.

Here you can see some pictures of the Quaker Steak & Lube: