Halfway Point: Silvester Auf Borkum

Halfway into January, it's high time for a celebratory new year's post, so:

Frohes Neues Jahr, to all you Germans, Americans, and everyone in between!

The halfway-point of my exchange year fell somewhere in this last week, and in reflecting on the last five months- as well as looking ahead to the next five- all I can say is:

Eeeeeeeh?

[There's no way this thing is already half over.]

It's as if upon first arriving back in August I blinked, and then BAM- here I am smack dab in the middle of January. Wie ein Augenblick. Everything has been happening so quickly, and I know next half is going to go by faster yet.

The end of 2012 [which we did, in fact, survive] and the corresponding New Year's celebrations served as a transition into the second half of this exchange, and found my host family and I on the gorgeous island of Borkum.

First glimpse of my first island(:

The last of the islands belonging to Germany in the Frisian chain in the North Sea, our route included driving through the Netherlands to get to the ferry's port. A two-hour drive and hour-long ferry ride later, we arrived! First impressions? I was quite swept away-- literally. So, so windy...
[Over the course of the week I experimented with every hair style possible. Braids, ponytails, buns, each reinforced with at least half a pack of bobby pins, and none of which were able to withstand that wind. No matter what I tried, I ended up coming home looking like a sad poodle..]

Moin moin~

 We headed to our Ferienwohnung- vacation apartment- an adorable little place where we were greeted with a warm "Moin!", a traditional Frisian and Low German greeting.

[Sounds like a seal...]

Unpacking and settling in confused the heck out of the dog though, poor thing):

All things strange and confusing.

The next day, we went to the beach. The beach! A beach with soft, velvety sand (!!), and waves that crawled up the shore and left mounds of foam and seaweed strands. A beach dotted with seashells- colorful shells and rugged oysters.

A beach with wind.

Lots of wind. 

[But nonetheless a real beach, not like the gravelly attempts at them in the Puget sound. You hear that, Seattle?]

I'd never seen anything like it before(:

It was such a treat, going for walks on the beach every day. Drawing in the sand, gathering seashells, underestimating how high the tide was and having wet socks for the rest of the day [okay, that happened once]. With kids and their kites above, and dogs playing below. With the wind swallowing our words and playing with our hair. With the ocean between us and the rest of the world.

A treat for the dogs, too~

And then it was Silvester-New Year's. The name is actually derived from the Pope Sylvester I; according to Wikipedia, 

"The liturgical feast of Saint Sylvester is on 31 December, the day of [the Pope's] burial [...] Accordingly, in German-speaking countries and in some others close to them, New Year's Eve is known as Silvester. In other countries too, the day is usually referred to as Saint Sylvester's Day or the Feast of Saint Sylvester."

Horizontal fireworks: exploring the Waagerecht frontier

We were on Borkum with four other German families, friends who were all spending Silvester on the island. Together, we sat down to dinner and board games; eight adults, eight little kids, and one American exchange student saying goodbye to 2012. 

[3... 2... 1... Prost, auf's Neue Jahr!]

The following fireworks, however, weren't altogether successful. In addition to creating problems with simply lighting them, the wind was so strong that our fountains went more horizontally than anything else, and our rockets dipped down, veering a little too close to the trees [read: into them(:].

The troupe.

We took on a Geocache the next day that we didn't necessarily have much success with... [false coordinates, missing checkpoints, wrong directions (even with googling the way!) and general chaos.]

It nonetheless had us traipsing all across the island, taking us through cobblestone streets lined with low brick buildings, past a fence made of weathered whale bones, and the courtyards of the island's school and spired church.

Can't get more hipster than a whale-bone fence.

 We took a detour halfway through to witness quite the Borkumer tradition; a dip in the North Sea on the first day of the New Year.

Nordsee schwimmen

To put that it perspective, it was as windy as ever and barely at freezing point...

old [left] & new [right]

The coordinates afterwards took us to the old and new lighthouses, and then we picked up the following day with  new directions that lead us through the dunes; gorgeous wind-kissed grassy stretches from which you can see almost the entire island.

Die Dunen

Unsuccessful, but good fun(:

After seeing so much of the island, and getting bits and pieces of the culture and history behind it, my host-dad took me to the Heimatmuseum der Nordseeinsel Borkum, the island's museum. It wasn't the Smithsonian by any means, but I found it to be really interesting. Despite being small, the exhibits were tastefully put together, with thorough collections and a lovely vibe of exploring an attic.

Whale hunting and seafaring in the North Sea.

The museum concentrated on the sea-orientated culture and way of life on the island [and therefore the Frisian islands in general], first leading us through a display of what various rooms in a traditional Borkum house would have looked like, and the development of whale-hunting and seafaring in supporting daily life there. It then went on to document the development of the island through trade and tourism- relevant, since the island is made up of almost five times as many vacationers as permanent residents.

The last section widened its focus from the island itself to a broader look at the sea, with displays of marine life-- collections of underwater creatures, birds(!!!) [To those who know me and my bird fixation- the room was simply awesome.], seashells of all sorts, and shelves of sand collected from beaches around the world.

And guess what I found there?

Of all things...

Washington state sand! 

[Sandwiched right in between sand from Lake Michigan (MI), Miami Beach (FL), and the Gulf of Mexico (TX).]

I was not expecting that. A little piece of home, tucked away on a museum shelf on an island in Germany-- and from a state not particularly known for it's beaches, too.

Ah, Washington:)

The gang

And so we left footprints in the sand of last year behind us,  and, with the wind pushing us along, we stepped into 2013. At the risk of using a cliché, my life has been changed in every way possible since coming here, and I'm so excited to see what is yet to come in the coming months. 

 What surprises has 2013 hidden in the days ahead?