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Rainer's First Trip - Intermediate German with Herr Antrim Lesson #10
I can hardly believe it.
I am flying to Germany today.
I will live in Germany for a year.
I will work and study.
This is the first time I will be on my own.
I remember it like yesterday
when I stayed over at a friend's house for the first time.
I was 9 years old.
My buddy, Jim, had a birthday party
and he invited a few friends over
to stay the night at his house.
Jim was my best friend.
He really liked Ninja Turtles
and had almost every Ninja Turtles action figure.
That's why he had a Ninja Turtles themed birthday party.
I never had a themed birthday party.
My parents weren't poor, but they didn't have that much money.
If it wasn't in the budget,
we couldn't have it.
My siblings and I got free lunch at school.
We had to ride the bus to school.
When I was 11 years old, I was bullied,
because I was a so called “dirt kid”.
This is what the well to do kids called the poor kids.
The kids in my school said a lot of mean things.
They finally left me alone
when they found out
I am highly intelligent
and I did other students’ homework for money.
I hid the money in the couch and other places in the house
so my parents would find it later.
Eventually my parents asked me if I was selling drugs,
because they found all of this hidden money all around the house.
Then I stopped doing other students’ homework.
When I was 14 years old
my father graduated from the university
and got a new job.
This job paid well.
Our financial troubles were over.
We no longer lived paycheck to paycheck.
We did what we wanted.
We went out to restaurants.
I ate Chinese food for the first time.
We saw films in the theater.
When I was 16 years old
my parents took us on a family trip for the first time.
We took our dog Struppi, too.
We drove by car through Iowa,
crossed South Dakota,
lost ourselves in Wyoming
and found ourselves again in Montana.
The drive took several hours.
I read 5 books during the trip.
My sister and my brother played a lot of games.
We had magnetic chess and chutes and ladders.
I preferred to play games on my Gameboy.
First we stopped in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
There isn't much to do in Sioux Falls,
but we only stayed long enough to sleep and relax.
My father showed us the Falls of the Big Sioux River.
He explained a bit about the history of the United States
and tried to teach us a few things.
After Sioux Falls we drove on to Sturgis, South Dakota.
Sturgis is famous for the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
Luckily we didn't get there during the rally.
There were still a few motorcyclists,
but not as many as like during the rally.
Normally bikers are quite nice,
but some of them aren't that way.
If I'm being completely honest, I'm still not sure why we went to Sturgis.
My family has never had a motorcycle.
We have no interest in it.
There is nothing in Sturgis except this rally.
(Rainer shrugs.)
The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is only an hour from Sturgis.
We thought we had to see that.
I knew it was big, but I didn't think it was that gigantic.
Every face is about 18 meters tall.
That is about ten times as tall as me.
The Crazy Horse Memorial is only 14 kilometers away from Mount Rushmore
and is supposed to be 10 times as big as Mount Rushmore.
Unfortunately this memorial was not finished when we were there.
It still isn't finished.
It probably won't be finished in my lifetime.
It is supposed to take an additional hundred years to complete.
Maybe I will live to be that old.
After Sturgis we drove on into Wyoming.
In Wyoming lies Yellowstone National Park,
the oldest national park in the world.
We visited Old Faithful, the famous geyser.
We stood there for an hour and nothing happened.
We believed we had come at the wrong time.
We sat a while on a bench and my father explained to us how geysers erupt.
It was stinking boring,
but while he was boring us, Old Faithful erupted.
My siblings and I all asked almost simultaneously,
“Was that it?We waited for that?”
We wanted to get out of Yellowstone, because it stunk.
There is a lot of Sulfur in Yellowstone National Park
and it stinks like spoiled eggs
when it forms organic compounds.
And now I am boring you.
Why am I talking about this trip?
This trip was not just our first family trip,
but also my first trip that went more than 100 miles.
If you are looking for online German lessons
you should check out Lingoda.
Their teachers are native speakers and their lessons are fantastic.
There is a link in the description for that.
In my next video I will read a book in the airport.
Next week Herr Antrim will talk about the imperfect tense.
This tense is also known as the preterite or the simple past.
If you are bored, you can click these links.
That is all for today. Thanks for watching. Until next time. Bye.