Two weeks later, the 12th-16th of November, I had a co-op
week. Everyone in my grade had to do a week of on the job experience. I went to the local airport, where I worked in the maintenance facility. This was a lot of fun, I did various jobs including stripping paint off of a plane (had to wear a gas mask), cleaning a plane (least fun), repairing an engine mount, stripping down a section of a plane, doing daily checks of the fleet and other little jobs. I had a lot of fun that week, making it sad to head back to school.The next big thing was my trip to Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, to visit Ingeborg's sister. It's a very nice city and the family is
quite interesting. Their son is my age and is also a pilot, so he took me up flying over Frankfurt. It was quite enjoyable! We also checked out his father's Porsche, which is locked in the garage for the winter. It's quite the car! We talked about flying relentlessly that night, while still mingling with the conversation of the women.Sunday morning, it was raining quite heavily, but we went to Phillip's (the son) school for a small Christmas Craft Fair. He goes to a Seventh Day Adventist private school, however, he is Catholic. The school was really old and quite nice. Following this fair, we drove home and the rain became much much worse on the way back, which made for terrible driving. I however, slept (and apparently snored... Oops!) for most of the drive home.
During that week, Jobst, my host father, was in South Africa on a business trip. He is the press director for Germany's largest (and oldest) Catholic aid agency, and was touring the agency's projects in the country. He bought us each a little trinket from South Africa, Nicolle received the Rugby jersey of South Africa, who had just won the World Cup, Isabelle and Ingeborg received jewelry, and I received a neat little radio made out of Coke cans. It's definitely one of the coolest things in my room!
