My state, North Rhine-Westphalia is now 70 years old! To celebrate the anniversary I went to Dusseldorf the capital of North-Rhine Westphalia. My host mom had a concert at the big anniversary fair. She and about 100 other women are a part of a choir called Frauen Power (Women Power). The concert was an hour long and pretty awesome. They sang songs in German and English.

What was even cooler was that the concert was held in the Parliamentary hall where all the members of Parliament in Germany sit. The audience got to sit in their fancy chairs and take pictures at the main stand. I learned that when they're voting they all leave the room and walk in again through the three doors. Each door represents a vote.  Either yes, no, or no vote.

After the concert we got ice cream because it was 90 degrees, completely unusual for Germany and we were all melting. We walked along the Rhine river with our ice creams (we being Pia, Thomas, Pia's mom Dorothee, Juan, Raquel, Rafael, his host mom Birgit, and I). The walk was incredibly hot but very pretty. There were tons of booths for businesses and it was overall a very big event. It took up a long stretch of the waterfront on both sides of the Rhine.

We stopped for some water (sparkling of course) and a snack at a Brazilian restaurant that Rafael knew of and tried a traditional Brazilian snack that was really good. It was a fried dough ball made from potatoes with shredded chicken and seasoning inside. It was delicious and much needed for how much we were sweating. The whole walk I had been taking pictures and I did the same on the way back.

Dusseldorf is incredible. The buildings are all connected and very old. All the streets we walked on didn't allow cars so there were thousands of people walking around on them. We stopped at a famous beer hall and met up with the rest of our group before going home. Everyone ordered beers and I tried a sip of one. It was really bitter and pretty gross but it's all about the experience right?

Dusseldorf was a blast but I was happy to be home. I dropped my bag at the door, grabbed a glass of water and laid down on my bedroom floor for awhile trying to cool down. Later that evening Eva and Raquel (exchange students from Taiwan and Brazil) came over to stay the night. We played table tennis, a quick block building game, and Cluedo which is the German translation for Clue. It was all around a great day.

Happy Anniversary:)