U Got 2 Let the Music by Cappella

Once I settled into my fourth and final host family in Germany, I found myself in a pretty nice situation.  I had my own room with a queen sized bed in the basement.  The laundry room was also downstairs with me.  My host mom and host brother were on the 3rd floor.  On top of me was the main floor with the kitchen and living room, then the second floor was a guest room and my host mom's workshop (she was a seamstress) and then my host mom's room was on the 3rd floor and my host brother had this little nook off of her room.  My bedroom's location afforded me a ton of privacy. My host mom also afforded me boundless amounts of freedom, but that is a story for another song.  I had TV in my room and one of my host sisters was in the US working as an au pair for the years.  She had left behind a bunch of really great CDs with a lot of the latest German hits so I was in heaven. 

I remember a lot of my free time being consumed with correspondence.  This was back before email and the internet and I had a lot of penpals.  There were all of my regular penpals like Monica and Sergio W in Canada, Gretchen R in Washington, Lauren Y and Ryan C in California, all of my Turlock classmates and family members, some friends I had just met at a Dude Ranch that summer, and even some new friends also doing the exchange year that I had met in Duisburg.  I was receiving mail almost daily and it was great.  There was a real art to letter writing and I lament this basically extinct form of communication.  People would include quotes, pictures, songs, artwork. Sometimes letters would be written over the course of a few days.  They were personal, funny, intimate.  I loved it.  I felt pressure to respond as soon as possible and I found myself responding to one or more letters almost daily.  When I wasn't writing letters, I was writing in my diary.  I wrote all the time.  I almost always listened to music either on MTV or CDs while I wrote and U Got 2 Let the Music, a very typical example of Euro dance music, is one of those songs I listened to over and over in my room that year. 

You might wonder when I had time to study when I was writing so much?  I didn't.  I have no idea why I got away with this, but my German teachers expected absolutely nothing out of me.  I didn't have to do homework, take tests, or even participate or attend classes if I didn't want to.  This was inexcusable on my part, not to mention monumentally boring, but I took advantage of the situation.  The most important thing, in my opinion, was that I learned to speak German so well that I was often confused as a native or at the very least, a foreigner, but NOT an American.  Major feat.  The other issue with school was that in some cases, the kids were so far ahead of the typical, even honors American student in classes like Math, Biology, and Chemistry, that I couldn't have caught up if I wanted to.  So I had an easy year, academically, all the courses transferred over as "P", and I had a rough Senior year catching up on the requirements I missed my junior year.  I survived.