First days at school

I’ve started school in Germany. It’s hard, but fun! I’m in the 10th grade here. Apparently it’s easier than the 11th grade…sounds good to me! In class I’m mainly just sitting there since I can’t understand anything. When we take notes I can’t read the teachers handwriting on the board or on the overhead projector, so I look at the notes of Michelle who sits next to me in almost all my classes. On Monday I went to History and we were supposed to watch the movie and write down things we noticed. Well I wrote down anything I understood. I know the movie was about the Nurnberg trails and what lead up to the Nurnberg trials, but that was all I really got from the movie. Lol! Then I went on to 5th grade German! That was a crack up! The teacher didn’t know that I was coming, so when I said I’m a new student in this class she thought I was mistaken since I’m 16 in a 5th grade class. I then told her I was from the U.S. and I don’t really know German too well, so I’m in the class to learn the grammar. They were working in the past tense. I was happy because I already understood that pretty well, but the more practice the better! In between the two hour class we had a break. There are a lot of breaks in the German school. There is no lunch, but lots of snack breaks! During the snack breaks some of the little 5th graders came over to me and started talking to me in English. All they really knew was what is your favorite _________ (fill in the blank). It was great! Then I had French. For that class I switched to the other 10th grade class. I’ve never had French before. We were given a dialogue then we had to translate it. Thank goodness we were working in groups because I would have had no clue what to do since A) I don’t know any French and B) we had to translate it into German. My group asked me if I wanted to read the dialogue, and I was laughed and said “uhh NO! maybe sometime when you would like to laugh then sure, but not this time.” They translated the dialogues into German and would ask me after each line if I understood, and when I didn’t understand they would then translate it into English. It was fun trying to figure it out. I now know one word in French..la tѐte. It means the head. After French I had art. I asked where the art room was and they showed it to me. I went in super early because I forgot that that break was the really long break. I started talking to the teacher, and then she left. Some girls from my main 10th grade class came in and said we don’t have class today, so you can come with us. In German schools, when the teacher cannot be in class the kids just have free time. For the rest of the break we went outside and talked with people. Then we went into the cafeteria. It is very small. Then two other girls (Marike and Sabina) showed me around the school. It was nice. I think I have the school somewhat figured out now. After that class hour was over we went to German. I have German with the 5th graders, and also the 10th graders. That teacher talked the fastest out of all my teachers…great (sarcastically)! We were given a story that we were to read and then summarize. I couldn’t really summarize it since I didn’t understand any of the text. Then we took some notes that I didn’t understand. I wasn’t able to finish all the notes during class, so I had to barrow Marike’s notes and copy them that night. The last class of the day was English! I was happy. I could have a little bit of a break from constantly translating. The teacher ad me get up in front of the class and introduce myself in English. She then asked me a couple of questions about applying for the program and my host family. After that she asked the class if they had any questions. The class was silent, so I returned to my seat and class started. We started learning about American history. There were pictures and the class had to observe the pictures then tell what they see. The first picture was of Independence Day. The teacher asked everyone if they knew when it was, but no one did. They all guessed, but no one was close. So I whispered to the girl next to me 4th of July, so I could stop laughing at all the wrong dates. Several kids thought it was the 3rd of October which is when Germany celebrates the uniting of East and West Germany. I figured out that in Germany a backyard is a garden. So when there is a picture of a BBQ in the backyard they say there is a BBQ in the garden. I, also, found it humorous that the teacher would say number A, B, C etc. since they are letters not numbers. After school, I was invited to go into the city, but I was barely staying awake from how tired I was from constantly translating. Plus, I had no way of letting my host parents know what I was doing. So the girls walked with me to the bus stop, and then continued to the city. I waited for the bus, met up with my younger host sister, and then went to the house. I then crashed until dinner. After dinner, I watched Hannah Montana in German with my little sisters, got my books ready for the next day, copied the German notes, and then went back to sleep.
Tuesday s will be my favorite day. I have theatre for two hours, Music, economic law, math, and geography. Yesterday I went to my theatre class and in the first hour we had to read a story pretend to be a person and then write a email, letter, or sms, to someone about the story and how you the character were feeling. I had problems with that because I didn’t understand much of the script. I understood that there was a fight between two sisters over a boy and that they were at dinner. So everything was very hard. I didn’t do anything because I had no clue what to do. Later I came up with I should of said I’m the family’s dog or cat so all I had to say was woof or meow, but I didn’t think fast enough. Then we had a dance workshop. I didn’t know what to expect. It ended up that we were learning an Indian dance. I really liked it because I could understand what to do. Since we had the dance workshop I didn’t have music. After the dance workshop everyone went to cafeteria because we had free time. For some reason we didn’t have Economic law yesterday. Some of my classmates were bored just sitting in the cafeteria, so they went on a walk through the school and I went with. We looked at all the art in the hallways, made copies of our hands, and went into an empty classroom and played hangman. I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to do any of the two things, but they said it was ok, so I went along with it. It was fun, so who cares…lol! Then we had math. I left that class very happy because they were learning stuff that I already knew and find very easy. SOH CAH TOA! The only hard thing is figuring out what I have to do because the words are different in German than in English, but once I figured it out I was very happy because I could actually do work in one of my classes. Then we had Geography. That was fun. We had to take notes. I didn’t know any of the words besides bewolking which is clouds, so Michelle and Marike explained everything with a picture or some kind of action. After class the teacher came up to me, asked me where I was from, and asked if I would do a presentation of my region when we got to it. I said yes not knowing what she had said. Lol! (I tend to be doing that a lot these days) Michelle explained what I had agreed to, and although I’m not the biggest fan of giving presentations I was happy I had agreed because it gives more things to talk about, and I can share my culture with them instead of always them sharing their culture with me. After school I went home, and then went into the city with my host mom. I wasn’t feeling really great and I was very tired, but I went any ways. We went and got ice cream with Saskia (my host mom’s daughter who lives in town), and it was fun. Towards the end I really wasn’t feeling well, and I couldn’t translate anything. My stomach was hurting really badly, and my head was spinning. All I wanted to do was sleep. When I got home it was 4:30. I went straight tom bed, and slept until 8:30. I went downstairs feeling a little better, and ate some yogurt. I then started to feel sick again, so my host mom gave me some medicine and I went back to sleep. I couldn’t sleep very well because I felt too sick. Once I did fall asleep I didn’t wake up until the next morning when my host mom woke me up for school. She came into to my room to see how I was doing, and I was still not feeling very good. She told me that I should stay at home instead of going to school. I then went back to sleep. Now I have woken up, and I feel much better. I think I just got food poising, and now I’m all better. Tomorrow will be interesting in school since I was not there today. All though school is hard I really like it here in Germany. The experience is a lot different than what I thought it was going to be, but I like it that way. I never know what to expect next! I hope to post more pictures on facebook soon! Ari is coming this weekend! I can't wait to see her again! It's gonna be fun!