Today was my last day of school here in Germany. I'm glad to be done with it and move on to university, but I'll miss all my wonderful friends!
Friday
School was awesome. I love my Fridays!!! (especially since I'm finished with school at 10am).
I had one hour of Music, we analyzed a piece by Beethoven.
Then 2 hours of Sport, where we played floor hockey. Now That is something I can play, and love doing! It was so much fun, but I was really tired afterward and ended up sleeping 2 hours after school.
Later I made chocolate chip cookies. Trying to be resourceful and creative, I used some chocolate from my ginormous Easter bunny. However, about 10 minutes after I was finished with the cookies, Heidi came running into the living room (with her worried face) and asked me what finger I had lost. I was momentarily confused until she told me there was a unusual red/pink color in the cookies. Haha....some of bunny chocolate was colorful. Below is a picture of the Easter Bunny.
What I tripped over on Easter Day Morning
My school is so pretty!!!Wednesday
Nulltestunde Englisch gefällt mir gar nichts. (I don't really like having early morning English class). We worked more on the group advertisement project.
After English, I had two free hours. I used to start school on Wednesdays at 10am, but then they had to go and change the schedules for some reason or other, and my English class ended up as zero period on Wednesday. Blah.
During my two free hours I spent part of the time with Heidi in the horse stables, and then the rest of my time in the Bibliotek reading a book.
Then finally I had class again, but my the hardest class, Geschichte (history). We talked about a war between Sweden and Germany, or something like that. I'm not exactly sure cause I zoned out a few times, and that's really bad, because I have to concentrate or else I'm completely lost since of the German language.
After Geschichte, we had lunch - fish sticks and salad. It was alright, but it tasted too much like American food.
Then off to Chemie class. A girl gave a presentation over some chemical that is giftig (poisonous). It was interesting, but long.
After school, I worked on a Musikprojekt with a friend. We have to give a presentation over John Cage (I, the American, got assigned this cause he's an American componist - what a concidence) on Thursday in class.
Tuesday
I had only 3 hours of classes. One hour of German, one hours of Math, two free hours, and one hour of Religion. In German I continued working on that book project. Math was ridiculous, we're talking about Statical stuff that I learned in 9th grade.
Then during the two free hours I went with my friend, Tabita, to a Eyeglass place in downtown Bad Honnef, which was about a 15 minute bikeride from school. (She had to get her glasses fixed because they were bent from getting slammed in the face by a ball in Sport class.) After that we went back to my house to eat lunch and do some homework. A little later, we headed back to school.
In my Religion class we listened to a presentation about one of the seven deadly sins: Anger. I really like my Religion class, it's so interesting.
Then after school, all I have to say is Sport Project! Blah.... I finally finished it late at night, but it took up my entire afternoon and evening... then I fell into bed, exhausted.
Monday
I really do love Mondays. A fresh start to a new school week. It really helps that I start my days out with two hours of English class. :D I love that part. Today in English class, we talked about advertisements and how to analyze them. Then we were given an assignment to work in groups to design and advertise a product. My group was excited to have me....the native speaker.
After English we had our Breakfast Pause. Today was a little different. Instead of going to the cafeteria to pick up our brotchen, we had to go to the gym where we had an assembly in honor of the Schloss Hagerhof Girls Basketball Team. This past weekend they won the championship....during the entire season they haven't lost a game. Pretty good (but that's also why Schloss Hagerhof is well-known as a sport school). Anyways, back to the assembly....nothing like American high schools. Although it was the most school spirit I've seen here in Germany, it was hardly any "real" school spirit. I really don't know how to explain it, but hey, I'll just leave it at that our normal Breakfast Pause was changed....we did get our brotchen after the assembly, but then we had to hurry to class.
My next class was German. We are currently reading "Die Physiker" and doing a project over the book. I've spent lots of time reading and rereading the book in order to understand what's going on. Now that I have adequate understanding, I'm working on the project, but am not very far. I'll have to finish that up this weekend...
After the two hours of German class, I went to the Bibliothek (library) for the afternoon pause before lunch. There I read a Jane Austin book, Northanger Abbey, which I happened to find in the school library (yeah, it's in English, shame on me...but I have to reward myself after working so hard with that book for my German class).
Then finally it was lunch time! Yummy noodles with a creamy white sauce.
After lunch, I had a free hour, which I used to read another 100 pages of Jane Austin. Then around 2pm I headed to my Chemie (Chemistry) class. Start of class we were told that we wouldn't be doing "speed-dating" but instead "speed-learning". We were given a packet of information about alcohol, split into small groups, and then had to prepare presentations about our information. Then the last 30 minutes of class, we presented what we learned. It was quite interesting.
After school, I went home and crashed in my bed. For some reason or other, I'm so exhausted!!! Then I woke up, did my homework, made Kaiserschmarrn (delicious!) with Heidi, helped around the house, spent time doing lots of nothings, then went to bed. Pretty exciting, huh?
So life is pretty normal. I'm finishing up the second week of school of this new year, and things are going better than ever. My German has improved significantly over the past month, and I suppose it helps that I study my piles of German grammar books everyday for at least 1-2 hours.
At the beginning of this week, I dropped Biology and changed to Chemistry because I was having some major difficulties with understanding and working with the Biology teacher. It didn't help that he played the "you're an invisible person and I don't answer your questions" game. But yeah, I really like the Chemistry teacher. He's very funny and explains things really well, and he noticed that I was in his class. I don't know why I didn't take Chemistry in the first place, since I really enjoy Chemistry after having such a fabulous teacher at Dobson High School.
Last week we got back grades on our finals in all of our classes (well okay everybody else did - I didn't do all the finals since my German writing skills are not so good). However, I did take the English and Math Finals. And guess what? I got a 1+++ (meaning an A+++) on my English Final. My teacher said, "There is no question on your command of your native language." And then I received the second highest grade, a 2+ (an A- or B+), on my Math Final. I'm sure I would have done better if I had completely understood the word problems (word problems are bad enough in English...but when they're in German, I just play the guessing game). Overall, I'm pretty bored in Math since I've learned what they are now learning when I was in 7th grade... However, I do really enjoy and often spend time at school tutoring people in Math. I'm getting pretty good with all the German math terms.
This past week I've did tons of baking. I made snickerdoodles (4 times in one week), pound cake (birthday cake for my hostmom....it was so scrumptious!), biscuits, and lots of other yummy things. I'm so grateful that I have the most wonderful parents in the world, who were so thoughtful and sent me cream of tartar and baking soda. Life is good now that I am baking my favorite foods again. hahaha...now all my German friends are demanding my snickerdoodles.
Not that I'm counting down or anything, but I have 153 days left in Germany. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...
You have no idea how happy I am for Winter Break. :D
I seriously can't wait to be out of school. I mean, school isn't horrible, but it's not exactly ideal either. I am often so lost in classes cause my German isn't superb yet, or I'm zoning out cause I'm just too exhausted to concentrate on understaning German. It's crazy how much energy is sucked out of you when you're trying to understand the world in a different language. It's also just awkward to be in class. I can't participate, or if I try then everybody stares at the American girl trying to speak German. They all say that I speak good German, but I feel quite the opposite.
Last week in my Religion class, the discussion was about why people believe in God and about the different beliefs of creationism (I think). Then suddenly my Religion teacher, who often completely ignores me, turned to me and asked me something about how religion is taught in schools in America. I was caught completely off guard. I wasn't even sure if I was understanding what they were talking about. So hoping that I was understanding right, I pretty much told him that that we don't have religion classes, and that we only learn about evolution in Biology. Sheesh, every single person staring at me as I struggled to explain this in my not-so-good German. Then my Religion teacher politely smiled, thanked me, and continued talking about something or other. I don't know if I had understood correctly or what. Ha...oh well.
Yep, so only 5 more days. Friday evening I'm going with my host parents to see Laura perform in the school musical. Then right after that we are leaving for Austria. I'm so excited! We're going to be gone for 10 days, and 8 of those days are skiing!!!
So more about my classes at school:
English is my favorite class. My teacher in this class is awesome and hilarious. He studied at University of San Diego, so he speaks very good English. :D
Math is too easy. Right now they are going over parabolas and how to graph them. We had a test a few weeks ago. I got the 2nd highest grade out of the class, even though I wasn't able to complete a third of the test because of my poor German skills (silly word problems...impossible to translate). I really can't believe that most of the kids failed this test. It was over stuff that I learned in 7th grade, and they are in 11th!!! After looking through the book, I think the curriculum in 11th grade Math is supposed to be a mixture of Algebra 2, Statistics, and a tiny bit of Pre-calculus.
Music is also an easy class, especially after having AP Music Theory last year. Right now we are just going over the formation of chords and the Circle of Fifths. I guess the only hard thing is learning all the German terms and notation for Music.
Biology is a little difficult with it all being in German, but I have had Biology before, so I can get the gist of things.
My hardest classes are History and Religion; I hardly know what is going on. The texts that they give us are impossible for me. Even the German students struggle to understand the text.
The Extra Deutsch classes are pretty much just one-on-one tutoring for learning the German language. It's really nice to have time set aside to focus on the grammar rules and stuff like that.
However, overall I have it pretty easy this year. A normal German student would have about 3 or 4 more classes including Geography, French or Spanish, and Chemistry or Physics. (Some kids have all three sciences!!!) But I have an easy schedule since I'm not very good with the German language. Sometimes my classes are very confusing (especially the first 2 months) being in a foreign language and all, but the teachers and students are very nice and willing to help me out.
Although school in Germany is very very different from school in America, I'm really enjoying my time here. It's nice that I don't have the pressure of my grades counting for college or anything like that. This is just a year for me to experience another culture and to have FUN!
| Stunden | Zeiten | Montag | Dienstag | Mittwoch | Donnerstag | Frietag |
| 0 | 7:45-8:30 | --- | --- | --- | --- | Musik |
| 1 | 8:30-9:15 | Englisch | Deutsch | --- | Religion | Sport |
| 2 | 9:15-10:00 | Englisch | Mathe | --- | Religion | Sport |
| Break | 10:00-10:30 | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 3 | 10:30-11:15 | Deutsch | --- | Geschichte | Mathe | --- |
| 4 | 11:15-12:00 | Deutsch | --- | Geschichte | Mathe | --- |
| Essen | 12:00-13:15 | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 6 | 13:15-14:00 | --- | Religion | Biologie | Englisch | Geschichte |
| 7 | 14:00-14:45 | Biologie | --- | --- | Musik | --- |
| 8 | 14:45-15:30 | Biologie | Extra Deutsch | Extra Deutsch | Musik | --- |