Leben und das Gymnasium

My dear mother has made me aware, in rather confusing German (why does she refer to me as Sie when I’m a bit younger than her, and part of her family to boot? mysteries…), that I have fallen behind on my blog updates. Despite the fact that today is a typically busy schoolday, I’ve managed to find a bit of time to bring y’all up to date. (Spoiler: that sentence contains a healthy dose of sarcasm. Don’t go feeling guilty on me.)

I realize that I’m nearly two weeks behind, so before I get to school, I’m going to back up a bit. The day after my last post, I finally purchased a proper journal, as it seems that it was one of the things that I judged to be superfluous weight during my last minute packing in New York. (A word of advice to future exchange students: don’t pack at the last minute.) I’ve written about thirty pages since then, so I’ll to try to distill that into something a bit more manageable.

Last week started out pretty much like the one previous. I spent much of my time at Uta’s. On Monday evening, we had an expedition to a mall in Köln, which was actually a lot of fun, because Sebastian and I got to try out our German on the salespeople. Or, mostly, I watched him try out his German/gave helpful suggestions/laughed, since I wasn’t buying anything. Then, on Thursday, we went to Phantasialand after our lesson in the morning! It’s an amusement park in Brühl, and Uta and Kay decided that since Kay had the day off, it would be a good time to go. They were totally correct — it was the perfect day! The weather was gorgeous, ideal first-day-of-fall weather (warm, neither hot nor cold), and the crowds at the park were typical first-day-of-fall crowds (essentially nonexistent). There were some awesome rides and almost no lines, and I had a great time.

Uta, Sebastian, Kay, and me in front of the "Mystery Castle" (think Tower of Terror)

Then, on Friday, we went to school for the first time. Gaby drove me over around 10 AM, and we met Sebastian and Kay there. We had a meeting with Herr Steinberg, the school director, and Herr Bretschneider, a math teacher (I thought he introduced himself as Brett Schneider, and wasn’t really sure why he was telling us his first name). We worked out the classes we’d be taking, the adults spoke in German a lot, and Sebastian and I looked around confusedly. I was handed my schedule, a map of the school, and a brochure with information (in German), had a brief encounter with my music teacher during which I decided to come back to school later for my music lesson, and we left. (The music lesson was uneventful…I understood most of what we did, because rhythms are pretty self-explanatory, and nobody talked to me.)

INTERLUDE
And now for something completely different! On Saturday, my host family took me to Köln! Aside from my encounter with the shopping mall, this was my first time in Cologne, and it was lovely, as promised. (for the record, most of these photos are the same ones that are on Facebook, so if you’ve already seen those, don’t bother.)

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We went to the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum (source of the first few photos), where I took the “für Kids” audioguide, for the record…it’s safe to say that I’d know more about the history of Köln if I’d gone with English, but I had a lot more fun trying to decipher the (simplified) German commentary. Of course, as an American, I always greatly enjoy European history museums because they have oboes that are older than my country.

Anyway, back to school! Monday was my first day. I was spared a lot of angst by my neighbor, Laura, who came over on Sunday to meet me. We have a lot of classes together, so, unlike Friday, I wasn’t going in blind, and it helped a lot. She introduced me to loads of people before first period started, and I even remembered some of their names later, remarkably enough. Everyone has been incredibly nice, and, even better, most of them speak German with me! The first day, I barely spoke English for the entire time, which was confusing and tiring but very, very cool. That being said, there is a whole lot that I can’t communicate in German yet, but it’s a step in the right direction. Pretty much every time I started feeling down on myself, a new person who didn’t realize that I’d only been seriously learning German for about two weeks would find out and act surprised, which definitely helped.

Now, some short commentary on German school: it’s weird. Not good, not bad, just different (yes, I’ve been well trained!). When I found out that I’d be taking ten classes, my reaction was something along the lines of “wow, that’s a lot.” As it turns out, it isn’t, and most of my classmates are taking more. Most of my classes meet for three periods a week, while a few meet for two and one meets for four. Much like my American school, there are five days with eight periods apiece; out of a possible forty periods (Stunden) of class each week, I have exactly twenty-six. Whoa. I know that the people reading this blog know me in varying capacities, so let me just impress upon you the fact that I haven’t even had a lunch period in the past three years. Now, I sometimes have literally two straight hours free in the middle of the day. Three days a week, I go home after sixth period.

In addition, when the teacher isn’t there, class is cancelled. I’d heard this before, but I hadn’t really imagined that in my first week, three of my classes would be cancelled (two periods each). It’s a great system: as soon as the teacher knows that s/he won’t be there, it’s posted on a screen in the “lobby” of the school, so you can plan ahead. I was also not required to go to history yesterday, so, assuming that tomorrow goes as scheduled, I will have been in class for eighteen periods this week. And yet I still come home exhausted every day…the things living in another language does to your brain, let me tell you!

In the grand tradition of my blog posts, this one is now too long, so I’m going to leave this here and do some specific topics over the next few days. I’ve heard requests for information about food, and I might take some of the school stuff out of this post and flesh it out a bit in a new one…anything else you want to know about? Leave a comment! I love reading all of them.

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