My first week with my host family was also my first week of school!
First off, my host family is really nice! Not too much to talk about yet, since my host parents only speak a little Englisch and I only speak a little German, but my host sister speaks Englisch pretty well. Today, I cut off all English with her though so I will learn German faster.
Alright, now to school. School in Germany is definitely different from high school in the States. I have a different schedule everyday. Here's my current schedule:
Monday: Chemistry, Chemistry, Math, Math, Ethics, Free Block, Englisch, Sport, Sport (I get out at 3)
Tuesday: German, German, Politics, Politics, History, History, Biology (I get out at 1:30)
Wednesday: History, Chemistry, Biology, Politics, Math, Math, Free Block, Art, Art (I get out at 3)
Thursday: Biology, Biology, German, German, Englisch, Englisch (I get out at 12:40)
Friday: Biology, Biology, Englisch, Englisch, Ethics, Ethics (I get out at 12:40)
I've been given 4 weeks to test out my classes and if any of them are a hopeless cause, then I get to switch out. Each class is 45 minuten long and if one of my teachers isn't there, then class is canceled. No subs. Also, all my classes are in a different room. For example, my Englisch class will be in one room on Monday, another room on Thursday, and another room on Friday! I've never had to keep track of so many rooms! Also, the school is so hard to find your way around in. It's not like the halls in Tallwood. It was described to me by my Englisch teacher as "a patchwork school." 4 floors and each floor has a different layout.
The kids at school are nice, but I haven't talked to too many since I don't speak much German yet. And same with all the teacher. In most classes, they let me just sit there and doodle. Except for Englisch class. My Englisch teacher now refers to me as "The Dictionary."
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
End of Language Camp!
Language camp officially ends tonight! Some CBers leave on the train at 8:30 tomorrow morning and then everyone else leaves between then and 4:30. So excited to meet my host family! And I start school when I get there! Goodbye Schloss Wittgenstein and Bad Laasphe!
-Rachel
-Rachel
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Teamers and Teachers!
These are the teamers and teachers who have help make language camp SO much fun! (The picture's missing one of the German teachers.) The countless pranks, jokes, and all around fun times we've had with them are definitely a good start to the year. Can't wait to see them again at the midyear and end of the year seminars! Love them all!
Friday, August 10, 2012
More About Language Camp
Language camp is great! Over the course of about a week and a half, I have done SO many things! Sorry this is long, but while I actually have time to update everyone, here's a few:
One day, we were put into groups of 5 people, were given an egg and an apple, and were told to go down to town, talk to the locals, and trade our egg and apple to get the best thing(s) possible. So my group walked to town and went into the first store we saw called "Ihr Platz". We went up to one of the ladies and asked her if she had anything to trade for an apple. We ended up giving her our apple in return for a hairbrush. We then went to the store next door, where we traded our egg for a really expensive camera! We still have no idea how we pulled it off. We continued to go around town and trade for larger items. In the end, we had traded our apple and egg up to a flashlight, a huge bag of Russian candy (which was actually pretty good), and the camera (it was too good to trade.) A lot of groups came back with small things they had collected over the few hours and hilarious stories to go with some of them. One group, however, brought back a bike! That bike is still here because we got to keep whatever we got and many people have been riding it around the camp.
Other activity we did was get into groups, create a team name, flag, and anthem, and go through this scavenger hunt/course of games around the mountain. My team was called poison. We were the one intense team that decided to put war paint on or faces. Oh yeah, did I mention we had to wear face paint? Some groups took that to mean paint your whole body! One group was called the "Einhörner" which mean unicorns. They painted their entire bodies rainbow colors, wore tie dyed shirt, and taped paper horns to their foreheads. Another group called "'Murika" painted themselves in red, white, and blue and even put glitter all over themselves. Overall, a really fun activity.
We've also had free time to go to town quite a few times, so we all know our way around pretty well. Also, every Thursday for our afternoon class we watch a movie. Last week we watch "Männerherzen" which translates into "men's hearts." It was such a funny movie! Here's a link to a music video that one of the characters in the movie made. Everyone's been playing it over and over on youtube. The lyrics don't make any sense. It's hilarious! (But in German.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjiCBxfgST4
The movie we watched this week was "Der ganz groß Traum" which translates to "The really big Dream." It was such a cute movie. I would recommend either one to anyone who can find them with english subtitles (if they have them with english subtitles.)
Another thing we do every other day is workshops. We usually have different ones every time, but some are done multiple times. The first 2 times I played cards (because cards are awesome!) with some other people and one of the teamers, who gets really into the game so she makes it that much better. I also did a baking workshop where I got to make a German cheesecake. Bringing that recipe home!
Some other little things we've done is learn about the German political system (as we are on a political scholarship), learn about the green lifestyle of many Germans, learn how we would take a German train and which kind to take (we get to take the train when we go to Marburg tomorrow!), meet the mayor of Bad Laasphe, and many other things!
Oh, and German class is going great! I'm learning so much! The teacher I have is great and she is definitely trying to teach us as much German as she can before we leave for our host families! But I can say that I have a new hatred for word order and adjective endings! Grammar, ugh!
-Rachel
One day, we were put into groups of 5 people, were given an egg and an apple, and were told to go down to town, talk to the locals, and trade our egg and apple to get the best thing(s) possible. So my group walked to town and went into the first store we saw called "Ihr Platz". We went up to one of the ladies and asked her if she had anything to trade for an apple. We ended up giving her our apple in return for a hairbrush. We then went to the store next door, where we traded our egg for a really expensive camera! We still have no idea how we pulled it off. We continued to go around town and trade for larger items. In the end, we had traded our apple and egg up to a flashlight, a huge bag of Russian candy (which was actually pretty good), and the camera (it was too good to trade.) A lot of groups came back with small things they had collected over the few hours and hilarious stories to go with some of them. One group, however, brought back a bike! That bike is still here because we got to keep whatever we got and many people have been riding it around the camp.
Other activity we did was get into groups, create a team name, flag, and anthem, and go through this scavenger hunt/course of games around the mountain. My team was called poison. We were the one intense team that decided to put war paint on or faces. Oh yeah, did I mention we had to wear face paint? Some groups took that to mean paint your whole body! One group was called the "Einhörner" which mean unicorns. They painted their entire bodies rainbow colors, wore tie dyed shirt, and taped paper horns to their foreheads. Another group called "'Murika" painted themselves in red, white, and blue and even put glitter all over themselves. Overall, a really fun activity.
We've also had free time to go to town quite a few times, so we all know our way around pretty well. Also, every Thursday for our afternoon class we watch a movie. Last week we watch "Männerherzen" which translates into "men's hearts." It was such a funny movie! Here's a link to a music video that one of the characters in the movie made. Everyone's been playing it over and over on youtube. The lyrics don't make any sense. It's hilarious! (But in German.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjiCBxfgST4
The movie we watched this week was "Der ganz groß Traum" which translates to "The really big Dream." It was such a cute movie. I would recommend either one to anyone who can find them with english subtitles (if they have them with english subtitles.)
Another thing we do every other day is workshops. We usually have different ones every time, but some are done multiple times. The first 2 times I played cards (because cards are awesome!) with some other people and one of the teamers, who gets really into the game so she makes it that much better. I also did a baking workshop where I got to make a German cheesecake. Bringing that recipe home!
Some other little things we've done is learn about the German political system (as we are on a political scholarship), learn about the green lifestyle of many Germans, learn how we would take a German train and which kind to take (we get to take the train when we go to Marburg tomorrow!), meet the mayor of Bad Laasphe, and many other things!
Oh, and German class is going great! I'm learning so much! The teacher I have is great and she is definitely trying to teach us as much German as she can before we leave for our host families! But I can say that I have a new hatred for word order and adjective endings! Grammar, ugh!
-Rachel
Sunday, August 5, 2012
News
Here's a link to the newspaper article I was in when we visited the mayor of Bad Laasphe:
http://www.siegener-zeitung.de/a/591014/50-amerikaner-in-der-lahnstadt
-Rachel
http://www.siegener-zeitung.de/a/591014/50-amerikaner-in-der-lahnstadt
-Rachel
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Language Camp at the Start
I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany 5:00 am Sunday morning and immediately jumped on a bus and headed for my language camp at Schloss Wittgenstein! Since Germany is 6 hours ahead of where I was in the States, it's was 11:00 pm my time and extremely hard to make it through the day without sleeping (for the sake of no jet lag.) When the second flight of students arrived, we started with a walk to the local town nearby. Keep in mind that the Institut that my language camp is at is on top of a mountain. It was about a 15 minute walk down and it was really interesting to walk around and see the town (with our group of 50 students and 10 teamers and teachers) and hear German being spoken around us. It wasn't until we started walking back that we realized we had to walk almost entirely uphill! It took us almost twice as long to get back than it did to walk to the town. I now have a new hate for walking uphill!
On Monday, we took a test (if you had any previous knowledge of German) which took about 2 hours. After that we did a bunch of group activities, a 30 minute walk around the mountain, and enjoyed the first day we were actually awake in Germany! Later on that night, we found out which class we were going to be in and met with our new teachers for the next three weeks. I was placed in the Intermediate class, which is right in the middle of the five classes.
Yesterday, we started our language classes. We have classes from 9:00 - 12:30 Monday through Friday and a second class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00 - 3:30. It was a bit weird trying to unearth everything I had learned in the previous year with new German added on. I have to say that I'm learning more German faster than I thought I would. (But then again, that's what happens when you have 3 1/2 - 5 1/2 hours of German a day.) Afterwards, we had another group activity and some free time (which most of us used to figure out this complicated way of getting the newly fixed wifi on our laptops.)
Today, we started with our classes again and then had about three hours of free time until we need to be at the Schloss for dinner. Most of us signed out and walked down to the town with a few friends and went to the local grocery store and bought lots of chocolate and mezzo mix (which I think is actually really good. It's basically coke and fanta mixed together.) We then walked over to the local ice cream shop which is better than any ice cream I have ever found in Virginia Beach! And it was definitely cool to be able to buy my chocolate, mezzo mix, and ice cream entirely in German! It's not much yet, but it's just the beginning of what I'm going to learn at camp and throughout the school year!
-Rachel
On Monday, we took a test (if you had any previous knowledge of German) which took about 2 hours. After that we did a bunch of group activities, a 30 minute walk around the mountain, and enjoyed the first day we were actually awake in Germany! Later on that night, we found out which class we were going to be in and met with our new teachers for the next three weeks. I was placed in the Intermediate class, which is right in the middle of the five classes.
Yesterday, we started our language classes. We have classes from 9:00 - 12:30 Monday through Friday and a second class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00 - 3:30. It was a bit weird trying to unearth everything I had learned in the previous year with new German added on. I have to say that I'm learning more German faster than I thought I would. (But then again, that's what happens when you have 3 1/2 - 5 1/2 hours of German a day.) Afterwards, we had another group activity and some free time (which most of us used to figure out this complicated way of getting the newly fixed wifi on our laptops.)
Today, we started with our classes again and then had about three hours of free time until we need to be at the Schloss for dinner. Most of us signed out and walked down to the town with a few friends and went to the local grocery store and bought lots of chocolate and mezzo mix (which I think is actually really good. It's basically coke and fanta mixed together.) We then walked over to the local ice cream shop which is better than any ice cream I have ever found in Virginia Beach! And it was definitely cool to be able to buy my chocolate, mezzo mix, and ice cream entirely in German! It's not much yet, but it's just the beginning of what I'm going to learn at camp and throughout the school year!
-Rachel
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