First day of school

I have had to type this message twice because it did not save.. Oh well, that is technology for you.

Yes, the day had finally come. I went to German school. The schedule is very different there, and especially confusing! Some people have told me that block scheduling is hard, try having 5 different days that are completely different!!! That is not the only confusing part, sometimes teachers cancel classes if it is hot or something and other times there are tests and you can come late or get stuck at school waiting for nothing. It has some perks, but it is very easy to get lost. The first class I went to was Math. I understood the numbers, except I didn't know what the teacher was talking about so whatever I did with the quadratic equation I do not know if he wanted me to do something different. Oh well. Then I went to a religions class.. They are required to take a type of religions class. You can take religions, which talks about every religion, or you can go to Catholic or Protestant and then just learn more about what you already believe. I did not know this until the end because I thought we were in German class! Haha.. Until we started reading a passage from the Bible.. Funny. They talked about the world and how it was impacted by the Catholic religion. It was neat to be there. That was all the school I attended, because it was hot and they let out early and some teachers canceled classes because it was also hot and so we went home.

Then we made pancakes. These were no ordinary pancakes, because of course we are in Germany here. So first we made the mix from scratch, only took 2 minutes. Then we put the mix on the pan but instead of just leaving it there we had a little rod that smoothed out the pancake until it was almost completely flat on the pan. Once it was cooked, flipped, and put on a plate, we took one at a time and filled it with various ingredience. Strawberries, whipped cream, sugar, applesauce, jam, things like this stuffed the pancake and then we did something a little more different. We wrapped up the pancake into a roll and ate it with a fork and knife. It was very different, but excellently delicious.

Then I met Anja´s best friend Mira, she was very nice and fun. She spoke decent English because she went on an exchange program once too. Crazy how many people do that here! The three of us went to get more gelato, I am really loving that stuff. They gave me this AMAZING spoon that was my favorite color and shaped like a shovel. Anja gave me like 20 of the things after she saw how much I loved it, because they had been saving them from when they went to get gelato. By the way, we can walk there in 5 minutes. How amazing is that? Anyways, I learned the color, my favorite, leila which is purple. That was just fantastic.

After the delicious ice cream I went with Anja to see her old host family she stayed with for 2 weeks in San Diego who were visiting Germany and leaving the next day. They were such sweet people and the most amazing thing was when they were talking in German because I understood most of what they were saying! Later in the day I learned all the colors, the numbers, and a little bit of this and that. Have to start somewhere!

Later on I helped Anja with her English homework. She has been struggling and not doing so well in the class. She speaks it just fine, but the grammar is hard as any person probably knows. I helped her understand the WHY to the grammer, not just ´that is the way it is´ so she seemed very pleased. It was a great experience because I not only learned a little more patience, I had the opportunity to work with someone one on one for school work. Because teaching is one of my carreer choices, it was a priceless experience. I hope while I am here I can help her understand to the point that she does not struggle anymore with the little things.

For dinner we had German style fast food. Now, do not get McDonalds in your head, because that just is not Florian. It was pasta, and took about 10 minutes to make. Me and Anja did it ourselves. Basically it was penne (a type of noodle) and sauce from a can, but the sauce had some nice herbs and things inside. It was pretty tasty, and Florian said it was the closest you could get to Italian with that simple of a food stuff. We had pineapple for dessert and while eating this delicious meal we were watching the beginning of Avatar, in German, with English subtitles for me.

As I was going to sleep that night I realized why I am being so good at pronouncing the ´ch´that so many Americans find hard to pronounce and I was constantly surprising new people I met by how well I was able to do it. I would sometimes hiss at my kitties, mostly when I was little, but I still know how! Well, the sound is very similar and I think it is why I find it easy. Anyways, that is a little strange...

More adventures await tomorrow.....