Gymnasium

I've been in Germany for a little over two weeks. I started school last Monday and I start my intensive language courses tomorrow in Esslingen. I'm still having trouble understanding most things, but I'm definitely learning.

There are multiple types of secondary schools in Germany, but I go to a Gymnasium, which is where most people who plan on going to university go. German school is really different from what I'm used to. For starters there are students ages 10 to around 19 in my school, and there are about 1,500 students. Teachers rotate classrooms, so the rooms are more plain and don't really have decorations or posters. Most classrooms don't have computers and I think there's only one room in the school with a Smartboard, so teachers use chalkboards and projectors for their lessons. It's definitely more discussion based and there's not really any lectures, so taking notes is rather difficult. The schedules are also really different.

My schedule is:
Monday: Art and Bio (90 min each)
Tuesday: Chemistry (90 min) and English (45 min)
Wednesday: Math (90 min) and French (90 min) (and then Sports and History once I finish language courses)
Thursday: Politics (90 min), French (90 min), English (90 min), and Bio (90 min)
Friday: Math (90 min) and English (45 min)
So some days I finish school around 12:30, and other days I don't finish until 5. It's also kind of complicated because the classrooms aren't always the same, for example English, which I have 3 days a week is in 3 different classrooms. I usually take a bus to the train station and then take a train to Plochingen, where my Gymnasium is located. It's a fairly short commute since Plochingen is one town over.

I think school will end up being interesting, but for the time being it's very difficult for me because I have no idea what's going on in any of my classes besides English and French. I understand some things, mostly words and some sentences, and occasionally I'll understand the general concept of the lesson, but most of the time I'm completely lost.

I went to Stuttgart for a little while with my host family to walk around and have some lunch. There are a ton of stores and a main shopping street, where there's a bunch of stores we have in the US like Zara, Espirit, Longchamp, etc, then a bunch of European/German stores I don’t know. Stuttgart seems like a mix of new and old, there are a lot of modern buildings right beside some older ones. It was a kind of rainy but still really nice to walk around and see a bit of the city. We went to a really nice indoor market, which had tons of different vendors with meat, cheese, bread, candy, vegetables, and just about everything else food related. There were also some outdoor flower and food markets.

I had my first AFS "Survival Camp" in Murrhardt. I stayed at a youth hostel along with 3 other exchange students (from Florida, Chile, and Spain) and over 10 returnees. It was great to meet the other exchange students + German returnees and the camp was overall really enjoyable.

Here are some photos from the last couple of weeks:

Stuttgart this weekend

 Linsen mit Spätzle und Saitenwürstchen- a typical Swabian dish

 Neckar river in Wernau

    Mercedes-Benz museum

 Stuttgart last week

tschüss!

der Anfang

           I arrived at my gateway orientation in D.C Tuesday September 2nd, after spending a few days in Virginia. We didn't really do anything the first day since all the other CBYXers were arriving throughout the day. Wednesday was incredibly busy on the other hand, and we started the day at 6:45 and got back to the hotel at 9:30. I met with a staffer of my representative as well as attended sessions at the Department of State, then went to the German-American museum and went to dinner at a German restaurant. Thursday was incredibly busy, and consisted of tons of information sessions. It was a really long day- we started at 8am and ended at 10pm. I tried to rest as much as possible to avoid initial exhaustion and jet-lag once I arrived in Germany, especially since we arrived 1am our time. Saying goodbye to my family and friends was definitely rough, but I'm beyond excited to start my year in Germany.

I’ve been in Germany for 3 days now and I absolutely love it. We arrived in Frankfurt at around 7:30 am on Friday after a 7 and a half hour flight. Customs and baggage claim was extremely quick, even though there were 85 of us. We met the AFS Germany volunteers outside the gate, and those whose host families live near Frankfurt were picked up. The rest of us followed the AFS volunteers to a special area in the airport designated to the AFS students from around the world that would be arriving. I was there for a few hours since my train wasn’t supposed to leave until 2:50, so I met a bunch of people from all over the world that would be studying in Germany. Train workers were on strike, so our train was delayed, and I didn’t end up arriving in Stuttgart until around 5:30. I was sooo tired since I hadn’t slept in 24 hours, so I fell asleep on the train. Once I arrived in Stuttgart, I recognized my host family standing on the platform. I got off the train, grabbed my luggage, and went to my host family. They were extremely friendly and gave me flowers which was so sweet.

It took about 20-25 minutes to drive from Stuttgart to Wernau. Sunday morning Pia, Liv (my host sisters), and I walked to a bakery to get bread for breakfast. Wernau is a little bigger than Croton, and has more stores/shops/restaurants. We got a lot of different breads at the bakery as well as pretzels, which are apparently a breakfast food as well as a snack food. A typical German breakfast consists of bread, meats, butter, cheese, or maybe nutella and jam. On Sunday we also played some soccer and rode bikes to Plochingen, and I saw my Gymnasium (high school). We then rode to a Biergarten and had some drinks and snacks and listened to live music.

On Tuesday I went to Esslingen am Neckar, a much bigger town about 15 minutes from Wernau to walk around and get a new SIM card for my phone. The town is really old and has beautiful typical German buildings. I'll be taking intensive German classes in Esslingen, so I'll have to take a train from Wernau to get there. I start school next Monday and then German courses the next week. I think I'll be figuring out my school schedule for at some point this week.

Here are some photos from Esslingen: