Language, Life, and Late Orientation Camp

In the typical fall fashion, I caught a cold. It's more annoying than anything. But it hasn't kept me from doing much (except for track or gym class). In fact, school is more and more fun every day. I can understand a lot more, even though I still can't participate much. German class is still the hardest. They're reading something in "old German," which is even more difficult to read than "normal German." One of my classmates brought a kids book to read with me during the break.

It has awesome pictures, and is called something like "In a Deep, Dark Forest..." I love my class. :)

Other observations about German school:
1. They have a lot of breaks between classes. At least five minutes between ever 45 minute class, and 10-15 after every two periods.
2. Lots of people eat whole sandwiches in the break (now me included).
3. Quotation marks are written „..." I knew this before I came, but it still bugs me.
4. Kilograms, centimeters... oh, metric system, why are you still so confusing?
5. My class has to take a lot more subjects. They take physics AND bio AND chemistry, plus english, french or latin, math, German, geography... the list goes on an on. They just don't have class as often.
6. They generally have class with the same people.
7. Senior privledges for EVERYONE that's not in "middle school" grades. Except better. When you don't have class, the school doesn't care where you are.
8. Alles auf Deutsch... yeah, I know, I'm in Germany, but it's still pretty hard sometimes.
9. Middle school and high school are together.
10. They really don't have that much homework. Not like I'm able to do much/any of it anyway, but still.

11. Electives, like art and music, aren't just fun. The first one and a half months of art class were spent learning about composition. Then we took a test on it. We just started drawing these past couple of weeks after vacation, and drew kohlrabis as part of the nature study unit. Here's a picture of part of mine (almost finished!)

I could keep going, but I won't, because I want you to keep reading. Anyway, last weekend was the AFS Late Orientation Camp. It was such a good weekend! We didn't get a whole lot of sleep, but we all had so much fun. I already knew two people, Ajelet and Jessany, who are both CBYXers from group five in D.C. orientation. Then there were Bosnians, Brazilians, Portuguese, Italians, Spaniards, Chinese, Indonesian, and so many more. There were a few workshops every day, but there was a lot of free time to get to know everyone. Exchange students are so awesome. AFS makes us do a talent show, which was also really fun. I sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" with Ajelet in English at the same time Katherine and Gabriel (from Brasil) sang it in Portuguese. Plus a few more kid songs accompanied by Katherine on the recorder.

We all wrote notes to each other in our languages on the last day. English just isn't that cool, because everyone can understand it. The reason it says "NO!" on one of the notes, is that for some reason, we got onto the topic of health class in the U.S... Jessany explained how we learn how to say "NO!" to drugs and sex and alcohol. Everyone else found this really funny, and it was repeated quite often. I can't wait to meet everyone again, but they're all in a different AFS group that meets in (or near) Stuttgart.