Language.

Hello all! Wonderful day here in Deutschland, but that is most days. :) Finished out school yesterday, for the week that is. And by the end of the school week I think I was finally figuring out what was going on! Always a good thing. But now I am very excited, because on Monday I finally get my official schedule! A couple of the classes will stay the same, but unfortunately not math. It was the upper level math class and the teacher told the person putting together the schedule for me that I shouldn't be in it because it is so different, he said to put me in very basic math. Well, that stinks because it was the only class I actually understood everything going on. C'est la vie. So, a few points of what is going on with me now!
I think my imagination is in overtime right now. Either that, or I am crazy. Here is the deal: I think I know more German than I actually do. When teachers are speaking, my mind fills in the meanings of the words with what I think they SHOULD mean. Sometimes I am right, sometimes I am very very wrong. So after a class I will feel great about my German! Then I realize I didn't really understand all of it. I just thought I did. I don't know. Hopefully I am not going crazy.
Also, I have no idea how much to study German, and how much just to let things meld in my brain. Right now I have a little notebook for words I want to look up, and I do so. But I don't know if I should look up ALL words I don't understand or try and figure out the context. I guess I will have to try a few different strategies. Advice is welcome. :)
But luckily I do get to go to a two week long Sprachkurs (speaking course). It is a bit late, end of september, but it is with all the inbounds from the area and I am SO excited. :)
Now! A few cool interesting similarities/differences between the USA and Deutschland! :D

1) There are little kids at my school. I think as young as fifth grade, but it surprising how much it doesn't really matter here. I think if it were like that in my old school, it would be chaos. But here it works out pretty well!
2) Buses. I take a public transportation bus to school every day. No big yellow school buses here! I think it is interesting, but also really hard for me right now because as an exchange student, I have to pay for it each time until I can get the proper pass. Also, there isn't a bus to my town after 1 o'clock, so that also stinks. I guess there are pros and cons to each! (I wish Buffalo had public transportation. It is so much bigger that Patersberg, yet no buses! Argh! :P )
3) So here we have a Headmaster that fulfills the role a principal would. But the cool/new thing is, he also teaches classes! He teaches my geography class. I feel like that is a lot of principals dream, to actually have time to teach a class!
4) Parking. Parking here is a bit different. You can park on sidewalks in certain places, and often the street has areas to park that makes the street wide enough for only one car to go through. I will try and take a picture to explain later, but I find it so much different than the huge streets with large shoulder we have in the US!
5) Participation in class. So far, I have seen that most of the students in each class participate. So many hands raised! Always! It is cool, because the teacher never has to force someone to answer a question, but it is also kind of bad because when someone says something wrong there are always ton of hands that go up like lions pouncing on a dying gazelle. Okay. Maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. But it definitely makes me nervous to answer anything! Oh, and plus, that whole knowing very little German thing, but, you know. Whatever. :)
6) Lastly, English class here is awesome! They talk about Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen. In a way, it is harder than some English classes in the American High School I went to! Definitely harder than most foreign language classes. I never made it to the upper level language classes (I didn't start taking French until my Junior year. Bad idea! If you are in/going in high school take a foreign language right away!) so I cannot attest to this to much. (Liza/Kelsey/Ben/Charlie, did you read intense French/Spanish books?) All of the kids in my class have excellent English. Bravo to all! What stinks is that whenever I go to answer something I stink at answering. You know that feeling when you are talented at something (not saying I am talented other than the fact that I have spoke English all my life) and then you go and do it in front of people and fail miserably? Well. That is me in English. But the nerves will go away and my teacher will learn that I am not TOO much of a fool. Hopefully.

Well that is all for now. Oh! Sorry, one more thing. My host mother suggested I write what type of cake we have each day (yes. Cake. Each. Day. I will be so fat when I come home :) ) and tell you how it was. Well, today was Käsekuchen and it was wonderful. I will post pictures of the cake each day as well!

Alright, well, Tschüss!

Beth