An Afternoon in Boppard

Hello All!

Today my host-mom had an appointment in Boppard, so I tagged along after school. School is getting better, but it is a little bit stressful to not be able to do well. Heck, I even blanked on my English test today! But I hope that it will get better! It will be worth it if I ever actually learn German... Haha! 

So here are some photos I made in Boppard!

If you can't read it, this child's shirt says a certain profanity on it. Was a bit of a surprise on a 3-4 year old German boy's shirt!!

We had to take this ferry across the Rhine. I guess one of the towns near us is thinking about building a bridge, but it would be quite expensive. Good for tourism though! (Lots of tourists here!)

Shoutout for Drew. Found you a red panda in Boppard!

Cool fountain in the square!

So, I ran some errands and had a wonderful spaghetti Eis. It was a long day, so that definitely helped! :)

Tschüss!

Beth

Oh, one more shoutout. Got a lovely card from my friend, Laura Herzog the other day. She is amazing and I miss everyone back in Minnesota! Thanks Laura! 

Guten Tag!

Hallo Alles!

Haven't updated in a while, and just wanted to drop in and say all is good! Learning German is becoming easier, but definitely not easy! When I told people I was taking a year off before college, they really thought it was just a year off. Trust me, this is no picnic. Sure, it is beautiful and the food is great, but acclimating to another lifestyle is difficult. And I am trying my best to learn German. Which is why I have decided no more computer until the sun has set! I can't waste my time on here. :) Obviously this rule starts tomorrow. Haha.
Oh, so I finally got my new schedule! And it is awesome! School here is a bit different because you don't have the same classes everyday. It is more like college. For example, my schedule:

Monday    Tuesday    Wednesday    Thursday    Friday
Religion    Englisch     Informatik      Religion     Deutsch
Informatik   FREI!       Englisch         Erdkunde   Deutsch
Erdkunde  Erdkunde   Mathematik    DKurs       FREI!
Biologie    Informatik  Erdkunde       DKurs       Biologie
Mathematik Biologie   Musik            DKurs        Mathematik
Geschichte  Deutsch   FREI!             FREI!         Englisch
                                                       Musik
                                                       Musik
                                                       Englisch
                                                       Englisch

So, my classes are Religion, English, Technology, German, Geography, Mathematics, A German course for the exchange students, Biology, Music, and History! Normally school goes until 12:45 each day, but on Wednesday I get out at noon, and on Thursday I get out at 4:45. I don't mind that though because I really like my last classes! :)
Speaking of school, today was a really interesting school day. It was WanderTag. That literally translates to hiking day. At first, that didn't sound so appealing. But then our teacher told us we were just going to eat breakfast, and then walk to a castle. It was a pretty great day! School here is awesome. :D

On another note, I just wanted to let all know I am open to questions. I'm not claiming to be an expert in the German lifestyle or the area, but if you are interested I can see if I know, or I can ask my family or friends. Also, if you are interested in becoming an exchange student please let me know! I would be so willing to help you! :)

Tschüss!
Beth

Hello all! So today we went to a lake! Wohoo! I know a lot about those. :) (Minnesota joke). It was awesome! My family and I rented a paddleboat and paddled around for an hour. Then we walked around and went inside the gorgeous church there. It was a splendid time. Here are some photos:

 My wonderful host mom and I (the pedal-ers. :D)

A diagram of the birds there.

Inside a flower/plant shop. So many cactuses! 

The church

I loved this fountain. 

Ducks! (Enten!)

Well, we didn't follow the "Don't feed the ducks rule. :D"

So, a wonderfully good time. But unfortunately I must now get ready for school. Poo. :) 

Tschüss!

Beth

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

A Question!

Can you guess the two ingredients in my lunch today?

Immer!

So, I have quite a bit to talk about, but I will break it up throughout the next couple of days to not bore you or blab on and on!

So, recently, it has gotten weirder and weirder to speak in English. Especially in school, I feel like English is forbidden there! :) (Except in english class, which is awesome, by the way).
Secondly, I think that I won't be able to take French class here. D: It is just so much harder. Not only is the material more difficult, but I am also constantly translating the French to German, and vice-versa with English thrown in there to balance it out. It isn't going to work out. Yikes.

But, onto happier things! More interesting differences here. Not better or worse, just different. :) They are so interesting!
1) Their pens are different. Stupid to say, I know, but a lot of kids here use fountain pens. Like this:

I don't know if I didn't notice it before, but I have never seen a student use a fountain pen in the States, so that is interesting!

2)GREAT FOOD. Their food is awesome! My host mom is a wonderful cook, but they also have great food options. Plus a lot of it is out of their garden, as well. Here is what we had for lunch today:

Potato Cakes with potatoes and onions from the garden!

 Homemade Applesauce

Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream! :D

On that note, lunch is also the larger meal. For dinner we eat a lot of bread, meat, and cheese. It is really good, but I am eating SO much bread here! So good, but so bad for me. :)

3) Everyone in my class is so interested and engaged in the topic. Everyone tries really hard and the classes are quite difficult. I haven't seen any slackers in any of my classes. 

4)There are a lot of exchange students! Not that come here :( but from this school that went to the US or other countries (but mostly the US). I have met 5 already, and my school is really small!

5) School here is more like college. We don't have the same classes everyday, and sometimes people have free periods where they can go/do whatever they want. And classes (for the most part) are lectures.

6) At this school, and most schools in Germany, there is no lunch served here. You go home for lunch, usually after all of your classes. Right now, I have 6 classes from 7:45 to 12:45, and then I go home for the day. But when you are in 11th and 12th grade, you have 55 minutes for lunch, then you come back to school for music or sport class. But I don't think I will have to do that! Woohoo!

7) Everyone is REALLY neat, organized, and has great handwriting. It is crazy. And their paper is like graph paper so they can be more precise! But the teachers have horrible handwriting, so I can never understand what they are writing... 

Okay, I think that is enough for now. More tomorrow!

Tschüss!

Beth 

Schule!

Today, school was so much better! I had actually a slight idea of what was going on. :) math is quite easy (well, compared to other classes I must take here. Germans are intense when it comes to school!) and I understood the music class. But it was a bit hard to answer all the questions about major and minor chords, but I had some help. :) I am also starting to get the hang of where things are in the school, and how to follow a crowd when something is going on. Plus, with each day, my German listening skills are getting better! My speaking skills are about the same, but I think that is going to take more courage and memory skills when speaking to people.
So, interesting fact. Today, I was sitting in class and I had my water bottle with me. (the German kids don't have the reusable kind usually, but I have my camel back so it kind of sticks out.) and I had it on the table, like I would in the U.S. But then, the teacher turns to me and says, "Beth, no water bottles on the table. This is not a bier garten!" that teacher is really nice so it surprised me, but I took my water bottle off the table and said I was sorry. So, the funny part, was that the boy next to me had his motorcycle helmet and jacket on the table! Pffsh. Haha. Just another difference, I guess. :)
Well, that was the most embarrassing thing all day, so you could say it was a good day. Now, off to do German homework! (French class will be the death of me, haha)


Mit besten grüßen!
Beth