Hello everyone! This week was another wonderful week in the beautiful Freiburg, Germany! Unfortunately, it rained all week. Not just a drizzle, but down pouring cats and dogs kind of rain. Because I don’t have a tram pass anymore, I ride my bike to school everyday and Rahel is nice enough to join me. Wednesday morning in particular was raining extra hard. I wasn’t really prepared because I only had a rain jacket but I guess I just thought it wasn’t raining as hard as it really was. But it was raining so hard on my ride to school it was almost hard to see because I had to squint my eyes so hard. It was a lot of fun. It was such an adventure. By the time we got to school I was completely soaked. Like soggy shoes, dripping hair, 100% saturated clothing. It was a mess. I didn’t have it the worse off though. Some of the girls were wearing jeans which were definitely not going to dry before the end of the day. I was lucky enough to wear quick dry hiking pants, so while they were completely soaked when I arrived, they were bone dry after my second class. Good job hiking pants!
Another good thing that happened on Wednesday is that in Religion class, I really got to participate. The Religion teacher is very good at encouraging me to participate. It also helps that the religion class is much smaller and so it’s not so intimidating. On this particular day, we had to write something. A poem, a letter, song lyrics, whatever. Something about the people we love. The topic that day was about hospice and palliative care so we were talking about how if we were in that situation, what would encourage us to keep going. It was kind of a dark topic so getting to write about the things we love afterwards really lifted spirits. I wrote a nice poem about “Meinen Stern” (My Star). I wrote it in German to challenge myself but wasn’t planning on presenting it. When the teacher called on me she asked if I’d written it in German or in English and so I told her German and then she asked me to read it. I read it out loud and of course I was nervous because it’s intimidating reading something in German to a room full of fluent German speakers, but I did it. And everyone clapped and said it was very good. It just felt really good.
Thursday was kind of a weird day. I just was feeling kind of off. Everybody was being very nice (as always) but I just felt very alone. When I came home I was still just feeling kinda down (for absolutely no reason at all) and so I decided I should get out of the house to cheer myself up. So I went to dance class. I’d already been to this dance course, but I went again because it’s fun. Some of the girls at my school came too and it was fun to just relax and dance with them. I also danced with some strangers and had some really nice conversations. I never know who’s gonna be chatty and who’s gonna be shy and quiet when I dance with them, but it’s fun to be a partner with someone who likes to talk because it gives me a chance to practice my German conversational skills. Every now and then I partner up with someone who can tell where I’m from because of my accent and they really want o speak English so that’s also fun. But that didn’t happen on Thursday, which was also fine. The people I was with were very interested in my exchange semester and were also very impressed with my German. I really enjoyed their compliments and it was reassuring to know I can have meaningful conversation with someone in a different language in just 5 minutes or so.
After dance class Rahel and I biked back and ate a quick dinner before it was time to go again. Rahel and I biked so much on Thursday. To school, home from school, to dance school, home from dance school, back to school, and then finally back home. The reason we went back to school, was for the school play! It was technically a musical, but not really. There were only two songs so the majority of it was dialogue. It was such a good play/ musical. I was really impressed. There were 2 girls from my class in it and they did a really fabulous job. The name of it was “Cassandra” but I tried looking it up and couldn’t find anything so I don’t think it’s very popular. There were some important themes that it played with. For example, who really wins in a war, how the modeling agency is messed up, teenagers and their cell phone addiction, the pressure placed on teenagers today, and even more. In the play you basically traveled through time and you can see how problems change through time. That’s not really a very good summary, but I don’t really know how to summarize it. But I can say it was absolutely fantastic and I was really impressed.
The following day on Friday, I watched the play again. This time I watched it with the whole class. It was a performance with for the school. But the thing that really impressed me about this play is that at my school, there is a pretty big theater program. We have this gorgeous auditorium with an amazing sound system, and I assume there’s a strong budget that goes along with that. For this musical though, they didn’t have an auditorium. They preformed in the basement and there were some chairs brought in for the audience. It just proved to me that you can still have a really amazing theater program without a big budget.
Friday flew by fast because we basically just watched the play and then we had one more class. And then we were on a break! Southern Germany has a lot of breaks. Every 4-5 weeks there seems to be a 1-2 week break. It’s good and bad because of course the breaks are nice, but it also means school goes on for a really long time. School doesn’t end here until very late July/ early August, which just happens to be when school starts for me. In fact, my summer this year is only 2 weeks long. There’s just about two weeks between when I get home from Germany and when senior year starts, so I’ll take all the breaks I can get.
After school on Friday Renate made us a delicious lunch of vegetable pizza to celebrate the start of our vacation. I relaxed after school and later that night Rahel, Anna, and I watched a movie. We watched “If I Stay” which is a lot sadder than I remembered, but for being an overall pretty happy person, I really enjoy really sad movies which is pretty odd.
On Saturday I slept in and relaxed for my first day of vacation. I organized my desk a little bit, and listened to music. After lunch Rahel’s friend Larissa came over to work on a Physics project. The three of us are in a group together and our topic is how radiation affects humans and how we protect ourselves from radiation. We were assigned this project for our “over the break homework”. It’s quite a complicated topic so I can’t really help too much, but I helped as much as I could. We didn’t really get that much work done though. We mainly just ate frozen mango (which is actually the best snack on the planet for a hot day) and goofed around. It was a lot of fun though. But the next day, she came over again and we were able to finish the project.
Then on Saturday night, Anna and Rahel came over to watch a movie, and afterwards Anna slept over. I think I fell asleep early but we still had a lot of fun.
Another exciting thing that happened this week is that I started reading my first German book! It’s a book Rahel read in 3rd or 4th grade, but it’s very exciting for me. The book I got is made specifically for people learning German so it’s perfect for me. It’s slow going, but I’m making progress!
I also have a little announcement about next week’s blog. Because we’re on holiday right now, we will actually be going on vacation. We’re going camping in the Italian Alps which I am so excited for! And what’s even more exciting is that my Mom is going to be flying out here to meet us! We’ll be going on a little trip around Europe after the camping trip which is also going to be so fun. The reason I’m telling you this is because we’ll be out of the country and I won’t be bringing my laptop so there won’t be a blog next week. I’ll still write it, I just won’t be able to post it until about a week later. So I just wanted to give you all a heads up that there will be no blog next week and depending on when I get back, the big update blog all about my trip may be late. Thanks for understanding! I hope you all have a great week and as always feel free to email me! I love reading your emails! Talk to you later!
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