Schubart Gymnasium

Einen Schönen Guten Morgen!

It’s already been a month since I’ve been in Germany. Whew! Crazy to think about. Which means that school has started, and I’ve already completed my first three weeks! And that I’ve really procrastinated posting this… whoops!

So school here’s a lot different than North Penn. For one, it’s only about the size of my middle school, Penndale, with around 900-1,000 students, pretty large for the area, as apposed to the 3,000 students at North Penn High School.  Another huge difference is that the students are from 5^th grade to 12^th grade, 10-18 years old. Its definitely a little strange seeing kids half your size playing and running around the halls, with the older kids not seeming to mind at all. Somehow I think the students at North Penn would have issues with this.

The class that I’m in is considered 10^th grade, the reason being that the 11^th and 12^th grade classes are at a much faster pace to prepare for the Abitur, or German equivalent of the SAT’s, and since I am not planning on taking any Abitur, the 10^th class is a good place for me to be.  Plus I’m with my host sister Zoe, and without her being able to explain things to me I’d be completely lost. So a big shout out and thanks to Zoe!

We are with the same students most of the day, and usually stay in one classroom, and the teachers come to us.  All of the students are friendly, and we also have an exchange student from Ecuador and one from Japan, who also find German an incredibly complicated language.

A big perk of German school is that we also don’t have afternoon classes each day, and for me I have Monday and Friday afternoons free. It’s quite liberating! We also get an hour break when we have school in the afternoon, and we’re free to go into town and buy lunch, or do just about whatever we like.

Most days I ride my bike to school with my host sisters, and riding through the town early in the morning with nobody but the shopkeepers opening up and the street cleaners, it’s pretty surreal.

I enjoy almost all of my classes, despite the fact that I can hardly understand what’s going on. The ones that I find most difficult are Chemistry, Physics, and of course, Math. It doesn’t help that they’re neither my strongest subjects, nor my favorite, and when the vocabulary is completely different, it’s a little hard to comprehend. On the other hand, I love that I have French more than any other subject, and although the classes here are much farther ahead of what I had been learning last year, it’s still enjoyable for me. Except for the fact that I’m swamped with twice the work… the textbooks explain and define everything into German, and I hardly understand that, so I come home and translate it myself. It makes my head hurt, but I really think it’ll be worthwhile.

I also have German, Religion, Biology, Music, Art, Politics, History, and English. I think it’s great that we can have so many subjects, and still have less instructional time in one school day that back home! History, Politics, and English are bilingual courses, which for me means they’re a breath of fresh air: English! Never, ever take for granted being able to understand what is going on!