Settling In

The weather was disgusterous again this morning.  It wasn't raining quite as hard, but it was just as cold.

 Here is a randomly inserted picture of me because I had nothing else to take a picture of for this post.

First period was German.  With a partner we had to write to each other on a piece of paper.  We weren't allowed to talk at all.  We had to come up with an idea of something that matters in our present-day world, create a mind-map brainstorm, and then each write a poem from that mind-map.  I worked with Celina.  Since I didn't think I would be able to write a poem by myself, the teacher said Celina and I could work together on the same poem, which made things easier.  I was extremely pleased with how much I contributed to the project.  I came up with the idea for the topic (pollution) and also contributed to the poem itself.  Celina wrote the first few verses, and then I wrote some.  Celina would change them just a little bit to make them sound better and would also help me find rhyming words.  Also, while we were having our "conversation" on paper, she corrected my writing mistakes for me.  The poem wasn't even half bad! :) I think I'm definitely getting used to school here, and am finding that I can participate more and more in different classes.

After that was Physics.  There were taking a test today, which I didn't have to take.  But of course, I forgot my book.  ARGH.  So instead I worked on a piece of artwork in Nadine's planner. :)  We sit next to each other in Physics and did last class in Religion.  We decorated the days we don't have school in her planner with the huge assortment of awesome markers Nadine has.  We wrote 'frei,' which means 'free' and is how they say there's no school, in different colors and fonts, and it looked really cool.  I worked on a different day off during the Physics test after first looking over the test and coming to the conclusion that I understood none of it.

Today I bought myself some food from the cafeteria for the first time.  The cafeteria really isn't the typical image of school lunch we have in the United States.  They have actual food.  Not some weird-looking and sometimes yucky meal, but food that you'd see in other places too, such as brötchen with ham and cheese on it.  Another difference is that in America, you stood in line and got a tray with the meal on it that included everything together.  Here, you aren't forced to put anything on your tray because there aren't trays.  The cafeteria is like an actual store, in a way.  I bought a chocolate croissant that was fresh out of the oven (I literally saw it being pulled from the oven) and warm and delicious.  Why can't school in Utah offer school lunches like this? ;)

Math was the last class of the day.  Everyone hates math because, according to them (I haven't had enough experience yet) the teacher is horrible and can't explain anything.  This was evident when tests were passed back, and almost everyone bombed it.  I don't know if I've explained this before, but the grading system here is from one to six.  Six (and also a five) are considered Fs in America's grading system, and a one would be an A.  Here are some conversations I heard around me as the tests were passed back:

"Dude, I didn't get one question right!"
"OMG, I got a six too!"
"Dude, me too!  What'd you get"
"Haha, a five."
"I got a two!"
"You got a TWO?!  Holy crap!"
"Woah!  I can't believe I got a four!  This is awesome!"

Yeah, I think there's a problem with the teaching...  For the rest of the class we went over homework and got a new homework assignment.  Nothing exciting.  I've already learned what they're doing, but they still do it a little differently, and I don't know all the math vocab in German yet.  Plus, I obviously still make mistakes with the math portion  of it.

It seems that every morning starts out craptacular, but it at least stops raining by the end of the school day.  It's still pretty chilly, though.

German word of the day: Gedicht.  Pronounced Guh-DICHT.  The 'ch' is pronounced in the back of your throat, kind of like a gargle.  The word means 'poem'

The Sunflower Project: No miraculous changes, but here they are:

I'm starting to get kind of stressed out about what I'm missing at home.  I feel like I'm getting behind in math, which is super important, and I also am working out less, which is supposed to be going in the 'more' direction right now, not less.  Sigh.  I feel like I'm living a life in Germany and a life in America and have to take care of both.