12/06/14

I can now delete my last post, my laptop has decided to be nice to me.

"You don't need to pack summer clothes, you wont be getting a real summer and it's not going to hot." Said the mother as her daughter left for Germany for 5 and a half months; 6 weeks being in summer.
so, what did I do? I packed one down jacket, one woolen jacket and another jacket. As well as over 5 pairs of long pants, what was I actually thinking?
The past few days have been horrible, it has been between 35-40 degrees Celsius. Luckily there is a public pool close by and its perfect for a nice cool down. It's hard to work out if people are in a bad mood from the heat or the amount of French people who take over the place, i'm thinking its a bit of both.What annoyed me most were the people smoking, just sitting there surrounded by kids and the smoke is blowing in everyone's faces. It's such an issue here but it doesn't really get to many people.  Its so great to listen to the Germans complain about the French. Breisach (where i am staying) is right on the border of Germany and France, so as you can imagine there are plenty of French. They all shop here because its cheaper but not only do they do that, they only speak French. When Germans go to France they speak French but when French people come here they speak French and don't attempt German.

It is now holidays for two weeks which is good in a way but on the other hand I have had to cure my boredom for the past week. Everyone seems to go away in these holidays instead of the summer holidays because its not so busy.  I'll go to Portugal on Friday so no more posts for a week but I am thinking of writing a day journal so i'll see how that goes and then post it when i get back.

you can be jealous, I'm sure most of you are sitting home freezing

Yesterday I decided to cure my boredom by going for a two hour bike ride. It was extremely hot but I wanted to do some sort of excise. I had no idea where I was going but I just decided to go straight and see where I would end up. I didn't end up in an interesting place because I was dying of thirst and had to turn around but I decided to take a photo:

Talk to you all in a week, goodbye for now :) 

Due to technical difficulties (also known as my laptop being a total shit) this may be my last post for a while.
I am very sad about this and I apologise but these things happen. There may be some posts but not as many as i was hoping for in my last month in Germany.
Goodbye for now and hopefully I can write again soon.

The weekend started nicely on Thursday; a long weekend was just what I needed. It was a busy long weekend but one of the best so far.
Thursday and Friday were just normal days to relax and do a few things. On Saturday I had my very last soccer game here: I don't think I've ever been so sad about a game.  It didn't matter if we lost or won because we would come second on the ladder either way. Winning would obviously be a good note to leave it on so that is what we did. The end result was 3-1, I had to score three or more goals to get my goal count on 10 or above but unfortunately I only managed two goals. I am so happy that I got to play in Germany, it has definitely helped me feel comfortable in this rather unfamiliar place and, of course, my team was great and will never be forgotten.

Number 9 is my lucky number- 9 goals. 

Saturday night my friend Marlene and I had a sleepover, which was great, and we went on a really nice walk down to the river Rhine in the evening. I didn't want to make a big deal over my birthday so the day was very relaxed and in the evening I had a few friends over for dinner which was really nice. Turning 16 is here is a big deal because you can legally start drinking (beer, wine, etc.No heavy things), but to me it was just another birthday. I have six weeks to live it up and then I'll have to wait another two years.
Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday and for all the kind messages I received- and of course the presents.

sunset

 

Mistakes

We all make mistakes, its part of the human nature and it can't be stopped. When learning a new language, of course mistakes happen more frequently but everyone just forgets and moves on.
I make mistakes very often but thats alright, its all part of it. I am going to write about one of the mistakes I made yesterday, it was more of a miss understanding. If you don't get it the first time you may have to read over it again.

We had just finished writing a 3 hour long German test and I was still a bit overwhelmed by it all. The next lesson was biology, not too hard just another lesson where I pretend to understand everything.
 Anyway, the teacher said, "draw a stick man on half of the page". So i drew an ugly man, not too hard I thought. The next thing the teacher said was, "draw the same stick man with closed eyes".  So I thought a little bit about how I would draw it and came to a nice plan in my head. Before i started to draw it, I looked around at some other peoples and they weren't drawing the face on the actual person. The first thought that came to me was, is it really that hard to draw a person with shut eyes? Then I thought maybe it was a German thing to draw stick people like that. I sat there for a little bit and then realized how dumb I really am.

A weekend in Switzerland

A short description of my weekend in Switzerland (1 week late) 

1/5/14

Sitting on the ICE (InterCity express) and watching the mountains and green grass go past in a blur. I won’t complain and say I had to wait for over an hour for this train to come because I was very well entertained. People watching and free WiFi is a fun thing to do for an hour. I really am not German at heart because I didn't mind waiting for an hour.

As I was drinking my four Euro small hot chocolate from Starbucks, I was watching this lady have a conversation with herself. She obviously thought she was really funny because when she came inside she could hardly walk through the door because her laughter was taking over her body. I thought maybe it was time to go before she came and sat next to me.

I arrived in Interlaken Ost (Switzerland) a few hours later and met my dad’s uncle and aunty. They have a holiday house in Beatenberg which looks over the lake and mountains. It was such a shame I had so little time because it was simply beautiful.

The rest of the day was well spent catching a bus to the end of street and walking back. No, it wasn’t just a normal street; it was the longest street in Europe that goes through a village. When we got to the end we walked the 7km back, taking in the beautiful view along the way. 

3/5/14

Bern is a bit like Canberra, not in looks or the way it feels but it is a forgotten capital city. No, Zurich is not the capital of Switzerland and Sydney is also not the capital of Australia.

Bern is a beautiful place filled with lots of life but also very relaxed.  At the end of the main street is a bear enclosure, it was weird seeing bears in the middle of a city but also understandable. I thought it was pointless at the time but I studied a bit about Bern in one of my German assignments... who would have thought it would come in handy?

Bern is definitely a place I will visit again. You could almost say it is a flawless city because the flaws are so well hidden. Switzerland is a ‘must see’ and should be visited at least once in everyone’s life time.   

Bern

The bear enclosure 

The walk along the lake side 

Independence

This is just a thought I had: An example of independence between German and Australian kids and their parents. 

Australia: "You're now in year 9 (or 10) darling, this means you're going to have to start being independent. I will still pack your lunch and morning tea in the mornings. However, Mummy wont be able to pick you up from school anymore, she now has to work full time because you're grown up now. There is a bus that goes past our house but you will have to cross the main road and walk a few metres so please be careful. Now listen to me, do not talk to any strangers and call me as soon as you get home. I will be home from work in the late afternoon so I will leave some afternoon tea in the fridge. OK?" 

Germany: "You're now in year 5 (or 6), this is when you become more independent and don't rely on mummy and daddy as much. I have bought you a train card so you can now travel to school and many other places without having to get me to come with you. I will give you the train times so you will have to work out what time you need to catch the train. There will be a lot of other people from your class doing the same so you wont be alone. I will come home  later in the afternoon so make something for lunch and we can have a warm meal for dinner."

It's hard thinking of things to write and making it interesting. I like to write interesting posts every now and then rather than really boring posts everyday. This post may be interesting for some but feel free not to read it if you're not interested in 'Steiner education'.

School went back today, it was a bit weird getting up at 6.30am rather than 10-10.30am. My holidays were well spent relaxing and catching up with people.Going to bed at a reasonable time is also a struggle. It doesn't help that the time differences are so annoying now and basically doesn't work out at all with Australia - it's very tricky finding the time to talk to people at home.

I have to keep reminding myself that because I am in Germany it does not mean I am on holidays all the time. I would love to spend the time visiting new places, taking nice photos and meeting new people but unfortunately school and homework are in the way. Instead of taking maybe an hour doing homework it takes me 3 because my procrastination has become very bad. It is not that I don't understand it but I am just not interested and, of course, looking up words that I am unsure of takes a lot of time and effort.

I am starting to lose all my creative skills that I formed at Orana over the nine years that I was there. It's something that is really lacking at this school, and I find it sad. Its something completely normal for them and it was normal for me to write my own work book with pictures and colours every morning for nine years and then bring it home and spend more time working on it. Those books are precious and it is hard to part with them so you store them in a box until you move out. What happens here I wonder? Everything gets drilled into them with endless pieces of paper and tests, then at the end of the year all the pieces of paper get chucked out.

I never believed it when the teachers at Orana said "make your books beautiful, you will come back to them later in your life". That is 100 per cent true: its so nice to start from the class one books and flick through them watching your handwriting and the use of colours and crayons change.

To put it straight forwardly, I miss Orana but the time has come to move on and now I know that it doesn't just take a few days. The things like being outside for most of the day, going to singing every morning, talking to the teachers about things that aren't even about school - you don't realize how important they are until you don't have them anymore,everything just goes.

I guess being at this school is not only extremely different but it is also hard on me. It's impossible to be myself because most people are complete strangers and you see new people everyday. There is no sense of 'family' or even 'community'. School is where you go and learn, nothing more (I do not agree). It is also frustrating with the language because I can't say what I would like to say, only what I am able to say. I am hoping this will improve over the time (which I'm sure it will).

If anyone has any interesting ideas on what would be interesting to write about or what they would like to see in this blog, comment below or message me :)