School, Holland, & Inbound Orientation

Hallo there! I have now been in Germany for about two and a half weeks, and figured now was a good time for a first blog post. I might try to do a post a month, or have it vary on the density of interesting events. Every day, of course, is interesting for me, but I will try to boil it down for these posts. Much like when making maple syrup.

Varel, overall, is a very beautiful and adorable town. I ride a bike to and from school, through the cobblestoned walk- or bike-only streets, and try to explore as much of it as possible on my way home. I’ve been trying to take lots of pictures, although it feels quite awkward when you stop to take a picture of someone’s daily convenience store.

Me and my host mom, Pam

My host parents, Rainer and Anong (Pam) Rudkoffsky, are amazingly kind and very laid-back people. Pam is originally from Thailand, and loves to cook, so I am getting a lot of amazing Thai food. I’m still getting lots of German food though: my host father buys fresh bread for breakfast every morning, and we also often have cakes from the bakery for tea (people drink a lot of tea in this area).

Kira die Katze

My host parents’ daughter is currently on exchange in Brazil, their eldest son is currently studying in Thailand, and their other son, Markus, is currently working and living with us until November (before he moves to New Zealand). They also have a ‘dog’ (actually more of a Katze they say) called Kira.

Everyone here has been very nice to me; people at school are kind and always willing to show me to classes and/or listen to my broken German. Louise, a girl in the eleventh year, is friends with my host family and is able to show me to her classes, so I am taking her courses. These consist of: German, English, Art, History, Philosophy, Math, Biology, Politics, Sport/Gym (focused on skiing – we get to go on a field trip to Austria), Italien (ancient Rome and Italian cooking), and Music. Even though I cannot understand everything in the History and Philosophy courses, the teachers are very energetic and engaging. My English teacher seems to be the only really strict teacher: while answering a question I said that “the British hate the French,” which made him scowl and say “Hm. ‘Hate.’ Quite a strong word you used there.”

The school parking lot

Main differences between Lothar-Meyer-Gymnasium (my high school) and SAS:

• Phones are strictly forbidden, everywhere, during class and even during the breaks
• Most of your grade is based on participation in class
• Ergo, people actually pay attention in class
• The only class that seems quite advanced is Math; it’s the start of grade 11 and we’re anti-deriving log functions (what I learned in Calculus 12)
• There are no lockers or fluorescent-lit hallways, just brick school buildings with classrooms, with tables outside (and in the cafeteria)
• The cafeteria food is way better
• Everybody rides a bike.

Also, this past week was ‘Projekt’ week in school, where everyone signs up for a different project to work on and normal classes are post-phoned. I joined Louise in the Cafe project: basically, the 15 of us made and sold crepes, waffles, coffee and baking Thursday and Friday at the school. The teacher let us leave around 12:30 each day, too. This occurred while everyone was asking me how difficult German school was.

 

Fabiola, Pam, and I at the market in Holland

It smelled fabulous

Last Saturday, my host parents, Markus, Fabiola (the other Rotary exchange student in Varel, from Mexico) and I went on a day trip to Holland to check out the big fish market the town was having. It was strange having just started to get used to hearing people speak German, and then hearing Dutch. The Germans think it sounds very funny.

 

The next day, Fabiola’s host sister and boyfriend took us to a giant theme park about two hours away called “Heide Park”. It was basically Disney world with fewer animals and more roller coasters (and less expensive). It actually has one of the world’s largest roller coasters, but that one was closed down. Sadly, I don’t have any photos, because we didn’t want to carry anything with us (it was a hassle to deal with when going on the giant loop-de-loop rides).

Fabiola and I at the Inbound Orientation

This weekend was the first Inbound Orientation for Rotary Exchange students in this district, held in Oldenburg. It was super fun: there were only three of us Canadians among the dozen students from the USA and ~40 other exchange students. We talked about how we missed Tim Hortons, and at one point the three of us politely held the door open for all the other exchange students (just to bug the Americans).

Each country had to do a presentation in front of all of the Rotary people AND all of the German teens who were deciding which countries they wanted to go to on their Rotary exchanges next year. Basically, we had a few minutes to sell Canada. We started by dancing onto the stage with “One Dance” by Drake playing into the microphone. That kind of set the mood for our laid-back, winging-it presentation. They either thought we were really cool or really boring.

We didn’t get to watch the other country presentations, but the Brazilians had a guitar with them when they left, so I think they won over a lot of people.

Gym where we slept

After the presentations, we had lots of time to chat with the German outbounds and their parents and convince them to put Canada first on their countries list (or at least above the United States). It was a great feeling when someone would tap you on the shoulder and excitedly tell you that they want to go to Canada next year on exchange.

WELL. This blog post turned out to be WAY longer than I expected. Sorry. Congrats if you made it to here.

Tschüss!

-Hannah

 

Oldenburg (about 1/2 hour from Varel)