Big Change, Different Country

I face a huge transition in just a few weeks: I'm going to Germany!  I'm going to go to school in Germany for about two months.  You are probably all jealous of the fact that I am going to school over my summer break..... Not.  But I'm not going there to learn, I'm going just for the experience.  The nice thing is, nothing counts academically, so I could get all Fs if I wanted to... which I don't.  :) My grandparents live in Leverkusen, Germany, and I'm going to stay with them.

Obviously, this is going to be a huge change.  Germany is so different in so many ways.  There is the language barrier, which will hopefully be the least of my problems, seeing as I speak German fluently.  However, I've never had practice using the formal version of 'you' before, which I will have to use when talking to teachers.

Next is the way of life.  In Germany, everyone bikes and walks pretty much everywhere.  This, I think, is really nice.  Every summer when I go to Germany, I ride my bike to the mall, the parks, the bakery, the ice cream shop and, this year, to school.

School itself, of course, is going to be a major transition too.  The schedule is totally different.  There are way more classes including religion class, which I've never had before in my life.  Math, though, is probably going to be the hardest.  In Germany, math is all word problems.  That, plus the word problems being in German, is going to be a huge challenge for me.

This is the schedule that my German friend sent me.   Translation: I'm going to have PE, math and French on Mondays; German, chemistry and story (I have no idea what that is) on Tuesdays; English, French and music on Wednesdays; German, physics and math on Thursdays, and English, bio-chemistry, and religion on Fridays.

There are so many cool things about Germany.  For example, there's bakeries everywhere!  There's actually one at the corner of my grandparents' street.  I don't think anyone can honestly tell me that this isn't awesome...  :)  Also, Leverkusen was one of the host cities for the FIFA women's soccer world cup in 2011.  But something I really need to bring up is the pool.  Leverkusen has a super cool swimming pool called CaLevornia.  There are probably about twenty different pools with different water temperatures, slides, lazy rivers and other attractions.  I am always incredibly excited to go there!

Germany is going to give me a lot of new experiences, both good and bad (but hopefully mostly good.)  I'm looking forward to embracing the changes and becoming a better person through these changes!