Two Weeks in and Still Feeling Estranged

           Welcome back y'all,

    First off, I apologize for being a day late. Just balances out being a day early last week!

    From where I left off is where I'll begin! My family has been the coolest family I could have ever hoped for. My host brother and I are always doing something childish and fun together. For example, build acorn launchers from an old bow, or corn Kerne shooters from paper towel rolls and rubber glove fingers. My host mom is definitely less intimidating now. She's really become super friendly and helpful. My host brother said it's so stressful here from summer to fall since that's when people are mostly doing the Heuhotel and Maislabyrinth and that all will ease up once winter comes around.

    Gymnasium is probably the most intimidating thing I've ever been a part of. The people aren't particularly warm, teachers are very "matter of fact" (for lack of a better term), and the content is simply more demanding. I was sitting in my math class in a group and I tried to ask questions about the assignment so I could possibly help. Believe it or not, they completely ignored me. Looked at me and didn't say a thing. That was definitely the biggest shock I've had so far. Teachers are not afraid to say exactly what they're thinking about someone, even me as an exchange student. For example, I tried a new level of math class to see if it was maybe easier to understand. The teacher introduces me, the says something like, "she moved down a math since 11th grade math is too hard. Okay, not for us but for Americans". Well, that could have been a joke that went over my head, but that definitely made me feel a wee bit uncomfortable. And the funny part was, I've done everything they did in class already. So, I believe I will just move back up. Then, talking in class. Bwah, that is something else. I tried to answer some questions in class, even though my German is not up to these topics. And no one really seemed to care that I tried, rather to point out that my German wasn't good enough. So in conclusion, I feel a little defeated after this past week.

    In my little city, there are a group of people who have a game night for the exchange students in the surrounding area. So this past Friday, I played games with exchange students from Brazil, Finland, Italy, Japan, and America. I don't think I had ever been around so many people from so many different countries. They downside way however, that everyone spoke English. So I felt like I could have been practicing German at home but I ended up speaking English for multipule hours. Another this about this city, people are really quick to speak English. I try to speak German with peers, some people older than me that I come across regularly and they almost always switch to English (except my host family, thank goodness). I was practicing with a family friend who was taking me home from the game night and I had asked for one word in German, and then she switched to English, even when I used German for the next couple of answers. That's pretty frustrating.. But everyone says the German will come, the German will come. But I'm definitly hitting a frustration patch..

    And for all curious, I still have not made friends yet.. I have a couple of potentials, but they might take some work and some convincing to speak German. However, I had a breakthrough with my host brother. He came into my room last night as I was working on some homework and for whatever reason, something in my mind decided that I was going to speak German and not give two crapsabout  whether I was right, wrong, "fluent", or choppy. What do you know, it came out pretty cleanly and relatively more correct that I thought it would! So my conversation skills have been improving without practicing too intensely (but that'll change very very soon).

    Well, I can't say I don't have any friends. I don't have German friends yet. I'm actually pretty good friends with the exchange kids at my school. We go and get Käsebrötchen together, have study pow-wows, and practice German together. And they've been so cool. So I can't really complain.

    I don't want this post to make it sound like I'm having a bad time, because that's not it. This is such a cool, unique experience and I wouldn't trrade it for the world. I'm soaking everything up and living every day to the best of my ability. And you know, that's really all we can do. 

Until next time! 

~Katy

 Willkommen in Deutschland! I was lifted into a tree to look like I was standing on my house!