First Post

Day 1-

Flights went smoothly, and I met Uwe Jacobs and my host family. Got a house tour, then went to a small public beach and went swimming with my siblings. Went to the grocery store. We eat a lot of different bread. Dinner was toast of different varieties with different spreads or slices of meat. I tried to watch TV but my complete lack of understanding of Deutsch was a large obstacle. I was so tired that I fell asleep with my clothes on while trying to read in bed. I woke up in the middle of the night and got under the covers. I changed my phone to German and it’s fun to attempt to figure out what things say. I didn’t know that Germany uses 24 hour time, but I can understand why.

Day 2 -

I woke up “early”(8:30) so that I could go with Ove and the girls to drop off Elsa at a summer camp at her school. We had bread for breakfast (roll type things) which I was pleasantly surprised to find were pretzel type bread. After getting back I ate some crepes which Katja made that were very good. We put apple sauce on them, I found out. After that I chilled for a while and played with Luise. She showed me her things and taught me the names of them "Auf Deutsch", along with other things around the house. We went into town around 15:00(3pm) to look at my school and get ice cream. The school was unfortunately closed, but we walked around anyway and saw a water buffalo on a trail nearby. We went and got ice cream after and walked around the harbor for a while. Luise played on the playground.

I really like it here so far. The family is so much healthier than my own at home (more active, not really addicted to screens, and they eat better)(no offense guys), everywhere is walkable/bikeable, the environment is much prettier, the houses are nicer, and so many more things. The only thing that’s radically different is the lack of whole-home A/C or any at all. It’s a big change, but I don’t really mind it with fans and open windows and doors. It helps that most of the year isn’t hot enough to require that you have A/C.

I’ve come to realize that I enjoy the sound of Deutsch being spoken and the way the German accent sounds. I hope that I can start conversating Auf Deutsch very soon, because Luise doesn’t know any more English than I know German right now, and Katja doesn’t like to speak English very much because she doesn’t know much either. Even though those things sound annoying written down, I find them more of a motivation than anything else. Either way, I was still able to play with Luise and understand and convey enough to kind of talk to her.

I hadn’t thought about it, but some board games have a different name in German, which I find a little funny for some reason. For example, Yahtzee is Kniffel.

So far, I haven’t felt homesick or sad, but only time will tell how I feel over the coming weeks.

Weird note on culture shock: I’m not sure whether I’m just well adjusted or if Germany just isn’t as different as the Rotary people were hinting towards, but I haven’t felt like things are any more different than I expected or that it’s too much to handle. If anything, things are less different than I expected and I’m almost disappointed. The cars don’t actually feel that small, though I suspect that’s only because I don’t have a physical american SUV for comparison. The food isn’t anything insane, and there are still fat people (though slightly fewer and to a lesser extent).

My room is nice. What makes it great is that I’m taking the room of a fellow teenage boy, so things are pretty much automatically to my taste and style.

Day 3-21

Overall Transition & Language Learning: August has been overall good so far. I sometimes wish I had learned more German since I’ve been here, but I can’t change the past, so moving on. My first day of school was rough at first, but I’ve been doing well since I got through that. I got a membership to a rock climbing gym. I saw museums with my host dad and siblings. I’ve spent a lot of time playing with my siblings, learning whatever German I can from them, and watching movies and TV with them in German.

Energy Levels, Sleep & Routine: I’ve also spent a lot of time in my room because I’ve felt kind of emotionally/physically drained after each day. I would first equate being physically tired to my sleep habits (6-8hrs per night which is frustratingly not enough sleep for me). Because I am already “underslept”, the 24/7 foreign language, real classes in school, and living with two little girls kind of take it out of me emotionally. I wish I didn’t need so much sleep to feel well rested and happy every day, but I have lived like this my whole life and it's not ever going to change. I’ve found that I still struggle with making myself get up and do things that I want to do like rock climbing, starting a new conversation, doing my German lessons, or (crazy fourth wall break) writing my thoughts down for the blog. I’ve read a lot while I’ve been here, although the first book I finished was a long comic book (Invincible Compendium 3). I’ve already read like 15% of “The Diamond Age”, and I’m catching so many things that flew completely over my head when I first read it 10 years ago.

Host Family Dynamics & Chores: I had a tense day one day when I forgot to clean my room before the cleaning lady came and my host dad sent me a text saying that he and my host mom wanted to talk to me after school. I felt so guilty all day and then when the time actually came he literally started off by saying “don’t worry, it's not a big deal”. The conversation basically consisted of “hey can you clean your room before the cleaning lady comes so that the floors are clear for her and unload and load the dish washer please, thanks.” Also I totally overlooked this but I had been leaving the removable showerhead too high for my sisters to reach and I needed to fix that. That may have been in my top 5 most relieved moments of all time. I thought I was in for a stern talking too and a mood shift that may last for the rest of my time here, but I was pleasantly surprised by a polite request and a nice casual convo afterwards. I did some painting with Elsa and I made a surprisingly good and recognizable portrait of my dog that heavily boosted my ego in the art category.

Museum Visits & Getting Lost: Going to the museums, while a little bit overwhelming due to the foreign country and language aspects, was a great evening with my family. I saw the national gallery of Germany, a really nice multi-level museum with some really good original exhibits, and the most complete geological and ecological museum I’ve ever seen. Imagine multiple large halls with twenty foot ceilings, filled to the brim with ceiling-high shelves packed with different animals, organisms, and rocks, one or more rooms for each. It was insane. I may never see such a complete museum again. Honestly I found it kind of funny how stereotypically German this museum is. Side note, my host dad was going through these museums at such a pace I could barely admire all of the art. I’m not sure if it was because my host siblings were with us or some other reason, but I kind of appreciated it in the art gallery where I honestly wouldn’t have spent much more time on it. This same night that we went to the museums I briefly got lost as we were leaving the last museum. What compounded the issue was that my phone was very low on battery, so I didn’t get the whatsapp call from Ove. I spent like 10 minutes walking around the front of the museum somehow never seeing my family. I finally got out my phone and was able to reunite, but It scared me a little bit even though I knew I could get home by myself without issue.

Public Transit Experiences: My first time on the U-bahn(subway) was also the night that we went to the museums. I found out that you need to forcefully get off if there are people in the way because the doors do not stay open long and they probably will not get out of the way in time. I saw an older lady experience this phenomenon first hand as we were travelling towards the first museum. The train was stopping and the lady didn’t realize for a second so she jolted up and made her way towards the door(she was in a seat directly next to the door but it didn’t save her). To her dismay there was a crowd in front of the door blocking her way, so she shouted “stop, get out of the way”, but they didn’t. The doors closed and she proceeded to scold the people who stood in her way blocking the door and mean mugging it the whole way to the next station.

First Day of School Chaos: Abrupt subject change. I’ve been doing pretty well at school on the whole, however looking back, my first day was a little bit rough. I started out by waking up at 6:30 and getting ready for school. I get up at 6:30 every day and this hasn’t been any more of an issue than you would think. I got to school at 8:00 and my little sister went straight to her class. I, on the other hand, had to wait for my orientation at 9:30, or so the lady at the front office told me, so I sat down on a bench in the courtyard and opened up the New York Times Games app on my phone. Around 30 minutes into this annoying wait, a teacher came back and told me that phones weren’t allowed on campus, so I just ended up sitting there with my thoughts for a while. Once the orientation came around, I cautiously went in and sat down as it was about to start. I sat through the whole thing not understanding a word until the time came for the schedules to be handed out. To my anxiety’s wildest dreams, there was no schedule for me. I had been given faulty information and I had to wait even longer for the correct orientation because the one I had just sat through was for a different grade. The next orientation finally came around and I was ready to get my schedule. A long twenty minutes where I understood nothing, knew nobody, and filed away multiple papers I didn’t understand and had no idea what to do with later, I finally got my schedule only to be thrust back outside, which I forgot to mention was just cold enough to be uncomfortable. When I looked down at my schedule, I was surprised to see what looked like a complex spreadsheet full of gibberish (I don’t mean German, I mean random 3 character combinations that made no logical sense to me). And of course in my extremely anxious state I just stood around for a while lacking the courage to ask someone for help (probably like 30 minutes). I finally worked up the courage and asked a guy who had sat near me during orientation what my schedule meant, and he explained in broken English that my class for the next two hours was free this week because the teacher was still on vacation. You would think this would be good news, but you must remember that I was completely by myself, no friends, no sense of direction, no recommendations for what to do. I ended up just walking away from the school until I found a place to sit down and got on my phone. I still had no idea when my next class was, and I wouldn’t hear the bell ring, so I decided to look up the bell schedule. Luckily I was able to find one, so I went back to the school in time for my next class only to find the courtyard empty and class in session. I went to the front office and the lady explained where my next class was and wrote down the correct times for the class periods (they call them hours here). The schedule I had found on the official school website was just completely wrong for some reason, so that was annoying. Additionally, the correct schedule had another 30 minutes until my class actually started, so back to my phone. I finally arrived at my first class at 1:50pm, almost 6 hours and zero fulfilling or happy moments after I arrived at school. Luckily this class was debate, which I thoroughly enjoy, and it was exclusively in English. I had struck gold, and the class was 2 hours long :). After that I had fitness, and we got let out super early after a quick class overview from the coach. I didn’t really think much of this first day until I was talking to a friend about it. His reaction to the story made me realize that It may have been a pretty bad day, though I hadn't consciously realized it.

School Registration & Course Selection: Let’s backtrack a little bit and talk about my first time at my school, Katholische Schule Salvator. I went there in the first week of my exchange by myself on the bus and by foot. It was a daunting journey because I had never taken a bus or navigated a city by myself before, but I made it in one piece after missing only a single bus stop because I didn’t realize I needed to push the stop button. I walked up to the school and found the right office after a quick text to my host dad to check. I then got my school ID and met the head teacher, Frau Diecklebrock (I have no idea how to spell her name and I’m like 45% sure on the pronunciation too). I had a brief conversation with her where I chose my classes. I needed at least ten subjects, at least two languages, one philosophical class (politics, religion, geography, or history), one science, one fitness, math, and maybe an extracurricular or two. Additionally, two of my classes would be my leistungskurs classes, meaning they were basically advanced classes and they occurred more often. I decided for some insane reason that I would take all three sciences along with politics, religion, and history even though I really didn’t need to. I now regret this decision, but I probably won’t as much in the long run. Who knows? So my final class selection was: Debate, Fitness, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, English advanced, math advanced, politics, history, religion, German, and art, 12 subjects total. This, as you can probably tell, is way more and a little harder than is necessary, especially for someone who knows almost zero functional German, but I didn’t really think about it and now they may be set in stone:(. Rant over.

Exploring Berlin & Food: The second time I went out with my host family, we went into central Berlin. We walked around and saw what I think is a capital building along with a museum and a nice park and pond. Afterward we went to a Döner Kebab shop and I got one that was very good. It’s basically a gyro and the meat is shaved off of one of those big rotating pieces of mystery meat. After that, we went home.

Social Life & Sports at School: My first week of school felt a little bit slow, but looking back it went by pretty quickly. It gets better every day as I make new friends and spend more time interacting with people. I made some good friends in art class and debate class who are part of the same friend group which is nice. I can usually find one of them to talk to between classes. I haven’t gotten in contact with anybody but one person over the phone yet, but I think it will happen over time. I don’t really want to force it, since I've already physically wedged myself into the group and I don’t want to ask any extra of them. The one person I have exchanged contact info with so far is a girl who I have zero classes with that I talked to on the way home on the first or second day of school (I forgot which day). I texted her a little bit the next day, and I say hello to her during school, but nothing else has really come of it. I think this is due to my slightly underdeveloped social skills, but I could be wrong. I switched into handball, a sport I have never even heard of before, because my friends are in it. I’ve had one handball class so far (the class is every Thursday at 3:30pm), and I enjoyed playing the sport despite my relative lack of coordination and split-second decision skills.

Kindling my love of Bouldering: After going to the museum with my host dad and siblings, I had the confidence to go to a climbing gym after school by train. I really enjoyed my first session there, and I now have a membership. I’ve already gone more times, but it’s a little bit hard to fit it into my schedule some days as public transportation makes the trip about 40-50 minutes from both my house and my school and climbing sessions+work outs at the gym can be 3+ hours for me. Nevertheless, I make it work, and this experience has only affirmed my goal to keep rock climbing as much as I can for the rest of my life.

More on language learning: I’ve been doing Pimsleur lessons when I can (30 minute sessions where you learn through verbal practice) as well as learning new words and grammatical concepts from my host sisters every day. My host sisters speak English with German grammar, so I end up learning about German grammar even when they’re speaking English. For example, my host sister kept saying “or” at the end of questions (ex: This food is good, or?) which led me to the discovery that Germans use the word “or” instead of “right” at the end of questions. So a sentence like “This food is good, right?” would translate to “Dieses Essen ist gut, oder?” (in English: "This food is good, or?").

I gave my host sisters some butter squishies and they really loved them. I didn’t know, but they actually smell like butter, which I found a little odd but cool. I see them playing with them almost daily.

I came into this exchange with very little experience living with younger kids, and I think it has been very enlightening to see first hand kids at different stages of life that I may not remember so clearly. I didn’t really know what to expect from an 8 and 12 year old in maturity, interests, etc. and it's very interesting to find out.