Hand auf den Tisch

The weekend before fall break, I traveled to the island Sylt with my host family. We left immediately after school in the car. We drove to a train that would take us to the island. Basically I traveled to Sylt in a car, on a train, across the sea. Is it just me or does someone else find that extremely cool?

Their house on Sylt was beautiful. Technically it belongs to Lorenz's parents, so no pictures allowed, sorry! It was a nice small cottage, with room for seven people to sleep comfortably. It had a thatched roof and it was made of red brick. It was very similar to their house on Führ. When we first arrived the house had that unused smell to it, but that quickly changed once we got settled. 

Each night we went out to eat. The restaurants were amazing and I loved both meals. I would have to say the first dinner was most interesting though. I had the whole kitchen discussing different translations of german words. Apparently a waiter had been listening to the mini German lesson Lorenz gave me, and then ten minutes later came back with the kitchen's opinion. It was really cool to see them so invested in my language learning haha. 

Each night we stayed up late playing Rage and Phase 10 Master. They are card games that I will definitely be bringing home with me. 

I know that German table manners and American table manners are different, but it really hit me at breakfast one morning when Antje said to Greta, "Hand auf den Tisch!" This means "Hand on the table," which for me is backwards. I've gotten into the habit of sitting on my left hand when I'm not using it so that I don't accidentally rest it on the table, or worse my elbow. Now, I'm having to erase those habits and instead leave my hand on the table. Elbows on the table? Totally fine. It's really bad manners to sit with your other hand beneath the table. Although German manners seem to be opposite of what I have grown up with, I am trying my best to change my ways, if only for a year. 

I went on a two hour walk with Lorenz and Antje to the beach. The beach seems to go on for forever. It was so beautiful. I took lots of pictures. 

Sylt was really beautiful. More than it is beautiful, however, it is expensive. We went shopping for a winter coat for Yoreme and I thought maybe I could find a couple of warmer shirts. Well I found some the only problem was the price that seemed to never drop below 90,00 Euros. Needless to say, I didn't buy anything. 

It reminded me of the movie Robots.

Perfect place for wedding pictures... if only it wasn't sooo windy.

This picture was in the house and I thought it was funny.

Minnesota dontcha know

I know this is long overdue, but now that I'm in Fuerteventura, I finally have some down time to write. So expect a bunch of reading. Hopefully I'll be able to upload soon, but the wifi here is really bad… 

Praktikum is a two week job practice for grade 12. The rest of the school continues to go to classes only grade 12 leaves. Everyone gets to choose where they want to work. Because of the language barrier, it wouldn't have been beneficial for me to work in a normal German business. Instead I went to Osteeschule with Greta. There I helped one of the English teachers, Katie Krieger. Coincidentally, she is also from Minnesota. It was really cool to be able to see and talk with her. Osteeschule is more of a Montessori school type set-up. When the kids are younger they decide what they want to learn. There are of course requirements, but one project can cover multiple subjects. As the students grow older, there is less freedom because they need to prepare for the National tests. It was really cool to see the different style of learning. 

I really feel like i helped some kids improve their English. Mostly I helped with translations and grammar. I even corrected the packet a couple of times.

Contractions:

The birds are not flying. They are sitting. 

The birds'rnt flying. They are sitting. 

Apparently their old English teacher made the packets. She was from England. I wasn't aware, however, that people from England used these contractions…

Katie left a couple days before praktikum ended to fly back to Minnesota for her brother's wedding. On Thursday, I was with Puri, the Spanish teacher. She was really fun. I didn't help much with spanish because it was kind of a game day. We played bingo and I read the numbers in spanish to the kids. Puri's last class of the day was a hip-hop dance class. It turned out to be less dancing more fooling around, but it was really fun. 

There isn't too much else to say besides I loved the kids. Apparently they really liked me too, because they were all sad to see me go on my last day.