Melanie to Germany!: School (and some other stuff)

So. After settling in and having my first two weeks of school, I’m pretty much almost used to life in Germany. Here is what my schedule is during a school day:

6:25 Wake up
7:00 Breakfast (I eat Toppas every morning, the German version of Mini Wheats)
7:25ish Leave for school. Chiara and I go with two of the neighbors. First, we walk a couple minutes down the street to catch the bus. The bus takes us to the train, which takes us to the train station. Then we walk to school from there.
8:00 Arrive at school and start class.
School ends sometime in the afternoon. It’s not the same everyday because some days we have fewer classes. Before I left for Germany, I was told that if the teacher doesn’t show up, you don’t have class. This is true but what I didn’t realize is that it happens like at least once a week. There’s a TV screen at school that shows what classes won’t have teachers the next day. We have to check it everyday. That’s how often it happens.

These are all of my classes: Religion, Chemistry, Geography, History, English, German, Math, Politics, Physics, Art, Gym, Biology, and Theater.
So basically what I do is follow Chiara around everywhere and copy down whatever she writes. The teachers and everyone talk so fast so I can’t really ever understand anything. When she has Spanish, I go to the cafeteria and bring my laptop to work on the AFS activity thing. Between each class (which are usually 90 minutes long), we have a Pause, where we go outside in the courtyard and have a break. Everyone has Pause Brot, which is a little sandwich that your mom makes for you in the morning. These breaks are 15 or 30 minutes long. On some days when we have fewer classes, we eat lunch at school. The food is real food on real plates with real silverware. The food is delicious because it comes from a restaurant at the city hall. No microwaved pizza dippers here.

A lot of other things have happened. Learned how to play Rummy, went to Herbstfest (a fall fest), had my first German beer, and watched a bunch of American movies in German.