Fun Facts

     I know it's been awhile since I've written. As I think I've said before, the internet is faulty, and it's been down all week. We only just got it back last night, and I was too tired to write anything. Well, here I am at the end of my second week of school. It's been long, exhausting, frustrating, but full of learning and fun as well. However I am not going to commence bemoaning about my troubles or singing praises about my new home. Nope, I'm just going to go through some fun facts about the little, and big, things that are different here than Emerson, and even in the United States and Canada. (I know the Canada because the other girl exchange student is from there). Anyways, here they are.
     First of all, I have a little bone to pick with Mr. Child. Why did he not warn me that there is an H in European music? Or really anyone who knew of that fact. It is very strange. The way it works is that their H is in place of our B, and their B is our B flat. So this is the way a scale goes: C D E F G A B H C. Does that make sense to you? It really doesn't to me. Also, they don't use Do Re Mi, but instead Prim, Sekund, Terz. I suppose here theirs makes a little more sense, but it still confuses me.
     Fact number two is that they don't really have main lesson books. Okay, sure in Chemistry they had books that they wrote down all their experiments in, but when they had to hand them in at the end, there was no stressing, no coloring, no overall making them beautiful, and they weren't even hand bound! Well, I guess the hand bound part isn't such a big deal, but really, main lesson books aren't even mentioned. Sophie didn't at first know what I was talking about when I said we sometimes had to bind our own books.
     Next on my list is the fact that for the first week of school, cell phones (most of which were iPhones) were used blatantly and normally, with all the teachers okay with it. Someone even looked something up on his phone and showed it to a teacher, in the middle of class. I don't really understand it. Now, it's gotten a bit stricter, but still.
     Another about the school is that they have a kitchen where the high school students can go get a hot meal. It's 4.30 euros a meal, and it's very good. You can do that, bring your own lunch, or you can walk the few blocks to the local supermarket and purchase your meals there. No permission slips! And you can eat in class whenever you want. Well, actually the math teacher doesn't let you, but all the others do.
      I'll end with one more little thing that I find entertaining. Most of the swearing is done in English. There are a few German ones, but the most that I hear are in English. They'll also just break out into random song in English, or in German. But, as a comforting note, the boys here are just as crazy as though back home, and as Sophie, Patricia and I have concluded, boys are crazy, no matter how big or small, young or old, they are "verruckt."