Ten

This is a modified version of the text that appears on GAPP 2008.

Today was Friday, the thirteenth of June. Our “American Evening” of the night before lasted till 11:00, and most of us got home around 11:30, so I think everyone had a hard time getting up. Going to school was even harder. We had “unterricht” with Frau Stevens and Herr Anderson first hour. We went over what happened at American Evening (all good, the whole performance was great) while struggling to stay awake.

Afterwards, I went to a history class with my partner. They were giving presentations about articles they had read about World War II. There was a particularly interesting one about Hitler’s Commissar Order. The next hour, some of our partners were taking a test, so we went out in a little commons area and tried to sleep. That worked well, but the fourth hour we had to go to a special German lesson taught by Frau Aßmann. We read a story aptly named “Nordpol ist Mordpol”, or, auf Englisch, Northpole is Murderpole. We had to find the mistake in the story. The problem here was that there were penguins and polar bears in the same region. Not cool. I found this to be very childish. It just wasn't interesting. I also like how Frau Aßmann made us all spit out our gum and stop eating or drinking because it was what "Germans" do. Except they chew gum, eat, and drink in class just like we do in America.

Afterwards, I had philosophy class. If staying awake for something I understood was hard, it was even harder for what I didn’t understand. In that class, the Germans are working on how language is learned. It could be interesting, but I think most people would have trouble getting everything if the lesson was in English. Our final class was English. Max had translated a story, but left out the dialog, and he handed out parts to the class. We told the story while acting it out. It was quite fun. Nick K was the princesses who was waylaid by a brigand and rescued by the prince of a neighboring kingdom.

After school, I went with Max to a theater where he was playing in the band for a dance recital. Apparently we were there late, so we were yelled at by the dance mom type director. She continued to yell over her wireless mic (which was also feeding back every time she talked into it-the tech's solution was to take the highs all the way down to -12) for the entire time I was there. The dance and music were great, and it was really fun to be in a theater. I, however, don't think they were utilizing their technical resources in a way that made sense. Thier entire band and PA was at the back of the theater facing towards the stage. They were also playing at rock concert volumes. It was just "interesting" to see the way other people do things.

I was there for about five hours, so I slept a bit and we ended up getting home around nine thirty and then going to bed (Max’s mom made us). Our trip to Berlin left early Saturday morning, so we needed to get to sleep a bit early.