Hello everybody,
After a long time of not writing any further articles for my blog, I finally found enough time (and motivation) to bring you up-to-date about my exchange year in England. Well, you have PROBABLY noticed that I decided to write this article in English (or at least I try to do so) and I am honestly not quite sure if this is a good idea because my language skills are still ... worthy of improvement. However, I have noticed that it is always hard to go back to English as soon as I start writing or speaking in German. That’s why I wanted to reduce the part that German still plays in my everyday life to a minimum ... Maybe I should apologize for this decision – on the one hand to my friends and family from Germany who probably do not fancy reading English texts and to everyone from England who gets confused by my spelling and grammar mistakes. However, there is a part deep inside of my chaotic brain that DOES NOT CARE ABOUT THIS AT ALL. So if I feel happy with writing my articles in English, I will probably keep this going. If not ... well, then I will start to show off with my non-existing French skills. ;)
The last four weeks have been very busy for me and when I woke up this morning, I realized that it’s been a month since I arrived at my host family’s home. Just imagine, one of ten months of my exchange year is already gone and sometimes the thought of me being ...
… instead of ...
... still seems to be quite unreal.
Nevertheless, I think I should finally stop babbling and tell you about this really interesting September instead.
(Sometimes I can watch beautiful sunsets from my window.)
The day after I arrived at my host family (2nd of September), Laura (my host mother), Rosie (my host sister) and I went to my new school, which is the Simon Langton Grammar Girls’ School in Canterbury. Actually, we just wanted to do some organizational stuff, which sounded to be quite relaxing until the head of the Sixth Form told me that I was supposed to do assignments during summer holidays. I have actually known that I have to do summer assignments for school, but when I got the placement information for my exchange year in June, I was told that my school would get in contact with me as soon as there is anything I need to know. But when I found myself wondering why I was still waiting for these assignments although it was July/August, I emailed the local coordinator of my English exchange organization and asked her if she could get in contact with my school as I was told not to do this. However, my school did not reply to her inquiry, so we both thought that my teachers have been happy with my application and that I do not have to do any assignments therefore. Well, we thought wrong ... That’s why I was A LITTLE TINY BIT surprised and I already imagined myself sitting at the desk in my room with the clock displaying a time after midnight. I should be right because apart from the summer assignments I also had to do normal everyday homework. That’d why I did not sleep very much during my first two or three weeks of school ... my record was going to bed at about 1.30 am and getting up at 5 am. I can promise you, the thought of putting your head on your Maths book and falling asleep has never been so tempting.
But despite this unintentionally busy start, I like my new school. I was especially surprised by the wide range of subjects that you can study and it was hard to decide on four subjects if there are many fancy things like “Design Engineering” and “Drama Studies”, but in the end I went for Maths, Biology, Sociology and Psychology. In addition, I currently try out the Debate and Psychology School Society.
But let’s get back to my first official school day (3rd of September), which was made up of further enrolment papers, nervousness, excitement and a pinch of fear mixed with anticipation. When I arrived at school and waited at the main entrance (for a meteorite to strike me), I luckily got to know the exchange students Nora from Italy and Lena from Germany. At this moment it was very good to talk to somebody who kind of knew how I felt (by the way, there are altogether four international students from Germany at my school and Nora’s German skills turned out to be better than her Italian language skills, but of course we talk to each other in English). After a while we went into the main hall where the head teacher and the head of the Sixth Form held a motivation speech (that actually made me feel afraid of this school year and fairly unmotivated) and after this we had a lesson with our form teacher. There Nora and I got to know the English student Emily who helped us to get to different school offices without getting lost. In addition, she introduced us to some other English students and in the end they took Nora and me to several shops in Canterbury to buy school stationary. This made me feel very nervous again, but after all it was much fun, so looking back, my first school day was actually very good.
The next day, I had normal lessons which included one lesson of Biology and many Private Study lessons. When you attend the Sixth Form in England, you have one private study lesson for each lesson you are taught by a teacher and I definitely need my Private Study lessons - otherwise I would not know how to manage my homework. The Biology lesson was actually not that bad because I understood more of what the teacher was saying than I expected, which helped me to reduce my nervousness. By the way, you should not be afraid of saying something wrong because nobody minds your accent and the spelling/grammar mistakes that occur when you are no native speaker. Quite a lot of people have actually told me that they admire the courage of exchange students to go to a foreign country and speak a foreign language all day long.
By now, I finally handed in all of my summer assignments and therefore I hope that my school life will be a little bit less stressful in future. But of course there is also a life apart from school and this was generally made up of things like “How can I make new friends without being too awkward?” and “Can somebody please give me step-by-step introductions for how I can make my host family like me?” (does this last phrase make any grammatical sense at all???). Okay, the last question might sound a bit too dramatic because my host family made it easy for me to integrate into their family life. For example, Laura and I went for a walk with the dogs several times and if there was any opportunity for me to join them in visiting friends or similar things, they asked me if I would like to come with them (if any person of my host family reads this right now, I just want you to know that this really helped me to feel less out of place). One big event was the 18th birthday of Rosie and when we celebrated her birthday and on the same day the birthdays of Laura’s niece and brother (if I remember correctly) I got to know many other members of their big family.
(This is the place where Laura and I once went for a walk with the dogs.)
So all in all, I gradually start to feel comfortable in England and I hope that I do not mess this up. Perhaps I am able to publish another article before the end of October and to be honest I have actually already started it (yes, I am really proud of myself therefore). ;)
That’s it for now. I would like to thank you for reading this article and wish you a lovely day.
See you soon,
Sandra :)