Our Last Full Week in Germany

Our Last Full Week in Germany!

Well this week is our last full week in Germany, what an amazing experience we have had. I have learnt so much about the culture and the language. I am able to understand and speak with people it’s such an amazing feeling being able to understand a language other than English. I couldn’t have asked for a better host family they have been amazing and I have seen so much and learnt a lot.

 Frankfurt Main Tower view

 Rosenheim Christkindl Markt

 A massive christmas shop in Munich (sorry I forgot what it was called)

Christmas is close and Germany is getting ready.  There are lights that fill the streets with color and when you drive through the towns it is so magical. I just wish there was snow as that would make it even more beautiful.

On Friday I went to the primary school in Rott Am Inn and visited my host brother's classes. I gave the class a presentation about Bright and Australia, we also made lamingtons to take to the kids. It was very different to our primary schools. 

Martina took me to a Christmas market in the forest, it was amazing.  The stalls were all made of wood and they had Christmas lights all over them and they just looked so beautiful.

Frankfurt:

Over the weekend Andrea and I travelled to Frankfurt with Andrea’s Judo class because they had a tournament on the Sunday. We got up bright and early Saturday morning, hopped in the bus and then travelled about 6 hours to Frankfurt, I have to admit the Autobahn is great. We stayed in a town about 10km away from Frankfurt called “Maintal.” On Saturday afternoon after arriving we took the train to Frankfurt where we looked around and shopped. We went to the tallest tower in Frankfurt, the “Main Tower”. It is also the first weekend of the Christkindl Markt, and Frankfurt was packed. There were so many people at the Christmas Market so it was quite difficult to look around, especially as the market was so big. Frankfurt is such a beautiful city and being there at Christmas makes it very special as they have the most amazing fairy light display.

Germany has been the most amazing experience. I am so grateful that our school can offer this program Thank you so much for the best time of my life.

Germany 29.11.2016

Matilda Manning

An Exciting weekend

With just over 2 weeks to go it feels like we have only just arrived. The time has flown past so quickly, I have had heaps of fun and learnt so much about the different culture, language and the way of life. I am not finished yet but so far it has been a wonderful learning experience that I have really enjoyed.

Over the weekend Tilly and I went with parts of our families to an ice hockey game in Rosenheim. It was really cool to watch and although they said it was not very big there were a lot of people there cheering for their teams. One of the teams that played was Rosenheim and there was a lot of support for the home team.

At the start of the game the home team had their mascot as a big blow up arch that they all skated through. It was like before the start of a concert where a celebrity comes out. There was smoke, the lights all turned off with a spotlight on the entrance then they were each called out respectively.

It was a little bit sad, in the last 3^rd the opposing team scored 3 goals to Rosenheim’s 0 and the home crowded wasn’t happy with the result. It was a bit funny to go to the game and see a whole different crowd of people. They were a bit more rowdy than the people I have seen.

One of the things I am loving about Germany is the school times. School starts at 7:55am and finishes at 12:50pm. Thing only thing that I don’t like so much is that we have to travel an hour to school every morning meaning waking up at 6. But what makes it all worth it is that we finish at 12:50. In Australia we eat lunch at 12:45 and then have all afternoon at school. Here they get up a little earlier, have not as long a break at school but they get to go home for lunch and do whatever in the afternoon. They still do about the same amount of school they just have time for other things.

Today after school, Andrea, Till, Niklas and I caught the train to Andrea’s house where we ate lunch and then went to Munich for the afternoon. We went to Therme Erding which is a big centre with lots of pools and water slides. It had lots of inside and outside pools and water slides, “rivers”, wave pools and lots of relaxation (google it). We spent 5 and a half hours there before heading home.

  We went on a walk through a forest with a painting of Marilyn Munroe 

 The mascot of Rosenheim Starbulls

The start of the game

Teagan

German Exchange 2016

German Exchange 2016

Hi everyone, hope you're all well back in Australia. I am having an amazing time in Germany. I’m sorry we haven’t written a blog in a while but Teagan and I haven’t been very well and then we had our holidays so we had limited internet. But I will tell you everything that I have been up to over the past few weeks.

Language Experience:

After the short-termers left it was a bit weird to be honest, I got to school the next day and it felt very empty because we were used to seeing our Australian school friends in the morning and it was different not seeing them and speaking English. As a consequence, my German has gotten so much better! I’m able to understand some conversations now and I am sometimes even able to talk back. It’s amazing how you can be in a country for so long and just adjust to the different language. I think we have been here now for about one and a half months and it's incredible how much my German has improved as well as Teagan’s. It was very difficult at the beginning and it was hard to understand what they were saying because sometimes they speak High German and sometimes they speak Bavarian which is different to what we learn at school. I didn’t really know how to join into conversations and it was challenging and to have a conversation with somebody I didn't know very well. However, I would really encourage anyone that wants to study German to come over to Germany and immerse themselves in the language for three months. It has been the best experience of my life and I still have about 5 or 6 weeks to go.

School Holidays:

We have also just recently had a one week school holiday and my amazing host family took me to ... Italy!  We travelled with the caravan down to Rome, we stopped in Venice to stay two nights and it was the most amazing weather, it’s such a beautiful city or town I don’t really know. We travelled on a ferry that took us from the caravan park that we were staying at to where the main part of Venice is on the water. I saw gondolas and the little tiny water canals that have tiny bridges over them. We then headed down to stay a night in Siena and we looked around the town.  It just also happened to be Halloween, so we saw lots of little kids all dressed up in their pirate and fairy costumes.  It was very cute. They were trick or treating around Siena and there were lots of people in the town as well. Soon we arrived in Rome. Andrea and I were a little bit tired so we didn’t do much on our first night. The next day we met with some of Martina and Robert's (my host parents) friends who flew down from Munich to show us around Rome.  The first place we visited was the Colosseum. It was amazing.  We also visited the Vatican and went to the top of the dome where I could see all of Rome.  It was so beautiful, we were lucky to have such good weather. There are lots of amazing churches in Italy and we went to four in one day because of the Holy Doors legend.  They say that if you go to these four doors in these four churches including the Vatican, then God would forgive you for everything bad that you have done.

On our last day before we travelled back to Rosenheim we stayed the night in a place that is the sister city of Rosenheim. While my host family and I were having dinner at this restaurant a lady comes up behind Andrea and asks her if she is from Bad Aibling and is this your exchange student and that family turned out to be Clyde English’s host family from last year - Alina and her family!! We sat and we talked for about another hour and a half.  It was very exciting (Clyde if you’re reading this Alina says “Hi".) Hope everyone is all well back at home and see everyone soon.

                                      - Venice

 - Rome Trevi Fountain

 Colosseum

 Siena Cathedral

 Colosseum

 The Vatican is was absolutely amazing!!!!!

Germany 2016

Matilda Manning 

2 Aussies in Germany

Well living in Germany is very different after your safety net leaves! The first 4 weeks were great with all the 'short-termers' here. At school you could always find someone you knew and you had lots of people to talk to but once that was gone and just Tilly and I are here things change. You have to talk to people! It also seems that more people talk to you once you’re not in a group.

After one week with no safety net we had holidays! It was nice to have a bit of time with my host family and see a bit more of Germany. For our holidays we spent the first few days at home then went to Hamburg. It was a really long drive. Over 8 hours and almost 900kms in a car is hard!

Hamburg was beautiful. We saw the Port and the masses of ships and shipping containers, we went for a walk through Hamburg and saw a few churches, shops and the Miniature World.

One of my favourite part of going to Hamburg was our trip to the North Sea. We drove up to the North Sea on Friday and spent the day there. It was really cold but really fun. Walking out to the beach I was thinking it was really cold (about 3 degrees) only to get out into the beach and find people kite surfing in the water!

After getting back from Hamburg we spent a day at home. It was nice to relax. Sitting in my room doing some homework (hard to believe) I looked out the window to see it SNOWING!!!! I love snow. There wasn’t enough to stay here but the next day we went for a drive and spent some time playing in the snow. It was lots of fun and I can’t wait until the snow settles here.

Some pictures from Hamburg. The first is of the Port the first night we got there and the second is in Hamburg, photo credit Ingo!!

A photo from when we went to the North Sea -it was really cold!!

In the snow!