Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Schnee!

3 Things I learned today:
-It is verboten (forbidden) to throw snowballs at my gymnasium.
-Kids don't really care about this rule.
-German kids have really good snowball aim.

As you probably gathered, we had our first snow! Of course, it was preceded and followed by freezing rain, so it didn't stay on the ground super-long, but it was enough to make a very small snowman and enjoy the snow in our hair and eyelashes! Our field trip this morning was to some sort of energy processing plant- I doubt I would have understood anything said even if it were in English. So I sort of wandered around daydreaming while he blathered on about the huge generator. Then we went to school, but apparently the trip was supposed to take longer, because our teachers for Biologie and Chemie weren't even there. So we just sat in the cafeteria room and talked and listened to music and ate food until Geschichte (history), which passed quickly. One class today, wahoo! Except then I had to take the bus home because my bike was at the S-Bahn station where I'd met my classmates this morning to get to the plant. I dropped my bag off at home and changed into hiking boots to brave the slush, and proceeded to miss my bus twice. The first time I was at the end of the driveway, just across the tiny road from the bus at the stop, but it was already pulling away. The second time, twenty minutes later, I was waiting for the bus and it was 7 minutes late, which is rare, so I figured it had come early and decided to just walk down to the S-Bahn. About a minute later, the bus passed me walking. I stuck my tongue out at it. Stupid bus. I got some walking in anyway, even if I did get splashed twice by cars driving through puddles. I biked back through the slush and then changed into dry pants and curled up on the couch with my book for Ethik (in English!!)- Give a Boy a Gun. It was actually quite good- a collection of comments from people involved in some way with two boys who attempted a mass shooting. It was interesting to see all the different perspectives, and read the boys' history before I read anything about what actually happened. It's the sort of book that sort of twists your heart- I grew to feel sorry for the boys, but what they did was so awful that it makes me feel guilty for pitying them. It's an interesting sensation. In any case, it made me feel so incredibly lucky to have such an amazing school- both here and in America, but I was thinking mostly about America because all the school shootings referenced in the book were in America. I can't imagine anything even close to this happening at my school. Sure, we've got cliques, and a popular crowd and a football team, but I don't think anyone really and truly hates another group of people. I also don't think bullying is much of a problem in my school- maybe it's just because I haven't experienced it, but I think it was more of a problem in middle school. Once we get to be in high school I think people realize they could be doing better things- people are focused more on their grades because they count, and people are more worried about upkeeping their social profile, and in our community I believe that beating up on people would completely ruin someone. I don't think it's considered funny or cool at my school like it was in the school in the book. Of course, this book was published in 2000, also, so maybe it's just because it's been almost a decade.
Well, that was a lot of mishmash for one day, so gute nacht for now!

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