I Have Two Weeks of Vacation in Three Days

One thing that I'm quite sure I like more about the German school system than the American school system is the abundance of vacation. We have two weeks starting on Thursday afternoon, three weeks for Christmas and other winter-oriented celebrations, another two weeks sometime in the spring, and I'm pretty sure that's not all. I'm definitely going to need it though, seeing as I am moving up to the twelfth grade after this vacation. Although the lessons here are somewhat easier than what I experienced at CHS, my schedule is going to be absurd. On Mondays I'll be in school for eleven 45 minute periods. That number looks really bad, but upon closer inspection I realized it wouldn't be as dreadful as I thought. I have two free periods right in the middle, and the last three periods are gym, so it's really only six academic periods. Six is about what I have the rest of the week as well, except for Fridays. I only have two classes (four periods), and they are music and English. I get to wake up late, and the convenient subjects of my lessons lead me to believe that I won't really have to wake up at all. That is going to be rather nice. Oh, and Frau Ernst: Ich habe eine Deutsch Arbeit geschrieben und 9 Punkte gekriegt! Das war besser als die Hälfte der Klasse! Wir müssten einen Text lesen und interpretieren, und danach ein Absatz darüber schreiben. Die Lehrerin hat mir keine Bonuspunkte gegeben, 9 Punkte hab ich unabhängig verdient!!! Vielen Dank, für alles, dass Sie für mich gemacht haben.

Soccer is going extremely well. I just spent too much money on new cleats, but they are high-end and look like they'll last a good long while. Nomis is my new favorite brand. They are comfy, light, durable, and have amazing touch. You almost never find shoes like that. I played my first and second games on Thursday and Sunday, and on Sunday I played the entire game and earned an assist in our 2-0 win. I also got two warm-up jackets, a wind pant, and a t-shirt completely free, and there's a training jersey on its way. I haven't bought any clothes yet, but at the rate at which I am acquiring complementary attire I'm concerned that it's not all going to fit in my luggage on the way back. It's a harsh world, I tell you...

I've reached the point in my social situation where I can go to an event and already know people besides Consty's close friends. People come up to me and say, "Hi, we met last weekend! You're the nutjob American, right?" I'm really psyched about that, and I can't wait to meet kids my own age on my own once I move up a grade.

I've broken a few things since I have been here, but my family hasn't threatend to throw me out or withhold food yet, so I'm fairly positive it's okay. The worst was when I was helping Marie with English homework and trying to clarify the word "chuck." I feel like an idiot just thinking about this. She had one of those plastic, pincer hair clasp thingies that open and close and have really long teeth and look like a monster's mouth. She also has a really soft, cushy blanket in her room, where I was attempting to be useful and failing miserably. To illustrate the puzzling vocabulary I hefted her hair piece and "chucked" it in what I thought was the general direction of her comforter. Now Marie's room, like most rooms, has these things called walls. They are not soft and forgiving like a blanket. Quite to the contrary, they are as harsh and unsympathetic as the world we live in. That poor, brittle piece of plastic didn't stand a chance against such a force as unwavering physics. It shattered into small, defeated fragments, and I promptly left the room, without a word, to fetch some money for my traumatized sister and a replacement set of monster teeth. It wasn't too long afterwards that Constantin taught me the German word for klutzy. Ich bin tollpatschig.

I miss NH weather a lot. The past few days here have been nice, but in general it's overcast, cold and windy. A kid in my class has an iPhone, and sometimes he checks the weather in Concord. It's always something painfully pleasant, like 73 at 3:00 in the morning.

My camera memory card is screwed up, so I haven't been taking many pictures, but I plan on getting that worked out ASAP. Every single electronic appliance I brought with me is now unusable. Not that I'm bitter. Not that electronics are expensive.

A few things that are different about school here. The grades are made up almost completely of how well students do on tests that they have twice per semester, and on a participation (verbal) grade. That's it. Student's think Wikipedia is a legitimate site to reference, and teachers accept it as long as it sounds legit. That's basically all that is important. Also, everyone has anally neat class notes are. Even the guys color code their diagrams of cell organelles, and rather than writing in pencil and making use of an eraser, they write in pen and cover their mistakes with white-out. For notes, that no one but themselves is ever going to look at. My notes are really messy, and I get some pretty funny looks from some of my classmates.

Well, that's about it. As you can probably see I put some pictures up on this page- a couple to the right and a couple way down at the bottom. Take a peak.

I hope everyone is doing well. I'm thinking of you and missing you, but I've got to stick this through. Not that it's much of a chore ;) Write me letters or emails or something to let me know you're alive!

Benehmt euch,
Tommy Symmes

Celebrity Status, Soccer, Skip-bo and Schaum... Does it Get Any Better?

I am having an absolute blast. Let me start off with a disclaimer: I am not responsible for any tears shed in jealousy of my situation. Just kidding. But not really... ;)

I’m now playing soccer for my local club, but it’s different than what I’ve done before. This is legit competition. You have three subs per game, just like in the pros, and there are players in the league who get paid a little each month to play for a certain club. I’m not registered with the team yet, but I’ve been practicing with them and the paperwork is on the way.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Schaum (Foam) Party. It was a club atmosphere in this huge tent with loud music and lights and everything, but there was something especially extraordinary about this party. There was a huge area where a machine periodically spat out foam in which many crazy people were dancing crazily. Naturally, I felt the need to join in and was absolutely drenched after about thirty seconds. Sometimes the foam would rise over seven feet high, and Const and I didn’t come out for about three and a half hours. Now his cell phone is broken. Riley, he knows how you felt.

Oh, and a quick note to the fam: they have skip-bo here in Germany! I was pretty surprised when my host mom whipped out an old deck, and she was surprised that I knew what it was. We play every once in a while, and it reminds me of Chappy.

On to details about school. My classes are Music, Politics and Economics, Philosophy (my favorite), Ethics, Math, French, English, German, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. I don’t speak French, and the students have been taking it for about five years… Hmmm. I’ve taken tests in English and German, and I think I did pretty well in both of them. English is really fun. I hear all of these funny mistakes, but nobody is there to laugh along with me, so in that sense, it’s a little lonely. It’s okay though, because I’m usually the only one laughing, even when I’m with Americans. My favorite quote so far: “I’d like to put my finger in another subject.”

I feel really lucky to be in a situation where I can be so active. A couple weekends ago I played in a beach volleyball tournament with Heiko and Const (host dad and bro) in the middle of a city. There was definitely no beach anywhere, just a huge pit of sand in front of a train station in the middle of a city. That was a blast. I also go inline skating every once in a while, which is pretty good training for nordic. Once a week I go to volleyball with Heiko because they play soccer for the first 15 minutes or so to warm up. I go home after that, though. Then three days a week I have soccer practice, which is the jam. It’s really high level, but I’m keeping up fairly well. The team is nice, and it’s cool to be able to play with such talented athletes. Lastly, I played badminton this week, and that was really fun. My arm is exhausted, because we played for more than two hours, and it was pretty intense.

I am also now in possession of a cello. I’m really excited, because I get home from school at 1:30 each day, and I have very little to do until the evening. Const and I sit around and watch Youtube, which is really fun, but we’re running out of videos. We’ve watched “Can I Have Your Number” from MadTV about 80 times, and if you haven’t seen it, watch it right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTFZyl7hfBw

I hope everyone is well. The weather here is not quite as nice as it is in NH in the fall, and I really miss that. I hope you are all enjoying it for me!

Tommy Symmes