2nd Day of Family Stay: Beau

Germany has been more than fantastic, it has been unbelievable. The trip has been beyond mesmerizing and I am glad that we still have more time. The group has been in the tourist spotlight for the past few days, but now that all of the students are in a home, with a family they've never met, and are speaking German, it truly captures the true essence of why we decided to venture out into a foreign land.
My host brother, Marcel, is a very kind person. Despite me being 17 and him being 15, we get along very well. We both are fantaics of soccer, play PS3, and both enjoy having each other as company. After getting a good night's rest, Marcel and I were off to School to go to class. The schools here are very different. Unlike back home, the schools here are kind of wild. Everyone seems extremely independent. Our first class of the day was Technology/Architecture, where the students were building model-sized houses out of stirofoam. Despite the chaos in the room, the students were quite productive, accomplishing much in the hour and a half they were there. .After that class, we had a short break where the students could exit the building to eat and talk. We sprung right back into action after the break and traveled to math class. I decided to take notes, and use them as a personal keepsake as my time in a German school. Definitely a good idea. We stayed in the same room (their teachers travel from room to room) and awaited the arrival of their English teacher. I enjoyed this class for obvious reasons, but also for the effort the students were putting into learning a foreign language. It was refreshing to see a desire to learn about something that is undeniably a large part of our culture and way of life. Next, the students all left the building to grab something to eat at the local restaturant or  supermarket. This was peculiar to me because as a student, I can never leave my school. I wish I could sometimes; the lunches at our school are blehh. His final class of the day was physics. This should have been exciting, but the room was extremely uncomfortable. Few German classrooms have air conditioning, and on a warm summer day, everyone was ready to leave school and go get an ice cream cone. We didn't want an ice cream cone though, we wanted to play some soccer. We walked into the gym, set up the goals, and got the game underway with a few other guys. After some intense play, we stopped and spoke with the coach. With me playing soccer at my school, I was honored to hear him tell me that I bring soccer pride in America by the way I play. After a long day, Marcel and I headed back to his house to clean up, eat, and head to the local video game rental store to rent Fifa 13. We had and are still having a good night!
Overall, Germany is a pretty great place. The z is in the place of the y on the keyboard (which causes an awful lot of backspaces...), the semis are flat fronted, one doesn't see money on the ground like they would in America, and most of all, they are humans just like us. Language may be a barrier, but cooperation and effort knocks that barrier right out of the way.