Friday at Herrenchiemsee

Today our group visited a beautiful castle in which we took various moods of transportation to get to.  We started out our day by arriving at the train station at 8:00 and traveling to a neighboring city.  We then caught the next train that led us into land outside of our recently known land.  From there we travel farther by a small train to a boat dock that would take us to an island where the castle is located. Once we stepped foot on the island we gathered for snacks and then hiked our way up to castle doors. The castle was built by King Ludwig II who ruined the Bavarian economy by spending millions on his extravagant castles. His most famous of three castles inspired Walt Disney's castle at Disney World! We took a tour of many rooms such as the kings bedroom, dressing room, ball room, office and entry room. We  gathered more knowledge about the people and events that occurred during the time of the castle usage.  After we finished our tour, most of us rode back down towards the boat dock by horse carriage. As we waved goodbye to this important piece of history we sailed away back into the surrounding lake. We arrived at our starting location and felt tired from a day of long travels.

Meet Marla

My name is Marla mann and I am currently attending John F Kennedy memorial high school. This fall I will be a sophomore. A few things I am looking forward to while in Germany are getting to know my host family better, expanding my knowledge about German culture and making the world not feel so big.

Nurnberg

Our trip to Nürnburg ( with the Costa Ricans ) 

The first thing I want to put out there was that I was quiet bored on the train ride. I really don't know why but I was just tired and was at the point were I just didn't want to hear Spanish. No bueno (DRAT!!!!). But I was very glad that the weather was on our side. As we adventured into the market square we met our tour guide and we learned about the Church of our lady, How eyeliner came to be ( it was a surgeons pen), and then there was this artist who I completely forgot but he has something to do with a hare. His name was Albrecht Bürer or something like that. But I general the trip was wonderful. The two churches, or three if you want to be specific.  And the hill was crazy massive. But we are all safe and sound. Even all of the Costa Ricans :)

Casey's School Day at Franz Marc

Today I went to school with Jannik. For second period I went to A 101 to meet up with the other USA exchange students. We meet the principle and some teachers. We talked about what we did over the last couple of days and talked about our next trips. After we talked we had the 5th grade English teacher show us around the school and gave us a map just In case we got lost. We had a 15 miniute brake after that and then we went to our last class, art. In art they where making national monuments out of different materials. The best one was a NASA rocket. After art we went home and took Collin with us. Collins host was on a field trip to Munich and was not home at the time so we went to the BMW museum. 

Presentation Day 1

Well, we all survived our presentations. More surprisingly I survived the day being that my host brother was over in Munich for the day. I started my morning as usual as I took the bus to school listening to music. The transportation system is very interesting over here, I can't really compare and contrast due to the fact that I hardly take the bus or the s link. But back to school, for first period was all gathered like usual and talked about our weekend. Same old same old. Then we presented our presentation, simple enough. Going to classes was hard because my host was not here so I decided to tag along with one of my German friends to class, or atleast what they were doing ha ha ha. But being the end of the day, I took the  train home, I don't remember how to spell it in German. And due to my great skill I got on the right train. But little did I know, I was going in the wrong direction -_- . Luckily it was only one stop and the train I wanted was the first train that came into the stop. With that enigma over, I walked home to find that we were going lederhosen shopping, I was pumped. So I bought a pair of lederhosen and decided that I am now ready for culture week. Be ready Kennedy Catholic High School, you are about to have a well dressed German on your hands :)

A Typical Day at Franz Marc Gymnasium

A typical school day starts with a ten minute bus ride to Markt Schwaben, the town where Franz Marc Gymnasium (5th through 12th grade) is located. The school is larger than Kennedy but not huge; the total enrollment is around 1,100 students). Here are some major differences between Kennedy and Franz Marc:
1. There are two schedules. One is from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with eight classes. The other is 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. with six classes. The longer schedule is on every Monday and Wednesday and the shorter schedule fills in the rest of the week.
2. On the 8 to 3:30 schedule, the students have an hour long lunch and students 9th grade or higher may leave the campus for lunch. On the 8 to 1 schedule there is no lunch.
3. On both schedules there are two fifteen-minute breaks.
4. Teachers don't have their own classrooms, they just go to whatever room their students are in. Also, instead of moving from classroom to classroom all day, students are often in the same room for different classes.
5. Sometimes the teacher will not be present for a lesson so the students may leave. 

On this particular day we had a long schedule. The first class was math, then physics, then chemistry. During the break students go to the front hall of the school and meet with friends and/or get something to eat or drink. The fourth class was French, followed by English. It happened that the teachers for the remaining lessons on this day were absent, so Julius and I got to leave school for the rest of the day. 

Greg's 2nd Weekend in Germany

So this weekend I went to a Barbecue. Didn't really do much but hang out, played Volleyball, all of that  interesting picnic stuff. Saturday, Brett was sack and I went to Olympia park and took a nice little tour around the park and went up the Olympia tower. It is completely different from the space needle. Sunday was just a relax day. After a  week it is always good just to relax. plus it was raining so I didn't really want to go outside. By the end of the day we decided to just hang out and watch the most manliest movie ever... Frozen. It has monsters and castles and who the heck am I fooling its a Disney movie. So yeah, my weekend.