The educational system is a large part of any culture, the structure and effectiveness of it shapes the future generations of a country. While in Finland, I attended quite a bit of primary school because of the ages of my host siblings, but with the Hambruch family, I am going to school after high school ... back to college for me!
The first day was spent with Wilken at the farm school. In Germany, you need to get some further education to be a farmer so they devised a program that allows people who want to farm to apprentice a variety of farms nearby and go to classes once a week for the classroom portion. Wilken has been apprenticing this family since August of this year. I'll be honest, school was a bit rough for me. We sat there for six hours (with breaks) listening to lectures in total German. I did pick up the general topics of character traits needed to be a good farmer -- milk fat ratios, time logging and organization and some feed rationing. But aside from the general concepts, I couldn't tell you what we learned.
After school was done, Wilken drove me to the train station in Celle where I took a train to Gotting where my host brother Martin goes to university.
It just so happened to be Marten's birthday ( I apologize if I ever accidentally spell MartEn as MartIn, my brother's name is Martin and I spent a lot of brain power learning how to spell that right as a small child), so of course we had a small, controlled, social gathering to celebrate. It was a great way to meet everyone and have everyone practice their English and me practice my German.
The next morning I went with Marten to his introduction to physics class where most of the party also showed up. This class was a little easier to follow since numbers are the same in every language it was just the content that I couldn't figure out, as it should be.
There are some things that I regret not documenting more throughout my travels, most of which are bathroom related. It's not what your thinking. The toilets have a different flushing system in every country I go to. I think when I get home I will make a collage with the pictures I can find on Google. Here is what the situation is the apartment here in Germany is like.
Today Marten wants to show me a horse farm for jumping horses and a castle so I am certainly looking forward to all of that.
I'll end with a picture out the apartment window of a college town in Germany!
