My First Week of School.

The School in Nürtingen is fairly large. It has two main building, the first housing years 1 - 8 and the other has years 9 - 13. With many other classrooms within I still have no idea where everything is. There is also some other smaller buildings spread about, the Kindergartens and an art room housed within one of them.

All the year 10's are nice. I had met some of them previously practicing for their School musical 'My Fair Lady' (Ahh soo much funn...!? I'll write about it later. Although I can say that I never plan on EVER playing music again for a musical). And most of the teachers seem to be nice.

One thing about German school is that it starts at 7:45am. It is a bit early but on Mondays and Fridays we only go until 12! :) Wednesdays go till 1:30pm and Tuesdays and Wednesdays go until 3:30pm. I hav. And as a side note, every morning for the next three weeks we've got German Poetry. It's almost better than Austrlian poetry because I can't understand a thing! (No offence to those people who like poetry. I do happen to like some poetry, just generally not the poetry we do in school).

For most of the lessons except for Maths and English I sat there note really comprehending what the teacher was saying. I understand a little bit, and a few words every now and then but other that that all you get is blank stares from me. I pass the time when I am really bored by drawing in my book.

Wednesday's bored creation

I have to say one of the best classrooms is the Woodwork of Design Tech (DT) room. It is much smaller than what our school has in Australia and SO much messier. There is heaps of saw dust and wood chips and everything all over the floor but it makes it look like it is being used like it is meant to. The teacher is pretty relaxed but I don't get to find out what he is like until later in the Term because we have art at the moment...

In English we are doing an analysis of Slumdog Millionaire. The teacher made me read so much because she 'liked hearing my accent'. Next time she does that I think I should giver her a real Aussie accent.
Hearing lots of people speaking English in a German accent can also be quite funny. The English teacher in question speaks good English just the accent makes it a little bit hard to take her seriously.

It was actually an awesome week because Mayday was on Thursday so we only had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday School. Also on Thursday was my first day allowed back on the road bike, and we went for a 60km ride through the Schwäbische Alps. There was a pretty long hill climbing up to the top of the mountain range which was very satisfying for my much deprived legs.
Before every little state or town (which there are many) there is a small yellow sign telling you the name and other details about it. On every ride we go on it is a sprint to the sign, I think I am slowly getting used to road racing tactics.
I am riding an old steel road bike - it is pretty awesome and I 'll put a picture up later but bbeing steel it is a flexy. Trying to chase Jo (Jakob's father) down a mountain with a couple of sharp corners made the bike feel like it had a bit of a flat tyre; one of the biggest downsides of steel. I had no chance in keeping up and decided to play it safe.

Yesterday, being Friday 2nd May, I got back on my lovely stiff carbon fibre mountain bike and went for a ride up to a castle in the Schwäbische Alps. I am still not technically allowed on the dirt until next Wednesday but the Road bike wheel was being fixed, so we decided to ride on the dirt up (very little chance of crashing) and ride the road back down. It was a little bit cold up the top, and unfortunately a big cloud which made it hard to see beyond 20 metres. We'll have to go up there on a day without any clouds and take a picture.

Here are some pretty bad quality pictures from up there anyway (taken on Jakobs phone):

Some sweet German singletrack... pretty muddy though, I'm not quite sure if it ever dries out

I don't think I need to say anything.

And I had to put in a photo of Jakob looking swagy.

Back to school tomorrow, which I'm not really looking forward to. Only till 12 though so I suppose that is an upside :)