The Devil's in the Details in German Schools

    For anybody who’s ever lived in a foreign country, you know how oftentimes, communication is ALL in the details. Sure, you can understand when someone says take a left on this street or take this number bus, but what if they describe where you should turn based on a significant city landmark instead? Or if they mention you get off at stop X, but you don’t exactly know that stop’s name, and so you think it’s a landmark? Or, on the offchance you’re REALLY disorganized, and you don’t even REALIZE that you’ve been given instructions to do X (which breaks your everyday norm), but you didn’t understand any of the instructions given, and so you show up on what SEEMS to be a regular day for you, and your regular classroom is locked, and none of the other students are anywhere to be found?

               I feel like combined with Germany’s school system of sink or swim, even in middle school, and that makes for some panic filled days trying to remember where you’re supposed to be, and what your teacher COULD have mentioned in passing at some point in the past week or so. This would happen a lot for some reason with gym classes, where for a week, we would have a “swimming” module, so the teacher would just offhand mention that the next class would be at the city swimming pool. Well, that’s all great for kids that live in the city where the school is, and that have been to the swimming pool on the weekends with their families for fun, but when you’re a kid who has a 45 minute train ride and didn’t grow up going to that pool as the local hangout spot, it’s a little tricky to find. In my case, I ended up being an hour and a half late, and that was LUCKY because I happened to find Anna (one of the girls in my class) running through the city cause she forgot that it was the first day of swimming class too! That in and of itself is SUCH a clear memory to me, even after all these years, cause it was such a relief to see someone I recognized and that I knew was going to the same place I was. Frau Frank (she was the prototypical German woman, with short dark hair flecked with blonde streaks, a sun-weathered face, and somehow in her 50’s or something and still had that toned, lean-muscular look), our gym teacher, when she saw Anna and I walk into the pool that late, had the classic German disappointed look on her face that makes a sixth grader wither. Honestly though, I was just happy I somehow made it(:

               Of course, at the time, I was swimming two hours a day with the Eiffel Sharks swim team, so Frau Frank’s frown quickly turned upside down when she saw me killin’ it in the pool. Good ole German schools, where teachers can actually show preferential treatment to the kids who excel in their classes.

               Or like the time when my elementary school, unbeknownst to me because of another aforementioned “lost in translation” situation, took an entire day of school off to have an all day soccer tournament against a bunch of other elementary schools in the area. I just showed up to school thinking it was a usual day, and I walk in to see everybody in their gym clothes wearing jerseys. I don’t remember if I had my gym clothes that day, but I guess that’s a bonus of my always wearing white Aasics back then right?(:

The games were run as a bracket, with each school playing the other 4-5 schools in ~30 minute games each. Looking back on it, but we were probably the small fish in the big pond, cause basically our entire team was our whole class of 13-or-so kids. The whole time, I’m just excited that we get an entire day off school, but some of those German kids were getting intense (as they are prone to do when soccer is involved). And one of my most vivid memories of that day? We were playing one of the better teams from that day (against whom we ended up losing), and everytime we were moving up about to get close to scoring, and this fat kid defending would come in, shove all us skinny kids aside, and punt the ball away with a single leg swing. Short to say, it was crazy frustrating, but also shout out to that kid for knowing exactly what he brought to the team(:

And it was all a surprise to me(: Just a few examples of how missing a few little words in an announcement or a sentence can make for some fun surprises(: