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| 20 minutes until first period... and no one in sight. |
1. The bathrooms are way better. Sure, there are the token "Schule ist Scheiße" and f-bombs scribbled on the wall, but there are real doors. Back at South, the doors felt more like a courtesy divider with major gaps that you could see around. There are even two, sturdy hooks and enough room to hang up your backpack and your jacket. And to top off the Deluxe Gymnasium Water Closet Experience, there are two flush options (like at the Portland Airport). Ooooooh. I think that's just a European toilet thing in general, though, to save water.
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| Now that's a quality toilet! |
2. There are no substitute teachers. Today our history teacher was gone, so we all showed up to class, signed a piece of paper for attendance, and a kid popped in a Spiegel TV documentary about Napoleon's European conquests. Everyone stayed after signing the paper to watch the movie. That was pretty impressive. One of the religion class teachers was also gone, so they just got to have a release that period.
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| They showed this picture a lot in the movie today, "Napoleon Crossing the Alps." |
3. So far every class is discussion based (even PE). The teachers do come around and check that you did the homework, but the reason you do homework is so you can participate in the discussion. In English we discussed the argumentative and stylistic structure of the Declaration of Independence. The German kids are impressively well-spoken in English. It's kind of intimidating, actually.
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| Every classroom has chalkboards. They still give me the heebie-jeebies. |
4. Cell phones are absolutely taboo. Whereas at South at least 65% of the class had their cell phones right on their desks and you'd get the regular Snapchat of Mr. So-and-So, phones are taken away if a teacher sees them here. A major part of that has to do with teacher privacy. For example, they don't want to be featured on your Twitter feed without even knowing. And I'll admit, having no school-wide wifi has made it way easier to concentrate in class.
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| A Viktoriaschule-approved, in-school selfie. |
5. You can't eat in class. We get two twenty minute breaks and an hour long break for lunch, so there's plenty of time outside of class to chow down. The no food rule is partly because of cleanliness. My teachers really like a clean space. We spent ten minutes in class yesterday sanitizing our desks, which I'm not complaining about!
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| This water bottle, the latest in high-fashion water bottle trends, has been a surprisingly excellent conversation starter. |
Overall, school is very interesting. The discussions are stimulating and poignant. Maybe I'm just ignorant at this point, but there's less of a clique-vibe than there was in high school. Almost all of my 90 classmates have been going to school together since they were in fifth grade, so it's kind of a familial feel to it. One thing I do miss, though, is the whole school pride thing. Viktoriaschule doesn't seem to have a mascot or a million different kinds of t-shirts and random apparel. So I guess I'll be proud from afar. Go Saxons! Go Ducks!