Hamburg and more

This past weekend I traveled to Hamburg. It was the first of two excursions I am doing this term, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only thing I would have changed was how early we left on Saturday, because I think that I would have enjoyed it even more with a little more sleep even if it meant sacrificing an hour of our 2 hour long lunch break.

I last wrote on Wednesday, so I have a lot to catch up on...

After school on Thursday, I watched a movie called "Soul Kitchen," which was about a man who owned a restaurant in Hamburg. I liked it more than the movie before, but not as much as the first movie. It was funny at parts and overall a good movie, in my opinion.

On Friday, I had a "Zwischenprüfung," or midterm. It was much more difficult than I had expected, and had some questions that I had absolutely no clue on (afterwards I found out that they went over those before I was in the class...so I don't feel too bad about that). It consisted of a listening element, where we listened to the news from the day before and answered some questions about it; a vocabulary element, which I considered pretty hard because some words were on there that I had no idea I was supposed to know; a grammar element, which I found pretty easy except for a conjunctions fill in the blank; a reading element about sleeping; and an essay element, where we were supposed to write 150 words about something. All of which in 90-100 minutes. Luckily I test quickly.

We received our grades on Monday, and I received a 77%, which while it was lower than I have ever gotten on a German test, I think it is also very representative of the amount of material I learned so far. I think learning almost 80% of the new material in 3 weeks of intensive class is good. I like the German grading system more because it is more representative of the amount you learned, and gives me a higher goal to attain. The American system makes it far too easy to get an A, in my opinion.

After school I had a meeting with the gym trainer, Sebastain, to check out how fit I am. After doing the test I am convinced they give bad grades to make people think they should come in. They measured height, weight, body fat, bike endurance, balance, strength, and flexibility. He was very serious about the whole thing, and had me make an appointment for Monday (yesterday) to create a fitness plan. While I was laughing over the judgement process, I was looking forward to getting a plan, as I expected some pretty intense elements to result from such harsh grading.

Sadly, I was disappointed. We made some random plan, not at all focusing on my goals for the summer (build endurance and continue to get faster). I will give it about one day's worth of effort then go back to the plan that Matt is making for us.

I was thinking about writing about Hamburg as well in this post, but I have lost the energy, and wouldn't be able to give it the recap it deserves. That will wait until likely tomorrow.