BEN

Dreaming about this country for so long.. Finally I flew all over the way from my familiar hometown to Germany.
I decided to come to Internatsschule Insitut Lucius through GEP’s recommendation.

Internatsschule Insitut Lucius is a high school which located in a small town called Echzell, where impressed me with the fascinating landscape and the serene atmosphere when I first arrived.
At the end of the road is where this high school located. The most different part between here and the high schools in China would be that this high school was right lean against with a big forest. This forest helps a lot with the biology learning and outdoors discovery. Except of this, the fresh air here seems totally inexhaustible.

The whole school is divided into five blocks – Forsthaus, neueshaus, Burg, the teaching area and the playground.
Forsthaus is the core of Lucius. Because it not only accommodates all the boy students from sixth Grade to eleventh Grade here, but where the after-class tutor rooms, President’s office and the food court are.
The teaching area includes classrooms for Art, Music, Chemistry, Biology and Physics, it is also where the stadium and the classrooms from sixth to twelfth Grade located. Neueshaus and Burg are students’ dormitories. Neueshaus is the dormitory for boys in the tenth Grade and girls in the sixth to eleventh Grade. However, Burg is only for girls and boys who are in the twelfth Grade, therefore, students in the lower Grade are not allowed to enter Burg, it is only opened to people during holiday events or with special invitation.
The playground is divided into three parts as a basketball court with volleyball court, other is a football field, the other is a tennis court with a football filed (thus, there are two football fields in the school).

In general, German people are really friendly, especially my President, teachers and classmates. You can always tell them any problems you encounter, normally they will help you friendly! I have encountered tons of problems, for me the strongest cultural shock would be language and the personality differences. In school, you will meet a lot of German-born foreigners, the thing is, everybody speaks German as their mother tongue! Therefore, no one would slow down speaking to you simply because you look Asian. But do not worry, since everyone was really nice, so after you get to know each other more, they would make effort to adjust to your language level and their way of communication with you. Here, no one would treat you as a “foreigner”, so it was even faster to be involved in the groups.

Then it comes to the difference on personalities. In China, I thought I was already really open-minded compared with people at my age. However, since I started to live in Germany, I discovered that most of the German young people’s personalities are really outgoing, which was actually even more than I expected before I came over here. For instance, in China, normally we hug the opposite sex when we are in a close relationship. However, in Germany, it is really common to give hugs even we are simply friends. To German people, this is a way to show the friendliness and make the friendship closer. I was not used to it and always felt shy to this behavior at the beginning I just arrived, but soon, I started getting used to it little by little when I understood more and more about German culture.

I have realized that I need to redefine and readjust to the German life style. No matter how much preparation I have already done before I came over here, there were still new things surprising me, and I know that there will be more things in life that I have to learn during my stay here. 
At last, I want to share about the food cultural difference everybody might encounter. In China, I heard a lot about Chinese students who study abroad hardly get used to western food. We eat congee, steamed meat-bun and other Chinese-kind of breakfast everyday, and out of a sudden the choices change into bread with jam, cereal with milk or sandwiches, it is no doubt not a easy thing. On this point, I personally feel that the food my school provide is really perfect! They not only provide European food such as spaghetti or bread, but also American hamburger with fries, hot dogs or sometimes there is even Chinese noodles and Milchreis (literally means milk-cooked rice). The variety of choices makes me feel not so hard to adjust to the food here.

Z.G.

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Tomoaki Fujiwara

Food is essential to life, therefore make it good!​

​Today we cooked lunch with Ms.Schüssler. 
Immediately after our arrival, we started cooking the dishes. 
It was a great activity, which I will rarely experience, because I've never cooked in somebody's house.
It was amazing! We cooked many dishes, such as sweet and sour meat, three different vegetable dishes and scrambeld eggs with tomatoes.
We finished off our afternoon with desert, which was chocolate cake with ice cream. The chocolate cake had been baked by Ms. Schüsslers son. I was amazed how yummy it was!