Family Blog

Five and a half month ago Manuel and Philip left Germany to go to school in a foreign country. The goodbye was hard for both sides but Manuel and Philip are both welcome into their new families and we felt relieved that both are happy with their new families.

In the meantime Philip writes his emails no longer in German but in English and also when we phone with him there are some answers in English. Also Manuel wrote that he sometimes forgot the German phrase but this is a good sign. It shows that both have adopted the English language.

Both are well integrated in their new families and feel very well. They got new impressions and saw in this five month in America much more than the last five years. They noticed the beginning of the American election campaign which is very different to our system. Manuel was on an event with Obama and he was very pleased about him.

What is the big difference to Germany? First, school is like more to have a job: in the morning you go to school, eat at school and in the afternoon you leave school, each day at the same time. You have a strict schedule, e.g. exactly 4 minutes to find the classroom for the next lesson (Manuel had problems in the beginning because the building was new for him). After school you go to sport training and after that you have to do your homework. The teachers are stronger and get more respected as here (which is good) and there are much more tests than in Germany (which is also good). But the bandwidth of subjects is much smaller (which is not so good). There are more common activities at school than here and the "school spirit" is much more common. At contest the students stand to their school.

Another difference is sport: we have soccer and handball, the Americans have baseball and basketball. We have VfB Stuttgart and Bayern München, the Americans have the Packers and the New York Giants as I learned from Manuel's blog.

You know you are parents of AFS students...

• ...when you send care packages into another countries,
• ...when dict.leo.org is one of your favorite web site,
• ...when you realize that there is a difference between American English and English you learned at school,
• ...when your son told you that the Australians have a funny accent,
• ...when your wife suddenly wants to know how to write an email,
• ...when you suddenly have to share your computer with other family members because they want to look for news,
• ...you get an answer about your picture of your christmas tree why it isn't decorated,
• ...when you feel your heartbeat when you try to phone with America,
• ...when you begin to register a Skype account for all members of your family,
• ...when your parents ask you about the email adresses of your sons,
• ...when you wonder how people in former times could have lived without the internet.