Day 11, Day at School

Week 2: Wednesday October 23, 2019

Today our day started with classes at Norman North and we were allowed to sit in classes we wanted to see without our GAPP partner. This gave people the opportunity to see other subjects like Chemistry, for example. We also had to give our presentations again. Everyone had their presentation at different times and because of that you could listen to others. So in 1st hour I followed other German students and listened to their presentations about, for example, our school or about Stuttgart. In 2nd our I had to give my presentation about German food again. All the American students really enjoyed all of our presentations and asked us a lot of

questions afterwards. They asked us about Germany in general or something about the presentation. Sometimes these questions would take up all of the 45min-lesson after the 15 minutes of presentation.

In 4th hour we had a German Club lunch where most of us went and we tasted multiple types of Oreos. We wanted to compare what the American students and the German students liked best - similarly to what we had done on Monday. In the end both groups liked the normal Oreos best.

After that we had two more lessons of presentations or attending classes. By that time, we all had done our presentation including Monday four or five times. It was really easy to do them because we had memorized the whole presentation.

For our 7th and final hour of the day we got invited over to the baseball court. There we met the baseball coach of the Norman North baseball team. Because both baseball courts were under construction, we went to the inside training hall. In there we were appointed a baseball player and they taught us how to use a baseball bat. First, they showed us the basic motion of swinging the bat without a ball and we practiced it for a couple of minutes. Then we moved on to actually hitting balls. As a first step they put a ball on a stick, and we could hit the ball with the bat easily. After we had mastered that they threw the ball to us very slowly. As time went on, they threw it harder and faster. This gave us an idea of how hard it actually is to hit a baseball that is going close to 100 miles per hour. In the end, as a “reward”, they got some of the best players of their team to show us how to properly hit the ball. We all had a great time there and enjoyed the  experience.

At the end of this school day we met our partners again and went home to spend the rest of the day with them.