Der neuer Austauschuler

We have a new exchange student in 10am. He name is Alaster and he's only here for the week. He's from Australia, and I appreciate having him around mostly because he is so weird, I look like a normal deutsches Mädchen in comparison. On my first day of school, I sat in the back row and was silent and wanted to disappear, because I was really shy. On his first day of school, he came equipped with four or five books of pictures of Melbourne, dozens of photos of him winter-camping with his family and him and his girlfiend dressed up for a school dance, a DVD, and a CD of his favorite Australia-themed music. He passed them out during English class. Then we all asked him questions. Aline was sitting in front of me with Pauli and she said (in German, obviously) "Is he going to the prom here? Do you think he's going to the prom?" The word for "prom" is "graduation dance", so she raised her hand and asked, "In this photo... did you go to... an Australian ball?" It was really cute. Next, Frau van der Wijst asked him, "How are the schools in Australia different from the schools in Germany?" He talked (slurring his words a lot, so I definitely couldn't understand him) about grading, his school, their partner school in China, and all this stuff, for about five minutes. Frau van der Wijst asked him a couple clarifying questions, which he answered with long, extremely complicated answers. It was so funny!

In Deutsch, when asked if he'd been in another German school up until now, he stood up and talked for five minutes about all the places he's been so far in Germany and Europe. Apparently he's doing some exchange program where he gets to travel everywhere and then spend one week in school and then travel more. I've asked him a couple times to clarify further, but it is so difficult to understand his German! When he learned I was American, he spoke in English to me, but I just answered in German and so I think he got the idea, and we don't speak English anymore.

On Tuesday, Mr. Australia was back. He's constantly either sitting with his head on the table or calling out half-hearted answers. He's a year older than me, and he speaks much better German than I do, and I never do things like that. Even in Physics and math, I pay close attention and write down everything the teacher says (copying, probably incorrectly, from the person next to me.) It drives me crazy. He kept remarking that what we're doing in math is so easy.

Today he randomly went up to nice Lukas Leonhard and said, "You know what most people in Australia think of when they think of Germany? NAZIS." And Lukas sort of looked at the floor and said, "Oh," very sadly. It really bothered me.

In a few minutes I am going to my Deutschkurs, which is ending really soon! I'm glad, because sometimes it's really boring and slow. But I had a good day today. I showed some nice people in my class pictures from home, and they loved them. They told me that Maine is beautiful, the pictures of me when I was little are adorable, my dad looks like a French football player, and my brother "has great style." I came home and successfully reserved movie tickets online. It was really good.