My new school in the Czech Republic
First of all, I would like to introduce myself shortly:
My name is Conrad Borchers and I am an AFS exchange student from Germany who lives in Vrchlabí and goes to the gymnasium in Jilemnice for one year. My main interest is the music, as I play three instruments and like to compose songs myself.
I chose the topic school for this little report, because I think it is right after the change of family the biggest change an exchange student is going through, and it covers a lot of time in which he can observe cultural differences and meet a lot of people of his host country.
A big task for every exchange student is to get used to a complete new situation in terms of organisation, social situation with complete new people and a new class and of course different language and culture.
What helped me the most to complete this task was the fact, that there were many people who helped me a lot with my schedule, which I could change to many lessons of Mathematic, Informatic Technologie, Music and English, which I can understand the best. With this new schedule I visited many different classes and met many different people quickly, which was very useful at making new friends to share hobbies, like going to dance classes or playing floorball.
Also I experienced a lot of help by my new classmates during the lessons to understand what the teacher explained and by the teachers themselves. At the same time I could teach them for example some German and help at the German language lessons as an “assistant teacher”, so that we helped each other in many things.
With this in mind I could easily adapt to wearing slippers inside the school, which was a bit strange for me at first, or get used to another style of teaching which has, compared to my German school, more authority for example.
School is one of the very important things for an exchange student and I learned that you can make a difference in your school life if you don´t hesitate to ask questions, talk to many people and are not afraid to make changes.
Conrad Borchers, 17 year old exchange student from Germany
Zde si také můžete přečíst rozhovor s Conrada s jeho učitelkou na Gymnáziu a SOŠ Jilemince, publikovaný na webu gymnázia 14.2.2016.