DaZ Klasse (German as a 2nd language)

The kids have now been in school for 3 weeks and so far it's going pretty well.  They're acing their tests and yesterday Miguel actually said that he was glad that he knew a bit of German before we got here.  He hastened to add that he was NOT glad that I taught him over the summer.  I guess that's as much of a vote of thanks as I'm going to get.  "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."  :-)  Then again, how annoying it must be to have a mother that says, "I told you so!"

Anyway, they're in class for 3 1/2 hours each day and during that time they have a Fruehstuckpause (a 10 minute break to eat breakfast) and a Hofpause (20 minutes recess).  They're required to use fountain pens and rulers at school.  When we bought the rulers, we assumed that it was for measuring lengths, but no - its main use is for neatly crossing out any mistakes made with the aforementioned fountain pen. So they're learning not only German, but gaining practical experience in structure, neatness and overall orderliness.  Their handwriting is definitely improving and Miguel, although he's frequently come home with ink all over his hands and even his neck, hasn't dropped great globs of ink all over his clothes at least.  Who knew that you shouldn't take out the small ball that's in the ink cartridge? 

The recess is with all the school, around 250 students or so from grades 5-10, and Vicente & Miguel play soccer every day.  They say that not too many kids play soccer, most sit around talking.  I'm glad they get a chance to get to know some of the kids that aren't in their DaZ Klasse - they actually know 3 other kids' names.  Vicente says they communicate more in English than German with the other kids, but mostly they don't need to talk.  On one of the rainy days Miguel played chess with one of the other DaZ students.  He got slaughtered.  With the realization that not all stereotypes are true, I told Miguel that it's no wonder he lost - the other kid comes from Russia. 

The school also offers a German conversation class for the parents of DaZ students and Pablo went along to that yesterday for the first time.  He's enjoying learning German too and is understanding quite a bit.  The kids are delighted to be instructing him in German but even more delighted to demonstrate that they're learning much more quickly.  Pablo doesn't have too much of a chance to speak German during the day, but he's coming along.