I've recently spent two weeks at a "Language Camp" in a place called Altmüntser. It's where all of the new exchange students go to learn German as fast as humanly possible. There was nearly 30 of us all together, ages ranging from 15 to 18.
For me personally, I'd been taught most of it in school already... but being 14 at the time I thought "Why should I pay attention in German? I'm never going to use it in my life!" - Well actually, 14 year old Molly, you are going to use German, it's a very important part of your life at 16/17!
But I found it all very useful, and I did remember lots of the information from school, believe it or not. We did lots of work on articles and simple vocab so that we could at least find our way around Austria.. We learned a lot of sentence structure which gave me a headache a lot of the time because it's sooo different to English; rather than saying "Today I bought a dog" you'd say something like "Heute ich einen hund gekauft" which translates to "Today I a dog bought". IT'S SO HARD! But I keep getting told that it'll get easier the more I practise...
We spent roughly 6 hours a day doing German work- not including homework, and there was a lot of that too! On Saturday's we got it easier though, we only did 3 hours, and Sunday we did a "group activity".
When we weren't in class, from Monday to Friday, we were either playing in the snow, shopping, chilling in each others rooms, or doing homework.. Most of the time I was the one doing homework, ha. But if I wasn't, I was outside in the snow! I can't say I'm much of a shopper, and there wasn't really much to shop for anyway, unless you count chocolate... But the snow was good fun! I ended up with two snowmen, a few snowball fights and LOTS of bruises! Everyone had lots of fun doing whatever though, there was always something for everyone.
Without us realising, on Saturday, the teachers had organised a day out with some of the "Rotex" people- they're people that have been on exchange in the past, between 5 years and 6 months ago. They told us about some of their highs and lows of the exchange and gave us pointers on how to make it the best experience that we can, it was really good to hear everything from them. They took us ice-skating too, it was good fun.. I'd never done it before so I found it hard to stay on my feet, but I survived and didn't break anything!
The second week went all too quickly.. it wasn't too different to the first week really... two people had head injuries, both needed to go to hospital, one needed stitches, but both were okay. Everyone became more relaxed, a few rules were broken (NOT BY ME!) but everyone had fun and had stories to tell their host family and family at home.
Omg, I can't believe I forgot the food! It was amazing! Every meal, except breakfast, had soup. Lots had a salad, which was amazing, and the main meal was so so good! We all had table rules to follow, most of which were too hard to comprehend apparently because a few of the boys just couldn't do the right thing! But it was always funny, everyone always enjoyed the meals, mostly 'cause of the 'action'.
On our last 'full day' on Language camp we took the afternoon off of the school side of things because we'd made plans to go ice-skating. We all walked their together, which took about an hour, but by the time we got there it was closed... just our luck! But we decided that it'd be fun to check out a nearby town, called "Gmunden". When we got there we decided what each of us wanted to do and split up into groups accordingly. The people I was with decided to visit the "Lake castle". It was so beautiful! We didn't spend heaps of time there but we had lots of fun! We found another way home, it was very pretty; we walked along the lake side, and took lots of pictures of course! When we got back to Altmünster we went into the local café/restaurant for a coffee and cake. After an hour or so I went back to camp with a couple of other people. In my opinion, this was the best day of language camp!
Whenever we were all just chilling together it was such good fun! There was lots of laughter, and lots of noise! So many good friends and good memories made!
It's so good to know that the people that I met over those two weeks will be there for me forever, no matter what. All of us are going through something similar and I think whenever one of us is down the rest will be there to bring them right back up! We had so many fun times together, all will be remembered forever! These people are all so amazing, each in their own way and I love them all to pieces!
Lots of the crew <3
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