I went to school earlier than usual today, and the sun was hitting the church across from my bus stop in such a way that I thought I should share one of the first views of my morning commute.

Libby and I attended the first set of lessons for the first time today, and our first class was with a 5th grade English class. I love that we are getting to see so many different classrooms! These students’ English was very impressive considering the fact that they have only been studying it for a few years. At the beginning of class, the teacher, Mr. B, allowed students to ask us questions about the U.S., as several teachers have. I was very impressed by the thoughtfulness of some of the questions. One student asked if we liked German music as much as they like American music, and another asked what sort of holidays we celebrate. Another student delved into education policy, asking whether students could be held back for failing a class in the U.S. We were also allowed to ask the students questions, and this entire exercise was great practice for students to develop their English skills. The previous day in class, they had worked on learning about British money, and today, they learned more conversational vocabulary and phrases related to making purchases. This class was so lively and funny, and the students were so excited to meet us and talk with us – it was wonderful to start the morning with them. When we went to sit down, one student toward the back begged us to sit with him, but we ended up sitting off to the side in the back, not too far away from a student sitting at an isolated desk. Without even glancing to the side to look at us, this student reached out his hand with candy in it and dropped it into our hands. It’s hard to describe how these students were just amusing in a natural way because it shined through in really little things like this.

The students were quite talkative in this class, and this was the first class in which we observed any concrete disciplinary measures. If a student was being persistently disruptive, then Mr. B would write his or her name on the board and would add tally marks next to the name if necessary. I assume that this process incorporates real consequences at some point, but perhaps not necessarily.

Next, we attended a geography lesson, which was rather different compared to the other classes we observed. I think that the class was composed of 10th graders, and some of them were also in the first philosophy class we observed. When the teacher introduced me to the class, she shared that she thought I would be a boy because my name is Alex (which is apparently a boy’s name exclusively in Germany). Throwback to when I used to be invited to all-male birthday parties in elementary school. Libby and I noticed that this was the first class in which the students truly seemed to be disrespectful toward the teacher. Students talked regularly and not even quietly; they were very disruptive. The teacher became noticeably irritated and called the students down several times, but they did not even really stop talking to listen to this. They also mocked her a little. This class reminded me of American classrooms in which the students did not respect the teacher. Basically, the teacher repeatedly issued empty threats, and the students knew that the threats were empty, so they never heeded them.

Two of the students in the geography class had missed a test, so their make-up “exam" was to give presentations on related topics. The second student to present became so anxious and nervous in the middle of her presentation (even though she was doing a marvelous job) that her voice began to shake. I think she heard this in her own voice and the stress escalated to the point where she began to cry. The teacher then handled this in what I think was one of the worst possible ways. She kept trying to have the girl leave the front of the room to go to the bathroom to wash her hands or talk to the teacher in the hallway, but the girl clearly wanted to just power through her presentation once she was able to collect herself. The student recovered after about a minute of silence and staring from the class (a girl in the front offered up a tissue), and then she finished her presentation. Immediately afterward, the teacher asked students to say something personal to the student who had just presented. This is risky and something I would only do if I were confident that my class had a supportive class culture, something which this class clearly did not have. Most students tried to be encouraging but really just commented further on the fact that she had cried, and one student’s comment was, “At one point your voice began to shiver, and I wasn’t sure why that happened." This must have been so mortifying for the student who presented. The teacher also asked the girl in front of the class why she had become “excited." The teacher had totally misinterpreted the situation since she thought the girl had cried because of the subject matter of her presentation. After class, we went up to the teacher to thank her for inviting us to her class, and the student who presented walked up also. The teacher then talked about how this class had kind of unique challenges today and referred to the presentation incident (in front of the girl) as a “tricky situation" that you just have to figure out how to handle. It’s difficult to paint the picture of how uncomfortable the whole class was, but I was surprised at how out of touch the teacher seemed with how to be sensitive toward a student. At another point in class, a student who had not yet participated in class asked a question that took a full two minutes to explain as he searched for the words in English. At the end of it, the teacher walked out from behind her desk and said, “Oh sorry, I was distracted. What was your question?"

The third class Libby and I attended was an 8th grade history class. The teacher was pretty sarcastic with the students and there was a great feeling of rapport throughout the class. To begin class, the teacher left the room, and instructed the students to find out things about us. They mostly asked similar questions to the ones we have been receiving. One student said he had been following the news regarding things like Trump and Ferguson and asked if there were people who racist in America. I responded that there certainly were but that I thought that was the case in most places. The student who asked is Black, and I wish I had had the chance to talk to him about what he thought about racism in Germany and his perception of racial issues in the U.S. When the teacher returned, he asked what the students had learned about us. They reported out some of our answers, but then the teacher asked if the students knew whether we had boyfriends or siblings. These are not the questions I would have expected my teacher to want me to ask a visiting guest, but emphasizing the importance of getting to know a person as an individual instead of simply extracting information from them (though this is never how I have felt during these questioning sessions) is an interesting lesson to teach. This teacher was an engaging lecturer as he explained historical stories and made the topics relevant and interesting. A difference from most U.S. classrooms was that the teacher talked openly about sex and specific birth control methods throughout the class. At the end of class, students were still very excited to talk to us, and several rushed up to us. One student said, “This dude wants to show you a magic trick," and the student showed us a pretty impressive card trick. I really appreciate how open and friendly many of these students are; I feel like I have gotten to know so many of them, and it has only been 4 days.

After school, Libby and I grabbed a quick lunch of Indian food in Bergedorf, and then I embarked on the adventure of finding a drugstore for a few items. This was not super difficult, but I had to look up several words.

I then wandered my way through a spontaneous wind and rainstorm (and apparently hailstorm) to a coffee shop to meet with Stefan Richter. In my introductory letter to my host family, I had mentioned that I wanted to see whether there was a Moravian Church in Hamburg. She conducted some Internet research and tracked down Stefan, and then she connected us through e-mail. He is the “traveling pastor" for a large area in Northern Germany, including Hamburg, Brunswick, Hannover, and Bremen. The church in Hamburg has a partnership with a Lutheran Church and meets at their church because it is a small group. When there is only a small group when Stefan visits on a Sunday, he leads them in a Bible study discussion and fellowship instead of giving a sermon. An interesting thing he recently did with the Moravian group in Hamburg is that he led a conversation about the topic of the refugees in Europe to figure out what “wisdom in this situation" is. I loved the way Stefan talked about faith as being so integrated into current and daily life. I think my mind has always been held up on the idea of setting time aside for God, so my later attempts to transition to having God be a part of every moment have been kind of difficult. Another example of this concept is that Stefan talked about playing contemporary songs in his church services. I had thought that this meant contemporary Christian music, but he was talking about mainstream music. He said that these songs include things like destiny and passion and that these sentiments transfer when you are in church. He also explained that this is what the church used to do; hymns were popular folk songs with altered words taken from Scripture. Stefan thinks that it will take a few generations for this to really catch on, but I appreciated and liked the idea, especially once he explained it. Something else we talked about was my faith history, and I said that, since I was not born into the church, I was baptized at the same time I was confirmed. He thought this was interesting because, around here, you have to be baptized before you are confirmed, and since this is done at a separate, earlier time, Stefan thinks that this diminishes baptism because people are really just waiting for the confirmation with gifts and everything. I asked about the presence and perception of the Moravian Church in Northern Germany, and he said that it is a small (only about 250 members) and not widely recognized group. When people are already attending other churches, Moravians don’t think it is important to reach out and try to bring them into the Moravian Church specifically, so it has not grown very much recently. The church has also stopped growing as much because families in general are having fewer children, so the Moravian tradition is being passed on to fewer people. We talked about missions as part of this conversation too, and Stefan talked about how, when Moravians travel to other places for missions, they try to learn from the people there and help them find out how their faith can be lived out in an authentic way that is relevant to them instead of imposing existing Moravian traditions on them. I will be meeting with Stefan and about seven others next Tuesday at the Moravian Church (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine) in Hamburg to share some photos of my church, Winston-Salem, my church’s mission trip to Peru, and the Moravian Youth Convo in the Czech Republic and Herrnhut last summer. I’ll spend most of the evening just talking with the group to get know everyone through fellowship. This is an awesome opportunity, and I am so fortunate to have come into contact with Stefan, who has been so welcoming!

After meeting with Stefan, I met up with Julika and my host brothers who were in Bergedorf for an appointment. We ran a few errands which included going to a toy store 😃 😃 (pictured below) and getting some ice cream.

When we got home, I went over with Julika to pick up Benny from Peter's parents’ house, which is right next door. I had a chance to meet and chat with Peter’s father, who was very friendly and asked about my time in Hamburg so far and things like my future plans. Peter’s mother wasn’t there at the time, but later in the night, I went back with Peter to meet his mother, and the three of us sat down and had an egg yolk liqueur (Eierlikör), which was pretty thick and sugary. His mother was also very nice and asked me questions about what I was doing and what I want to do. They invited me to come over to their house anytime I pleased. They have hosted many international exchange students throughout their lives and have lived several different places, including the U.S. and Mexico. Peter’s mother was one of the first German exchange students to come to the U.S. (in 1951 I think), and she graduated from college in the U.S. She still keeps up with her friends from this time.

Later in the evening, Julika and I drove to Bergedorf to a movie center (R.I.P. Blockbuster) to rent a movie for us to watch. We did this since the movies shown in the cinema are in German. The kids had already gone to bed, but Julika, Peter, and I watched Broadway Therapy together, and we had a nice time!