Reiswerk

Hello, I’m Anika. I’m 16 years old and I will go to Canada in exactly two months. Currently I go to a comprehensive school in a small town – Mauritius-Gymnasium Büren. My home-village Alme is very beautiful. There’s much forest and only a few habitants, but in Canada I will live in one of the biggest cities there – Vancouver. My school will be the West Vancouver Sentinel Secondary High School in the West Vancouver District. I hope to enjoy my time there. I regret that I haven’t already got some facts about my host family. But as soon as I hear something, I will tell you some information. This blog is a good idea to tell you about my experiences in Canada quickly.

I know that I will miss you all very much, I always say that I would like to take you all with me, sadly this won’t function. There will be maybe a possibility to visit me in Vancouver when there are the Winter Olympics.

There are still three weeks school and I’m expecting the holidays. I hope you like reading our articles and please write comments. Best wishes

Anika

I’m one out of five students blogging here. I’m Christopher!

Me at re:publica '09 - © Daniel Seiffert

To be exact, I am Christopher Koch.
Born on 7^th of June 1994, I am currently 14 years old and I will go to the United States of America – for 10 months! My school is the Mauritius-Gymnasium in Büren and I’m in the 10th grade. Yes, 10th – in primary school I’ve been a little careerist – in December 2001 I “easily” visited grade 3 instead of grade 2 (however, if our math teacher needs half an hour to explain what we have to do, it is easy to fill the worksheet within this time).

I am living in a very small village near Paderborn or Dortmund in Northrhine-Westphalia. I’m curious about how the impressions of us countrypeople^[1] (Anika, Kirsten & I) and the other two coming from town will differ.

As well as Anika, who will introduce herself in a few days (when I showed her how to do this ;D), I will travel by TravelWorks. It’s a good organisation, but sometimes a very frowzy^[2] joint^[3]… for example, they called me in the first weeks of May ’cause they wanted to have the copies of my passport again. I already had sent these copies in January…

The picture? That’s me at the re:publica ‘09 in Berlin. There I’ve been on the panel “Grown up on the Net” with the subheading “Is the communication changing? How do young people experience the internet?”. It was a panel discussion about how the youth is using the internet. I have been one of four panelists (discussants? debaters? … participators), also there have been a 17-year-old student, a teacher from Hamburg and a teacher of elementary school from Berlin. My impression? I have been very nervous. Very very very nervous. But it was great to be there.

I’ve got three sisters. There’s Anna, 21 years old, who is studying French and Geography (teacher) in Marburg. Also there are Verena, 12 years old, and Sophia, 9 years old. Verena is at the same school like me, Sophia goes to primary school.

I am interested in many things. Information technology (maybe neuro-informatics), politics, psychology, music, … I can imagine to work at these occupational areas^[4]. But I don’t know yet. Do I have to? No, not really.

I’ve got the feeling that something is missing. But I don’t know what? We will see.

[1] countrypeople: Leute vom Lande
[2] frowzy: umgs. schlampig
[3] joint: umgs. Laden, Butze, Verein…
[4] occupational area: Berufsfeld
Anmerkung: Abkürzungen wie “I’ve” oder “I’ll” sind bewusst so gewählt. In Blogs, so könnte man sagen, ist das “üblich”.