Day 13: June 19

 Today we got to school at 7:40 and then left to see the children from the Grundschule (like an elementary school but without kindergarten and fifth grade). When we got there we were greeted in their meeting room with a spread of pretzels and sparkling juices. Then the principal spoke to us about the different aspects of the school. One topic was the refugees from Ukraine who don’t speak very good German. They have a special class to teach them. After that we split into two groups, one for the fourth grade class and one for the third grade class. I was in the fourth grade class and they were all so excited to ask us questions, but were also scared to ask. One student asked what our favorite song was and if we could sing it, but we couldn’t think of one so we sang them a bit of Oklahoma! Towards the end they started asking questions in German and were all shocked with our German. They got more comfortable and were sad to see us go. We were picked up by some of the parents and they drove us to the pretzel place. 

Once we got there we washed our hands and prepared to make the pretzel dough. The instructor asked us all the ingredients and we put them into a big mixer. Then we made the shape of our pretzels. It was interesting that it was important to put the pretzels in lye in order for it to taste correct. When we baked them the instructor told us the story of how pretzels were invented. Basically a king thought a bakers bread was so bad he was going to kill him, but instead he gave him the task of making something that he could see the sun in three places with. Because of that the baker made the pretzel shape but on his way to the oven he dropped it in the lye. The king thought it was delicious and fit his task so the baker lived! After the story was over we took the pretzels out and left. We all then had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted so with my exchange partner I made a special cake called “Spaghetti Kuchen“. It is a cake with strawberries and a cream frosting made to look like spaghetti. Later in the day was the second Euro Cup game for Germany, so a lot of people from the group went to a big watch party with (what felt like) the whole town. It was funny because there was an ”American“ food truck and that line was the longest! The game felt very long but we won 2-0! That was the end of the day and I was very happy to sleep.

-Hannah Ingels