It has been an exciting last week of term for the German Department.

On Monday and Tuesday, 20 students from Years 11, 12 & 13 joined German learners from four other schools for the “Talkfest German Camp” at Tirohanga in Mosgiel.

The aim of the camp was to have as much fun as possible while listening to and speaking as much German as possible. Traditional German food was a big focus, including getting to know each other over Kaffee und Kuchen, creating delicious ice creams in the Eisdiele and feasting on Wurst, Hamburger, Brötchen, Kartoffelsalat and Käse. Our students were also awarded 1st and 2nd prizes in the themed cake competition!

A particular highlight was learning the dance for the song “Jerusalema”, which was choreographed by Kelechi Onyele, a German/African dance instructor, and which has gone viral during the pandemic. In a special moment, we were able to join Kelechi on a live Zoom call so that he could watch our dance from his home in Frankfurt and give us an inspirational talk afterwards – in German, of course!

The students also sang the camp song ‘Tage wie diese” by the group “die toten Hosen” and improved their language through vocabulary and sentence building games.

A huge “Danke schön” goes to Frau Renner, Herr Moore and the other German teachers for their work in making the camp such a success.