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can be that i don't know all the vocabulary or something so no problem

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okay so fair hello yes hello how are you doing i'm good uh can you state your name and age for

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the record yes i'm fear eisling and i'm 17 years old great and we know each other how uh we are in

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the erasmus plus project um yeah and i've been in there for like one and a half years now i think

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yeah i think so you and i have known each other for a couple of years now yes exactly and you

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You live in Bedburg, which is a city slash town in Germany.

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In Germany, in Cologne, yes.

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And the purpose, the goal,

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the objective of this interview, you and I,

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is to talk about the going back to school measures

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that your country, Germany, is implementing,

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because you are one of the students

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that is now back in school.

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Before that, I got some other questions

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that I'm gonna ask you.

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Okay. Awesome. Number one question, of course, how are you and your family doing?

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Me and my family are okay. Like, I'm living with my mother and her boyfriend and my brother.

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And it's like kind of strange the past weeks. It was kind of strange because we were always like

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together and in this house at the same time and yes it was also strange that we couldn't like

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really see our grandmother because usually we are there every second weekend and

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so we tried to limit this meeting and yeah that was strange but all in all like my family is

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healthy and i'm very glad about that i am very glad to very happy to hear that uh fair where

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were you when news broke out that school was going to be suspended and for how long was it

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going to be suspended in germany like in the beginning yes so um i was in school at the moment

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and it was like directly after our exam we wrote um our math exam on that day for six hours

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and it was our last exam before um like the a-level exams so the last important one um

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and then we went out uh and we sat in our like big hall um and talked with the others about like um

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how the exam were and then our um principal um like uh said uh something via like the um

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i don't know the english word um but so that everyone could hear it in the classrooms

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she said that this afternoon there will be some news yeah and um that we should go on the website

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to see um if we would have school on monday or not and um after that our um like whole uh the

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whole 12th grade made a picture together for our um uh for our newspaper um and it was like the

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last thing that we did together as a grade okay and i think that's like kind of creepy that it

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was just in that moment where it all ended um yeah and uh then after that it got the we got the news

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um that schools would be canceled for three weeks um to the easter holidays

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um and these three weeks would have been our last three weeks of school and so it was a bit

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shocking for us because like um we had our last day of school but we didn't really know it and we

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couldn't really enjoy it and we also had to write an exam so it wasn't really fun i think um yeah

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i think that was like and then after the those three weeks everyone else had uh the two holiday

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day um holiday weeks and um yes so that's probably about it something that i have been discussing

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with the with our 12th grade students is exactly that maybe without them knowing it they have

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already experienced and lived their last day at school and after so many years it is discouraging

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i i guess also maybe a little bit disappointing if you don't get to go back you guys are now back

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and then even though it is not the same thing at all but i mean but i mean you're back um our 12

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graders are not supposed to be back or at least that is what you know what the president said

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last night uh that nobody's gonna go back into september we shall see what i mean what

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until september um yeah exactly remote teaching is still gonna be a thing online lessons and

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everything uh but in-person classes not until september wow that's a long time that is a very

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long time they might change their mind but i mean i don't know okay but in spain it was also a bit

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different situation it was more extreme in spain so yeah it was different and that is my next

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question um so you're sent home and you leave your last day at school and then all over the news

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because in the beginning nobody really knew what corona was all about like it was supposed to be a

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flu then it wasn't then it was killing hundreds and thousands of people and then news began to

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talk not just about what was happening in every country but also about like in europe in uh the

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USA China Japan of course very quickly he was all over the news that Germany

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was one of the countries that was doing it in like the best possible way some of

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the reasons that I have not done in here you protected the elderly very early on

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like conducting massive tests you have I believe triple number of ICU beds

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intensive care units than we do in spain for example and also something that i that i find

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extremely interesting there's a lot of uh young population in germany and they were supposedly

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the ones that got infected first and then because you know corona doesn't affect young people in the

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same way as it affects uh the elderly then young people fought it off and then they came out maybe

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not immune but okay and healthy and everything and and and yeah and those i believe were the

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three main reasons that germany was was doing so well what do you think about that um well i think

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you did research um and i just like um i watched the news uh every day so um i know that we weren't

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as infected uh like as spain or italy um but i didn't know all of those reasons why uh it was

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it wasn't that extreme um so yes i think i'm glad about um how it happened or like um well not with

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spain and italy but i'm glad that we could react like that um and uh i think all of those facts

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as i think about them are true um because like i heard also in the news that we have many icu beds

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and that they were free and that's why i think we also like um uh flew in some italian uh infants

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and to like help them too and yes also with the young population I think that

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we handled that situation as well good because the schools were cancelled so that there wasn't

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any infection rate there anymore and yeah well that's that's about it

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There's also a concept that I very much like that I found out when I was first living in Germany, like seven, eight years ago now.

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Which is that, like here in Spain, when a student begins college, university, even though he or she may go, you know, may change, move from his house, may change cities, his room, his bedroom is still very much his bedroom.

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bedroom but in Germany and correct me if I'm wrong that is not the case right when you leave home

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like when you leave your um your parents house and you move on to to a flat with your friends

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whatever uh your room stops being your room and then they reuse it for whatever purpose yes uh

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that's really true um like as well in my household um my older sisters my two older sisters uh they

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moved away um and they are living in other cities now um in their own flat and um yes their rooms

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aren't the same anymore uh one is uh for my mother to work in it and um the other is like for

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everyone um and so we can watch tv in it or something like that so it is exactly how you

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said it was exactly and then i believe that is one of the reasons that germany wasn't as

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infected because young people when they were they were on holiday

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beginning at the at the onset at the beginning

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but then when they moved uh back home they didn't move to

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their parents house and i believe that is also

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one of the reasons that the um infection didn't spread as

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as much yeah that can that can be true enough about the infection uh so you're

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now home i mean not now um you are sent home uh from school like

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a month ago a month and a half ago and then what was it like

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what was it like your first day being homeschooled