In order to get to school early in the morning, quite a few of us have to get up really early! Dominique for example travels more than 1 hour each morning in order to be at the Institut in time! Others are more lucky: Katrin and Andrea live in the school's boarding home and don't have to get up until 8 am ...

Since our training is a two year course there are always two year groups: one has theoretical lectures in our lecture hall, for example analytical chemisty with our headmaster, Mr Wolfgang Flad. Our lectures are not quite like normal school lessons: we are all being taught together, raher like university studies!

It was a bit hard to getting used to this type of teaching but we managed somehow!

While one year group is in the lecture hall, the other has practical in the lab. At the moment it is quantitative analyses and environmental analyses. We have to be prepared for whatever we will be doing in the lab on that particular day and frequent tests make sure we know our stuff!

It is no good to walk into the lab without being well prepared: chemicals are handed out only at specific times so if you aren't ready by 8.15 you can't get started!

Have a look at our analyses: we collect the samples each morning and have to hand in the protocols by 4 pm. This means that you have to organize your lab day really well!

This is physical chemistry with Prof. Greiner: a rather tough subject which involves a lot of mathematics - but it can be quite fun, too, especially when he shows us some experiments during the lecture!

Lunch break is from 12 - 1pm: we like to spend our breaktimes in the computer room since we can get on to the internet - and for example chat with our mondialogo partners!

Others prefer to have a snack and a chat with their friends! If you have forgotten to write protocols at home - this is the time to do them!!

Back in the lab: knowing how to handle instruments for automated analyses is an important task for a CTA to be.

Here, as always, watching and observing is not enough - you have to do it all by yourself in order to really understand what needs to be done!

Fortunately we can work in pairs: we all do our analyses individually but we share our glassware with our lab partner - and team work is really important if you are to succeed!

The mondialogo students you can see on this page all belong to the younger year group - we call it LG 54. The older students, LG 53, are doing their final practical, organic synthesis. It demands a considerable degree of knowledge and knowhow about the handling of chemicals and complicated apparatus as you can see in the picture. LG 53 has just completed the written final exams and will graduate from the school at the beginning of July.