Fall Break

So, my German students have been in school for about two months, and we just had a two-week-long fall break!  I found the timing quite unfortunate, since I still feel like I barely know my students and would have liked to have had some continuity with going to school, but such is life. 

That being said, as I previously mentioned, I used the time to do a little travelling.  The first week I just hit up some of the cities nearby, Paderborn, Bielefeld, and Oerlinghausen…Detmold is the prettiest of them all!  But Paderborn and Bielefeld have far better shopping options, as they’re bigger.

Then there was Zürich.  Upon landing at the airport we were greeted with a barrage of Swiss watch ads, which was mildly amusing.  Amusing stereotypes aside, though, this was one of the least fabulous trips I’ve taken within Europe.  It was ridiculously expensive, there weren’t that many “attractions” we wanted to see, and the ones we did see were a bit disappointing.  The zoo was small, the art museum was rather boring, and even the opera we saw was an oddly modern production that just confused us both (“us both” being me and Kate, another English Teaching Assistant who lives in Paderborn).

The trip did have one great part though: Luzern.  Or Lucerne, depending on how you wanna spell it.  It was an absolutely gorgeous city, set on a river that opened up into a lake, just like Zürich.  While I wouldn’t recommend planning a trip to Switzerland to anyone, I would totally tell people travelling around Europe to stop in Luzern for an afternoon or a day.

Disappointments aside, the trip was an interesting chance to compare Switzerland and Germany.  First, the language, while still “German,” is really Swiss German, and pretty damn incomprehensible to me – Kate was doing a great job understanding it, though.  I think that Swiss German fits the bill for what a lot of Americans imagine as stereotypical, ugly German.  It’s guttural, filled with a lot of harsh back-of-the-throat sounds, and had what I found to be a very strange cadence.  Coming back to Germany and the very standard German of my region was a relief! 

Some other differences I noticed:

In Zürich, although not Luzern, there was free wireless internet in almost every café and restaurant we were in!  Germany is disappointingly not-wired (my old dorm in Tübingen didn’t even have wireless), so it was a nice change to be able to pop onto Facebook or check emails during the day. 

The Swiss cross the street when the pedestrian light is red!  Germans DO NOT do this.  If you do, the old ladies and people with children will glare at you, and you’ll likely get fined if a cop sees you.  I was absolutely loving how the Swiss just crossed the street whenever and wherever they wanted to.

There are Starbucks everywhere. Truly on every street corner. 

You don’t have to pay to use the bathrooms in department stores like you do in Germany!  So greatly appreciated.

The Swiss don’t appear to separate their trash in airports and train stations.  Again, very un-German (here, we separate trash from paper from glass from plastics, and can bring beer or other bottles back to grocery stores and receive deposit money.)

They had “Butterbrezeln” in Switzerland!!…We had them in Tübingen as well, but when I tried to order one up here in Detmold, I just got a funny look.  Someone later told me that’s a very Southern thing (someday soon I will try to devote a post to Northern v. Southern Germany – I miss the south!).

Surprisingly, the beer in Switzerland – and I mean Swiss-brewed beer – was absolutely delicious!!  Not something I expected coming from Germany, but true.   

Tuesday, it was back to school – during my first two hours with the 10^th graders, I was allowed to take half the group alone and work on some literary summaries and analyses!  It was pretty challenging, the kids don’t want to seem to speak with me that much.  I’ll keep working on it.  

American Politics and British English

My attempts to lead lessons last week met with mixed success.  My Thursday morning started with leading a listening exercise with the 6^th graders…they comprehended quite a bit, but the exercise I designed didn’t allow them to speak with each other very much.  My week then dissolved into a disaster with the 8^th graders on Friday.  I wanted to explain to them the idea of the electoral college and therefore the idea of swing states, since I’m from one, but the lesson went from bad to worse…the video I found about the electoral college played half-way and then crashed the computer, and when I attempted to use the whiteboard to explain the process, I was met with blank looks and absolutely no one would answer my questions.  The lesson dissolved into the teacher trying to explain the process in German to them, and they still didn’t understand. 

Wasted lesson aside, I’m mostly upset because I feel like it was a really horrible introduction to me/my teaching for the kids…after something like that I think they’re going to be really hesitant to engage and be conversational with me.  Had that happened in the 9^th grade class I went on the class-trip with, I feel like it wouldn’t have many negative repercussions; they’re comfortable enough with me that we could easily have a positive, communication-filled lesson the next day.  So that’s my biggest fear right now, but only time will tell.  Happily, my week ended on a really positive note, with the other 8^th grade class engaging a ton with me.  We did some listening exercises where they had to take notes on what I was telling them about my family, myself, and Cleveland, and the next day one of their assignments was to plan a fun day for me in the region – they were all super excited to share their ideas, which mostly included eating and shopping.  It was pretty cute.  Less cute was the fact that a bunch of the girls think I look like Kristin Stewart (I’ve definitely gotten that before in Germany, not sure why) but I guess there are worse American celebrities to look like. 

My interesting German-schools-are-so-different observation of the day is that there are no school buses.  Kids ride the public busses, with tickets paid for by the school system (or at least I’m pretty sure that’s accurate…) and the public buses are scheduled around class times.  So, in the morning my bus arrives half-an-hour before the first class starts, and I can catch a bus back to Detmold after the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, or final period.  It’s awesome and adorable how these kids just take themselves around the city, and I’ve never noticed a kid freaking out over a lost bus pass.  Quite responsible of them, no? 

Aside from not knowing the students well enough (oh, and not knowing how to teach), British English is my other big problem here.  I’ve gone to correct what people have said, only to learn that what they’re saying is totally appropriate for British English!  For example, instead of saying “review” for a test, they say “revise.”  Which just sounds super funny to me!  Turns out I’m going to be learning German and English this year…

For the next two weeks, though, I’ll be on fall break – crazy, since I totally feel like I just got here.  I’ve been decently touristy the past few days, and I’m headed to Zurich next week for 4 days, but I’ll write more on that later.  

Schedule for the quarter

I finally have a fixed schedule for the coming quarter!  I will be working 12 hours a week (that is the max they’re supposed to give us…not sure what they think we’re supposed do with the many many other hours in a week), with 7 different classes, and 5 teachers.  So far, I’m thinking it’s going to be quite manageable, although I only started this schedule Tuesday.  I have both Mondays and Wednesdays free, although some Monday afternoons I might go in to spend extra time with one of the classes. 

Tuesday, though I was with a group of 10^th graders for the first two periods; they definitely will need some prodding to be more communicative!  Then, I spent the next hour in a 6^th grade class, they were adorable and very eager about reading aloud and talking.  The teacher in that class asked me if I want to lead a lesson Thursday, and I said yes pretty quickly without really thinking about it…now I’m terrified!  I’ve got a little plan laid out in my notebook, but have no idea how the students will react to the listening exercise, ie, whether they will actually be able to understand any of it.  But I’m hoping they do and we have a successful first lesson!  If not, we’ll be moving onto describing pictures and maybe I’ll be able to get them to talk about their own vacation experiences.   Tomorrow, I’ll also be reviewing the 9^th graders blogs with them, going over common grammar and vocabulary mistakes…I’m hoping that goes well too and they actually learn something! (I’m ridiculously nervous if you can’t tell.  I came here to learn about teaching but it seems so scary right now!)

Updates on that tomorrow, onto more fun social topics…let’s start with smoking.  As you may know, smoking is far more prevalent here in Europe than in the States.  Many of my friends in Tübingen smoked and everyoneeeeee I’ve met from the Music School here smokes as well.  However, many of the teachers at school have told me that it’s really going “out of style” and young people are smoking less, although that’s not what I’m seeing.  It’s definitely an interesting difference between here and the States, especially because they’re frequently smoking in bars, although I’m told this has technically been made illegal. 

Today, Oct 3, is the Day of German Unity, so no one had school!  So yesterday I went down to Paderborn, where another American Teaching Assistant lives, and we had dinner with an old host family of hers.  They were incredible welcoming, fed us an absolutely delicious dinner, and just spent the whole evening hanging out with us and chatting.  It is so incredibly nice to hang out with German families – it’s something I never did in Tübingen, and it’s great to see their homes, how they interact, what they cook, etc.  Then, we went down into the city to a bar, and even in the dark, I could tell that the city was really pretty.  I’m super-excited to go back and do some more exploring, especially since it’s a very very Catholic town and there are what appear to be beautiful churches eeeeeeeverywhere.