Thanksgiving in Germany

I’d been brilliantly free of homesickness here…until Thanksgiving happened.  It was really hard to be away, but also sort of fun integrating Thanksgiving into my life here.

Still, getting up early and going to school Thursday felt a bit wrong.  Seeing everyone’s going-home-for-thanksgiving Facebook statuses made me a little sad.  Getting a “merry thanksgiving!” text from one of my British friends made me laugh.  And watching my students draw hand-turkeys and write what they were thankful for was totally amusing (I got a lot of “I’m thankful for Bayern München” slash other football clubs).

In class, before setting the kids loose to draw hand-turkeys, I would usually briefly go over the history of thanksgiving and then talk about food…most of my German kids have never had a full turkey as dinner before (although I learned goose is popular at Christmas), and they seemed quite weirded out by the idea of pumpkin pie.  Even after I told them it was my absolutely favorite Thanksgiving-food, and one of my favorite foods overall, they still all said they’d rather try turkey.  Silly German students…

Friday night, I went with Seba and some other students to their professor’s, an American teaching at the Music School here who was hosting a Thanksgiving dinner.  It was absolutely amazing – all of the typical Thanksgiving dishes, done to perfection – but also super strange to be having Thanksgiving dinner at 9pm on a Friday, with French, Chilean, Peruvian and Iranian people.  Not typical but definitely great!

And now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s onto Christmas music!  Hopefully the holiday cheer all around (Germans do some fabulous decorations) will keep the homesickness away? Christmas markets here I come…

Art Museums

The theme of the weekend was fabulous art museums.  Jarrett (another American assistant in the area) and I headed to Hamburg Friday afternoon after classes.  We basically spent the whole time eating – there were so many food options compared to tiny Detmold! –  and going to museums.  One was for art, one was for art and design/industry, and both were absolutely fabulous as well as the perfect freezing-cold-weather activities.  We did, however, still make ourselves walk around a bit.  Hamburg has the biggest Rathaus (city hall) I’ve ever seen, an absolutely impressive and imposing building, and the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen.  It’s St. Michaelis, a baroque-style church that was so light and airy and beautiful I didn’t want to leave!

Hamburg is also Germany’s largest port city (and Europe’s third-largest) so we spent a bit of time walking around the harbor area – or rather, rushing through it late, on the way to a dinner reservation – and it was pretty cool to see the grungy harbor parts mixing in with what are clearly very new, gentrified parts. 

Monday morning we caught a 6:46 train out of Hamburg to Düsseldorf.  All foreign language assistants in my state (NRW, North-Rhine Westfalia) were invited to Düsseldorf for a three-day long conference; my group from the Detmold area went with the people in the Köln/Cologne area.  Looking back, it seems the point of the whole thing was just “look at how cool our state is!”  Düsseldorf is the capitol of NRW, so we visited their Landtag, state parliament, on the first day.  We spent the second day in Essen, where we visited a museum about the Ruhrgebiet, and then the Folkwang art museum, where I saw the best exhibit I’ve ever seen: “Im Farbenrausch: Munch, Matisse, and the Expressionists.”  Look it up, it was amazing and definitely the highlight of the trip for me…if I were an art thief, I totally would have wanted to steal some stuff.  The last day, we toured Düsseldorf, learning a little more about the city’s history and the rivalry between Köln and Düsseldorf, and then saw a puppet-play (totally weird).

Add to all that excitement and touring the fact that Düsseldorf has the “längste Theka der Welt” (longest bar in the world), and you’ve got six day’s straight of travelling, touring, drinking, and not sleeping.  My state of exhaustion has me pretty sure I won’t be doing any more travelling before Christmas break (home to Cleveland yayyyyyyy!!!), but the plan is to spend weekends going on day-trips to see various Christmas markets!  

The Challenges of Being an American in Germany

As I’m sure all of you can imagine, moving to a foreign country has its challenges – new language, feeling like an idiot all the time, annoying bureaucracy, homesickness, a wardrobe that doesn’t really cut it, etc etc etc.  The list goes on!  Today, however, is about the culinary challenges:

I’m getting really bored of the beer here.  Ok, Germany has great beer - and they are extremely proud of it and ALL Germans laugh at me when I say I miss American beer.  However, a rotating “diet” of just Pils and Hefeweizens is getting a little old…I would kill for some Schlafly Pumpkin, or an APA, or a Vanilla Porter…the list goes on.  I haven’t even found an Irish bar in Detmold where I can get a Guinness!!  Anyways...I think this indicates I’m having a pretty good year here, if my idea of a problem is the non-extensive beer options. 

Another “problem” I ran into lately was baking chocolate chip cookies here.  Something that I could do in my sleep in the States became a full-on project here in Germany.  Here are the steps:

(1) Research “baking soda in Germany” to come up with the right translation/brand name of something that will function like baking soda

(2) Spend about an hour at the grocery story perusing the baking section, to finally settle upon some weird powdery stuff that’s labeled “Vanille” and two different types of brown sugar that are clearly both not quite right

(4) Spend a good 15 minutes hacking up a semi-sweet chocolate bar into something resembling chocolate-chip sized pieces

(3) Preheat the oven, ie, pull up one of those online translators for temperatures and things like “cups to mLs”

(4) Measure out very in-exactly the supposed metric amounts of flour, sugar, etc etc

(5) Be very concerned when the vanilla-powder-stuff doesn’t appear to dissolve into the mix well, and when the consistency of the dough is quite strange

(6) Bake! And watch the dough rise a frightening amount, and resolve to bring some American ingredients (baking soda!!!) back after Christmas

(7) Burn slightly…ok that has nothing to do with Germany, just my ditzy-ness!

All of those issues aside, it was of course still delicious!  The roommates and I devoured the first pie-plate I made, and I managed not to burn the second.

Food-issues aside, a quick note on Amsterdam – it was one of the most fun trips I’ve ever taken.  It was so fabulously refreshing to be in an actual city, where you have to fight through crowds on the street and there is still life going on around you when you’re walking home from the bars at 4am.  I didn’t do all that much (I’d been once before and done some of the tourist sites like the Anne Frank House already), so I spent just a lot of time walking around the beautiful canals and eating and drinking (in healthy, moderate amounts, of course).  We did take a walking tour one day, which at least gave me a great sense of the city history and layout, and I was able to make it to the Jewish Museum – but aside from those two activities, it was a very chill weekend!

This week starts a new schedule (it’s a new quarter); it’s basically my old schedule plus two new classes.  This weekend it’s off to Hamburg (the final large German city on my list of must visits!) and then Monday through Wednesday we have an Assitant-Meeting in Düsseldorf.  I’ll have an update next weekend at the earliest, I expect!

Exhaustion

The theme of this post is exhaustion.  I am exhausted!  Here’s a quick summary of why:

1. This weekend I hung out with my incredibly fun roommates (trying to learn pool, tips anyone?).  There is nothing quite like waking up at 5:30 on a Friday morning, going to five hours of class, taking a far-too-short afternoon nap, and then staying at the bar til 5 am…going from school-schedule-to-university-student-schedule in the same day is killer.

2. Having to switch between German and English quickly and accurately is strangely tiring.  I never knew how incredible it was that all of my professors and teachers could go from perfect English to perfect German and back multiple times in the same day.  My brain cannot get the hang of it, and my German is not improving here as quickly as I’d hoped it would.  I think it’s partially because I’m not letting my English go to hell like I usually do (ie, I start letting German phrases and structures creep into my English).  I don’t want to do that this year because I want to retain my perfect, native English to speak to my students with, but the back-and-forth is proving really challenging for me. 

3. Teaching is exhausting, and I apologize for stating the obvious.  For all the idiots out there kvetching about how teachers don’t work hard enough…well, as I said, you are idiots.  That’s all.  But, I really didn’t anticipate how mentally “on” I would have to be just to lead a two-hour lesson about and in my native language! 

In the hopes that you’re wondering what exactly I’ve actually been doing at school that’s exhausting me so much, here’s a run-down:

Last Thursday, I got to take half of one of my 8^th grade classes for a period to go over some vocabulary.  They didn’t really want to speak English, making it a bit challenging and frustrating.  (I took the other half of the class Friday.)

Also Thursday (and Friday) I got to take three or four of my 9^th graders at a time to do some simple conversation exercises – basically just me asking them stuff about their families, hobbies, etc, but the kids really want to speak English with me and it’s great.

In my other 8^th grade class, I usually stay in the classroom with the teacher, and we help the kids with writing exercises or listen to them present small dialogues.  This class is super adorable and enthusiastic to the point of being out-of-control loud and rambunctious.  But their English is great and their energy is certainly not a bad thing, especially on a Friday afternoon when I’m hitting my wall.

For the very last class Friday, I’m with a group of 13^th graders.  Picture tall guys towering over me and basically everyone looking older than me.  It’s a bit strange!  Their regular teacher couldn’t be there so I got them set up with some worksheets at the beginning of class and then took smaller groups to a different room to learn about the electoral college.  Teaching that complex topic works much better with 18 year olds than 13 year olds, sorry again for stating the obvious.

Then, Monday of this week I spent the day listening to the 13^th graders’ oral exams.  They had to present on an invention and its effects for mankind (topics ranged from the telephone to condoms and the pill…wouldn’t see that in an American class I don’t think) and then the students had to answer questions about topics they’d discussed in class this year.  It was really challenging, not only to listen super carefully so that we could grade them at the end, but also to listen to a presentation in English and then discuss/grade in German!  Again, the back-and-forth was doing me in.  However, it was extremely interesting to hear about the grading process and it felt awesome to actually be able to help comment on what was said. 

Tuesday, then, I taught Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and a parody video to my 10^th graders; they were really well behaved for me and there were definitely some of those awesome moments where they came up with great ideas/interpretations that I hadn’t even thought about.  Also, this was the first time I lead an entire class entirely by myself…it was awesome.  I’m super happy to be finding out that I actually do like teaching itself and not just the idea of it!

Then, I listened to some more of the oral exams, and finished the day with my 6^th graders.  I took half the class at a time (girls first, then the boys) and spent the period letting them ask me questions, and then working on a listening exercise.  The boys were SUPER rambunctious and at one point asked me if the girls were better.  When I said yes, they all got super sad and begged me not to tell their teacher…it was adorable.  Overall though, they are a great group with the energy to rival the 8^th graders. 

So, I’m finally starting to feel like a real person here in this country!  The sense of purpose associated with prepping classes and being at school is amazing, especially compared to how lazy/undirected I felt when just taking university classes in Tübingen last year.  Now, with our Halloween/All Saints/All Souls long weekend, it’s off to Amsterdam!