Goodbyes

It all started last Thursday evening, when Susanne arranged for a few teachers to come to Detmold and have one last dinner with me.  It was really nice seeing everyone outside of school – we even managed to talk about non-school related things part of the time, which I think is pretty impressive for a bunch of teachers – but as soon as dinner was over the “I’m leaving soon!” panic – and the tears – set in.

Sunday evening we threw a party, and someone asked me what I’d be taking with me from this year…and there was more crying.

Since then, it’s been a stream of goodbyes, tears, promises to come back and visit soon, really thoughtful gifts (recipe book for German bread included!!!), cakes and cookies and German treats from my students, and the crazy part of my brain trying to decide if I should move back here and try to teach permanently – not currently the plan, but I suppose having options in life never hurts?

I’m in the middle of packing panic at the moment.  Tomorrow, Saturday, I head to Cologne, where Rebecca and I will have one last night out (or at least a bier or two).  Sunday morning will be the dreadfully long Köln-Amsterdam-New York-Cleveland trip…and then the reverse culture shock can set in. 

To those of you in America…I CANNOT wait to see you all.  It’s the only thing that’s going to get me on that plane Sunday!

School Exchange

As I mentioned, last week Jarrett and I visited each others’ schools, as I have Mondays free and he’s off on Tuesdays.  After the two days, I had the feeling that things are far more similar between our schools than I’d anticipated.  Over in Oerlinghausen, they’ve also got a cramped staff room and rowdy (in American terms, unacceptably loud) kids!  Jarrett also seems to be used pretty much the same way I am; sometimes he’s just in a class and helping kids with work, other times he’s leading a special lesson on a US topic – last week, it was US geography with the little ones. 

Mondays is his AG (basically a lunch-time extracurricular extra lesson in English), so we did a swearing lesson with them based on materials I’d used before with another class.  It was a group of 7 ninth-grade boys, so they were a little wild, but did genuinely see the reason behind us doing an entire lesson on swearing – they didn’t have a sense of how offensive some words are, but I really think they did by the end of the lesson. 

The next day, it was really cool to have him at my school and see how the kids reacted.  My 9^th graders were pretty normal, but one of my 6^th grade classes seemed quite fascinated by him, and spent a good bit of time asking him questions.  My 5^th graders were even more intrigued, and spent literally the whole class period asking him everything from “What’s your favorite class in school” to “Are you rich?”… we let the teacher tell them that’s not actually an apprpriate question to ask someone, but it was a bit funny nonetheless!

Visitor!

After being jealous of all the British assistants who had friends visiting throughout the year, I finally had a visitor of my own.  Vanessa, another WashU student from my sorority who is currently living in Switzerland headed up to Berlin for a long weekend and made her way over to Detmold to spend a bit of time in NRW. 

It was really really really fun having someone from WashU around, and I enjoyed the chance to be a bit touristy again in NRW/Detmold.  Saturday, we headed to Düsseldorf for the day, as Vanessa wanted to check out some art museums.  While she and Jarrett visited one, I spent the first part of the day wandering around cute little neighborhoods, getting lost, happily stumbling upon a fro-yo place and less happily getting caught in a wicked, 5-minute downpour – but what’s a week in Germany without ridiculous weather, right? I visited the second museum with them and it was great, as Jarrett has studied quite a bit of art and art history, so walking around with him left me feeling pretty well informed.  After a proper German dinner and a few Altbiere – Düsseldorf’s local brew, dark and delicious – we ran for our lives to catch a train back to Detmold, and somehow made it.

Sunday, after a ridiculously long but lovely proper German breakfast at the apartment with the roommates, we hit the Regional Museum in Detmold to check out an exhibit on art during the National Socialist regime; it was both informative and artistically great at some points.  On Monday we had to make an early start of the day, as Vanessa headed back to Berlin and I made my way to Oerlinghausen to visit Jarrett’s school…but I’ll update on that later!  

Weather weather weather

My last post ended with an ecstatic “the sun is shining!” and while it’s still shining here in Lippe, the disastrous weather in Germany has somehow struck again…

This weekend, I was supposed to road-trip down to Vienna with a friend, for a weekend of clubbing/dancing/museums/delicious food/gorgeous architecture/general big-city fun.  Most of you probably know that Vienna is, without a doubt, my favorite European city – so I’m pretty bummed not to be there.  What went wrong? Parts of southern Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and even Hungary are having serious flooding problems, due to, you guessed it, rain.  Highways down south have been either closed or so traffic-jammed that we decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to drive into the unknown…we’d also heard that the night before people were stuck on the roads and sleeping in cars.

So, I spent the weekend in Detmold, and as it was sunny and beautiful here, chilled in the park on Saturday reading and working on my tan (I’m sadly still freakishly pale).  I’m sort-of over the fact that what was supposed to be my last travel-hurrah of the year was cancelled, and for such a boring reason, but I’m also sure that, when I look back on this year in Germany, the terrible weather will be something that really stands out.  From this cancelled trip, to many many many days exploring a new city from under an umbrella, to the fact that I’m pretty sure my mom and I saw snow nearly every day of her trip here, the weather has influenced a good bit of my time here.

On a slightly related note, the sun here sets later than in the States – and I funnily don’t remember that from Tübingen.  Today, for example, the sunset time is 9:43, while at home in Cleveland, it’s 9:00.  Somehow it really makes a big difference, and the light evenings have been messing up my schedule a bit – it seems really silly to get ready for bed at 10 when it’s still light out!

Belgium

This past weekend, we had the last of three four-day-weekends in the month of May, and took the chance to head to Belgium.  We packed two cities into the trip, Antwerp and Ghent, and both were quite different than what I had expected.  I thought Belgium would be a bit like Luxembourg, and the southern, French-speaking area, might be. We, however, were in the northern, Dutch-speaking area, and it was like a grittier, non-touristy version of the Netherlands.  There were definitely beautiful sections, but both cities felt very “real.”

Our train tickets for the entire trip – there, back, and one day from Antwerp to Ghent – were quite inexpensive, in part because being under 26 years old in Belgium has a lot of advantages, one being ridiculously inexpensive (in comparison to Germany) train tickets.  Young people under 26 can travel between any two cities in the country for only 6 EUR, even on higher-speed trains like the ICs.  Museum entry was also always just a single euro, which was great as I visited two and Jarrett managed to pop into at least five. 

Aside from museums and walking around seeing the beautiful squares and churches, we spent a lot of time eating and drinking.  The waffles and fries from street vendors were just as delicious as we expected them to be, and Belgian beer is truly different and exciting.  While I found a lot of the beers too sweet, I also had some excellent hoppy ones that were very different from American beers – and very very very good.  We also unfortunately discovered the absolute worst beer any of us had ever tasted before, Delerium Tremens.  I’d heard of it before and later read that it’s considered one of the greatest beers in the world, but we all frankly thought it tasted a bit like vomit.  Sorry for the unpleasant image there, can’t win them all! 

Yesterday, it was back to school, where I talked about American High Schools, read a Shel Silverstein poem with the little ones, discussed Macbeth with the 11^th graders, and finished off the day with a nice chat with my other group of 11^th graders. 

And, FINALLY, the sun is shining in Lippe! 

NRW Travels

Yesterday, I got back from a trip to Belgium, but to update on the preceding few weekends:

With that wonderful semester-pass that allows me to take slow trains for free, I was able to head all the way to the other end of the state of NRW to Aachen for a few days.  Aachen, while smaller than I expected, was an absolutely beautiful town, with small, winding alleys and a lovely Innenstadt that, in some ways, reminded me of Tübingen.  The Dom (Cathedral) in Aachen is also one of the most ridiculously colorful, golden, and shiny churches I’ve ever seen, but somehow manages to just miss the gaudy mark and was actually really beautiful. 

Aachen also impressed me with some of the best sweets I’ve had in Germany.  The town is known for its “Printen,” gingerbread-like little cookies that can be covered in chocolate or nuts, as well as “Streußelbrötchen,” which is literally my new favorite pastry in the world.  It’s a very good thing I don’t live in Aachen, I suspect I’d try to eat one every day…

The following weekend, we celebrated for the last time with many of the English assistants in NRW, doing the usual trip to Duisburg for a night out.  It was a great time, but a whole lot of people are gone now, though thankfully Rebecca and Luke, two Detmolders, are sticking around for longer.

On that note, however, I’ve been mentally making lists of “things I miss from home” to get myself excited about coming back soon.  So far, the list includes driving, country music on the radio, Sunday breakfasts and dinners with the family, and dryers.  I still haven’t gotten into the idea of waiting days for sheets and towels to dry!

Red, Blue and White

Sounds funny, right?? Last week I played a board game with my 6^th graders where they had to take turns speaking for 30 seconds about a random topic from the board. One topic was “the USA,” and I heard the usual facts about Washington, DC and President Obama. One student, however, started to describe the flag, saying it had stars and was “red, blue and white” – it sounded so strange!

I tried to explain to them that, for some reason, we always say “red, white and blue,” in that order. They didn’t really understand until I asked about the colors of the German flag –  schwarz, rot and gold (black, red, and gold) – and then said them in a different order. They all made a really funny face and told me you can’t mix up the order in German either!  

Rainboots

Horrible weather has, unfortunately, been a huge part of my year here so far – I can think of few trips I’ve taken where bad weather hasn’t either kept us from doing something fun or left us a bit miserable, and Detmold has far more crappy cloudy days than sunny beautiful ones.  Today, although it’s the end of May, we’ve got a high of about 55 degrees and it’s been pouring all day.

What this post is really about, though, is rainboots! Now, Germans are a very practical people, and they always seem to choose dressing appropriately for the weather over looking extremely fashionable, although they do rock a good boot.  What Germans haven’t caught onto, though, are proper rainboots.  Few things fascinate my kids as much as when I walk into class with my tall, bright orange rainboots – my 8^th graders have not-so-subtly told me they think they look ridiculous and would never wear such a thing, while today, my fifth grade girls all came over to me and had to touch them and ask a million times what they were.  And when I walk through town in them, the older people just stare at me like I’m crazy.

Maybe when I’m back in a few years they’ll have caught onto the most sensible pieces of footwear one can own in a country where it seems to rain over 50% of the time? I don’t think I’ll hold my breath though. 

Maastricht

Divya and I headed to Maastricht, in the Netherlands, last weekend, and while the weather was horrible and the town was smaller than we anticipated, we managed to make a good trip out of it.  We spent most of the weekend just walking around, checking out all of the different neighborhoods and sights, and enjoying coffee and beer stops along the way.  We also visited a really wacky bookstore, located in an old church, where the upper levels and shelving are just sandwiched between these massive old pillars; walking around was a very strange experience.

Overall, the town itself was quite pretty, situated on both sides of a river, and the trip reminded me of how much I like the Netherlands.  As you may have already gathered, I sort-of hate leaving Germany and being somewhere where I don’t speak the language, but the Netherlands is a huge exception to this.  Because:

1.     Everyone speaks freakishly good English

2.     The beer is delicious and varying in style and alcohol percentage

3.     The people are tall and beautiful and it’s fun to just watch everyone ride by on their bikes

4.     The peanut butter is shockingly inexpensive compared to in Germany

5.     The skinny little houses all jammed together are beautiful, and just fun to look at

6.     It’s always a lot of fun trying to decode (and pronounce things in) the Dutch language

There are also some big differences between Germany and the Netherlands, such as the fact that grocery stores and shops are open on Sundays! That, and the fact that they give you beer with an empty glass and you pour for yourself…

On the way back from Maastricht, I stopped in Köln to see an Ellie Golding concert with Becca.  Words cannot describe how incredible it was, and we were both dying of happiness and awe at the end.  Listen to her stuff if you never have! 

Everyone is fine!

I’ve titled this post “Everyone is fine” because it’s about German hospitals.  I can’t seem to stay away from them – visited one myself while I was living in Tübingen, and got to spend this past weekend at one with Becca, after a scary bout of stomach pain and collapsing (note: not at all drinking related). She’s doing well now, and we’re entering the phase where we can laugh about what a ridiculous experience it was.

It starts in Duisburg, aka, about three hours away from home.  We were there for another assistant’s birthday party, had a good time hanging out with everyone, went to a club for a bit, and then headed back to the dorm where a bunch of them live.  Fast forward to around three am, and one ambulance ride later we’re in the most ridiculous hospital in the world.

No one in the hospital seemed to wear gloves, except when they were clearing the food trays (that makes sense, right..?), and there were no biohazard waste containers everywhere.  There was also definitely blood spattered on the floor in a few places. It was pretty nasty.  They also let me carry vials of blood down to Becca’s room to pass off to a new nurse…the casualness of this place was laughable at the time, and a bit scary in retrospect. 

Becca also had the most ridiculous roommate who was simultaneously quite lovely. She spent a lot of time walking round the room muttering “Scheiße, scheiße!” under her breath, but also took really good care of us – I didn’t feel too terrible leaving Becca there overnight, as I was pretty sure the woman would keep an eye on her!

After about 30 hours at this hospital, they cleared us to leave and we got on a train back to Detmold – I don’t think we’d ever been so happy to be home.  The most laughable part of the whole experience? We went to the party, which was HBO-show-characters-themed, dressed as vampires, so Becca arrived at the hospital with a very decent amount of fake blood dripping down her face and neck.  It gave us all a good laugh through the madness! 

School update

To reassure you all that I do, in fact, still work here and go to school, rather than bumming around on trains and in new cities all day, an update:

I’ve mentioned already that I got a new fifth grade class back in February; what I haven’t yet said is how brilliant they are.  We play a vocabulary game at the beginning of each class, they translate full sentences flawlessly and quickly.  Their teacher fires questions about the use of various tenses at them, they respond unhesitatingly with the correct description of when to use the simple present v. the present progressive.  We write sentences on the board like “Hillary gave her brother chocolate chip cookies” and they can identify the direct and indirect objects.  Their  class has shown me the extremely results of a good, challenging teacher who expect a lot of his students, and the hard work they’ll put in in turn.  And of course, they’re absolutely adorable!

During the past few weeks I’ve also been working very intensely with my 11^th graders on their “Facharbeite,” long papers on a subject related to international exchange or cultural comparisons.  In short, I absolutely love it.  I’ve always known that I love writing and the writing process (and thank god, considering the grad-school plan I’ve got going), but I didn’t realize how absolutely exciting and rewarding it is to give kids feedback on their work, and have them come to me a week later with re-worked and really improved essays.  I suspect it won’t always be so rewarding – these are the kids at the top of their game in their grade level, really – but it’s exciting to discover yet another aspect of teaching and academics that I really really enjoy. 

Finally, this week marked the start of my last-new schedule, for the 4^th quarter.  It’s pretty perfect – I’ve got all of my favorite classes still, and was able to re-work in my awesome 9^th graders who I went on class trip with, as well as a new 8^th grade class – they’re wild but super enthusiastic. 

To close, I’ve just recognize that I describe the majority of my classes that way: “wild/crazy but enthusiastic.”  As mentioned, this very much has to do with the fact  that German students are, as a rule, far less quiet than American students.  In many of my classes, it’s completely normal for a teacher to talk over the sound of half his students chattering.  I don’t do this.  I’ve recently accepted that my American ways cannot be broken in this respect, I will spend a full two minutes standing at the front of the room waiting for them to quiet each other down, and I recently told a class that if they couldn’t get it together and be quiet when I was talking, I wasn’t going to come anymore to work with them.  I’ve got to say, this week was markedly better!  

Spring Break/Travels

I’ll start by saying there is no way to summarize my mom’s trip over here.  We hit Berlin, Prague, Bamberg and Detmold in just under two weeks, and I’m pretty sure it snowed nearly every day.  The horrible cold aside, we (or at least I!) had a great time, and happily, my language skills never failed me in an embarrassing way…so, I think I’ve successfully proved to the family I’m learning something over here!

While summarizing the trip is absolutely impossible, here are a few funny notes:

My mom and her friend couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea of drinking in public – when our train tickets were checked on the way from Berlin to Prague, she and her friend had a mild freak-out and (awkwardly and not very subtly) tried to hide the bottle of wine we were drinking.

I was forced to take about a billion sidewalk pictures in Prague, making each and every turn down a new street a small photo op – look out for some extremely cool “sidewalk pictures” hanging somewhere in the house at some point in the next…ten years???

I was able to introduce my mom to cinnamon-orange-tequila shots…great success!

I was almost murdered by my mother when we arrived at the platform for the train to Prague only six minutes before the train was set to leave – after that, we usually got to each train station about a half hour early.

Strangely, the Lenon Wall was my favorite Prague attraction – I recommend it highly! It’s something totally different to look at in the city.

And finally, I essentially totally fell in love with Berlin when we were there.  I’d been twice before, and always found the city too big, confusing, and lacking a “feel” – people often say Berlin doesn’t really know what it wants to be, and this is in some ways very true.  While it used to bother me, I’ve recently been able to embrace Berlin in all it’s many-sided-madness, and I can’t wait to get back there someday.

Then, after a couple of weeks at home, the travelling continued with a trip to Trier (Germany’s oldest city) and Luxembourg.  While we endured our fair share of mishaps, including hiking all the way to a winery just to realize we needed a reservation, and some Luxembourgisch hostel-roommates who came back to the room drunk and loud at 3am, the trip was overall not only amazingly interesting and enjoyable, but quite relaxing, and started and ended with absolutely beautiful train rides along the Rhine.  We spent most of our time just walking around both cities, seeing Roman baths and beautiful vineyards in Trier and Luxembourg’s impressive former city defenses (think lots and lots of really cool looking walls and towers), and were able to hit two free museums in Luxembourg.  Overall, it was one of the most fun trips I’ve taken this year.

However, the single most interesting experience I had was attending Mass in Luxembourg.  Luxembourg officially rocks a few languages – French, German, and Luxembourgish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourg#Language.  Mass started with the sign of the cross in French, progressed to Latin for the Kyrie and Gloria, readings were done in French and German, the homily started in French and at some point switched to Luxembourgish, most of the Liturgy of the Eucharist was in German, with some Luxembourgish sprinkled in.  Divya and my heads were absolutely spinning the entire time!  We also realized we can somewhat understand Luxembourgish; it’s a very strange but cool sounding language. 

Finally, I’ve been really trying to put my semester-train ticket to use recently – a few weeks ago we picnicked in a beautiful park in Oelde, I’ve been in Bielefeld a bit more than usual, and yesterday, I went down to Köln to spend the day with Rebecca and a friend she has visiting from home.  Trains are still one of my favorite things about this country!

Fun times at school

A quick update on March before I leave for Berlin:

School school school. It was a really busy few weeks at school, perhaps the busiest since I’ve been here.  Last week, my 9^th graders spent a class period asking me about American high schools and their first question was “are the school busses really yellow?” – definitely an amusing couple of hours!  I’ve also had a few afternoons where I’ve subbed in for sick teachers with the upper-level kids.  It makes for long days, and my 13^th graders weren’t pleased with the work I gave them (practice exams), but the kids are always respectful and it’s cool to be able to organize class periods, even when I’m working off of a teacher’s idea. 

I’ve also helped correct some term papers recently, and got to create my 8^th graders vocabulary test for this week.  Both experiences have, once again, shown me just how much time goes into teaching outside of the classroom – correcting just one, ten-page paper in non-native and thus slightly confusing English took me well over an hour, and I wasn’t even grading, but rather just looking for mistakes and helping with overall clarity. 

Busy-ness aside, the less stressful moments with my 5^th and 6^th graders have been wonderful as usual.  This week one of my 6^th grade classes was having so much fun working on writing their own texts that they asked their teacher if they could have “another hour of English!!!” instead of switching over to history.  We were astounded and of course let them keep going. One task asked them to write me an email about things to do in Blomberg; I learned that we have TWO ice cream shops in the city and that the restaurant in the castle is supposed to be quite excellent :)

On a “school-systems-differences” aside, we were able to push the hour of history back and do another hour of English with the 6^th grade because Gymnasium teachers in Germany always have two subjects – thus, as their English teacher is also their history teacher she can rearrange the hours a bit when she wants to.  Teachers often have subjects that you’d expect to go together – English and German, or a language and history, or math and a science or bio and chem – but there are also combinations like English and biology.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Berlin, then Prague and Bamberg before heading back to Detmold for Easter.  In true German/European fashion, I’m looking forward to some more vacation time!

Some wonderful things about February

Recent news in Germany is that this is the darkest winter they’ve had in decades – one report I saw said in 43 years, another threw out the number 62.  Either way, it’s been ridiculous! Everyone I know, roommates, teachers, and other teaching assitants, is absolutely fed up with this winter and the blues that have come with it…but despite the fact that I’ve been on-off sick and freezing and therefore spending a lot of time in bed with a magazine or movie, February was a pretty great month.  Here’s why:

I went to a hockey game! As it was less physical than a North American game, had a final score of 6-1, and obviously wasn’t played by teams I had any allegiance to, it wasn’t the most exciting game I’ve ever seen, but the fans were super-enthusiastic and, let’s face it, hockey is always awesome. 

The 13^th graders who I’m helping to prep for their final oral exams are getting noticeably more comfortable with speaking and it’s really fun to see them making progress. 

I’ve been doing a decent bit of pronunciation-practice with my kids, and it’s quite satisfying to eliminate things like “willage” and “Ca-li-for-ni-a” from their English!

I now have a tandem partner through Bielefeld University; we met up Wednesday when he invited me to a French-cooking-session at his apartment .  Not only was it a great time and a chance to meet a lot of new people, but we also made some delicious Flammkuchen!  (tarte flambée in French, a thin pizza-like dish)

I’ve gotten to know even more teachers at my school; certainly makes the day more social and enjoyable.

I’ve found a new “gym-buddy” which has given me good incentive to keep going, even as I dread the prospect of waiting outside in the freezing cold at the bus stop. 

Finally, February got some points for being a short month – we’re all super-broke and were happy to have been paid again after only 28 days!

And, March should be equally wonderful – the sun is evening shining today!  At school we’ll finish up with the 13^th graders, I’m headed to Berlin in mid-March for a big Fulbright meeting, we’ll have Spring Break immediately after that, and, most importantly, my dearly-beloved mother is coming to visit!  

Dublin

Dublin.  I really don’t know how to adequately describe what an amazing time I had, suffice it to say there is nothing quite like having four days to just hang out and explore with a friend from home.  I could not be happier that Michaela chose this year to pop over to Europe for a bit!  (Though I did genuinely tear up when we were saying goodbye.)

The trip did NOT, however start off well…the night before I left, I was still feeling decently sick, and when I woke up after napping, Friedemann informed me that the security people were going on strike at the Düsseldorf airport the next day.  I changed my flight, got up at four the next morning to go to Berlin instead, suffered through a nice delay, and finally made it to Dublin.

Once there, the weekend just got better and better.  We hit the Guinness factory Thursday night, spent Saturday at the Irish National Stud where racehorses are bred, saw the Book of Kells, an old manuscript, at Trinity College, and of course spent a good deal of time enjoying the local food and beer.  Our tour guide from the Guinness factory even recommended us a brewery in town; it was beyond exciting to drink some porters and IPAs and red ales. 

A lot of the differences between Ireland and Germany were really doing my head in the whole time I was there – the Brits do always tell me that they and Ireland aren’t really part of Europe in some ways.  I had my first surprise at the airport, when I was actually questioned about why I was coming into the country.  Two questions, “why are you here” and “how long are you staying” constituted the most intense security I’ve experienced outside of the US.  Then, I had a real shock on my way from the airport into town, when, like an idiot, I realized they drive on the opposite side of the road.  This had me very very confused the entire four days and every street crossing was a bit dangerous.  I was also unpleasantly surprised to discover they use different plugs than in Germany…luckily Michaela had an adaptor!

Our funniest moment of the trip, however, came when a nice older man at one of the bars told Michaela and I we had “very American teeth.” What a thing to be identified by! 

Viva Colonia!

Karneval is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve experienced in Germany.  Karneval – the pre-Lenten party/Mardi Gras – actually begins on Nov. 11 and is basically the biggest cultural event NRW has to offer; its epicenter is Köln. Divya, another American assistant in the area, was offered her landlady’s sister’s apartment for the weekend, so we all headed down to Köln to see the madness.

The Detmold lot (Rebecca, Jen, Luke and I) arrived on Saturday. It should be noted that the “real” Karneval events are Thursday, Weiberfastnacht/Women’s Day, and Monday, Rosenmontag, when there is a huge parade in Köln. Saturday, when we went out, was nothing special, but this didn’t stop the whole city from dressing up in extremely elaborate costumes, drinking in the streets, going to bars and clubs well before a normal going-out time, and dancing crazily to German hits the entire night.

Here’s what I found so wonderful about all this:

1.     To make a sweeping generalization, and in my opinion, Germans don’t often get too riled up or excited about things. Football is one thing they’ll go crazy for, and apparently Karneval is another. In this calm, orderly, sometimes downright boring-seeming country, it was amazing to see everyone let their hair down, put a ton of effort into their costumes, and be completely ridiculous.

2.     I’ve never ever ever heard so much crappy German music in a bar – they usually play American/British/Australian stuff, and while I love having good music to dance to, it is sometimes sad how they don’t pull from their own culture to party. Karneval is again the exception – the music was terrible, as a lot of German pop is, but it was amazing to see everyone get so excited about it. I also learned the Kölner Karneval song (Viva Colonia), which is incredibly fun to sing/scream along to with a bunch of Germans.

3.     I saw yet another example of Germans dealing with alcohol responsibly: people walking around the streets of Köln with glass bottles were stopped, given a plastic cup to pour their beer in, and shown a glass deposit container where they could toss the empty bottle. Safe, practical, keeps up the tradition of recycling, and let’s the party go on.

The unfortunate flipside to this whole weekend is that I was rather sick (though the fortunate flipside of that is that I didn’t really drink and thus saved a bit of cash). So, this weekend was not only an introduction to German Karneval Kultur, but also my first full attempt at curing myself German-style. This meant a lot of fruit juice, oranges, heiße Zitronen – lemon and honey with hot water – tea, the strange homeopathic salts that I’m convinced prevented me from being sick over Thanksgiving weekend, and some plant-based decongestant. Plus a lot of sleep.

New Schedule

As Tuesday marked the start of the second half of the school year, all the students’ and teachers’ schedules changed, which meant mine did too.  While I’ve happily held on to some classes, like my adorable sixth graders, and sadly lost some, like my awesome ninth graders who I went on the class trip with, I’ve also got some completely new ones.  This quarter, I’ve got a fifth grade class – they’re wild but super enthusiastic – a different ninth grade class, and some additional upper-level-classes.  The teachers want me to help prep the 13^th graders for their oral English exams, and while its exciting to know I’m helping out with something really important, it’s also a little scary.  Hoping we get them all to a good place before the exam…!

The most positive thing about my new schedule, though, is that I’m working with some different teachers, and thus feeling even more integrated into the system.  It’s amazing how friendly everyone is once I get to know them a bit; they’re always inviting me to birthday celebrations and the like.  The feeling of integration and purpose that comes from working at a school is incredible, and it’s genuinely been a much more positive experience overall then when I was at university in Tübingen.  

Tuesday was a really great day for me, as when I walked into my sixth graders’ room, the teacher handed me his book and said “want to teach these two pages?” For really the first time, I just did it, without getting all flustered or questioning myself or needing an hour to think about what I should do.  It’s really exciting that I’m developing a feel for how to organize a class period and direct the students through various activities, and since these kids are super enthusiastic and sweet I’m able to focus on my teaching and their learning without dealing with any behavior issues.  Biggest issue? I keep forgetting to make them use complete sentences! I think this is because normal conversations do not consist of complete sentences, so statement that sound (and are) still very correct aren’t necessarily the statement/kind of practice that is going to help the kids actually develop their English to the highest level possible.

In conclusion, two things about German students that continue to crack me up:

1.     German kids are obsessed with white-out.  Each student appears to have two or three different kinds, and they use them in their personal notes, not just on a assignments…very few students seem to be able to cross things out, leading to veryyyyyyy slowly produced work. It’s all just very orderly and German.

2.     German kids have absolutely decked-out pencil cases. In addition to the pens and pencils one would expect, they have their white-outs, various rulers, glue sticks, colored pencils, highlighters, etc…they’re extremely well prepared, but again, this leads to some slow classroom work, as they alternate between colors and writing materials.

Basically, the Germans learn their orderly and elaborate ways early!

Trains, Concerts and Bars

This pretty much sums up my social life here in Germany – it’s a good mix of high- and low-culture, no? A quick explanation for each:

Trains: It’s interesting and I haven’t mentioned it yet, but because I’m enrolled as a student at a University here, I have a “free” transportation pass that allows me to use all Nahverkehr/Regional transportation in my entire state – from the busses that get me around Detmold and to school in Blomberg, to the (admittedly slower) trains that can take me all the way down to Köln.  It’s as wonderful as it sounds!  Some people complain about not being able to use the fast trains but I feel less touristy and more authentic on the “Bummelzüge.” It’s also worth mentioning that this pass is just another reason why I’m extremely lucky to be in the state that I am, North-Rhine Westphalia, as most assistants in other states don’t have such awesome, well-priced, and extensive transport options.

Concerts: As previously mentioned, both of my roommates study at the Music School in Detmold, which means I’m constantly being told about (free) concerts or performances they’re doing.  It’s not only a lovely way to occupy my time, but it’s also interesting to see myself develop a bit of an interest in classical music: lately, I’ve found myself spotify-ing different cello sonata’s and the like!

Bars: Not much to explain here, though I do want to mention that beer is a lot less expensive at a bar in Germany than it is in the US.  Yesterday, a small Guinness only put me back 2,20 EUR, which is still under three bucks (also, Germans use commas where we use periods, and vice-versa). Furthermore, a bar is a great place to practice my German, as it’s actually quite a challenge to carry on a conversation in a foreign language in such a loud and confusing setting!

Add it all up, and you’ve got my weekends. 

Ways in which I am becoming more German

As I get over my homesickness and round two of culture shock, I’ve been really amused some things in my life that seem quite typically “German.” Here are some examples:

I’m get very stressed and nervous when I’m not at my morning bus stop at least 4 minutes before the bus is supposed to leave.  I used to casually saunter up about 30 seconds before the 6:39 mark; now, I arrive early and wait around in the freezing cold with the rest of my fellow travelers.  Note: this stress developed after I noticed that the bus has actually been leaving well before its scheduled time.  In Germany, it seems that you’re just expected to be places early enough, so if you’re “on time” but miss the bus it’s no ones fault but your own.

After complaining about how boring German beer is, I’ve started to really enjoy it again.  While I still maintain the lack of variety in styles is a little disappointing, I’m once again in awe of how deliciously they do a basic Pilsner.

I’ve joined a gym here, as the frigid temperatures and snow have made running outside impossible. Just having something as legit as a gym membership here makes me feel very “German” and integrated, but I was also amused when I found myself completely non-plussed the other week when the owner started getting on me about needing to life weights in addition to running – “it’s the best thing for your figure!”  The German honesty and directness, which used to confuse and upset me, is becoming a normal and expected part of my daily interactions.

Finally, I’ve subscribed to a German weekly news magazine, Der SPIEGEL.  It remindes me of TIME magazine from the States and is a great chance to practice German; the issues are packed with stories on a really wide variety of subjects.  On the train this weekend, I was reading a small snippet and translating a bunch of words in it; the guy sitting across from me on the train asked if I were a journalism student doing homework as he’s never seen anyone spend so much time working on a little text.  Tricking people into thinking I’m German = the best part of any week.

Jury Trials, Fruit Roll-Ups, and Gun Control

The only thing that these three things have in common is that they elicited very very very strong reactions in my students.

My 9^th graders are doing a section on “rights,” so I thought we’d do a simple exercise on the Bill of Rights, matching up amendments with situations in which someone’s rights might be violated.  I didn’t finish the activity with either group, as all of the students got really caught up on the idea of “trial by jury.” After I explained what a jury is and does, the questions just kept coming.  They couldn’t get over the idea of someone with no legal training taking part in the legal process…”jury of your peers” didn’t elicit particularly good reactions.  I later found out Germany does have something similar, in which “lay-people” help decide outcomes, but it doesn’t seem as common as in the States.

As for fruit roll-ups, one of my 8^th grade classes requested that I bring some back for them after my trip home for Christmas…I did, and they were ridiculously excited. 

Finally, one of my 11^th grade classes has been doing group presentations on various issues in America, such as gun control, the death penalty, and the civil rights movement.  I was in class with them for the gun control presentation, and at the end they asked me to speak and field questions.  They really couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that I’ve been near guns before and don’t have a problem with people owning them privately; even the teacher was unable to remain “neutral” about the issue and kept agreeing with the students that she would really hate to live in a place where guns were so much more normalized.  It was, without a doubt, the most stressful 20 minutes I’ve ever experienced in school (simply on the account of 25 people staring at my like I was bat-shit-crazy), but the kids were all still really respectful and thanked me at the end of class for talking with them.

Overall, everything at school has been going really well, and all of the kids seemed quite excited that I came back after the holidays.  My homesickness is still more intense than I thought it would be (the freezing winter weather that makes me want to stay in bed all day isn’t helping!) but each day is a bit better!