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!