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!