Breakthroughs

This past week was the week of breakthroughs with my students – turns out all we needed to do was talk about Christmas! 

My 10^th graders finally spoke freely and voluntarily when I expressed confusion about when Santa comes – Germans open presents on the night of the 24^th, in my mind leaving no time for Santa to visit! (Turns out he comes during dinner.)  My 8^th graders \ seemed to enjoy a lesson with me for the very first time today when we listened to the song “Fairy Tale of New York” – an Irish/British Christmas song staple, and filled with lots of nice words like “slut” that they clearly enjoyed learning about.  I think I managed to shock them a little, in the good way, by saying we were doing Christmas music and then playing something so unexpected.  And, my other 8^th graders and I had a great class based around a transcript of a Facebook message.  It was a conversation between me and some British assistants about the differences in our Christmas traditions, so the kids simultaneously got to learn some culture and practice dealing with slang-filled, casual English…shout out to all the Brits/Irish people in Lippe who gave me awesome content for this week!

Their teacher was also really enthusiastic about the lesson I’d put together, as I’d structured it according to a framework he’d introduced me to earlier in the week (it basically involves getting students interested in a topic, offering an activity for them to work on, and having them present their findings and leaving them with something to “take home,” ideally self-produced knowledge or analysis).  That’s the other reason this week has been great – this teacher has started very seriously teaching me how to teach.  He said I’m clearly already comfortable enough with the kids and being in front of a classroom that we can move onto “step 2” in the process, ie, me learning more about pedagogy!  Especially cool is the fact that I’m learning the German terms for school- and teaching-related concepts. 

While a lot of things about my year here are going extraordinarily well, school is by far and away the best part – even with the frustrations that I’ve encountered, being there puts me in such a good mood it’s worth getting up before six every morning!

Christmas Can't Be Very Far Away

Ever have one of those hectic years where Christmas comes and goes, and between the work and rush and lack of snow, it just doesn’t feel like a proper Christmas even happened once December 26 rolls around? 

This could never happen in Germany. 

There is just too much Christmas spirit all around!  It starts well before Advent, at least in Detmold. The town teases you by stringing up lights all throughout the city center and refusing to turn them on.  Then, a little fair comes to town, taking over the entire pedestrian zone and making you miss the bus one day because the bus stop has moved from the main street to a little side street.  The next morning, you have to leave extra-early to make the new bus stop and are forced to take a shortcut through the castle-grounds.  The feeling of annoyance is simply amusing – it’s a difficult life, traipsing through the castle-grounds!

Then, finally, the Wednesday before Advent starts, the fair opens! Detmold comes strangely alive, people fill the streets as soon as it’s dark, eating and drinking and chatting, the lights that have been strung up for weeks finally come on, and you walk around drinking Glühwein, freezing but happy.  This is the essence of the German Christmas season: freezing but happy.

And, while it just keeps getting colder, if you’re like me and the other assistants in the area, you just keep going out into the cold and the crowds, eating and drinking your way through Advent.  One day it’s the market in Bielefeld, the next your at an upscale Christmas market in a castle – literally, in a castle – and the next weekend it’s ice skating on a little rink sandwiched between old half-timber houses and travelling to Münster to steal Glühwein mugs shaped like hearts.  At each market, you try a different type of Glühwein or a tasty winter shot – plum liquor with whipped cream is the winner so far.

Somewhere in between is Nikolaustag and the staff room exploding in a sea of chocolate and treats, a Christmas tree in the school foyer, a delicious Christmas-beer at the local brewery, the fun of opening a new door on the chocolate Advents calendar every day, the appearance of Christmas trees by every lamppost in the city, mince pies from the British and Advent wreaths that have red candles instead of purple and pink.

And while I’m more than excited to come home for Christmas, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world! 

I'm starting to feel like a real teacher...!

But actually, I am! Monday I went to my first “Fachkonferenz,” staff conference for English teachers.  The meeting started off with the head of the English department introducing me to everyone –  it turns out that I actually know less than half of the English teachers at my school – and presenting me with some typical German Christmas gifts, a bottle of Glühwein (mulled wine) and a chocolate Advent Calendar – more on German Christmas in another post, I promise!  It was super nice but I’m sure I was bright red the whole time.

Though the meeting lasted two hours and I didn’t quite understand everything, it was still 100% interesting.  Some of the topics we (well, they) discussed: purchasing new workbook materials for the department (German schools have funding problems too, it turns out), the pros and cons of the 10^th grade English book, the difficulties of mixing bilingual-studies kids and non-bilingual kids in class, possible ways to structure oral exams…and more!  The more time I spend here, the more I’m learning that German schools seem to have many of the same problems and challenges that American schools do – along with what I perceive to be some additional ones, due to how classes and exams are structure.   Turns out education is a thorny, complex, and political issue in this country too.

As for my recent experiences in the classroom, here’s what I’ve been up to:

6^th grade: I’ve been asked to lead more and more classes on my own!  It’s wonderful because (1) the kids are extremely well behaved, aside from the occasional throwning-paper-balls-around-the-classroom from the boys (2) they realllllllly try to always speak English with me, yet my German seems sufficient enough to fill in the blanks when they get really confused/need a word (3) it’s boosting my confidence that I can actually do something here! and (4) I’m slowly starting to pick up a lot of little teaching tricks, both from the teacher and just figuring stuff out on my own.  For example, I’ve been taught that just writing assignments on the board, even when it something simple like “do number 2 with your partner for five minutes” is a great way to keep the kids on track and moving – otherwise they tend to dissolve into distracted chatting…short attention spans, I think!

8^th grade: I’ve two classes.  In the one they do a lot of conversation practice in pairs and then present what they’ve come up with to the whole class – they’re energetic and enthusiastic and overall a lot of fun. In my other class, I’ve been given a group of 8 students, and since they’re working on the topic “NYC” I did a lesson on Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” and Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.”  It was pretty cool in the sense that we got to spend a lot of time talking about the language and phrases they didn’t know, as well as learning more about New York than they had from their book.  Next week I’m thinking about showing a clip from a TV show or movie that portrays New York…suggestions?

9^th grade: Here, we’ve settled into a routine of me getting groups of 4 kids for 15-20 minutes each to work on speaking exercises from the book.  This is the group I went on the class trip with, which has the advantage of them being super comfortable with me, but the disadvantage of them using a lot of German with me, since we spent that whole week together “auf Deutsch.” I think I’ve really got to be stricter with them and get their minds going in English when we’re in class together.  I’m realizing that with these older groups, who don’t have that youthful/adorable desire to practice English, it definitely would be better if I’d been able to keep up the “I speak no German” charade.

10^th grade: The last lessons I’ve spent with them involved me sitting in class and learning the difference between “simple past” and “present perfect” right along with my kids…it’s absolutely mind-blowing sometimes how unaware native speakers are of their language use.  The right tenses just fall out of my mouth, and the students have all of these complicated rules and conditions to learn…I do not envy them.  I am, however quite happy to realize I shouldn’t put too much effort into thinking about which German tense tense…after the most recent lesson, the teacher advised to say nearly everything in the present in German.

11^th grade: Both courses I’m in are analyzing American political speeches at the moment, and I’m of freakishly little use: these kids know a ton.  For example, we read a Schwarzenegger speech in one of the classes, and the question “Who is his wife?” elicited not only the right answer, but also a whole slew of information about the Kennedy family.  I actually had nothing to add after they’d finished sharing all the info they knew. Embarassing? A little bit.

13^th: Between all the tests they’ve been writing, I’ve actually seen quite little of the 13^th graders lately, but the few classes I’ve been in have been good.  In one, I had a group of them teach me how to play a card game in English – they thought this was an extremely stupid idea until 5 seconds into their explanation, when they realized they had no idea how to say things like “deal” and “spades” and “diamonds.”  It’s always funny to watch the older kids have their too-cool-for-school attitudes challenged a bit.

Apologies for the extremely long post, I didn’t realize I’d have so much to say!  

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!

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.  

Back to School, Back to School

I’ve been shadowing different grade levels this week, it’s kinda funny and makes me feel like a little kid again!  The students start every new class by standing up and greeting their teachers in a slightly-adorable, slightly-funny sing-song voice: “Good mooooooorning, Mrs. Charter” or “Guten Moooooorgen, Herr Jürgens auf der Haar.” 

First, to the scheduling: classes are 45 minutes long, but they also have a lot of “Doppelstunden,” where they have two 45 min periods right next to each other with a five minute break in between.  Also, lunch isn’t til 1:05, but they have two larger breaks before that.  So, the 9^th graders I shadowed Monday had this class schedule:

7:45-8:30 Math

8:35-9:20 Math

9:20-9:40 Break

9:40-10:25 French

10:30-11:15 French

11:15-11:30 Break

11:30-12:15 Physics

12:20-13:05 Physics

13:15-14:00 Lunch

14:05-14:50 Gym/sport

14:55-15:40 Gym/sport

So, it can be a really long day for them!  Or, some days they’re done by 1:05 and can go home. 

Second, some random things I’ve noticed: The kids tell me they have lockers, but they don’t use them – they just carry their bookbags and coats all over to each class.   They also don’t have a “homeroom” time, although they have a main teacher who is responsible for their class…I wonder how things like state attendance records work. 

As for the rest of the week: Tuesday I went to Bielefeld to enroll at a German university (more on that later, maybe, it was a disaster), Wednesday I shadowed a 13^th grade class, Thursday I shadowed 7^th graders, and Friday I got to go to all of Susanne’s English classes with her.  It was awesome! I was super impressed with the 9^th graders knowledge of English, and the 13^th grade class I visited spent the entire class period asking me questions and telling me about stuff in Germany, all in English.  I think the speed at which I speak was throwing them off sometimes, but I think they’ll get into the swing of it soon! 

By far the strangest school-related thing that I’ve experienced here so far is what happens when a teacher can’t be in class.  There are no substitute teachers!  Rather, the main teachers leaves an assignment for the students to work on independently.  It seems like the younger grades have some other teacher sitting in the room with them to keep things under control, but the older kids just fill out their own attendance sheets and then can go do anything!  It strikes me as soooooo strange, yet when I think of how much crap we sometimes gave substitute teachers, I wonder if it isn’t just as an effective way to deal with the regular teacher not being there. 

Finally, on an unrelated-to-school note, here are some population comparisons of various cities here and in the states, to help you (and me!) have some idea of where I am.  Source is, of course, Wikipedia, and numbers are rounded.

Detmold, where I live: 73,000

Blomberg, where I teach: 16,000

Bielefeld, where I’m trying to enroll at university: 325,000

Paderborn, the other university town nearby: 150,000

Bochum, where we went on the class trip: 380,000

Tübingen, where I spent a semester: 90,000

Stuttgart, capital of the state that Tübingen is in: 600,000/2.7 million in the region

Göttingen, where I spent a summer: 120,000

Berlin, Germany’s capital: 3.5 million

Cleveland: 400,000/2 million in the region

St. Louis: 320,000/2.8 million in the region

Washington DC: 600,000/8.1 million in the region

So, I seem to keep moving to smaller and smaller German towns…Detmold only has two platforms at the train station!!    

Class trip to Bochum

…was amazing.  And exhausting.  The class I went with, a group of 9^th graders, was literally the nicest group of kids I’ve ever met.  They were not only really well behaved, they were also totally welcoming of me.  I’m super excited to see them again next week!  Susanne is going to have me spend a few days next week just going to a bunch of different classes with different grade levels, so I can get a feel for the German Gymnasium system, and it sounds like Monday I’ll be following their class around. 

The class also seemed quite engaged with the various activities they encountered, more so than I remember my high-school classes being on field trips.  We had a few tours at various places, and the kids were all really excited to talk, answer questions, and even ask their own questions.  On the other side, they seemed far more chatter-y than a group of American students would have been (or, a group of US students that talkative would have been reprimanded by their teachers I think).  However, I think I’ve heard that that’s quite normal of German students, although I wonder how I’ll feel teaching with all that background noise going on. 

As for the exhausting part: one, I’m a horrible traveler, and 4 days of going non-stop in tourist-y mode really did me in.  We saw some really interesting stuff – the Bergbau (mining) Museum, Starlight-Express (a musical on rollerblades), the Duisburg harbor, the largest inland harbor in Europe, etc – and some less fascinating stuff.  Two: I think the most exhausting part was just speaking German the whole time – I forgot how much energy it takes to go through the day when you have to focus so hard on what everyone is saying, even when they’re saying simple and pretty much inconsequential stuff.  I’m very much looking forward to my German improving to the point where I can get through the day without desperately wanting a nap!

A “side-effect” of the trip was that we spent a lot of time driving around to get to these various places, and of course time on the Autobahn getting from Blomberg to the Ruhrgebiet and back again.  That, in conjunction with being driven around by some of the teachers from the schools, has led to the following series of observations about car transport in Germany:

1.     The buttons for radio and whatnot inside of cars are all in English – even in German-made cars like Porsche and VW.

2.     I’ve mentioned this before, but there is no yellow centerline on German roads.  I have NO IDEA how these people stay on the right side of things.  I find that and the signage all very confusing and not-intuitive, but they keep telling me “it’s just what you’re used to.”

3.     There lights turn from red to yellow to green like ours, but then briefly back to yellow before going green again.  Kinda cool, although the first time it happened and we started to move I thought we were about to run a red light and die in a horrible accident or something.

4.     I’ve seen three pick-up trucks here so far.  Those and the sight of cornfields on the way from Blomberg to Detmold give me the most homesickness.  Weird, no?

5.     Freeways.  Holy smokes.  Now I love freeways in the U.S. – I love how intuitive everything is, how you can just follow the signs north or west or east or south and pretty much end up where you need to be.  German freeways are NOT like that (in my opinion).  First off: while our freeway system makes lovely sense, with interstate numbers increasing as you move from west to east, and from south to north, the German system does not do anything similarly sensible.  Nor is there that distinction between 2-digit interstates and 3-digit local freeways – although this may be due to the extremely small size of Germany, I suppose??  But, most mind-boggling, is the fact that freeway signs do not tell you if you’re going N/S/E/W!!!! The exit signs will show the splits in a “go left gets you to Bochum, go right gets you to Essen” sense but not in a “this is north” and “this is south” sense.  It was driving me crazy all week! I had no idea where I was going…However, German freeways, just like those in the US, are even numbered when they run E-W and odd numbered when they run N-S.  Or so I’m told, I still have to check on that one.

Saturday I finally figured out who the other English Teaching Assistants in Detmold are – there are two girls from Great Britain and one guy from Ireland.  It’s amazing to me how many foreign language assistants Germany brings in each year!

My final note for the day is that Germans walk so damn fast, everywhere, that I genuinely get cramps when walking around with them.  Awkward, no?  The pace is so weirdly quick I think I’d prefer to jog to keep up with them.  

Gymnasium

I finally finally finally visited my school!  So awesome, and so interesting.  Here’s what happened/my disorganized thoughts:

1.     I forgot to wear earrings on my first day of school, whoops!

2.     All of the teachers were incredibly welcoming.  Some live in Detmold also, and it sounds like there are lots of options for carpooling out to Blomberg together, which would be way better than sitting on a bus for 35 minutes in silence every morning. 

3.     The kids speak really impressive English, at least in the classes I observed.  We told them I don’t speak any German so that they will speak English with/around me!

4.     Dress code is pretty casual, even the headmaster wears jeans. 

5.     Teachers only have to be at the Gymnasium when they have class – there is no like “be in the building from 7:30 to 3” rule or anything.  They also don’t have individual offices or even department offices.  Instead, there is a massive room with tons of tables/bulletin boards/coffee machine/copiers where all the teachers can gather, leave their bags, hang out between classes, etc.  Sandra, the woman who took me around with her all day, said she would much prefer if they had like a 7-to-3 schedules, but the lack of offices makes it pretty impossible to do any work at the school, so the teachers end up doing all their preparation and grading at home.

6.     Almost every English teacher I met already has an idea of what classes they want me in.  I think I’ll be pretty busy!  Which is a good thing…since Blomberg is a bit far away, once I’m out there, I want to be in a lot of classes.

7.     The German school system is still very confusing to me.  Sandra tried to explain on Thursday night how the older students end up choosing different subjects to focus on, and take different exams based on which classes they’re in more, and on top of regular school exams have to choose subjects for their Abitur (it’s the test you take at the end of Gymnasium that gets you into Uni…maybe…?), and the Abitur has both written and oral components.  So, Sandra has a 13^th grade English class that meets only Thursdays and Fridays, because that group didn’t choose English as one of their final-year focus classes.  Confusing, no?

8.     Students miss class sometimes to take exams for other classes.  For example, a student walked into the 13^th grade class in the middle of the hour, he had just come from a physics exam.  I feel like that never happens in the States, although maybe that was just Mayfield?  Either way, the system in Blomberg is structured such that it’s expected that students sometimes miss a class for another class’s exam. 

After school, Sandra let me spend the whole day hanging out with her and her kids (she has two adorable, super-ginger boys, 2 and 4 years old) and even took me grocery shopping!  Such a necessity… We were able to also talk a bit more about teaching in Germany, she feels that the profession has really lost respect recently, which made me sad to hear.  I’d always thought Germany had a much better handle on their education system than the States, but I feel like I might be discovering this year that things are just as difficult here as they are at home. For example, she told me that the state governments are continuously “updating” curriculums with no further support for implementation, forcing teachers to completely revamp their systems every few years, and on top of that, making each school purchase the books/pamphlets describing the new curriculums.  More on this topic to follow as I learn more…

Saturday was spent sleeping, jogging, continuing to attempt to unpack my life, and playing poker with some of Seba’s friends (I lost everything in the end, luckily they don’t play for money.)  It was simultaneously great to hang out with people speaking German and soooo annoying at how stuttering/unclear mine still is.  Ohhhhh well it will get there. 

Tomorrow, Monday, I get to go on a school trip with the 9^th graders to the Ruhrgebiet!  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhr)  Check it out.  According to that wiki page, it’s the 5^th largest urban area in Europe! 

Orientation

Monday morning I left Detmold for Köln/Cologne and orientation, still luggage-less – although I received a text from my roommate about an hour after leaving Detmold saying that it had, in fact, arrived that morning.  Once in Köln, I joined the massive group of Americans taking over the main hall of the train station, we boarded a bus, and about half-an-hour later arrived at an old monastery in the town of Odenthal.  It was super-cute, but we spend most of our time in meetings and in “simulated teaching” sessions, where we all had to practice giving a lesson.  Because our “students” were actually our fellow ETAs (English teaching assistants) and therefore native speakers, it was hard to tell what problems would actually arise, but the practice definitely gave me a healthy taste of the difficulties of preparing a lesson plan and effectively teaching my language as a foreign one.

During the last evening of the program, I also started to understand how beneficial it is that we (American ETAs) are not only associated with the PAD (Pädagogischer Austauschdienst/Educational Exchange Service), but also with the Fulbright Kommission.  The PAD organizes exchanges for many foreign-language assistants from all over, placing people from Great Britain, Australia, Spain, etc, in German schools.  We American ETAs are (of course) the only ones associated with Fulbright.  The benefits of that association are financial – ie, lots of travel reimbursement – and social/professional – the networking opportunities, with Germans and other Americans.  Slash we are invited to the yearly Fulbright meeting in Berlin, which we were told is great lectures followed by great partying (roughly). 

The whole week we spoke in English most of the time – I’m guessing the people from the PAD wanted to make sure we didn’t miss any of the important info they were giving us about visas and insurance and that sort of thing, and we were of course practicing giving English-language lessons.  However, from the little German that was spoken, I realized that some of the other ETAs speak absolutely brilliant German, and I’m feeling very inspired-slash-challenged to get my German up to snuff.  I may even be so brave as to dive into my old grammar book from WashU…on a more negative note, I also realized that the usual deterioration of my English that happens when I go to Germany simply can’t happen this year.  I’ve always previously looked with satisfaction upon those ever increasing moments where I can’t remember the English word for something, or German phrases just pop more quickly out of my mouth.  Now, however, I’ll really have to focus of keeping my German and English separate, and learn how to switch quickly and accurately between the two, so that my students can actually learn something from me!  Good life skill I guess. 

Aside from that, orientation was a really great chance to just meet everyone else and establish some contacts – I spent a lot of time with the other Americans who are teaching in cities near me, as well as with some Baden-Württemberg-placed people, who 1) will be great contacts when we want to head down to Stuttgart’s beer festivals (read: calmer yet still legit and awesome versions of Oktoberfest) and 2) made me really, really miss gorgeous B-W (Tübingen, where I studied junior year, was just south of Stuttgart). 

It’s also absolutely freezing in Germany.  I knew it was going to be quite rainy but I didn’t know it would be this cold!!  I think it was nearly sleet-snowing on Wednesday…

Tomorrow (Friday) I FINALLY get to go to my school!!! Susanne is out of town at a conference, so another teacher, Sandra, is going to take me around; we met tonight already for drinks and I was really happy to hear even more about the school from her.  Wish me luck!

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: This site is not an official Fulbright Program site. The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State, the Institute of International Education or the Fulbright Program.

Tomorrow officially starts my time as an English Teaching Assistant here in Germany, hence the inclusion of the disclaimer.  I'll travel back to Köln tomorrow and then board a bus to a teeny-tiny town called Altenberg, where we'll spend three days learning everything possible about what we're supposed to be doing (teaching) as well as dealing with all the dreadful logistics stuff (banks, etc).  Next Friday I'll finallllllllly go to my school and meet some other teachers, observe some classes, and hopefully get an even better sense of how my upcoming year will look.

Until then, a few thoughts: I forgot to write yesterday that Ikea doesn't accept credit/debit cards (ex, VISA), which totally surprised me - H&M, for example, does.  Ikea will only take an EC-Karte,which as far as I can tell is really just the German equivalent of a debit card in that it pulls from a checking account.  I'll have one soon!  I imagine it will make me feel super-German and very legit.

Second thought: In the past, I've extolled Germany's lack of customer service as we understand it in the states - your waiters don't hover, you have to pack your own bags at the grocery store, etc etc.  At the present moment, however, I'm fully in favor of the U.S.'s emphasis on "the customer is always right," after dealing with a zillion (well, only like 7) baggage representatives.  After finally getting to the number that I thought would put me in touch with the German shipping company that is going to deliver my luggage, I found out it was just some other person from the Köln airport.  Forging ahead, I attempted to demand in the best Bob-Conkey-demeanor that I could muster up that they get in touch with the company and get me expedited shipping, pre 8:30 am arrival, for tomorrow (my train doesn't leave til 10am).  The woman had a fit and told me it was absolutely impossible to do that now, so I asked for her supervisor, at which point she asked me "Why do you need to talk to her? There is nothing she can do" to which I answered "I just do.  Please get her."  THEN I hear her tell another woman, in German, that I was trying to change the delivery address.  At this point I entered near-rage-blackout stage and told the woman, also in German (I'd been speaking English before with the other one) that I did not, in fact, want to change my address, then DEMANDED she make the expedited shipping happen and then...my piece of shit prepaid German cellphone ran out of credit and the call hung up.

Being an American in Germany.  Rough stuff.  

Final thought: I hit up church this morning - this one in Detmold has far better acoustics than Tübingen's did, I was amazed at how much I understood! - and we only had one reading before the Gospel.  What's up with that? I think I need to do a little research before bed.

IKEA!

Today I went to IKEA! Susanne continued her tradition of being extremely helpful and thoughtful and brought me along on her shopping trip with her daughters.  I was totally overwhelmed by the size but happily found everything I wanted - pillows, sheets, a comforter, a desk lamp, hangers, a bath mat, and a trashcan - and somehow only dropped 160 Euro.  Great success.

A not great success is the fact that I have no clothes to put on those new hangers.  We got back from shopping at about 3 and there were no suitcases anywhere in sight. So I called Delta again and talked to the most unpleasantly rude person I've ever had to deal with on the phone - and I used to work at our alum calling center bothering people and asking them for money!  The man essentially bitched right back at me about how I'm somehow supposed to automatically know that "industry regulations" mean that Air France, as the last carrier I flew, is now responsible for my luggage.  He then proceeded to offer to find for me the number for the airport I flew into, and became even more agitated when I called him out on the fact that according to what he had just said, I needed to talk to Air France, not the Köln airport...

Vowing never to fly Delta again (joke...my return flight is already set to be booked through them I think) I called an Air France number, where the man was very apologetic (and delightfully French-accented) and checked my phone number and said he would look into it and call me back as soon as he could.  When he hadn't three hours later I called again and discovered they still didn't know anything, although they at least seemed to care.

So, although Susanne had invited me over for dinner again, which would have been fun, I cancelled on her and resigned myself to an hour of searching H&M to find some clothes for the orientation meeting I have next Monday-Thursday back in Köln.  Ironic, no?  And then proceeded to buy all sorts of shampoos and soaps and stuff that I rue using.  And then proceeded to launder the few clothes that I did bring with me that I've already used up.  Fresh jeans here I come!  Also, German laundry machines are disastrously small.  Mom, I promise not to let that become an excuse to wear dirty clothes all the time.

Cross your fingers for my luggage arriving at some point!  I'm moving past the fact that it's so delayed and inching towards a state of terror that it might be lost forever.

"Welcome at Cologne/Bonn Airport"

Actually, it might have said "Welcome in Cologne/Bonn airport."  Either way, I thought they needed a different preposition, and was mildly amused at how those crap translations happen in a country where they speak German as well as they do here.  But I guess that's why I'm here!

Background: Just graduated from WashU with my degree in German, going to spend a year in Germany assistant teaching English at a Gymnasium (German high-school equivalent, college prep), where my students will all know that you say "Welcome to," before I start a German PhD program at UNC/Duke next fall.

The adventure starts with horrible flights, lots of running through JFK, bursting into tears once I make it on the plane, rushing again through the Paris airport, arriving in Köln to discover my luggage is still in New York (still no idea where it is, the clean laundry is down to 2 shirts, 2 pairs of underwear, and 1 pair of socks eeeeeeek), calling the parents from the Köln airport to cry some more, getting on a train and barely being able to stay awake, being terrified I'm going to miss my connection and wake up in Berlin, blah blah blah but I finally make it to Detmold!  And within 24 hours I'm immediately plunged into that "Oh my goodness I love everything about Germany this is great I love everyone how amazing could this be" phase.  Susanne (my Betreuungslehrerin, the English teacher at my gymnasium who is like my intro/guide/overall extremely helpful person) picks me up, takes me to my apartment, we meet my roommate, my room is huge and clean, my roommate takes me on a little tour of the city, I go home to "rest" and discover netflix, hulu, and grooveshark don't work in this country (but fratmusic.com does, and has a country section), Susanne picks me up again for dinner at her house, loans me sheets and a towel, takes me back home, and I pass out.  Next morning she super-kindly takes me to appointments she's made with the Ausländeramt (office for getting documents for foreign ppl, they fingerprinted me!) and the bank, to open a German account so I can get paid (!!!), and everything is way easier than I expected.

Detmold is not as heinously picturesque and Tübingen was but is still pretty cutesy-German, and there is a Schloss (castle) in which an old Fürst (some sort of nobility, the translations for such words still elude me) still lives!  Anyways, I'm in that I-love-Germany-phase probably because I live a stone's throw from the Innenstadt/Füßgängerzone (inner city/pedestrian zone) and have not had to take a bus anywhere yet and have already had delicious Bratwurst for lunch and Susanne is taking me to Ikea tomorrow!  Desk lamp here I come.

Language-wise I'm also doing far better than ever before in Germany in terms of listening (duh) but I can't say anything that makes sense!  I'll go to say something and a horrible rush of German comes out, some declined/conjugated, some not, verbs everywhere (German is very strict about where you can put it's verbs), my accent all over the place, and I've probably said a lot of dumb anglicisms like "I'm cold" instead of "It's cold to me," the former of which means I'm like a cold/unfeeling person...but better than saying "I'm hot" which roughly translates as "I'm horny" (can you say awkward?).

I was able to chat a little with Susanne today about what the hell I'm actually doing here, it sounds like I will truly be an assistant teacher, which is totally appropriate, doing a lot of small-group work with the kids, and if I have ideas for lessons or whatnot I can work them out with the teachers.  So sounds not stressful but hopefully structured enough that I can actually learn a lot!

At the beginning of my attempt at blogging about Tübingen I posted my goals for my time in Germany; I believe they were "wear earrings every day" and "learn German."  I'm gonna stick with both of those, perhaps in a month or so I'll add something really exciting like "put on mascara every day"...and now I will sit in my apartment and hope fervently that my doorbell rings soon and some nice man is waiting outside with my luggage!