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!