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!
