Last Day of Orientation/New Start at School

Our last day of orientation made me really excited to get started at my school. We had a special meeting for the 20 students who are participating in the Diversity Initiative Program. We discussed integration in the German School systems, mainly its successes and faults. This was really interesting for me and now I have 20 contacts, which I can use for my research, if they are willing to help me out. I also once again discovered how small the world is. At lunch I sat with a kid who was from the Seattle area, I believe. He kept telling me that I looked really familiar to him, but he just couldn't place where he had seen me before. I told him that I didn't think I had seen him until then, but he kept insisting that he had. We bagan discussing our study abroad semesters and stumbled upon the connection. He and I both studied abroad fall semester of '05. He was in Freiburg, where I did my Goethe Institut language course and where I met and became friends with his roommate, Yeka from Venezuela. I had went over to Yeka's one evening for dinner and he saw me then. Completely crazy, I know! The fact that he even remembered blows my mind, but we had a good laugh about this. (Yeka, if you are reading this let me know!)

After we left orientation we arrived back at Koeln's main station and I caught my train back to Kiel, where my hostparents were waiting for me. I went almost directly to bed when we got home because I had to get up for my first actual day at my school. On Friday, I arrived at 9:30 at my school and the department head of English was there waiting for me. She gave me a short tour of the school and introduced me to many of my new colleagues. Lots of new faces to remember and foreign names to top it off! Then I was invited to the Headmaster's office for coffe and a short discussion about my duties at the school. This went smoothly and he too complimented me on my German skills. I was floating on cloud 9. After this meeting, I attended two classes with the teachers that I will be spending the most of my time with and who are responsible for me, Andrea and Katja. The first class were 13th graders, yes they have 13 grades at the college prepatory schools, which means that the students are very close to my age. Three girls gave a presentation on California because they had all been there in the past year. Their English was pretty much error free, so I am looking forward to working with this class because they are at such a high level. Next I went to a 10th grade class. Their language skills were obviously not as strong as the previously class but they seemed excited that a native speaker from America was in their class. They are now referring to me as their walking dictionary, which could become hard if they ask me a word in German and I don't know the English equivalent. Anyway, for the first week or so I will just be observing my classes to get a feel for the students and their abilities. Once I am comfortable with them then I will start teaching. One difference that I already noticed was how talkative the students are. They talked during the entire lesson and it was mostly not about the topic. Maybe I just never noticed this in High School in the U.S. but it seems that the students here are less respectful and don't pay as much attention. I guess I will see in the next year. It will definitely be challenging at times, but I hope that I can share my culture and language with my students and make it interesting.

I now have a rough outline of a schedule and have Mondays free, which is nice if I want to travel to visit people on the weekends. Friday evening my host family and I went out for dinner and a drink in the city with some of their friends. Thomas runs a travel agency and he and his girlfriend want to show me around a little bit. I think this is a very nice offer and will of course take them up on it. It continues to amaze me how everyone here is willing to go out of their way to show me a good time, y family, my school, my family's friends. In northern Germany the people tend to be referred to as quiet and zuruckhaltend, which is a term that means that they hold back a bit. But there is a saying that once a Northerner gets to know and becomes your friend, you will be friends for life. I can already see the truth in this.

One more thing I want to comment on that struck me as odd at first, is how quickly the people here have allowed me to speak informally with them and use their first names. I had expected otherwise. My colleagues are much more laid back than I suspected they would be and pretty much everyone I have met thus far except my boss has told me to speak informally with them. Gramatically this makes things much easier for me, as I am not very used to speaking formally in German and this does not exist in English.

As for spare time, I doubt that I will have much of that. I plan to register at the University and hopefully be able to take a class or two, in addition to my research. Also, I signed up for the U.S. consulate program called Meet US. This is a program that allows teaching assistants to volunteer to travel to schools in their area and meet with students who have no teaching assistants and would otherwise not meet Americans. You get to talk to them for a few hours and they ask you questions. I think this is a good way to promote America positively and perhaps I can show German school children that there are people in the U.S. who are interested in countries and languages other than their own.