New adventures and the smell of the sea!

Moin Moin from Kiel! For those of you reading this who don’t know what that means, it is the standard greeting here in the north. It is similar to Good Morning, but you can say it all day long. It’s little things like that, that separate the North from the South here in Germany. One thing I was really excited about though was to find out that there are Laugenbrezeln/broetchen in the North, even if they don’t taste quite as good as they do in the South!

Wow, I can’t believe that I have been here for almost a month now! It seems to me as if I just arrived a few days ago. Last weekend I met up with Ryan (Scotland) and Diedre (Canada), who are also teaching assistants in Kiel. We went to Subway (they didn’t have much money) and then spent the rest of the night wandering around the city looking for places where the younger crowds gather and searching for Kieler night life. We found plenty of bars and a few discos. To our surprise, we even stumbled upon the small but still present red light district of Kiel! We had a nice evening together which was mostly spent getting to know one another. I was the experienced one having been here much longer than them. They just arrived the week before last week and therefore are just getting started. I am constantly reminded of how good I have it to be living with a family who won’t let me pay for anything and to have a bed to sleep in. Ryan was living in a youth hostel for three days, but finally found an apartment. The only thing is, is that the apartment isn’t furnished and therefore he is sleeping on a foam pad on the floor. Lots of TA’s I have met here have had a similar start. I’m thankful I didn’t have to do that.

Monday my host dad and I took a trip to Rendsburg to get my Visa/living allowance. This time I didn’t have to wait hours on end like I did in Heidelberg! I was completely shocked! There must be more foreigners living in Heidelberg than around here. However, if I would have had to go to Kiel to get it, I probably would have had to wait longer, but since the town I am living in belongs to a different county, I got to take the short way out. Tuesday it was back to school, but halfway through the day, I was asked by a history teacher at my school, if I would like to join him and his class on a Jewish tour of Kiel. His class just finished the topic of WWII and he likes to plan trips that coincide with the material in the classroom. This was an interesting 2 hour tour of Kiel concentrating on places where Jews have lived and memorials that have been erected for those who were killed during the Holocaust. I think it is always good to make history a bit more personal, so that students can actually understand how real the situation was even if it did occur in the past. I then attended one of the History teacher’s fifth grade classes on Friday and the students thought that I was a new student! Yeah, go figure! I’m hoping it is the height thing… They thought it was “really cool” though that I am from the U.S. and that they could understand me when I introduced myself in English.

Also on Friday I was shown around the University by one of my teachers. It is fairly large in comparison to Heidelberg’s or perhaps it just appears this way because the buildings are all concentrated together. Friday night I went out with the History teacher “Lars” and some of his friends with whom he had studied in Kiel. They were all very nice and want to show me around the state I am in! Lars has his PhD and it is weird for me and probably most Americans to think that he teachers grades 5-13. I talked to my host family about this and they said that most Germans who get their PhD don’t necessarily intend on teaching at the University level and many just do it for their interest in research, not to move up in any chain. I found that quite interesting. I also found out that professors and teachers make about the same amount of money. That is, there isn’t much of a pay difference between working at a high school and working at a college. I thought in the U.S. this would be unacceptable, but then I remembered what some of my professors at Bethany make and well it is the same if not lower than high school teacher salaries…

Yesterday, Saturday, my host mom, grandma and I took a trip to Eckernfoerde, which is a small city close to Kiel. Its architecture is older and it is very beautiful. Not that Kiel isn’t! In the evening, last night, I met up with the other teaching assistants again and we went to dinner at an Asian restaurant. It was delicious. Then we went to the movies to watch Spiderman 3 in German. The theater we went to is like the theaters back in the day, old fashioned, with a balcony and a curtain that hangs in front of the screen. It is only one room and it only cost 2 Euro to watch the movie. It reminded me of the old theater that Barnesville used to have. I remember we took a field trip there once. That is what it looked like. After the movie we went to the “Kieler Brauerei” where total chaos had broken loose. My family informed me that it is always that wild there. It was funny though to watch the people (men, mind you) dancing on tables. I felt like we were at Oktoberfest, which by the way starts this week…not that I will be able to go, but just food for thought.

Today, well every Sunday, we have a huge breakfast with boiled eggs and a variety of delicious breads…mmm. After breakfast we (Host mom, grandma, and I) headed to Strande, a small town outside of where we live. There we walked for miles through fields, past old farming houses that have been renovated, and along the Baltic Sea coast. The weather is beautiful today! Something we haven’t experienced too often since I have been here. The smell of the water and sand was refreshing. My family is trying to show me as much as possible and I continue to be spoiled, since their only daughter is in Australia.