Settling in

Well it’s the weekend. I made it through my first week at the school! I am starting to get adjusted and am slowly learning people’s names, that is the names of my collegues. I am just starting on learning the names of my students. To make this clearer, I don’t just teach one individual class, I teach about 8 different classes and so it will take a while to learn all of their names, if that is even possible! The reason I am teaching so many different classes is because all of the teachers want to make use of me as a native speaker, which I think says a lot for the school and its teachers. All of the teachers that I am working with, eight total, are extremely nice and have gone out of their way to make me feel comfortable. I will be able to teach sections of lessons and whole lessons soon, which is exciting and scary at the same time!

In most of the classes, I was introduced to the students and then they were allowed to ask me questions. Of course you can imagine some of the questions they asked. The typical “How old are you?” and “Where are you from?” and then the most important questions, for example “Do you speak German?” and “Do you like Bush?” Some students asked for the cultural differences between America and Germany, which I always find hard to explain. There are so many that I had to pick out a few of the larger (in my eyes) differences for example school, lifestyle, environment and such. In one class, Herr Meyer assigned a homework assignment about me. He told the kids to write a short article from the information I gave them about myself for the yearbook! This should be interesting....Overall the kids seemed impressed with what I had to tell them and were very interested. Their English skills are also very good. Of course they should be good because they have had as many years of English as I have of German and many of my students have already spent half a year to a year abroad in an English-speaking country. Studying abroad is very popular for high school age students.

Thursday I went out to lunch with two of my colleagues. We planned to have movie nights once a week at Andrea’s place, which will be fun. Yesterday it rained most of the day so my host mom, grandma and I stayed in and watched a movie. Today grandma and I woke up early and went into the city to try to finish my paperwork for my bank account. I should have an account by Wednesday so I finally get my money, which is important for survival. Then we went onto the top floor of a department store and out onto the parking lot to watch the brand new cruise ship from Norway coming into the harbor. There is a huge celebration in the city today and 30,000 people are expected to be there. People were coming in herds on their bikes into the city and we watched it all from above. We had a great view. The Norwegian Band Aha is also playing a live concert this afternoon, which I will unfortunately miss. I had planned to go to it with Ryan from Scotland and a few other teaching assistants who are living in Kiel, but instead we are all going out for dinner together later this evening. I haven’t actually met any of them yet, but have been in contact with them through email. It will be a good start to meeting younger people here and will give me someone to do things with.

A few days ago I finally booked my flight to Croatia for fall break! I will be there for 12 days total visiting my two friends I met in Heidelberg. I’m really excited to see them again and for them to show me around their country! I told them that one day I would come visit them in Croatia and now I am really doing it. It’s hard to believe! In addition, I already have a trip scheduled for October 8th to a school in Bremen through the US Consulate. I will be talking to two groups of students for approximately an hour about immigration and the American Dream. I think this is such a huge topic that it will be hard to condense into an hour, but at least I have a lot of material with which I can work. Well that is my update for this week!