Moin Moin

Adventures in and outside the classroom!

2008-06-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

May 20th-26th

Tuesday

Today we woke up fairly early. Rachel and Leah finished packing their things, we ate breakfast together, and then we left for the train station. I Walked with them to the station and we said our goodbyes. From here, they are traveling to Mannheim to visit a friend of Rachel's. I hurried off from the station to make sure I got to school on time. School went quickly today with only two hours of lessons and then tutoring after school.

Wednesday

Today I had class with my little ones (6th graders) who I adore. They had written papers on their pets and put pictures on them. I had to correct them each individually. I'm always amazed at how much English these children already know at the age of 11. It's really impressive. In the 13th grade class, we again did oral interviews and my teacher needed me to back her up on the grades she was giving. Then it was my 10th graders who had to write dialogues again and they will be performing them for me next week. After school I had tutoring again and then I came home and relaxed before it was time to go to Dee's school on the other side of the harbor. Her 13th graders were performing a play and since I had been taking her to my school's plays, she invited me to come watch it. Also, her mentor teacher was the director. We cycled through the city to meet Heather on the other side of the water. From there we biked the rest of the way to the school. It was a beautiful day and the view from that side of Kiel was wonderful. I had been on that side of Kiel a few times before but never with my bike. We arrived a little early, so Dee gave us a quick tour of her school, which seems fairly big to me. Then we went into the auditorium to find our seats. To our luck, her teacher Karen had saved us three seats so that we could sit together. The play was hysterical. It was written by the students themselves and they did an amazing job acting. Watching these performances makes me wish that we would have had better drama opportunities in High School. The play was about school life in Germany and had a lot of inside jokes. After the play was over, we decided to bike up to Heather's school so I could see it too, since we were in the vicinity and she is leaving soon. She showed us around the buildings and then we were on our way back home.

Thursday

I had to work on the Abitur corrections once again today, but we finally got them finished and came to agreements on which ones were right and which ones were wrong. The discrepancies arose because the older teachers are more likely to mark things wrong than the younger ones. In some cases there were a few things marked wrong that were ok.

I had my 12th graders today and I was continuing the topic of natural disasters in the U.S. and then I had some pictures from Hurricane Katrina that I wanted to look at and discuss. Of course this didn't run smoothly, because the projector wouldn't turn on. The power supply to it hasn't been working properly for the past month or so and still hasn't been fixed. This caused us to have to change rooms. I had to go get the key for the other room and once again we were faced with technical difficulties. I got the computer on, but the pictures wouldn't come up on the screen. One of the boys in the class, thankfully helped me in getting this to work and I was relieved. Finally after all of this madness we got to look at and discuss the pictures. We barely made it through them all because time was cut short, but made do with what time we had.

Friday

Today I had to substitute for my mentor teacher because she was away in Hamburg. She didn't want her fifth graders to fall behind, so she asked me if I would take the class for her. I told her I would and she planned out the lesson and gave it to me. I had been in this class one time before and she kept warning me that they might misbehave. I just laughed and said I could handle it. Our topic was working in the book on some grammar exercises for the first period. The kids have signs with S's on them and are supposed to hold them up when someone forgets to put the “s” ending on the verb in a sentence. Example: Kate run to school. This is the most common mistake that German students (at least mine) make in the English classroom and I have yet to figure out why this is. They know the right way and they learn it, but perhaps they are just to lazy to remember when you have to use an “s”.... they also have cute sayings that make this easier to remember. Anyway, they asked me if they were allowed to get the signs out and use them and I said yes of course! Why on earth would I discourage this?! The first class went really well and the kids were so quiet while they were working that I had to laugh because if my mentor teacher would have been there, she wouldn't have believed it was them. I let them go a few minutes early and one of the girls whispered to me that the period wasn't over yet. I laughed and told her I knew this, but had nothing else planned and that I would see them after the break for the next lesson!

In the second lesson, we started a new unit on Police, firemen, doctors, etc. I introduced the unit by talking a little bit about what these are like in the U.S. (in German of course, their English isn't good enough to understand this yet) and asking them to share any stories they had about being in the hospital or experiencing fires. Some of the kids had some interesting stories. Then we started the new unit and completed the exercises. After that they were assigned to write a five sentence story using the new vocabulary they learned. While they were writing, one of the girls in the class asked me “Is it nice in the U.S.?” and then said “I want to go.” I told her it depends on where you are but that she should definitely go if she gets the chance. I thought it was really sweet that she asked this. After they were done writing, I let most of them read their stories out loud and then the class was over. Some of their stories were very creative and some were really funny.

After the fifth grade classes, I just had conversation hour with my three 13th graders again. They didn't have any ideas for topics, so we started out talking about stereotypes and then from there we just talked about random things. A lot of the conversation revolved around differences in the U.S. and Germany and what I like and don't like here. They had a lot of questions to ask.
In the afternoon, I had to clean because a girl came by to look at my room. She seemed nice, but I told her to come back on Tuesday night when my roommates would be here so she could meet them. The rest of the day, I spent packing for Munich, since I am leaving tomorrow evening on the night train.

Saturday

Today I went to the store to get some food to take with me on the train. While I was out, I ran into one of the teachers from my school three times within a half an hour. We both had to laugh about this even though she lives a few blocks from me, this isn't that normal. I went to my favorite Doener Restaurant and got a doener to go. I ate this, finished packing my bag and then was off to the station. My first stop was in Hamburg. Here I got on the train to go to Magdeburg. On this train I sat across from man from Senegal who started talking to me. The conversation was fine until he kept asking me for my phone number and trying to get me to come home with him! I thought are you crazy. After he wouldn't stop asking me, I decided to move to the lower level of the train to escape from him. I had to change two more times before getting on my overnight train that would take me to Munich. Unfortunately, I didn't even make t to Magdeburg on the train I got on. The tracks in the state of Sachsen-Anhalt were being worked on and they had a bus replacing the train the rest of the way. We all had to get out and wait for the buses to come and take us to our final station. The bus was of course late. Then the bus driver was driving for over twenty minutes on back country roads and I started to wonder where he was taking us... sure enough he decided that he was heading in the wrong direction and needed to turn around. This made our journey even longer and caused me to miss the overnight train that I was supposed to be on to Munich. I was not a happy camper and neither were the rest of the passengers who also missed their trains. The train conductor had tried to get our trains to wait on us, but there weren't enough people for the trains to wait so long and be delayed because of us.

So I ended up spending the night in the train station in Halle in Sachsen- Anhalt. I could tell I was in the east because of the dialect differences and it was really funny to listen to people talking. I was just happy that the station had an actual building where we could sit inside and you could walk around. Of course I didn't sleep at all for fear that my things would be stolen or that I would miss the next train to Munich at 5:45 that I had to get on. The first hour and a half, I spent talking to two girls from Leipzig, who had just flown back to Germany from a vacation in Iceland. They were really nice and told me all about their trip and how beautiful it is in Iceland. The one girl had left her purse on the last train which had her wallet, passport, camera and money. I told her I would keep my fingers crossed (in German “press my thumbs”) in the hopes that she would get it back. After the hour and a half, they were able to catch a train at 2:30 to get to Leipzig, while I still had three hours of waiting ahead of me. I spent most of the time walking around trying to stay warm (idiot me wore shorts thinking I would be on the warm train all night!) and looking at the map of the region that we spent over an hour riding through on the bus. Finally it was time to get on my train. The conductor had written me an allowance to ride the other trains and I didn't have any problems after this. The one other funny thing that happened on the train ride was that a drunken young couple came up to me and the guy was whispering to me that he didn't have a ticket and to keep the conductor away. He came back five minutes later and yelled at me for letting the conductor on the train. Of course he was joking the whole time. He kept calling me Hannelore and when I told him that my name was Vanessa, he said it was pretty much the same name. I couldn't stop laughing and after a few more minutes of whispering in my ear and shaking my arms, he walked away, satisfied because I had actually talked to him unlike the other “unfriendly people” as he called them. The whole train experience that night reminded me of Kim's stories from the Greyhound buses. I for some reason had all the crazies, along with an interesting journey!

Sunday

After 18 hours of travelling (I could've been to the states and back) I finally arrived in Munich! It was about 11 am and I decided to go straight to the hostel and drop off my bag so I wouldn't have to lug it around while I was waiting for the Bethany crew to arrive. After this, I stopped at an Internet cafe and then went and got a coffee. I walked around Marienplatz for a while and then went back to the station to meet the others. I was looking around the bookstores until time for them to arrive and as I was walking to check the platform they were to come in on, I ran into them! Their train had arrived earlier than expected and they had just tried to call my cell phone which I had turned off because the battery was ready to die. What a coincidence! They went to check in at their hostel and I went upstairs with them. They had a really nice room for the four of them. After they got ready, we met up with Laura and then went to lunch close to Marienplatz. It was so great to see all of them again! I was so happy, but it was also really strange to see them in Germany. It somewhat felt like I wasn't in Germany while they were here. It was also funny because Tessa and I had been in Munich at about the same exact time four years ago!! We were both on the German club trip then and now she was the teacher taking the students and I'm working in Germany! Strange how things like this happen...

We met up with one of Tessa's German friends from Graduate school at lunch and afterwards we went for a walk past the University building where the Scholl's threw out the leaflets about the Nazis. They were executed after the government found out that they did this. There is a memorial for them on the ground there with bronze leaflets. From here we continued walking to the English Garden where the Oktoberfest takes place. I believe it is one of the if not the largest garden/park in Germany. After sitting there for a while, Tessa's friend had to go back home, so we rode with her to the station and said goodbye. The rest of us split up to go back to our hostels. I wanted to check in and relax for an hour or two and the others wanted to do the same before we went out on the town for the evening. We had a fun girls night out and some boys from Minnesota who are traveling around Germany joined us for the evening.

Millionaire/famous person for a week: Riding in the Benz, loved by my students, trip to Sylt, and Ambassador of the U.S.

2008-05-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

May 12th-19th

Monday

Today was a holiday, so almost everyone had off work. This didn't really affect me though because I usually always have Mondays off. So anyway, the other Kiel assistants and I did a tour of the Baltic coast on the Eastern side of Kiel in the Mercedes Benz that Siobhan had. We started at a lake called Seltener. We parked and walked down to the area designated “beach.” When we got to the “beach,” we couldn't help but laugh because it must have been only about 10-15 feet long, just big enough to get into the water! Here we made friends with some little children. We seem to attract them wherever we go. The one little boy really liked Dee and kept trying to get her to go deeper into the water. We spent about half an hour there and then were back in the car with the map in our hands, looking for our next destination. Lutjenburg was our next stop on the journey. Here we found the Bismark tower and climbed it to the top to get a fabulous view of the city and of the Baltic Coast. The rapeseed fields shone a golden yellow in the sun and added to the scenic view. We also found a giant chess board here with pieces that were about the size of me! It made me think of Harry Potter only here the pieces didn't attack you when playing! After climbing the tour and eating our picnic lunch, we went into town and got ice cream. We wandered around the town which is really small, but very cute and then we went back to the car to continue on in the direction of Schoenberger Strand. The water there was crystal clear and we decided to rent a paddle boat for half an hour. The girls made me do the talking to the man renting them, which of course didn't bother me. The guy asked me if I was from Denmark when I told him my last name. I laughed and said no, that it is English, but that I am from the States. Upon saying that I was from the States, the heads of all the people sitting at the rental place turned to me. I wasn't sure why this was so interesting...perhaps because I was speaking German...hopefully some day, the Germans will get used to the fact that some Americans can and do speak German! Anyway the boat ride was a lot of fun and the water and view were amazing. After this, we were all pretty exhausted from the day in the sun and we made our way back to Kiel. I went over to Dee's and we made fajitas for dinner and watched the movie “Now and Then.”

Tuesday was my first day back to school after my trip to Prague and of course everyone was asking how the trip was and whether I had recovered from it. The kids were happy to see me again, as they usually are when I have been gone for a while or we have a break. I only ended up having one class today and then in the afternoon, I went to the cheap showing (1 Euro) of “P.S. I love you” at the Bruecke Movie Theater with Dee and Shivs. The movie was really good, but also sad and I actually teared up at a few places.

On Wednesday, I once again didn't have much to do at school. I had class with my little ones and then had to help with the Abitur test corrections again.

I finally got to work with one of my 10th grade classes, on Thursday, that I haven't been with for about 3 or more weeks. They were so sweet when I came into the room, they all shouted “Vanessa!” and one of the students was teasing me saying “you don't like us anymore.” I told them that this wasn't true, but that I had been gone on the trip to Prague and then had been busy with some of the other classes. Once again, it's times like these, when you really like the teaching assistant position as opposed to the actual teaching position. Of course they would never have this reaction with a real teacher that they see all the time.

On Friday, after school Dee, Siobhan and I met up with Alex at the train station. He was on his way to visit Ryan in Sweden. We had coffee with him and saw him off. Then I came back home to go running and eat dinner. In the evening, I met back up with the Dee and Shivs and we went to the movies again and this time we saw “The Bucket List.” In German the title translates to “The Best Comes at the End.” I'm not really sure why the translations for the movie titles are sometimes extremely different, but I guess in this case it is because most German's don't understand or know the idiom “kicking the bucket” and would therefore not understand the English title if it were directly translated. It was another good movie, but also very sad.

]I was picked up at 9 am on Saturday by Jens (one of the English teachers at the school), Christiane (his wife), and Tjag (his 3-year old grandson). Jens had invited me to go to an island in the North Sea with them. The island is called Sylt and is the most famous island in Germany, next to maybe Ruegen. Sylt is a very expensive place to live, most of it is a Nature preservation and there are a lot of rich and prominent people who own homes there. We started off heading to Tonder in Denmark where we planning to catch the ferry over to the island. In the car, I was reading some German children's books to Tjag, who was quiet at first. It didn't take long though until he was my friend and talking up a storm. When we stopped in Tonder, we walked around the small, but cute city going in some of the shops. Here we grabbed a Danish hot dog (with pickles, bacon bits, mustard, and mayo). It was actually good, although I don't like most of these things! From Tonder, we drove to the place where the ferry arrives and drove the car onto the boat. Unfortunately, the weather was the worst it had been in days. The sky was cloudy and it was really windy and cool, so we went inside and sat down to enjoy the view. Now I have ridden both a train and a car onto a ferry! After the ferry made it to the island, we got back in the car and drove off. We drove through the dunes, which have formed from the sand and wind. We parked by a lighthouse and then walked through the dunes to the water. It was too windy there, so we drove to the other side because Tjag wanted to build a sandcastle. Christiane and I helped him and it looked really nice when we were done. When we were done here, we drove through more of Sylt and to another small village on the island, where we got out and walked around the old houses and then along the water. This was our last stop for the day and from here we drove on to Westerland, where we went on the German Cartrain. Once again a form of transportation that probably only exists in Germany, the land of innovation. You drive your car onto the train and sit in it, while the train takes you to your destination! There's a first time for everything, I guess! We rode it until it didn't go any further and then we drove into a small city to get dinner. We ate at an Imbiss. We had Currywurst and fries and Tjag was happy. He was starting to get tired after such a long day, but he never got winy and was never in a bad mood. He's a very sweet little boy, who asked me if I would stay the night with them as we came into Kiel and they dropped me off. I thought this was really sweet because Kirstin's kids always ask the same thing. Jens said I had won him over. I had a great day with them and thanked them for taking me and then went up to my apartment.

Sunday, I wanted to go to one of my teacher's (Kirstin's) today, but no one was there, when I called again. I haven't been over to see her and her kids and husband for a while. So instead, I ended up cleaning my room and doing laundry, when I found out that I was having visitors. Rachel and Leah were currently on a European tour and managed to fit me in the plan. They arrived at 1 am after some complications with the trains and I forgot to tell her that there was a Plum and a Plumly living in my building. Therefore, she rang the wrong room at first Oops...they got a little surprise! After I went down and got them, we sat around chatting a bit and then went to bed because we had to get up early to leave for Hamburg.

Monday

In Hamburg, I met up with Eva Schramm, who works for the American Consulate in Hamburg. I was going with her to the Hansa Kolleg a school for students around my age who are trying to get their highest education degree (they already had a lower one), so that they can go to college now. I was supposed to talk to a class of students about the upcoming elections in the U.S. there. She picked me up at the station and Rachel and Leah were off to do a harbor tour that I recommended to them, while I was speaking at the school. We planned to meet back up in the afternoon.

The first thing we did was take the subway to the area where the school is. From there we went to a cafe and she bought me coffee to go and a Chocolate Croissant. We walked to the school and sat outside on the steps drinking our coffee and eating. The teacher who we were meeting arrived shortly later and took us into the school. Eva, from the embassy, knows the teacher very well. Anyway, the teacher, Mrs. Feldner gave us a tour of the school and introduced us to the school director and her colleagues. The school was huge and had a lot of space, in comparison to my school. I was pretty nervous about speaking, but when I got in front of the class, they all smiled at me and this made me feel much more comfortable. They introduced me and then I began with a short introduction and from there didn't have to worry about making the session last long. The students were very interested in the topic and had endless questions for me. They had already covered the topic in-depth and you could tell that they had been well prepared for my coming. At first I was speaking way too fast (probably out of nervousness) and the school director saw the lost faces that I hadn't noticed and asked me if I could slow down a bit. From there on out things went fairly smoothly. Some of the questions, I was unsure of how to answer or just didn't know what they were asking about and left it at this. I tried to explain everything as best as I could and my throat was very dry and I was actually very exhausted after an hour and a half of answering questions. Of course their opinions were quite critical of the U.S. and with sometimes very good reasons. As suspected, one of the first questions was who I would vote for. Eva told me that they would ask me this and I had asked her if I was even allowed to tell them this. She said I was there as an American Citizen and although performing a sort of ambassador task, was nothing more than this and could say what I wanted. I continuously told the kids that some of my answers were my opinion and that not all Americans had the same one. I also tried to present both sides of the debate to them. Overall, I think it went very well and Mrs. Feldner and Eva were very impressed with the activity and participation of the students. They thanked me for coming and then we (Eva, Mrs. Feldner, and I) went to the school cafeteria and had lunch on the school, which was very nice. We said our goodbyes, then went over to the pet store across the street (Eva wanted to look for some things) and then we went back to the subway and rode to the station, where I was to meet up with Rachel and Leah.

It was still early, so I walked with Eva to her bus stop and then I went to the bank to get money. I found Rachel and Leah and then we went to the city hall to take some pictures and then to the bombed church in Hamburg that serves as a memorial of the war. From there we went to the red light district, which is for some reason a “must see” if in Hamburg. There we took pictures and then walked back towards the city and on the way stopped at a really nice park to take some more pictures. We were a little hungry, so we decided to have ice cream, which is very amazing in German and another “must” for any visitor! We were in luck and had a very good looking German boy waiting on us. In addition, the ice cream was wonderful!! After this, we were on our way back to the station. Out of the blue, a boy came up from behind us and asked us if we were American and then asked us where we were from. He had overheard us speaking English. Peter was his name and he told us he was from Kentucky. I laughed and said that I would be moving to Kentucky to study at the University of Kentucky. Then he said that this is where he studies! Rachel, Leah and I found this very random and strange. He ended up walking into the city with us and we talked to him, asking why he was in Germany (he was traveling on his own) and what he was doing. He had just visited a friend in Scotland who was studying abroad and then he wanted to come to Germany. After Hamburg, he was on his way to see Salzburg because he will probably study abroad there in a year or two. He studies international relations and is taking German. Interesting...I could possibly end up teaching him in German 2. We split up once we made it back into the city center and us girls laughed about the strange meeting.
Rachel and Leah were quiet on the train ride back to Kiel. When we got back, I showed them one of the best views of the city from the bridge and then we went to get dinner at the Balkan Restaurant, where I had been with Harald (Dr. Menz) when he came to visit. We were the only customers there, which made it very a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere. I struck up conversation with the waitress who was telling us about her family and where they were originally from in former Yugoslavia. Rach chimed in now and then and I told her if she stayed in Germany for a while, she could become fluent. She remembers a lot for only minoring in it. Dinner was fabulous and after dinner, I took the two of them to the Kiel Brewery and ordered them a very typical German drink called “Alsterwasser” in the North. In the South known as “Radler.” After this, we were exhausted and headed back to my apartment to crash for the night.

Brace yourself!

2008-05-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

May 5th-11th
This one is going to be long... but good!

Monday

After breakfast we all met in the lobby where our translator and tour guide joined up with us. She led us on a tour of the old part of the city and told us about some of the history of Prague and its important historical buildings. This was a very interesting tour although the kids grew pretty impatient after the first hour. It was hard to keep their attention because the translator kept giving a lot of detailed information, that didn't really interest the kids as much as she had hoped. She showed us part of the University in Prague, the building where Kafka was born, the Charles Bridge and Charles Alley. The tour lasted about 2 or 3 hours and by the time we were done, everyone was hungry for lunch.

We had wanted to all go out to lunch together at a place that the tour guide had recommended, but when we went in to the restaurant, most of the tables were reserved and they were yelling at us for trying to sit upstairs. We decided this was a bad idea and most of the kids wanted to eat at Subway and save money, so we decided to split up. Four of the girls stayed to eat with Sascha, Andrea and I at the restaurant and the rest were off. This time, we went back in and were seated immediately. It appeared to us, however, that the people working here hated tourists. I, of course, can definitely understand this, but then again think that it is an important part of what keeps them in business. The menu was only in Czech, which made it a little hard for us to understand what we were ordering. We could decipher a few things, but the language is of course very different from English or German. The waiter got angry when we asked him what the dishes were in English and hastily and rudely read through them. We ordered and then waited for our food. Somehow, the man misunderstood Andrea and brought beef instead of chicken for her and the other girls. This led to a long debate over what she ordered and I knew that she said chicken. The man became even more angry and walked away without saying anything. He came back with the order he had written down and pointed it out to us. Then he brought the chicken anyway. We were just glad to have our food. It was absolutely delicious as one could expect, we just had to overcome some obstacles to get it! I had ordered pork, sauerkraut, and dumplings. This is a traditional Czech meal. It can also be served with beef or chicken and there are two different types of dumplings, bread and potato dumplings. They both taste fabulous. The girls had ordered pancakes with fruit for desert and they looked amazing too. Unfortunately, I didn't have any room left for any. We feared getting the bill because we thought we might have to pay extra, but in the end the man was very nice to us and we didn't.

After eating we walked around the city some more and all sat down in a cafe. This wasn't the best idea because we were in the tourist section and payed triple the price for a coffee. We learned our lesson and didn't repeat this mistake. Later, we all separated and Andrea and I went to buy some postcards. We found really cheap ones and then sat at a restaurant having a drink as we filled them out. After this, it was time t meet back up with the rest of the class and then we went back to the hotel. Dinner was at 6 and there we planned to go out to a sports bar for the evening. I called my friend Marketa, who I met in Heidelberg and now works in Prague and told her to meet me there. She walked in the door and it was crazy seeing her again. Another reunion, two years after we last saw each other and things were as normal as ever! It was like no time had passed and we just picked up where we left off. We spent the rest of the evening catching up on the past two years and then we asked if she could tag along on the tour tomorrow and no one had a problem with this.

Tuesday

I woke up today and went for an early run with Viola, one of the students on the class trip. We had a nice half-hour chat while running and it was nice to get to know her better because she is a very sweet girl. After our run, I got ready for the day and went down to breakfast. I found Marketa after breakfast and then we were all off to Terezin, the ghetto where the European Jews were sent on their way to being deported to other work and concentration camps. I knew this would be the most depressing part of our stay. Appropriately enough, the weather was dreary and it even rained a little while we were there. It stopped, however, after we left Terezin. Fitting for the occasion, I must say. Our tour guide showed us around the cells and the rooms filled with giant bunks that had been overfilled with people and told us the stories about sickness and starvation that killed most of the people who came through Terezin. There weren't any gas chambers there. Most of the people who came through Terezin were however sent on and killed in the camps. There were very few survivors. Only two people managed to escape the ghetto because it was a fortress that was almost impossible to escape and it was heavily guarded.
After the actual tour of the ghetto and fortress, we went to a museum that recounted the history of the use of the ghetto. This was also very interesting, although unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to get to see and read everything. We took the bus back to the hotel and from here, Marketa and I went to grab lunch. We each had a gyro and then we met back up with the group and were off to the old part of the city again. Andrea was in search of a Pizzeria and we found one. Marketa and I just had coffee, while Sascha and Andrea ate. We found the Jazz club Agharta and planned to go there for the night. Unfortunately not all the kids wanted to go, but we turned out to be a good sized group. The band that played was fairly good and we had a nice relaxing night, while the others went back to the sports bar for the evening.

Wednesday

After breakfast today, we went to the monastery on the small side of Prague and from there we went up to the Prague Castle that sits on the hilltop with a beautiful view of the entire city. Here, me and a few of the girls wandered around the dome and then took the 287 stairs to the top of the tower, where we could see everything from above! From there we went along the Golden Alley where very small houses from that date to the middle ages reside. This is where we all met back up again and then we walked down through the small side. After turmoil over the day tickets, we split up into small groups and I went with Sascha to get lunch. We went back to another restaurant that the tour guide had suggested to us that was in a quiet, less touristy section of Prague along the Moldau River. The place was packed and as we were getting ready to eat somewhere else, a table became free. We sat outside because the weather was so beautiful and we ran into 3 of our students who decided they would join us. Here I had an absolutely delicious gulash with dumplings...MMmmm! Also typically Czech. This made the conversation a bit more interesting. I like Sascha, but he has a very dry personality and doesn't say a whole lot. After eating, I asked the girls if they wanted to join me in climbing the City Hall tower to get some pictures. They said yes and we split from Sascha there. The view was again amazing and the weather was perfect!! The girls and I stopped at a few shops on the way back to the hotel. Viola found me when I came in and asked me if I wanted to go running then so we didn't have to get up early in the morning, so we went for our jog. After dinner, the kids wanted to go back to the sports bar again because a German soccer team was playing (probably also because they could get really cheap beer there, just a wild guess!), but when we got there, the place was already packed. The boys split from Andrea, the girls and I hoping they would find seats for themselves. I was actually glad because we then went to a bar/cafe that was outside and right around the corner. It had a much nicer atmosphere. About 15-20 minutes later, the boys were back saying that they were asked to leave the bar by the manager because they were under 18. In Germany, kids can drink at the age of 16, but in the Czech Republic not until 18. We thought is was funny that they weren't served and had to laugh about it. Needless to say, I still find it funny that we were on a school trip and the kids were allowed to drink alcohol as long as they didn't get out of hand. Something like this wouldn't be allowed in the U.S., but then again maybe it would be better if it was because at least the drinking would be controlled if it was in front of a teacher, rather than hidden in bags and such. Just a thought.

Thursday

Today the kids were split up into groups and had to do a type of scavenger hunt and answer questions. The groups were picked at random and sent off at separate times. They then had to find all the answers and the group with the most correct would win a prize. I had planned to meet up with Marketa again today and she was bringing Petra, another Czech friend of mine from Heidelberg. She was able to come see me because May 8th is a national holiday in the Czech Republic, celebrating the victory over the Germans from World War II. It was great to see Petra again and we went for lunch after we met. It was wonderful to see the capital of Prague in the presence of my friends. It made the experience even better. They are very special friends of mine, even if I don't see them that often. At the cafe we ate at, we called yet another Czech friend of mine, who wasn't able to make it to Prague to see me. Hearing her voice for the first time in two years was also a special moment. I can't explain the feeling, but it's great to have friends from all over the world, who can share their culture, ideas and hearts with you. There's nothing quite like it.

After lunch, we went for a 2 hour walk through the old city across the bridge to the small side and through a park that I had been in two days ago. The weather was again the best I've seen while here in Europe and we sat along the river chatting and soaking up the sun. At 4 we left to go to Marketa's apartment. It was in a very nice area of Prague and the apartment was very nice and also large. It was nice to see where she lives and just relax and spend time with her and Petra before I had to see them off at the station. They were heading out for Olomouc, the city where they studied and where I visited them two years ago. We said our goodbyes and I was somewhat sad, but also very happy that I had the chance to see them again. I know it wasn't the last time, I will see them!

From the station, I went back to the hotel for dinner and in the evening we didn't have anything planned, so Andrea and I decided to have a drink and talk. It was a really relaxing night and a good end to a wonderful trip. I feel that I have a pretty close connection to her and a few of the other teachers here and this also makes me happy, but sad to know that I will be leaving soon... After this, I went back upstairs and joined some of the girls who were watching Germany's next top model and then I went to bed. Unfortunately, my roommates, although they wanted to live with me in a room, were not that social and didn't ever seem interested when I tried to start conversation with them.

Of course what would the trip be without some excitement! At about 3:30 in the morning, the fire alarm went off. My roommates weren't getting out of bed so I went out into the hallway to check things out. No one was leaving our floor, so I decided that it wasn't real. The Italians on the 3rd and 5th floors had been partying loudly every night we were at the hotel all through the night and hitting on our girls during the day (they're smart enough to not go for this!). Anyway, on this night, the Italians were smoking and set off the smoke detector. They then took the fire extinguisher and this set off the fire alarm. Apparently, my floor was the only floor that didn't exit the building. The kids on the 3rd floor along with Sascha and Andrea had all went outside in their pjs. I had seen a man who works at the hotel come to our floor and try to turn off the alarm, so I knew there was nothing wrong or he wouldn't have done this and he would have told us to leave. I was just glad to know it wasn't our students who did this.

Friday

In the morning we woke up and finished packing. We met in the lobby after breakfast and turned in our keys. Then we had to wait to get our deposit money back from the hotel. This was complicated, as they tried to short us 30 Euro and we had to wait until this was fixed. From the hotel we headed to the station. We arrived about an hour and a half before the train was to leave, so some of the kids went and bought food for the train.
To our luck, the train was delayed another half an hour and when that half an hour was up, twenty more minutes and then an hour and a half later our train from Budapest to Hamburg arrived. We were going to arrive late in Kiel and were unsure of the connection which we would be able to catch. Fortunately, we were able to get an ICE from Hamburg and only arrived about 30 minutes later than expected. The train ride seemed to last an eternity though because we had been waiting on it for so long. Sven, Andrea's husband met us at the station and Viola's mom, the girl I went running with had brought Andrea flowers and Sascha and I chocolates for taking the kids on the trip. I thought this was very sweet and thoughtful of her. The kids were off and so were we. They dropped me off at home and told me they would call me on the weekend, since they were planning to cook out because the weather was so nice. I thanked them and then went up to my room, looked at my pictures, and went to bed.

Saturday

I didn't sleep in today after the long journey. I woke up from the sun and went running around 8. I met up with my assistant friends around 10:30 and we left for Rendsburg in a black Mercedes Benz, for which Siobhan had won a free weekend rental. They had planned a cookout for the day at her place. It was funny riding with Siobhan in a car in Germany. First of all, she is from Northern Ireland and therefore used to driving on the other side of the road, second of all the car was an automatic (she got this in case Dee or I would have to drive for some reason) and she is used to a standard and thirdly, she didn't know where she was going and Dee became the navigation system with the atlas map! We made it to Rendsburg without getting lost or hurt! I was impressed. They went shopping, while Heather and I waited for them to get back. Everyone else arrived around 2 or so and we fired up the grill around 3 or 3:30. It took us a while to get it going, because the coals weren't that great, but finally it was ready for cooking. The first thing we put on the grill was the chicken. I had cut it into strips and Rebecca had put on the flavoring. Dee and I cooked the chicken and we placed the potatoes wrapped in foil on the coals to cook. After everything was ready, round one was eaten. Round two, the hamburgers were then cooked by Nick. We had salad with them and then round three was sausages, which I could only eat a half. I hadn't eaten this much meat in a long time because it is expensive (same as at home). Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we had been yelled at by a woman who lives in the complex where Siobhan lives. She told us that we had to put our grill where the other one was, only later to be told by the landlord that we could put it wherever we wanted. He actually MADE us move it to a grassy spot on the lawn, where he said it would be much nicer. It was really funny, because he sounded so angry when he was doing this based on his tone of voice, but he wasn't mad at all. I was just frustrated, that he wouldn't leave us alone. But silly me, “Ordnung muss sein” The Germans favorite quote: “There must be order.” Marshmallows and a cookie that Alex made were our deserts. Basically we had been eating for 5 straight hours...

This is where the movement has to come in! So we were playing ball, I was doing flips and Siobhan was juggling in the yard. I think we should start a traveling circus act! We also made up a game that we called Schlesi Ball (short for Schleswig-Holstein, our state). This consisted of Siobhan juggling knives in the middle of a giant circle of six people, three of whom were throwing balls to each other, and three of whom were tossing clubs to each other. Basically total chaos, but one would expect nothing else coming from us! Martin even taped this and it looks insane! We also made friends with the neighbors and their kids. They were grilling out too and the two little boys decided to play ball with us. The one kept kicking Dee's soccer ball over the fence and into the other neighbor's yard and we made him go get it. The little one wanted to learn baseball, so Alex and I took turns pitching to him. I have to admit that we were successful because he was hitting at the end.

Around 9:30 or so we left Rendsburg for Kiel. After we parked the merc, I came home and went straight to bed. Andrea had sent me a message saying they would be grilling tomorrow at 6.

Sunday

I woke up and went running and then just spent the rest of the morning and afternoon relaxing. Anke, my roommate, asked me if I wanted to go and get some ice cream with her so we walked up the road to her favorite place, bought an ice cream cone and sat outside in the sun. It was warm, but still windy. Later, I rode my bike to Andrea's and her sister was already there. Two of her other friends that I had already met once before were coming over with their 5 or so month old daughter (Andrea's god-child). I had seen the mother when the baby was still in her belly, so I was excited to get to see the little girl. She was absolutely adorable with huge blue eyes. Sven got the grill going and put the first round of meat on it. This was steak. I haven't had steak the whole time I have been here, so I was actually really excited and it was delicious! I had another piece (they were smaller) and then they gave me a piece of pork and yet another small piece of steak. I couldn't eat any more after this, although they tried to give me a sausage, I had to politely decline. I knew there was a reason that I hadn't eaten much for lunch. I was on meat overload from yesterday and today! You didn't hear me complaining though. After dinner, the others left and I stayed a while longer talking to Sven and Andrea. We had a coffee and watched the pictures on their tv that Andrea had taken while we in Prague. Her pictures were very good too. She took a lot more of the kids, which made me happy because I had a lot of the city. After this we went back outside for a while and then around 11:30, I decided it was time to ride back home and get to bed. I thanked them for the lovely evening and went home.

What kind of pants do you wear when dancing into May in southern Germany?

2008-05-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

April 28th-May 5th

Monday

Today I had a class with the 8th graders for the first time by myself. I had been to a few of their classes before, so I knew their level and what to expect from them. My teacher had given me some vocabulary books with worksheets on the differences between British English and American English. A lot of people don't think that the differences in British and American English are that extreme, but I can say that there are more than I originally thought existed since I have been hanging around the Brits here and there are times when I simply don't understand what they are saying. This makes me think of a story. Ryan, my Scottish friend who left for Sweden, once told Dee that he didn't have any clean pants to wear and Dee said that she wears hers more than once a week and he looked at her disgusted...Clarification: to the Brits, pants are underwear! Anyway I didn't think this was too appropriate to tell the class, so I had copied one of the worksheets and then I had created a crossword puzzle for them also. This was fun for them, even if none of them got all of the right answers. The kids were pretty loud, but in my experience with them, this is how they normally are. It is hard to get a German classroom to be quiet. Sometimes you have to just stand at the front of the class and wait for them to realize they are too loud to continue. In my LK 13th grade class, after wandering around the whole school in search of a room with a screen and a DVD player, we started watching the movie “The Kingdom,” which is about Saudia Arabia and the U.S. This was not the first time I have had to go in search of a room at the school. It occurs very often, that rooms are changed and a class will be in the room that you normally have your class in and they send you somewhere else, only to find that this room is taken, too. The result is usually a waste of the first 5-10 minutes of class...The school is simply not big enough for the number of students that we have. To give you an example of the tightness in the classroom, the rows are so close together that you can't ask students to get up to come to the board, and students who come in late usually disturb the whole class trying to get to a seat because there is no other way. The normal class size is around 30, but once again the rooms just aren't made to hold this many kids.

Tuesday

Today, I had the eighth graders again for another lesson. This time we did another worksheet and afterwards we played bingo. I took in the Reese's cups that Natasha had brought and they were the prizes for the winners. They were excited when they won. One of the girls kept saying, “they had these in the U.S. when I was there!” I just laughed and thought to myself of course they did! We continued watching the movie in my LK class and then I had tutoring after school. After tutoring, I rushed home to finish packing my things and then I took the bus to the station. When I got on the train to leave for Heidelberg, I realized that I had forgotten my cell phone at home. I knew that I couldn't go there without it because I wouldn't be able to contact my friends. So needless to say, I had to get back on the bus and go back to my apartment. I had a little bit of time before the next train to Heidelberg and so I decided to go to the station early and grad a currywurst for dinner. I also had some things in my bag to snack on during the train ride. The connection ended up being better than the first one so it worked out in my favor that I missed it. I made it to Heidelberg around 11 p.m. and Kathrin met me at the station. We took the bus to Bismarkplatz and walked from there across the Neckar to her apartment in the Brueckenstrasse. We spent the next hour or so chatting before getting ready for bed.

Wednesday

Kathrin and I woke up around 9:30 the next day, ate breakfast and got ready to go to the Neckarwiese or the riverside as we would call it. The weather was beautiful and we sat in the sun taking pictures and talking. Other people had the same idea and were also laying around on the grass. Some people thought it was summer already and were laying out in swimsuits, to which Kathrin and I had to laugh! After an hour or so we went back to her apartment to get our things and meet up with some of her friends who I also knew from my semester abroad for lunch at the PH. We got lunch and made ourselves comfortable on the benches outside. Of course I can't go to Heidelberg, well the PH at least without seeing someone I know and the first person I saw was Markku, an exchange student who came to Bethany last year. He immediately got my attention and we talked for a few minutes and then I ate my lunch with the girls. Kathrin had a meeting with one of her professors, so I had contacted Beth Ann (Bethany student and friend of mine studying abroad) and we met at 2. We had coffee and cake and Markku talked to us some more until he had to leave. Kathrin came back and I had a hot chocolate, while she drank some coffee and we tried to plan for the afternoon/evening. We had originally planned to rent a paddle boat on the Neckar, but it rained so much that we didn't get to, so instead we went shopping in the Haupstrasse. For the evening, we had planned to “Tanz in den Mai” (dance/party into May; it's very popular to do this in Germany, they also put out May poles in every city for decoration) Our plan had originally been to go up to the Thingstaette where every year there is a big party for students in Heidelberg, but this is outside so we had to wait until later in the evening to decide what to do since it was still raining, as it always seems to when I come!.... . We ended up not going to the Thingstaette because it had rained so much and was probably really wet and muddy, but instead we had our own version in Kathrin's Apartment, with her five roommates and some of their friends and it was of course just as fun! Her roommates are all really nice and I think everyone had a good time! Beth Ann was also there.

Thursday

We woke up again around 9:30 and the four of us girls (Kathrin, myself, one of her roommates, and an old roommate of theirs) had breakfast together. We decided we were going to go out in a paddle boat on the Neckar this morning if the weather stayed nice. Sure enough, it did and we managed to get the paddle boat for a half an hour. It was Kathrin's roommates first time in a paddleboat and you could tell she enjoyed it. We had a beautiful view from the river and as I said it was perfect weather! This was a great way to end my unfortunately very short stay in Heidelberg. I was having a blast, but had planned to head down to Crailsheim to stop and see Svenni before going back up to Kiel. I wasn't sure if I would have the chance to do so again before I leave so I took this opportunity to do so. This meant, however, saying good bye to Kathrin once again, although I know I will see her again in July, when I am back in Heidelberg.
We made it back in time to get my stuff, grab a ticket and catch the tram to the station. I made it to the station with plenty of time and got on the train to Stuttgart and from there the train to Crailsheim. I met Svenni and Soeren at the station and they picked me up in their brand new car that they got for Christmas. I hadn't seen it yet and it was very nice. We got to their house and they had planned to cook out because the weather was so nice. Svenni and I went downstairs to help her grandma with the preparation. Her grandma was really excited to see me again and I was happy to see her too. Svenni and I made the pasta salad and a dip for the cucumbers. Then we had a nice long dinner outside on the back lawn. In the evening we watched television before getting ready for bed and school the next day.

Friday

Yes, you read correctly. I went to school with Svenni the next day, even though it was my day off! We met up with some of Svenni's friends before class started. The first two periods, she had math and she asked her teacher if it was ok that I was there and he didn't have a problem with it. He then asked her if I could speak good German and she said yes, so he asked me where exactly I was from and if I was visiting Germany. I told him that I was teaching here in Kiel, but I am sure that he thought that I misspoke/couldn't speak German because he looked at me like he didn't believe me. He probably thought I look to young to be teaching...The next two lessons, she had physics. We sat in the back and played games the first lesson and the second lesson the teacher gave them a worksheet and then sat and talked to us. The last two lessons of the day were English. Her teacher noticed that a guest was present and immediately asked me who I was and where I was from. I told her the states and that I was a friend of Svenni's and then she asked me if it would be ok if they spent the first hour of class asking me questions and then the second hour they could have free. I agreed and told Svenni later that she owed me! : ) Most of the conversation consisted of her asking me questions. The only thing Svenni could come up with to ask me, was what my favorite food is. She said she knew everything else, of course! I ended up talking about the elections and public transportation and a variety of other topics, such as why I am here. The teacher thanked me and we left when the bell rang. We got back to Svenni's house and her grandma already had lunch ready for us so we went downstairs to eat. We decided that we would go to the Brombac Lake when we were finished because the weather was so nice that we didn't want to waste the day inside! I was really proud of Svenni for finding her way to the lake after she told me she had only driven there a few times before. We had beautiful views of the scenery around us on the way there and at one point we got distracted from talking and missed our turn off, but this didn't matter. We just went to the other side of the lake first. We went down to the water and took some pictures and then we went to get ice cream. Instead, they were selling something called a Germknoedel. I had never eaten this before, but Svenni assured me that it was good, so I took her word for it. Most Americans reading this probably think it sounds gross because it looks like it says germ dumpling, but it has nothing to do with germs and it is absolutely delicious! It is a type of huge bread dumpling with a fruit filling (ours was strawberry) and it had cinnamon on top and warm vanilla sauce all around it!! Mmm! I later found out this comes from Austria.

Saturday

Today, I spent most of my day on the train. In the morning, we woke up and ran to the bakery to get some breakfast and something for me to take on the train and then it was time to say goodbye. Heike, Svenni's mom had written me a note, since she was already gone for the day and I went downstairs to say goodbye to grandma. I'll admit it, I almost cried. There were definitely tears in my eyes, when she asked me if she would see me again before I leave for home and I told her I wasn't sure, but that I would definitely be back. As I said goodbye to Svenni at the station, it was the same for both of us. Neither of us wanted to cry, but we could both sense the tension of the moment so we just smiled and said until next time! The train ride back to Kiel went smoothly and I came back unpacked my things and went to the supermarket to buy food for the 9 hour train ride to Prague tomorrow morning. I then made dinner and packed my bag again and went to bed so that I would be able to get up at 5 a.m.

Sunday

Andrea and her husband picked me up at 6 a.m. from my apartment and we went to the station to meet the class and our other chaperon for the trip. All the kids were on time and we boarded the train. I was really excited for the trip and to get to know the kids, so I couldn't concentrate too much on reading or anything of the sort. When we had to switch trains in Buechen, a woman was sitting in one of our reserved seats and wouldn't move. It was really funny because she was asking us what we wanted her to do and we said get up and find a new seat! Isn't that obvious?? Then there was another class group that boarded our train in Berlin. The girls in this class kept trying to get the attention of our boys, but thankfully it wasn't effective! The train ride to Prague went by very quickly, probably because I was so excited and as we got close to the border and were riding along the Moldau, the scenery was so beautiful. We arrived at the station and were met by our Translator and guide for the trip. I never did get her name, but she was a very friendly lady. She helped us get our Metro tickets and then took us to our hotel and helped us get checked in. The next shock was to come, upon entering our rooms. We were originally told that there were only 2 and 3 person rooms and we ended up being four to a room. When we opened the doors, we understood. The rooms were originally for two people but had two extra cots placed in them and there was barely enough room to walk. It could have been worse, but we were paying just as much as everyone else and therefore complained. We were told we had to make it through the night and they would deal with it in the morning. I was in a room with 3 very sweet girls who I got to know very quickly. We ended up going into the city together after dinner for a few hours. Sascha, the other chaperon walked around with us and showed us the places to see. Then it was back to the hotel for the night. My first impression of Prague was that it was a very beautiful and clean city and I had only seen a very small part of it. I couldn't wait to see more!

North Sea Mudflats

2008-05-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

April 22-28th

Monday

In my LK class of 13th graders, we started the interviews today. They actually went quite well. The students did make some of the mistakes that we had talked about not doing in the dos and don'ts class, but overall I was impressed with their answers. This was the only class I had today and in the evening, we had a meeting at Andrea's for the chaperons of the Prague trip, which was myself, her and Sascha, a history teacher at the school. It's required that a male and female chaperon go on any trip with the students. Otherwise it could have just been Andrea and I and I wouldn't have had to pay for the trip. O well, I know it will be worth it! We planned out the five days and set times and rules for the students. I'm starting to get really excited, both to see the city and to meet up with my friends!

Tuesday

We had more interviews, I did my tutoring after school and then Siobhan, Dee and I went for a walk along the harbor. We went to subway and got sandwiches since Dee had some coupons that were going to expire and we took them to the seating area at the harbor so we could sit along the water. It turned out not to be the greatest idea because it was cold and windy, but we did have a nice view. I am finally going to be taking part in the Meet US program that I had written about at the beginning of my assistantship. It is the program with the embassy, where they send you to other schools to talk to students about life in the U.S. I have been invited to Rostock. I had really wanted to go here, but didn't think that I would be able to manage the money and get there before leaving, but it looks like everything has worked out this way! The embassy is even allowing me to stay overnight because the journey is a longer distance and the program begins in the morning. The embassy booked a youth hostel room for me on board a boat! I'm really excited to get to have this experience! This will be at the beginning of June.

Wed.

Not much exciting happened today, I just continued the interview lessons with my 13th graders, which still seem to be going generally well, even if the kids aren't highly motivated. I was also invited by my 6th graders to participate in their Sports day at school next week on Monday, but unfortunately I won't be able to join them, since I have to substitute for one of my teachers then.
Thurs.

Today I had class and then one of my teachers called off because she had a migraine. This teacher was supposed to meet up with a Finnish lady who was visiting our school to try to set up an exchange program for students. The teacher who called off was supposed to show the woman around Kiel and since she wasn't there to do this, Andrea asked me if I could do her this favor and show the woman around. I cannot for the life of me remember her name, but she was nice. Andrea dropped us off at the harbor and we walked along it to the old part of the city. She bought a few postcards and then we went around little Kiel and past the city hall. We spoke a mixture of English and German. Of course her English skills are much better than her German, since most Scandinavians are perfect at English, but what surprised me, was when I found out that she teaches both English and German. I found this interesting because of her lack in knowledge of the language, but then remembered that this happens in the U.S. also because most of the time you are not forced to study abroad if you study a foreign language. After this we decided to stop and have a drink. I ordered coffee and she ordered a beer and I kept the receipt since I had paid because Andrea told me if we stopped to have coffee I would be reimbursed for it. I wasn't sure if the school would reimburse the beer or not, but then I remembered, this is Germany and not the U.S. and that they would most likely do so. After stopping, we went to the post office so that she could get some stamps for the postcards and then we called Andrea and told her where to meet us. We all three then went for coffee and cake. Once again on the school's money! This evening it thunder-stormed and rained heavily. The reason I wanted to write about this, is because I don't think this happens in Germany as often as it does at home. At least not from my experience of living here! This may be only the second one I have ever seen here.

Friday

Siobhan, Dee and I went to Preetz after school to try and pick up Siobhan's free Mercedes-Benz rental car that she won for a weekend at her school's Christmas Bazaar back in December. During the train ride, Dee was hit on by a creepy drunken man with long blonde hair who must have been in his mid-thirties. His pick-up lines were the best we've ever heard. Here's what he said: “Are you sixteen?” (eyes not moving from her face) Dee didn't answer so he continued by saying “younger?” Luckily he got off at the stop before ours. We couldn't stop laughing about this the whole way to Preetz. When we arrived at the dealership, the man told us that we couldn't have the car immediately, but that it would be at least a week, so we decided to get it on the weekend of the 9th, when I will be back from Prague and they will be back from Copenhagen. Since we were in Preetz and our plans had changed, we decided to actually look around the town. We had been there before but only when it was dark and before Chris, another assistant, left. We stopped and got ice cream and just enjoyed the beautiful weather we were having today. After wandering around a bit and sitting at a lake in Preetz for an hour, we decided to get the next train to Kiel. We went back to the station and were sitting on the platform waiting for the train to come. We watched a boy climbing a tree in the distance and it looked like he was going to fall, he was up so high. We got so distracted, that when I looked up and questioned why the train on the track across from us said Kiel and had been sitting there so long. Originally we had thought it had come from Kiel, but it turns out that this was our train and we were on the wrong platform. We didn't pay any attention because the train to Kiel usually leaves from the one that we were at, but it just so happens that this one didn't. So we ended up waiting another half an hour or so for the next train back to Kiel.

Saturday

Nick, one of the assistants had planned a get together on the North Sea for us all for his birthday on the North Sea, since this is where he is located. First we went to Heide to pick him up and then from there we rode the train to Buesum. It is a small touristy town because it is known for its Wattenmeer. This term doesn't really translate very well into English, but I think the closest you can come to it is mud flats. This area is preserved and it is popular to walk on and is said to be good for your skin. When we got to Buesum, we found a supermarket and all of us purchased a picnic lunch. We paid to go down to the water and the mud flats (yes this is normal in Germany, in some places you have to pay to go onto the beach; this keeps the beach clean and in order and Germans love order!). We ate our lunch and then took our shoes off in preparation for the mud flats. This would be another first for me. Contrary to what I thought, it was actually solid in most places. This is probably a good thing or else you would sink and get stuck in the mud! We walked all the way out to the water, which also wasn't as cold as I had thought it would be. It was slowly working its way in for high tide. By the time we had gotten back onto shore and put on our shoes after washing our feet, the mudflats could no longer be seen. The water of the North Sea is just as clear as that of the Baltic. Both being the clearest water sources I have ever seen... After walking around the town a little, we took the train back to Heide where we had reservations for dinner. It was not quite time for dinner, so we walked around Heide for a little while and sat in a cafe for an hour or so. Our dinner reservations were at an Italian restaurant. The food was delicious and very well priced for the portions that we received. I couldn't even finish my pizza, it was so large. After dinner we left for the station to catch our train. We had to change trains on the way back and our train had a delay. We almost missed the last train back to Kiel, but the conductor was nice enough to contact the train and ask them to wait for us, which they did since it was the last one for the evening. On the train ride back, we had another strange encounter with a drunken man who kept asking us if we smoked. He must have asked us about 3 or 4 times until he finally got the point that none of us do! His last comment to us was “There are 7 of you with sunglasses and all and you're telling me you don't smoke.” All we kept thinking, was how could having sunglasses automatically make you a smoker? When we finally got into Kiel, it was after midnight because of the delays. I went straight to bed.

Sunday in the park

Today, I decided to just relax and take it easy after our fun packed weekend. I knew I had a few weeks of traveling ahead and didn't want to wear myself out before this. Dee and Siobhan called me and asked if I wanted to go to Schrevenpark, the big park close to us. I agreed and we packed a picnic lunch to take with us. The weather was the best it has been the whole time. We were wearing shorts and laying in the sun and most of the students in Kiel had had the same idea. Everyone was out grilling in the park or playing frisbee or some other sport. We had fun people watching and Siobhan found some fellow jugglers who asked to borrow her clubs. The Rastafari man of Kiel was also in the park dancing around and singing. We spent the whole afternoon there and around 7 we called it a day.

Oh yeah, work...I know what that is, at least I think I can remember!!

2008-04-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

Monday

Today it was finally back to school after three weeks of pure traveling. I wasn't sure if I really felt like starting work again, but when I got there in the morning, I realized that I was happy to be back. I usually don't work on Mondays, but a teacher that I work with is on a six week leave and I took over her grade 13 class. I've planned a unit on job searching, applications, and interviews, so I hope it goes well. When I walked into the staff room, I received a very warm welcome from my colleagues and a collective “we missed you!” Frau Redlin gave me a hug because I hadn't seen her during the break. In general, everyone was in a great mood. Even walking through the halls, seeing some of my students put a big smile on my face, as they were apparently happy to see me back at school too. This made me realize how much I like the school and how well I fit in there and feel at home. It is a great feeling. I'm sure if I didn't feel this way, it would have been a long year. So I went to the one class that I had that day with my year 13. Half of them were for some reason or another missing, but the class went really well. We discussed actions that need to be taken before applying for a job and with this looked at my resume. We also pointed out the differences in German/American resumes. The class has to make their own, which will be graded by their teacher, when she gets back. Tonight there was play at the school, and I took Dee along with me, since she came to the last one. This time the 12th graders were performing Handke's “Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wussten” (The hour in which we knew nothing about each other). I thought that it started at 7 but it ended up being 7:30. I was glad we were early though because we were able to get tickets, since there was limited seating available. The play was great and the performance and performers did a fabulous job acting and made the piece very realistic. There was hardly any speech throughout the entire piece, only on occasion. There was audience interaction and the piece was very comical and its purpose is to invoke memories and think about the interaction of people in general. Dee and I's favorite part was when one of the boys ran across the stage in his boxers...haha!

Tuesday

Today we had great weather and I got done an hour early because I moved my tutoring with Moritz up. My unit with the 13th graders continued with looking at their resumes and filling out application forms, which is not common in Germany. Their resumes looked good, but I told them I would collect and correct them so they would get good grades. The rest of the day I just spent doing laundry and cleaning, since I was desperately needing to do both after all the traveling. I also realized it was nice to know I would be in one place for a while, even if only for two weeks!

Wednesday

Today I finally got my fourth tutoring student, Niko to come to tutoring. It actually went well. He's a smart kid, but just needs help in some areas. I didn't do too much after school. I just spent some time reading and researching.

Thursday

Today I had a long day of classes, although it went fairly quickly. I had tutoring after school and my second student didn't show up. I'm not sure why, but I'm sure she had a good reason. It's not like her to just not come.

Friday

I did a gun debate/role play with my12 graders, some of whom were in the play. I told them they did a great job with their performance and that since I now know that they can act, that I expected them to do a good job with the role play. I assigned each student a different identity and asked them to determine whether or not they would be for gun ownership and then they had to find the other members of their side of the debate. I then had them introduce themselves so that everyone knew who they were up against. To give you some examples of the identities: a pope, an old hippie, a lobbyist, a supreme court member, an arms producer, a hunter...etc. I then asked them to attempt to stay in character throughout the entire debate. This lesson turned out to be great! The hippie talked about peace and love, the pope about the bible, and the supreme court member about the constitution. Successful! The only thing that I didn't like about the lesson was that some people participated much more than others. With my 13th graders, I also had a role play planned. Theirs was on interview don'ts. I made them split up into groups of two and gave each group a list of interview don'ts to incorporate into a role play. The audience had to figure out what exactly the group did wrong. This was also very successful and hilarious! Some of the kids in this class are also good actors/actresses.

After school, I went and bought chocolates and caught the bus to Altenholz to pay a surprise visit to my host family. Of course I wasn't sure if they would be there, but it didn't matter much. When I got there, both my host parents and host grandma's cars were gone. I decided to try at grandma's anyway because I know that she sometimes lends them her car, when they need two. I rang the doorbell and sure enough, she buzzed me in. I could tell that I had just woken her up because she was messing with her hair as she stood in the doorway. I felt bad because most Germans don't like if you drop by unannounced, but they also told me that I was one of the people who has this privilege, when I moved out. Grandma Petersen was happy to see me and immediately asked why I had brought chocolates. I told her that they were for Silke, my host mom, since her birthday is tomorrow. She smiled and told me she was out getting her hair done, but would be back soon. We chatted a bit and brought each other up to date on the past few weeks and then she made tea and got out her usual tin can of cookies for me. After two hours, Silke finally got back from the hair salon. Grandma called over to tell her she had a visitor and she came over. She was happy to see me too and I gave her the chocolates that I had brought her for her birthday. I told her that I know it is unlucky to wish someone an early birthday in Germany, but that in the U.S. it isn't. She said it wasn't a problem. We talked for another hour and a half and then her and my host dad were heading into town on the bus to meet up with some friends of theirs and so we all rode the bus together. It was great to see them again and we said good bye until next time. Since the weather was so nice, I decided to go for a bike ride along the harbor before having dinner. The weather has actually been nice all week, with the exception of Thursday and I was beginning to wonder what happened to the normal dreary cloud covered sky...I didn't miss it though!

Saturday

I went with Helen and Rebecca to Schwerin, the capital of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the state beside mine and in the former the East. I have never been to this state, so I thought it would be interesting to see if it differs much from the others. It has suffered because is the state with the highest rate of unemployment since it is lacking industry. It is trying to combat this problem by promoting tourism. The three of us met up at the station in Kiel and were off to Bad Kleinen where we had to change trains. Unfortunately, none of us had looked up the connection and our train was running late, so we missed our second train and were stuck in Bad Kleinen, where there is absolutely nothing to do for an hour. We thought maybe we could find something, but after seeing the Hauptstrasse (main street) which was covered in dirt and being reconstructed and had nothing but small square, typically GDR houses on it, we realized that there isn't much to do. Bad Kleinen as the name suggests, really is klein, small. But of course leave it to a man from Liverpool, England to come along and make things interesting. He was in search of a ticket machine and we helped him purchase his ticket, as he didn't really understand the questions that it was asking him. He apparently does a teaching exchange in Wismar every now and then, a town not too far from where we were. I couldn't figure out why his German was so bad, if he has been here numerous times...He is a mathematics teacher and was interested in what we were doing in Germany and gave us a bit of a history lesson on Wismar, the city where he teaches. After about twenty minutes, he left to catch his bus and we went to get on our train that had now arrived, but wouldn't be leaving for another twenty minutes.

After another hour train ride, we arrived in Schwerin. When we exited the station, we immediately had a feeling that it was going to be a beautiful city. We walked along the waterfront to the old part of the city, where we wandered around and then went to the dome. We decided to climb the tower of the dome so that we could get a good view of the city from above and orient ourselves. We climbed the 220 stairs to the top of the tower, not so willingly. Helen gets dizzy on the stairs that spin around and Rebecca and I were not at all fond of the stairs where you could see below you, or of the wooden ones that did not sound very sturdy. We also didn't like the fact that when you got to the top, you could see through the wood panels and they creaked!! We quickly made our way to the concrete and more sturdy outside to take pictures. I'm not very keen on heights, but managed to get used to it after a while. It's always better when I have people with me than when I go it alone! From atop the tower, you could see the entire city and the giant castle of Schwerin. After we managed to make it back down the tower, we made our way to the tourist info to get a map of the city. From here we walked to the castle. It was unlike any castle I had ever seen before, in Germany or elsewhere and it was very large. It was these things, that made the castle appealing, attractive, and unique to me. We decided we would take a tour of it, if it wasn't too expensive. Of course we should have realized it wouldn't be. It was only Euro 2,50. The inside was also very impressive. I overheard a tour guide say that some of the rooms had been burnt and restored, but only the first two.

When we were finished touring the inside of the castle, we walked out into and around the gardens, which were also very nicely laid out and designed. When we were done here we headed back through the old part of the city, this time wandering down alleyways lined with beautiful buildings. Here we found a Schnitzel restaurant, where we decided to sit down for dinner. The first thing we noticed when we walked in, was that the people were still smoking in the restaurant. The smoking ban has apparently not yet been enforced in Mecklenburg- Vorpommern. Dinner was delicious and we paid and took a route that led us back past the waterfront and toward the station. We went into the book store because we had some time before our train would be leaving and here I found a Spiegel Magazine on Islam in Germany and the Identity of Turkish-Germans. I bought it because it applies directly to the research that I am doing. This was the second motivating thing in the past two weeks. First the mosque tour and then this. We left around 6 so that Helen would arrive back in Flensburg around 11. We weren't sure if the train that we took went through Niedersachsen or not because we had never heard of some of the places before and were a little concerned because our ticket didn't cover Niedersachsen, just Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but the woman checking tickets, stamped it and never said a word to us so we assumed she must have either been in a good mood or we were not in Niedersachsen. Now that I have been to Mecklenburg, there is only one state that I haven't yet been to in Germany and that is Saarland...

Sunday

The weather was once again great today and this time a bit warmer, as it was pretty cold yesterday in Schwerin. I ended up going for a walk along the harbor with Siobhan, Dee and Heather. We sat on the stairs in front of the Landtag (state parliamentary building) and then walked some more to a cafe that we like to go to on the waterfront. It was a nice relaxing day.

Judaism and Islam for beginners, the mayor of Berlin has spoken, and traveling some more

2008-04-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

April 7-13

Monday

There were a few sessions being offered in the morning, but Helen and I decided to skip out. She wanted to go to Checkpoint Charlie and I wanted to go to the Jewish Museum because I had heard that is was well worth the visit. We left together and then split ways after stopping at an internet cafe. I got to the Jewish Museum a little after 10 and had until 1:30 to stay. It turned out to be really interesting, starting with the early history of Jews settling in Germany and Jewish traditions, and ending with National Socialism and the Holocaust. Unfortunately, I spent to much time reading everything in the beginning, that when I got to the end, I had to rush through everything. I could have stayed much longer because the exhibition there is very large. It was very interesting and I was glad that I opted to go and missed the first session. I made it back to the hotel just in time to go to the second session, which was a panel discussion on the topic “Germany: A Global Player.” It was interesting to here the questions that people were asking the panel and to hear what they had to answer. After the panel, we had to go and get changed for the opening ceremony at the House of World Cultures. It is the former Congress Hall and is also known as the pregnant oyster for its architectural design. It is now a center for Non-European Art. During the opening ceremony, directors of the Fulbright Commission in Germany spoke, Fulbright musicians sang and played instruments, and there was a guest speaker who talked about Climate Change. After the ceremony ended, we were served a buffet dinner once again and here bread was spelled “bred!” I had to laugh about that one, even though I am sure it was just a typo. After dinner, we took the subway back to the hotel and went to bed because we were exhausted and knew that we had to get up early again on the next day.

Tuesday

After eating Breakfast at the hotel, Helen and I decided that we wanted to go back to the New Synagogue and this time go in it. We arrived before 10 and it didn't open until 10 so we had to wait. In the mean time, three Japanese men, 2 of whom we had met in the elevator at the hotel came over to us and started talking to us. They asked us where we were from and what we were doing in Berlin and Germany. We explained and then they told us that they were artists and do exhibitions and that they were heading somewhere else the next day. The funniest thing that they said to Helen and I, was that we look like twins. We laughed hysterically about this because if you saw Helen and I, we look nothing at all alike. She has red hair and is taller than me. But what they were referring to were our jackets, our shoes, and the way that we were sitting. Then it made more sense to us!

Finally the synagogue opened and Helen and I paid our Euro to go inside the dome. Unfortunately, it didn't meet our expectations and we were very disappointed. You couldn't go into the actual open part of the synagogue and when you got up to the top, you weren't allowed to take pictures. The view was nice though. After the synagogue, we walked around the Museum Island and back toward the hotel. I decided I was going to buy a new pair of tennis shoes as a birthday gift for myself, since I have almost walked out my other ones. I found some cheap pumas in the kids department and they were a great purchase! I then went straight back to the hotel because I had another tour scheduled for today. This was a tour of a mosque.

We met in the hotel lobby for the mosque tour and here we met our tour guide, Ufuk, who was born in Germany, but his parents are from Turkey. We left for the subway, after everyone had arrived who was coming along. We were off to one of the newer quarters of Berlin, where a lot of people with migrant backgrounds currently live. The area is known as Neukoeln and includes the Sonnenallee district. We got out at our stop and walked the rest of the way to the mosque. When we arrived, there were a lot of people in the courtyard and Ufuk told us that there was a funeral ceremony going to take place. He hadn't known about this, but he went and asked if the afternoon sermon was still going to take place and if it was a problem that we were there (we were a group of 20 Americans!). Of course no one had a problem with us being there and we went inside the mosque. The first thing we had to do was take off our shoes, as this is part of the Islamic tradition. Already, I felt as if I was entering a new and intriguing world. When we entered the mosque, I immediately thought it was beautiful. The Arabic script on the walls and the colors made the mosque appealing to the eyes. We sat down in the back to observe the service, while the men took their places at the front of the mosque. I say men, because there was only one woman there and she did not go up to the front of the mosque as the men did. She sat in the back, where we had all assembled to watch. First, they did a call to prayer and then they began the actual service that lasted no longer than ten minutes. It consisted of a series of repeated lines and repeated actions. After the service, there is a part that people can choose to do or not and each person does this differently. When the service came to an end, we went upstairs to the most beautiful part of the mosque. Here we could walk around and take pictures, while the short funeral service was taking place. We could here the funeral service, but once again not understand it because it was in Arabic. When this was finished, we all sat in the center of the dome upstairs and Ufuk explained to us the service that we had just seen and what the parts of it were. He also talked about the building of the mosque and the history of the ground that it is built on. The funds for the building of the mosque ($3 million Euro) was all collected from private donors within the Turkish community and the building of it took three years. The ground that it was built on was given as a gift to the Ottoman Empire as a burial ground for Turkish Muslims. Therefore, the name of the mosque, Sehitlik comes from the word cemetary.
An interesting thing to note, is that there are no pictures of people or statues of people placed in mosques. This is because Mohammed feared that the people would concentrate on him and other prophets rather than on God, therefore, names written in Arabic are used in place of pictures.

After his commentary, Ufuk allowed us to ask questions. I took this opportunity to ask him about the woman and why she sat in the back and why she was the only one there. He didn't clearly answer the question, but he did say that the tradition is that women are either in the balcony or in the back of the mosque because they keep a 2 meter distance from the men, although this isn't prescribed in any book about Islam practices. The second question I asked him, was how the Germans view Muslims and the image of Muslims. He answered with an unbiased approach and this led us into a discussion of integration. During the Q and A we discussed some other touchy subjects, but the discussion was never negative by any means and it wa very informative. Following the discussion, Ufuk invited us all to the small Turkish shop beside the mosque for a cup of Turkish tea. Here we were able to sit down at tables and further discuss issues of interest. The tour was overall the most interesting part of the Seminar up to now because it has a lot to do with the research I am doing and want to continue on Turkish-Germans in Germany.

Wednesday

Once again, we had breakfast at the hotel and then walked from there to the City Hall where our sessions for the morning were to take place. To give you a head's up on how many of us there were total, approximately 300-350 Fulbright grantees were in attendance to the Seminar in Berlin, not all from Germany. Fulbright grantees from all over Europe were invited to attend and therefore the group was larger than the amount of German Fulbright grantees. In the morning, five grantees were chosen/volunteered to speak about their work and/or research within Europe and its importance in connection with the U.S. and the greater global society. This ranged from a Teaching Assistant in Hungary, to an Opera Singer in Spain and a graphic design professor in Turkey. There were also a few other grantees on the panel who shared their experiences with us and offered time for questions. This gave us a chance to learn about the success of some of the grantees over the past year in their fields and was very informative.
Following the panel, the Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wolwereit spoke to us in the Berlin City Hall. A little side note, he is openly gay, which I think shows how open Germany is to liberal ideas. I can't imagine an openly gay person being voted into such a high office in the U.S. Anyway, his speech was about the re-unification of Berlin, as the 20th anniversary is approaching, and also how the U. S. played a key role in helping Germany achieve re-unification and gave its support thereafter. Also, he discussed the challenges faced by Berlin during re-unification and the challenges it still faces and must conquer today. When his speech was finished, he also allowed time for questions. He was confronted with questions on integration of families with migrant backgrounds and questions about the Olympics in China and why Germany didn't protest them. His answers came very quickly and were quite impressive. When this came to an end, we were offered lunch at the City Hall and then had a free hour to relax before the next session.

In the afternoon, we again had a panel discussion, this time involving the upcoming elections in the U.S. and the chances and challenges that this will provide Germany. This was also a very active and interesting panel. At the end, a lot of it revolved around the media coverage of the U.S. election in Germany, but this was also interesting. At 4, this was finished and Rebecca and I had planned to go to the Salvidor Dali Exhibition on Ku' damm. There were approximately 450 works by Dali on display there and unfortunately we didn't have as much time to spend there as I would have liked to have had. I had to hurry through the last works to get them all in before we had to head back for dinner. I was really glad that we had decided to go to the exhibition because there were so many works to see and Dali' art is incredible, unique, and fascinating!
We made it back for dinner and finished in time to go downstairs to wait on the buses that would be taking us to the Kulturbrauerei, a disco/bar, where we were provided with two free drinks and an amazing DJ. It was a great time, but was also really crowded once we all got in there and very hot. Helen, Rebecca, and I stayed until about midnight and then walked back to the hotel from there. We packed our things in the evening so that we would be ready to check out after breakfast in the morning.

Thursday

We woke up, went to breakfast, checked out, stored our luggage at the hotel, and then we were off to Potsdam for the day. The seminar was over, but Helen, Rebecca and I had planned to spend the day in Potsdam, which is about a half an hour train ride from Berlin. The weather wasn't the best, but it could have been much worse...at least it wasn't raining. When we first walked out of the station, we weren't sure what to think of the city, but the longer we walked around and the more we saw, the more we liked Potsdam. We made our way to the Sanssouci Park, where about 10 castles are located. The grounds are huge and we spent most of the day walking through the gardens and looking at the palaces. It must have taken us at least 2 or 3 hours to walk through the whole gardens and see everything. When we were done, we were in need of food. We stopped at an Asian restaurant and had a delicious warm meal, before walking around more of Potsdam. Later we caught the train back to Berlin and picked up our luggage from the hotel. We left for the main station and caught our train back from there. I made it in at about 8 in the evening and unpacked, only to re-pack for my trip to the south to visit my friend, Katharina, in Ansbach, close to Nuernberg.

Friday

Because of the seminar, I took the whole week off, thinking it would be pointless to go to school for one day and the one hour that I have on Fridays. Instead, I planned to visit Katharina, who I had met my freshman year of college when she had studied abroad at Bethany. I hadn't seen Katharina for over two years. The last time being, when she dropped me off at the airport to go home from Heidelberg. So I was really excited to finally get to see her again after all this time!
I took the 9:21 train to Hamburg and from there went to Nuernberg. From Nuernberg I had one more short train to Ansbach, where Katharina was waiting for me at the station. After fighting traffic, we went to Sandra's, a teacher with whom Katharina works, for lunch. Sandra has a three year old daughter Miriam and she is really cute, although also hyperactive (well, aren't all three year olds?). Sandra is also a very nice and sincere person and I was glad that I was able to spend part of the afternoon getting to know her and Miriam. Later, we went to Katharina's apartment and dropped off my bag. I was excited to see her place and when we got there, her apartment was very spacious, nicely decorated and had lots of light. I doubt that she could have found something better! For the next few hours, we walked around Ansbach. The city itself is quite small, but has a lot to offer and is very beautiful. We walked through the palace gardens and through the city. It's your typical small town in Bavaria with lots of beautiful architecture. When we were done with our walking tour of Ansbach, we went shopping for some food. At the store a guy was acting very strange and as two normal girls would react, we started laughing. He yelled at us and said we were typical Germans...this put me in hysterics, as of course I'm not German! Katharina laughed and said she wasn't going to say anything in return. When we got back to her apartment, we unpacked the food and then watched “Amelie.” I hadn't ever seen it, but it turned out to be a great movie. Katharina was tired and fell asleep during some parts, but she had already seen it. After it was over, both of us were exhausted and we went to bed.

Saturday

Today we planned to go to Nuernberg for the day. It is about 40 minutes by car to Nuernberg from Ansbach. When we got to Nuernberg we parked on the south side of the city and started walking toward the city center. We stopped and asked a man for directions to the castle along the way and he thought we were crazy. He made it seem as if we were hours away from there. A woman informed us that we just needed to keep going straight and we would get there. We figured out that it wasn't as far as he made it seem. I was in Nuernberg for a few hours on my way back from Svenni's Birthday party, so I somewhat knew my way around, and we found our way into the city center through the city wall that is still intact on most sides. We walked around and went into a few stores along the streets. Then we decided to go up to the top of the castle because the weather was so beautiful and the view was perfect. There were a lot of American tourists running around up there and it reminded me of Heidelberg. There is an army base in Ansbach, where Katharina lives, so maybe some of them were from there. We also heard a bunch of Americans in her city when we were walking around yesterday. Apparently the base in Ansbach will remain open, unlike many other bases that are closing in Germany.
Anyway, when we came back down from the castle, we were starting to get hungry, so we found a nice cafe where we had lunch. The portions were really large and the location of the cafe was along the water, so a lot of people were there. You could tell this was one of the first days of Spring because everyone was out enjoying the weather. We walked around a bit more after lunch, and then went back to Ansbach. We wanted to go to the movie theater in the evening so we looked up films and found one that sounded interesting called “Juno.” It was a really good movie that was very comical, even though other parts were dramatic.

Sunday

The two of us had planned to go to Rothenburg today, but then changed our minds to go to the zoo with Sandra and Miriam in Nuernberg. We had a great time looking at the animals and trying to keep Miriam content. We were rushing to leave because we didn't know if we had enough time to catch the train that I wanted to get from Ansbach to Kiel, so we called the train company and asked when the next train from Nuernberg to Kiel would be. He told us in 18 minutes. We still weren't sure if we would get that one either, but we were hoping. We said our goodbyes on the way and I bailed at the station and ran to the track. At first I freaked out for a second because the sign didn't say anything and then I realized that the train had switched tracks to the one beside it and it still wasn't there anyway, thank goodness. I called Katharina's cell to tell her not to wait, that I would get the train and said good bye and thanks again. I had a wonderful time visiting her and meeting Sandra and Miriam. The visit was long overdue and we had fun catching up on Bethany gossip and sharing stories from the past few years. In addition, this was a relaxing finish to the past three weeks of traveling. When I finally arrived back in Kiel, I walked home, unpacked, and prepared my lessons and materials for the next day.

Marzipan people, Airport hotel, and Vergangenheits "what?!"

2008-04-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

April 1-8

Monday

Katja, my teacher, arrived late! Well there's go the punctuality stereotype right out the window. She would have been on time but couldn't find a parking space because I live on the main street in Kiel. She brought the tests in and we began correcting right away. It took less than an hour and when we were done reviewing the corrections, I showed her around our apartment. She said she was happy to know that I had a nice place and agreed that the location couldn't be any better. After chatting a while, we decided to head out for lunch. They left the choice of the restaurant up to me saying I knew better than the two of them where to go. Of course I don't eat out very often, but I did know there was a nice restaurant down the street called Henry the Eighth, so we went there for dinner. Thankfully, we weren't executed while there! We all ordered pizzas with our own choice of toppings and they were very delicious. It was relaxing to just sit around and talk with Katja because we were still exhausted from all of the traveling. Katja paid for our meals (everyone here is so generous, Andrea did the same for us in Schleswig) and after a while, we decided to head back. Katja came back upstairs to get her things and then was off to the library and Tash and I relaxed some more before going to buy flowers and Oreos for my host family. I know that probably sounds funny, but the flowers were for them having us over for dinner and the Oreos because my host mom once told me that she liked them a lot. When we had gotten the things we needed, we waited on the bus and were on our way to Altenholz. We took a bus that doesn't go all the way to their house so that we wouldn't be way early and we walked the rest of the way there. We got there a few minutes after five and Silke was at the door to greet us. I immediately noticed that they had hung the picture of me, my host mom, and host grandma that I had given them, in place of the picture that used to hang of me and Svenni in the hallway that I sent before arriving. This made me smile. I introduced Natasha to Silke and Helge and then we went into the living room because grandma was in there. I introduced them and then we were talking in German because my host grandma doesn't speak much English. She is, however, taking an English course still so that she will be able to understand a few things when they head off to Australia to pick up their daughter/ her granddaughter. After a while, Silke and Helge came in and we were speaking in English and taking turns translating back and forth for grandma. This was funny, but also really sweet. My host grandma would always look Tash in the eyes when she was speaking to her so that she would know that she was talking to her. Natasha found this really touching. For dinner we had Tuscany chicken and for dessert Rote Gruetze, a traditional dessert in the north (I think it really comes from Denmark because I remember Frau Kohler teaching us how it is called in Danish and then seeing it on the Menu there). It is made of lots of different berries and is like a jelly. It is served with milk or a vanilla cream or pudding like substance. Of course dinner was fabulous as usual. After dinner we just sat around the table talking about what's happened in our lives recently and my host parents were asking Natasha about work and other things. Grandma left a little after dinner, I'm not sure if she was tired or if she just felt like she couldn't communicate and felt left out. I hope this isn't the reason she left, but it is unusual that she left so early. At about 9 or so Tash and I said our goodbyes and made our way back to my apartment.

Tuesday

We woke up and had breakfast, before walking to the station to take the train to Luebeck. It is a city from the middle ages (a UNESCO world heritage site, did you know Germany has more than any other country?!) and is one of the most beautiful and well-known cities of Schleswig-Holstein, so I felt that I should take Tash there. We decided to make it a relaxing day too. When we arrived, we walked around the city and I showed Tash all of the touristic points of interest and the door to the wall that used to surround the city. We then went to the Niederegger Cafe. Luebeck is world famous for its marzipan and Niederegger is the man who brought this fame to the city. His marzipan is supposedly of the highest quality, meaning that it has more almonds in it in proportion to the amount of sugar used. The cafe is on three floors and the bottom floor is mainly a shop that sells anything that you can possibly think of made of marzipan or marzipan flavored. It's amazing and if you go there, you will want to buy it all! We decided to sit down for a warm drink and cake. I ordered a marzipan coffee, which was by far the best coffee I have ever had! It was delicious. We ordered a piece of the tradition Marzipan nut cake and split it between the two of us. I still hadn't made Natasha try German ice cream yet (it's amazing too, pretty much every type of food is better here), so we decided to split an ice cream dish too. We ordered a vanilla ice cream with peaches and a raspberry topping. It, too, was delicious!!! After we paid, we went to the third floor where the marzipan salon/museum is located. Here you can learn about where marzipan originated and how it evolved in history. Also, there are 12 life-sized figures made out of marzipan there! It's completely crazy. There was also a woman molding marzipan into an entire display. She was making flowers for the garden when we were there. I asked her if she had made the other one sitting out and she said yes. She told me that it took her a month to make because of all the different colors of marzipan. I was really impressed.
After leaving the cafe, we walked to the other end of the city and then found the puppet/ marionette museum that we wanted to go to. The building looks really small from the outside, but once we were inside where the exhibit was, we realized that we were definitely getting our money's worth! The place was huge with at least four floors. It was filled with puppets from all over the world. Some of the most interesting and intricate ones were from Asia. The paper ones were so detailed. This was another highlight of the day, following the cafe. When we were finished walking around the museum an hour or more later, we walked along the harbor and then back to the station to catch our train back to Kiel. I had invited two of my friends who are assistants over for dinner and Tash and I still needed to go shopping before they came. After arriving in Kiel, we stopped at the store and bought the few extra things we needed to make our family's baked Parmesan chicken recipe. With the chicken, we cooked mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, and carrots. It was a really tasty meal and my friends enjoyed it too. Then we just sat around chatting the rest of the night.

Wednesday

We slept in as long as we possibly could and then we finally got out of bed to meet my friends for coffee and cake at our usual place on the corner. Heather and her friend were late so we planned to just meet here there. We all ordered our cake and drinks and they finally showed up. It was a nice relaxing afternoon, but then Tash and I had to leave so that we could catch the train we wanted. We stopped at the Doener Restaurant on the way to grab a currywurst and fries, that the two of us split for lunch. I had told her that she had to eat one before she left. Then we finished packing our bags and were off to the train station. We made it just in time for our bus to get there and took the nicer train since we had our tickets that were valid. At Hamburg, we put our luggage in the lockers and went into the city. I quickly showed Tash a few of the touristy sites of Hamburg and then it was time for us to find some food before getting our bus to the airport. We attempted to go to a buffet place that I had been before with a teacher, but it was closed so we went to a Thai place that we found in the Europa Passage (mall). It looked like it would be expensive, but ended up being super cheap and we were served really quickly. The food there was also delicious and I told Tash that she was spoiling me with all of this good food that we had been eating. I could definitely get used to that! We grabbed our bags from the station and were off to the airport at about 8:30. We got there by 9 and were going to be awake for the next 8 hours. The first few hours went by pretty quickly and the amount of people started to die out. We were 2 of 3 at one point, I think. We met a boy, I think his name was Jason??, at the airport who was part English and part Spanish. He was just going on leave for a week from serving in Iraq. He rolled up to us in a wheelchair and Tash and I were really confused because we had seen him walking around without it, but then we found out that he was just extremely bored and had found it in a corner. Later around 2 or so in the morning, one of the men working at the airport came and took it away and was walking around asking for our tickets. Of course, I didn't have one, but this wasn't a big problem. He didn't say anything, just asked if Tash and I were there together.

Thursday

We made it through the night and went upstairs around 5 to see if Tash could check in yet. The counters hadn't been opened yet, so we just sat back down upstairs. I had called a bus/van to take me back to Kiel a litlle after 5 in the morning, so we had to say goodbye, so that I didn't miss it. Of course when I got there, I was the only person in it and the driver offered me a choice of seats...haha. He also asked if I missed the last bus because he doesn't get calls very often to come out that early. I explained that I just dropped my sis off to get a flight back to the U.S. and he didn't ask any questions after that. I half slept on the way back. He was flying on the highway in the rain, so I didn't really want to keep my eyes open anyway. When I got back to Kiel, he dropped me off at the station. It was around 6:30 and then I walked to my apartment and and was asleep at 7. I woke up around 2 or so and my friends had asked me if I wanted to go for a bike ride around 6 and then to Heather's for dinner. I agreed to come along. It was a really nice day and we attempted to fix Dee's lights on her bike, as a man who was completely nuts walked up to us on the main square in Kiel and was shouting and spitting. He told us not to worry about the light, just to ride the bike. He said a few other things, but nothing worth repeating. We had to laugh about this because there is always something crazy going on in Kiel. 30 minutes later, I got yelled at by an older man for riding my bike on the sidewalk when no one was even around besides him. He told me that after you are 5 years old you are supposed to get off of your bike and push it there. I just laughed and kept pedaling. Germans are not very keen on breaking rules. One example, being crossing the road when a light is red and you aren't supposed to walk. This drives me and the other assistants mad. There could be no car in sight for miles on a small alley, and they will still stand there waiting for it to turn green! This makes us all laugh. Occasionally though, when you are the first to walk across, they will follow, either acting as though they thought it was green because of you or thinking, well I suppose if I'm not the first one to do it then it's ok. This is funny to observe. Sometimes though, you will get the people who roll their eyes and shake their heads when you do this. Anyway back to the program. We finally arrived at Heather's and she was starting the food. We had rice and curry and what the British call “pudding” for dessert (consisted of strawberries, whipped cream, and meringue. It was all really good. Around 11 we headed back home.

Friday

Today we went on a bike ride to Schilksee. Unfortunately, we were not very successful. We didn't get that far because Siobhan had a flat tire. We made it across the canal and into Holtenau and had to turn around. We were looking for an air pump, so that we wouldn't have to walk all of the way back (would have taken at least 1hour and 15 min.) and it started raining anyway. We found a gas station after asking a man walking down the street and then we met our next problem. Siobhan didn't have the same type of tire that the pump was designed for. We thought about what we could possibly do next, when a man with 3 bikes on the back of a trailer came along. We figured he would know what to do and so Siobhan asked him for help. He happened to have an adapter for the bike tire valve and was able to pump it up for her. This was very kind of him. After this we made our way back after stopping shortly for a picnic lunch. We went up to Dee's after we got back and just sat around for a bit. I then came home and grabbed some food and headed back over. We watched some tv and had a girl's night in.

Saturday

Siobhan asked me if I could fix her flat, since I am now experienced in doing it. I told her to bring it over and I would have a look at the innertube. I found one hole and patched it. We decided to go for a ride to the botanical gardens at the University, which is only about 5 minutes away from here. Her tire seemed to hold out so I think that was the only hole. After wandering around the gardens, which weren't fully in bloom, we rode our bikes to a bakery down the street to get cake and coffee. We spent the afternoon there and then I came home and packed for Berlin and then had dinner.

Sunday

Today, I Left for Berlin in the morning. I met up with Helen and Rebecca in Hamburg and we traveled the rest of the way together. Once we got to the station, we bought tickets for the subway and went to the hotel. It wasn't hard to find at all because it was so huge! After getting our rooms sorted out (the three of us expected to be in one room together, but they ended up only having doubles and Rebecca got stuck with some strange girl) we went to register for the seminar with the Fulbright directors. We received a free Fulbright hand bag and got our schedule for the conference for the week. There was also space left for the tours, which I had totally forgotten to sign up for because my sister was here, so Rebecca and I decided to join Helen on the Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung Tour (yeah it's a mouth full and it is one word!, it means : Germany's way of dealing with the past, very LOOSELY translated), a tour of Jewish memorials and places of remembrance led by prof Dr. Wolfgang Wuppermann of the Freie Universitaet of Berlin. Dr. Wuppermann is very knowledgeable and very opinionated on this subject (in a good way) and has also written many books. He had a really great personality and I enjoyed the educational tour.

Our first stop was Rosenstrasse, which is located right next to Alexanderplatz and was close to our hotel. This is where they know that Jews attempted resistance from the Nazis. The memorial is dedicated to women, but they weren't the only people resisting. From here we walked to the Jewish cemetery that had of course been grave robbed. It was the former location of Moses Mendelssohn, an important German Jewish philosopher's grave. There are now video cameras and a fence surrounding the cemetery so that no more damage can be done to the site that now has a small monument of remembrance. There is also a Jewish school located directly beside it and there they also have security cameras. It”s very sad that they have to have these out, but they are unfortunately still necessary for their protection. From there we went to the New Synagogue, which was burned on Kristallnacht and has been somewhat rebuilt (on the outside) as a memorial and place of remembrance. Next, we walked past the Berlin Dome to a very small memorial that was going to be removed, but was prevented form this partially due in part to Dr. Wuppermann because it also represented the resistance of the Jews. From here we walked to the Neue Wache where the National Memorial in Berlin, a statue of Kaethe Kollwitz' that was dedicated to ALL the victims of war and tyranny (this includes those who fell under the socialist Eastern block) is located. It was interesting to hear the response of the Jews to this memorial (it is viewed by them as a Christian-like statue). According to Dr. Wuppermann, their lack of acceptance of this memorial as their National Memorial is what led to the first discussions of building a Jewish Memorial in Berlin. Our last stop on the tour from here was at the book burning square “Bebelplatz”, also located on Unter den Linden. This is where more than 20,000 books by Jews, Communists and others were burned on May 10, 1933 by the Nazis. Next to the monument, a glass panel in the ground through which barren white book shelves can be seen, a plaque has been placed with a quote from Heinrich Heine, (also a Jew who's books were burnt on the square). In 1820, he wrote, “where books are burned, in the end people will burn.” I think this was the most haunting of the entire tour, as it appears that Heine could somehow foresee the future. Of course he probably meant this in a more abstract way, referring to humans' thoughts or something of the sort, but it still sends goosebumps down my spine.

After our tour concluded here, we were free to walk around and then we went back to the hotel to get ready for the opening and welcome dinner. The dinner was great with a huge buffet including many different types of delicious German breads, a huge salad bar and most importantly amazingly delicious desserts. There were so many we had to try at least two each time!! Drinks were also free the entire dinner. We were definitely being spoiled by the Fulbright Commission. The hotel was great, minus the fact that the shower had pretty much see through windows and you couldn't use the shower and bathroom at the same time because there was only one door that swung to close on one or the other, but we really couldn't complain! The view from our 29th floor room was also quite impressive! After dinner, we hit the city to get some pictures at night of the Brandenburg gate, the Reichstag, Alexanderplatz, and the dome. We made a few new friends at the dinner, Stephanie and Leah and they came along too. When we got back we planned out Monday and then went to bed.

Eurotrip: The Plumly sisters do Europe

2008-04-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

March 24th-March31st

On Easter Monday, yes the Germans have two, well technically three days of Christmas and two days of Easter (Crazy, I know!), Natasha and I decided to go to the Freilichtmuseum in Molfsee, where I was before with one of my teachers and her kids and which is just a short bus ride from here. I think I have written this before, but at the museum there are houses from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries here in the state. We woke up, ate breakfast, and then packed a lunch to take with us. When we were walking downstairs to get ready to leave we opened the door at the foot of the stairs to exit the building and a guy was standing there with a large red suitcase. Natasha happened to look down and realize it was hers, otherwise I would not have thought twice about it! We weren't sure why only one was there so I asked the man if the other one was still lost. He said it just hadn't arrived yet and should be here in the next few days. They were supposed to call before dropping off the luggage, but apparently didn't feel the need to do this! Anyway, Tash was excited to have her clothes and other items and to no longer have to wear my clothes. We brought the suitcase back upstairs and since we missed the bus we decided we would just start walking in the direction of town and catch the next one at one of the stops along the way. We were walking for about 10 minutes, when out of nowhere it started to snow like crazy! Our options were really limited because everything cafe-wise was pretty much closed, so I decided to show her what a McCafe was. This is a Europeanized version of a McDonald's and has a cafe attached to it with cakes and such. At least McDonald's knows how to appeal to its European customers by disguising its cheap self with fancy leather seats and wallpaper. We all know that you would never see this at home, as McDonald's is usually a place for kids and when it comes to colors and design, looks like a clown threw up in it. Anyway so we had our cake and hot drinks to warm up, before braving the cold again. The weather had calmed down and it was only lightly snowing and the sun came out. We caught the next bus and arrived at the museum, to find that there were actually a decent amount of people there. We spent over 2 hours walking the grounds of the museum, entering all of the houses, and watching some of the craftsmen doing their jobs. I think that Natasha enjoyed the museum because we don't have anything like it at home and the houses are really beautiful on the inside and the outside. After we were finished we had to wait on the bus again so we sat eating our lunch at the bus stop. We came back to my apartment to warm up and then headed back out to Holtenau so that we could walk along the canal and I could show her the old lighthouse there. Following this, we were exhausted and cold and came back and cooked dinner and went to bed so that we could wake up for the early train to Berlin on Tuesday.

Tuesday

When we arrived in Berlin, we bought 48 hour tickets for the transport system and checked into our hostel. We had a nice place, a room with 6 others. Two Australians, who we thought were foreigners because their English didn't sound like it came from an English-speaking country, a German boy from Munich, and three Chinese students who are studying abroad in Europe. All were very nice. We were going to stay two nights in Berlin, but then I had called my department chair of English and she said that she would like to take Natasha and I to Schleswig, her home town, on Thursday, which meant we could only stay one night. This wasn't a big deal because Berlin is too big to see in two or three days, so it didn't make much of a difference. We headed out from the hostel for the city. Again it was freezing cold weather and the snow was off and on. Our first stop in Berlin was the Charlottenburg Palace. I wanted to show Natasha a palace in Germany and this one was a great choice. When we got there, we decided to take the tour, which lasted about two hours. After this, we went to Ku'damm to see the Gedaechtniskirche (Remembrance Church, destroyed in WWII and left standing as a monument and place of remembrance) and the Elefantentor (Huge gate with elephants at the bottom) at the Zoologischer Garten. From there we went to the Siegessaeule (Victory Column), which we decided to climb. When we got to the top after two hundred and sixty or so stairs, we were disappointed to see that it was snowing and our view was horrible. Neither of us liked the fact that it was really a tight squeeze at the top either. After a few attempts at pictures, we headed out and decided it was time for dinner because we were frozen and had been walking a lot the whole day. We went to a really nice Chinese place across from the Gedaechtniskirche, where we were earlier that day. After dinner, we decided to head back to the hostel because we were completely exhausted from all the walking and the cold. We got our showers, talked to our roommates and laid in bed until we fell asleep. We decided to get up early on Wednesday so that we would have enough time to accomplish everything that we wanted to do. First we went to the East Side Gallery, where a mile or two of the wall was left standing and artists from all over the world have painted on it. Both Natasha and I were really disappointed at the fact that many people have disrespected the art and spray painted over it. I was there in the summer of 2006 and can tell that it is worse now than before. Not only do people painting over the artworks destroy it, but also the weather is destroying the wall and artwork over time. It's condition hasn't been kept up and the weather is therefore corroding it. Walking along the East Side Gallery only took us about an hour. When we got to the station, there was an advertisement saying happy birthday, this was how I remembered that today was my birthday...ironic I know!

From there we were off to Alexanderplatz, where we saw the Rathaus (city hall), the Neptunbrunnen (fountain), and the Dome. After deciding it would be worth it to pay the money to go in, we saw the beautiful inside, the crypts, the museum inside and climbed the steps of the tower to get an amazing view of the city, this time without snow! It was still really cold and windy though. Finally, we were finished after a couple hours or longer and Natasha wanted to use the restroom, while we were there. We went downstairs where you had to pay. I think it was around 40 cents (quite normal in Germany). Anyway the woman who was cleaning the bathrooms was crazy. First she yelled at Natasha for standing in the sink area, saying that there wasn't enough room for people to stand in there at that it was a hazard. Then she asked me if Natasha had fallen in because she had been in there for a few minutes and continued by saying it's not very nice that people take so long when there are only two stalls and people are waiting in line. First of all no one was out there and I answered her with a “well when you have to go you have to go.” Then I told her that it wasn't a big deal and we were paying for it anyway because she made a face at me after saying that! She then yelled at a woman who had just come out of the bathroom with her kids because she felt the woman had short-changed her for three people, even though the mother said that she didn't even use the restroom! The mother got mad and threw her money and walked away! Wow, all of this taking place in a church...even more irony! She must have been having a bad day or something.

Following this adventure, we went to find a bakery to eat some lunch. The World Time Clock on Alexanderplatz was our next short stop and then we were off to Checkpoint Charlie. At Checkpoint Charlie they have a museum, but we opted not to do this (I had already done it) because they had an outdoor photo and history exhibition. We spent an hour or two walking along this, reading the history of the wall and division of Berlin. It was nice because it was in English and German and I didn't have to translate all of it! It also had info on the cold war and statistics for people who had been shot or killed trying to cross the wall. This was also very interesting for both of us. From Checkpoint Charlie we went to the Brandenburg gate. Here there were skateboarders performing tricks and a kid breakdancing. We watched them for 15-20 minutes and then decided we were still hungry, so we went to a cafe for cake for my birthday. It was delicious. After cake, we went to the Reichstag (German congress building). It's free to go in, but the line is always long. The weather was nice though a little chilly even in the sun. We were over an hour waiting and finally got inside. You can take the elevator to the top and walk around the outside and in the glass dome.

After getting pictures, we were off to dinner. We had found a place called Maximillian's earlier that was supposedly typically German and decided to go there for my Birthday dinner. The food was delicious and we paid directly after finishing so that we could make it to the station for the train we wanted to catch. On the train on the way to Berlin, it was completely packed (they even had to hold the train until people got off it to take the next one at one of the stops, never had that happen before) so I decided we should book seat reservations for the way back so that I wouldn't have to sit on the floor this time. Unfortunately, I accidentally booked the reservations for the 9:30 train and not the one around 8 and the reservations can't be changed, so we were forced to wait around in the station for an hour sitting at McDonald's. When we got on the train we realized that we didn't even need to book seat reservations because it was really empty...had we not though it would have been full. That's life. We arrived back in Kiel around midnight or later and went straight to bed because my teacher was arriving at 10:30 the next day to take us to Schleswig. We found the other suitcase with stuff for me in it sitting in front of my door, when we got back. One of the people in my apartment had signed for it because they once again had not called to say they were coming. Overall, I had a great birthday spent in Berlin with Natasha and received a lot of messages from friends here and at home.

Thursday

My teacher came 10 minutes early, as expected because Germans (not all) are known for punctuality. The weather was really great and when we got to Schleswig, we parked by the school where she did her student teaching. The view of the city from above was amazing. I had been there once before, but it was night time then. We walked down through the main street of the city and went into a few shops. We walked along the small streets to see the squares, the architecture, and some small houses. Then we went to the dome and went inside. Afterwards we ate lunch at a very nice German restaurant. From there we decided to go to the Viking Musuem in Haithabu. I'm pretty sure it is the only one in Germany. It was really interesting, but smaller than Natasha and I expected. Apparently, there are houses like the Vikings used to live in there, but my teacher wasn't wearing appropriate shoes for this, so we didn't get to see them. At about 3 we headed back to Kiel. Natasha and I decided that we would spend the rest of the day relaxing. We did look for a book on Copenhagen because we are heading there tomorrow, but we didn't find any cheap ones so we decided to wait and hope to find one there. Around 5 or 6 we did go for an hour walk down to the harbor and then back up to my apartment. We cooked dinner, packed and went to bed because we had to catch a train around 6:30 so that we would get to Copenhagen around 12.

Friday

We woke up really early and walked to the station to catch our train. We took the route over Luebeck on the way there, which also goes over Puttgarden. I didn't know this at the time, but this means that the train has to board a ferry there and from Puttgarden to Denmark everyone has to get out of the train that is on the ferry and then re-board when it is time to put the train back on real tracks! This was exciting and hilarious at the same time! After a while, I realized that I had been to Puttgarden before and had seen the trains go on the ferrys. This was in the summer of '06 when Bethany's German club traveled in Eastern Germany and ended on Fehmarn an island of Schleswig-Holstein, the state I live in. After the 5 or so hour train ride, we arrived at the Copenhagen Main Station. We went straight to the hotel, which was only a block from the station. Our room wasn't ready so we left our bag and hit the city for an hour before checking in. After dumping our things in our room we were off to explore the grand city. We walked past Tivoli peering through the gates. Unfortunately it is closed during the winter season. We walked to the Rathaus and the Main square where there are a lot of beautiful buildings and then headed down the main shopping street. From there we went to the stock market building and saw Christiansborg, one of the three palaces in Copenhagen. We continued walking and found the Theater and the New Harbor, which is the most colorful and most known area of Copenhagen. There are lots of restaurants and cafes here and the boats were docked in the harbor. It was really beautiful. From the harbor we walked to the Amelienborg palace where we saw the guards guarding it, even though the queen wasn't there (the Danish flags were not flying, this is how you can tell). From here it's a direct shot to the Marble church (actually made of Sandstone, liars!), which was very beautiful inside.

When we got to this point, we decided it was time for dinner, even though it wasn't that late yet. We were really hungry. We had found an Indian restaurant in the travel guide that I bought on board the ferry ship and decided if in our price range (Copenhagen is outrageously expensive), then we would eat there. We found the place after around 45 minutes of walking. Along the way, we passed Rosenborg, the third palace in Copenhagen. No one was in the restaurant so at first we thought it was closed, but we figured out it wasn't. In our eagerness to eat, we forgot that we didn't have much danish money left over after paying for our hotel room. The two of us were freaking out about it, but not too much because we thought we had just enough to cover the bill. The food was absolutely delicious and the server (I think he was also the owner of the restaurant was very friendly. At first he thought that we spoke Danish because he had asked us if we wanted to sit at a particular table that he pointed to and I had understood through context and said 'ja,' not knowing this is not just German for yes, but also Danish. He brought us the menus, which I could about ¾ understand and I helped Natasha. She knew what she wanted and asked him if they had anything similar to it and he told her what to get. After eating very quickly (you would think we were starving, we were hungry from all the walking and traveling!) he laughed at us and we asked for the bill and where the nearest ATM is in case we needed more money. The funny thing was, that he didn't seem the least bit concerned, when we asked this. He told us there was one around the corner. We had as we thought, just enough Krone to cover the cost of the meal, but nothing left to tip, so we paid that and I sat in the restaurant until Tash came back with money for the tip. We realized we would have to get more money out to be able to do anything. The exchange is about 1 American dollar to 6 Krone, though everything is inflated so you are still paying way more. After dinner we were exhausted from all that we had done and seen, so we went back to the hotel and crashed, only to be woken up around 11 by a group of loud young men in the room next to us, partying and playing loud music. After about half an hour or so it finally died out. The walls of our hotel were literally paper thin and to give you an understanding of just how thin, Tash was drying her hair and I could hear it all the way on the opposite end of the building! Despite the party, it was still nice to have our own room.

Saturday

We woke up for breakfast at the hotel. There was a really nice selection and we were both satisfied. We decided that today we would start at the furthest things and make our way back toward town to avoid being tired at the end of the day and save some energy. We went to the armory/fort first and walked around there. A gothic church and a danish windmill were to be found. From there we went to see the Little Mermaid, the symbol of Copenhagen known around the world. I had heard that she really was little by friends who had been to Copenhagen before and had it not been for all the German and Japanese tourists surrounding it, we might not have seen her! We took a picture and kept moving. Unsure of whether the Amelienborg has changing of the guard, we attempted to see this, but without success. We continued in the direction of the Rosenborg palace and decided to stop for lunch at a cafe before we got there. When we finally got to the Rosenborg we bought tickets to tour the inside and the crown jewels. You could only go into a few of the rooms, which was a bit disappointing, but when we got to the jewels, it was worth it. The royal collections were vast and beautiful. We spent a good hour there and decided to go back to the hotel for a break so that we would be up for seeing Copenhagen at night. Tonight we wanted to eat typically danish style food, so we found a cheap restaurant in my travel guide again and went there. The atmosphere was great, the waiters were really friendly and funny, and the food was good. I ordered pork with sauerkraut and bread and the waiters were trying to convince me to eat the fat on it and the hard crunchy part. They said that would make dinner a few hours longer and that it is the best part. Tash and I just laughed. There was a man sitting beside me at the table and he kept staring at us and my plate and Tash and I never did figure out what he wanted or why he was staring, but it was quite obvious that he was doing it! After paying, we walked around the city and took pictures at night. The city was having an energy saving hour and shut off a lot of the lots in the evening, but thankfully left on the ones on the side streets or we probably wouldn't have trusted ourselves walking back to the hotel because let's face it, it wasn't in the best area even though it was close to the station.

Sunday

We had managed to see everything that we had planned to see in Copenhagen in the last two days, so we came to the conclusion that we did have time to take the train across to Malmoe, Sweden. We left early to ensure that we had enough time. We walked around the city for an hour waiting for the tourist info to open. At least it is open on Sundays, everything in Copenhagen closes at 3 or 4 including the tourist info. ( we tried to get a map of Malmoe there) and it isn't even open on Sundays. Once we had a map, we laid out a plan of things we wanted to see that we hadn't just seen in the hour we spent walking around. We had already found the fortress from the 15th century, seen the main square, a lighthouse, another old windmill, and the turning torso, a modern building with a creative architectural design. We went to the St. Peter's church, to the main square, where the Rathaus and residency were located, then walked to another square that was beautiful and had a lot of cafes. The alleys with small old colorful houses was our next stop. Then we went to the fishermen's huts, where fishermen usually sell fish that they catch there. This was really cute and for some reason there was a U-boat across from them in a field behind a fence...After three or so hours of walking around and seeing all of the sights, we went back to the station and boarded the train back to Copenhagen. We had planned to stay longer in Malmoe, but because of the central setup of the city, everything was really close and we accomplished a lot in a short time. We also didn't have any Swedish money and didn't want to take any out, so sitting in a cafe or something of the sort was out. After arriving back in Copenhagen and getting our bags, we went to the station to see when the next train to Kiel would be leaving. We jumped on board the next train and were on our way back to Kiel this time over Flensburg, which meant no boarding the ferry. We got back much earlier than planned and cooked dinner and talked to my roommate Nicholas. It was nice to just relax for a while. It was also good, because another teacher of mine had called a few days before and we planned that she would come over at 11 on Monday so that I could look over her corrections and questions that she had for the Abitur English test (very important test at German High Schools).

Something(s) sweet, Kathrin in Kiel, & Bad beginning

2008-04-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

March 18th-23rd

This week at school only consists of today and tomorrow and I didn't have much to do today. Tomorrow I am supposed to give my Barnesville presentation again, only this time for a 10th grade class. I spent the evening baking cookies (chocolate chip and peanut butter) to take to school for my colleagues and bought some chocolates for my students, since in Germany if it is your birthday, you are expected to give everyone else something instead of the other way around. I find this to be an interesting concept, but wanted to take part, since I have received something sweet from everyone else who has had a birthday thus far.

On Wednesday, I had a relaxing day and since I had decided I would take my treats in before Easter break because my birthday would be during the break and I'm coming back a week late (because of the Fulbright Seminar in Berlin), I set the cookies out in the staff room. I guess in Germany it is bad luck to wish someone “Happy Birthday” before it is their actual birthday, so all day people were thanking me for the cookies, but saying that they couldn't wish me a happy birthday until they see me after the break. I thought this was funny because in the U.S. one would say, "if I don't see you, have a happy birthday." These are just a few of the slight cultural variations concerning birthdays in Germany. Anyway, lots of people were asking me for the recipe for the chocolate chip cookies and I had to laugh because they were almost immediately gone! I saw one teacher eat 3 or 4 chocolate chip ones herself and she said she saw me counting! Of course she was teasing me, but I was thinking to myself “save some for everyone else!” Apparently it is the same in every teacher's lounge in Germany. At least my friends have similar stories...nothing lasts long, if left out, it will be eaten!! (esp. if it is made of sugar) After school I was supposed to have tutoring with a student, but he didn't show up (maybe I just couldn't find him, but he was nowhere to be seen). I don't know if he forgot or if he just didn't want to come...his teacher isn't going to be very happy though because it is the new student I just got and this was supposed to be our first day. So I ended up heading back and waiting for a message from Kathrin to let me know which train she would be coming in on. I ended up heading into town a little early to get a new hat because I had lost the new one I had just gotten last week, go figure. At least it had only cost me 2 Euro since winter things were on sale. I ran into a friend that I hadn't seen in a few months while downtown and she apologized for not returning my phone call because she had been busy at the University. I told her not to worry and that we would meet up after Easter break when I am back in Kiel to stay for a while!

I got to the station and Kathrin's train had a small delay, so I just wandered around until it arrived. I was really happy to see her since it had been since May that I had last seen her. She's one of those friends that it doesn't matter how often you see, you can pick up where you left off and everything is just like normal! It's a great thing to have friends like that. Sometimes people change a lot over time and similarities just aren't there anymore, but with us that isn't the case. So we started our 30 minute walk back to my apartment from the station (in the snow!!!) I kept teasing her that she must have brought it with her because it had been a beautiful blue sky, sunny day until then! (actually, it had started snowing when I was downtown about 30 minutes earlier) It was pretty snow, but it was also very cold. I was excited because it was one of the first real snows we actually have had here in Kiel, but it would have been nice if it had come before March! After dropping off her bags and warming up over a cup of coffee we decided to go for a walk along the harbor. We walked for about an hour and a half and then went to the old part of the city. There we went to Subway for dinner and to warm up. After this we walked to the bridge by the station so that Kathrin could see the amazing view of Kiel at night from there. I think she was impressed! Then we headed up to Dee's to get a sleeping bag and pillow for her and then we came back and spent the rest of the evening sharing stories and pictures. On our walk back we passed some sort of cultural event that consisted of singing and dancing around a fire. Neither of us were sure what was going on, but we think they were Turkish. It sounded beautiful and the children were all dressed in similar colorful outfits. We never did figure out what it was they were doing.

Thursday we woke up early and headed to the beach. We went to Schilksee and walked along the beach to the cliffs and back. We saw a couple fall in love or so we like to think. They were walking their dogs and then introduced themselves and we saw them walking together for a long time. We kept wondering if they were planning to meet up again or go out together. It was fun making up stories and predicting what would happen next. We also saw a man digging in the sand for something. We aren't quite sure what for, but he was intensively searching for whatever it was. After our walk, we sat down for a picnic lunch and when it started to rain is when we decided to head out. We went to the store on the way back and bought food for spaghetti and together we cooked a delicious meal.

Friday we woke up fairly early and since the weather looked decent, we decided to head back to the beach, this time to Strande on the other side of Schilksee. This must have been considered the first day of spring to the Kielers because they were putting out beach baskets along the shore, and everyone was out for the day in comparison to yesterday. It might have also been because it was Good Friday and everyone was off work. Kathrin and I took lots of pictures and then began searching for stones with holes in them because I told her about my host family hanging them on a string and putting them up in the bathroom as decoration. She thought this was a great idea and so we went on a search. We decided that we couldn't leave until we had found at least 10 of them. It was easier said than done, but we finally found enough to call it a day and have lunch. I managed to find 3 more heart-shaped stones (without looking for them) and decided I would have my own little collection too! After lunch we headed back to the bus so that we would get back in time to go to Dee's for dinner. We got back a little early so we were able to warm up an make no-bake cookies. I wanted Kathrin to try them and Siobhan hadn't had them yet either so the two of us made them quickly and dipped them out to cool. Then we left for Dee's. They were still preparing everything when we arrived. We had delicious noodles and stir fry for dinner and then came the big surprise, which I hadn't expected at all! My friends had baked a cake for me and had a gift for my birthday! I was really shocked and excited! They bought me a game based on a German TV show that we often watch. We decided that we would play later. First we decided to have Siobahn play us some music. She sang some Shakira and then she played a few of my favorite songs that she has written herself. After that we went out tot the kitchen to boil and paint the eggs that I had brought over. Kathrin had brought an egg dyeing kit with her because some of our friends in Heidelberg were dyeing eggs and she wanted to do it too. So we all had fun making a mess and coloring eggs!! They turned out really pretty except for one of the ones that I made... After dyeing eggs we attempted to play my new game! Who knew it would be so hard to figure out. We all had our laughs and Kathrin ended up winning.

Saturday Kathrin had to wake up early to catch the bus to the station because she was meeting her family in Hamburg to go the Lion King musical. She gave me Easter candy and a gift for my birthday which I decided not to open until the actual day. We said goodbye and then a few minutes later I got a call from her saying that she had accidentally picked up my gloves. I went downstairs to the bus stop to get them off of her and waited with her until the bus came. We had a great time together and I wish she could have stayed longer, but I will hopefully make it down to Heidelberg sometime soon and will be able to see her again!

I had to go shopping for food since the store will be closed both Sunday and Monday for Easter and Natasha is arriving tonight around 7!! After shopping, I packed lunch and went over to Dee's. She said that I had to come over before we all left for Hamburg together. They were catching a train to Paris and I had to pick Natasha up from Hamburg so we all decided to travel together to save money. When I got to Dee's she had Siobahn and I come into Sabine's room. She had put Easter candy in hats and laid them around the room. She said that is how they do it in her family and she thought we should all celebrate Easter together in Germany. She is so thoughtful and sweet and I really appreciated her doing this for us. After a group hug the three of us made our way to Aldi to get a few food items and then were off to the station. We ended up getting there early and got on the earlier train because a girl asked to ride on our ticket which saved us even more money. After getting to Hamburg we split ways because I had to head off to the airport. I got there an hour early so I wandered around the book store and read. After a while I noticed that Natasha's flight had been delayed. It ended up coming in an hour and a half late, yet I still couldn't find her anywhere. It appeared that everyone minus a few people had left and I was starting to worry that her flight had been canceled or she had missed it. Finally after another half an hour or so I overheard some men saying that they had lost their luggage from the U.S. and then realized this had to be what was going on. Everything was now running through my head....she's been standing there trying to figure out what address to tell them to send it to...she's probably freaking out because she doesn't know where I am...finally she came out and was so worked up and exhausted that she broke down. I think she was happy to see me. I calmed her down and then we went upstairs so I could take care of the luggage issue. A good start for her first time in Europe! It wasn't a big deal though. It was actually nice not to have luggage to worry about on the way home. We made it back to Kiel after midnight and after showering, went straight to bed. She had been going for hours.

The next day, Easter Sunday, I let her sleep in a little bit, but then forced her out of bed. The weather was absolutely beautiful so I decided that we would go to the beach for the day. We packed a lunch with us. We walked from Schilksee to Strande and back running into one of my teachers twice and she introduced me to her children as I introduced her to my Natasha. Tash thought that she was British because she speaks perfect and has a British accent even though she lived in California for many years and had only been to England for the first time this year! They learn British pronunciation here, this is why. We sat down and had lunch and then walked to the cliffs along the shore at Schilksee. We went up the stairs there and the view was absolutely breathtaking!!! The sunny blue sky made it perfect! That is now my new favorite spot in Kiel. After catching the bus back, we relaxed and then I started dinner. I made Schnitzel and Spaetzle with salad. A typical German meal (prob. not for Easter but that is besides the point). It turned out to be really nice.

Lost in translation, BethAnny visits, and St. Paddy's

2008-04-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

March 10-17th

Monday I worked on my bike again. I bought a new tire and changed it all by myself. I was quite proud, seeing as I had never done this before either. When you're on your own, you have to learn how to do things yourself and can't be dependent on others, plus I didn't want to have to pay someone to fix it!

Tuesday evening there was a meeting with the parents of my 11th graders about the Prague trip and so I was invited to come along by the teacher I'm going with. This ended up lasting all night, as there were other topics on the agenda. I found out the week prior, that some of my Czech friends will be able to meet me while I am in Prague. One of them happens to be working there now and another told me that one of the days we're there is a holiday and she will be able to see me then! I'm really excited to see them again because it has been two years since I last saw them and that was when I went to visit them in their university city. It's going to be an amazing time, I know that already!

Wednesday, Herr Meyer was sick and I was the sub for his two classes that I normally have on this day. My sixth graders once again asked me some of the same questions that they have asked me a thousand times. Every time it's still funny. How old are you? Are you a real teacher? etc. Then they asked me “where's Herr Meyer?” I told them that Herr Meyer was sick. They didn't understand this and said “what?” So I repeated “Herr Meyer is sick.” They still didn't understand until I said Herr Meyer ist krank (German translation) Then the kids said “It's called: Herr Meyer is ill!” I had to laugh hysterically about this. They haven't learned the word sick yet, so to them he is ill (British influence). I got a new student to tutor today too and now he makes number 4.

Not much happened Thursday besides class, school, and tutoring as usual. I found out that Beth Ann and Bethany will be able to make it from Munich up to Kiel this weekend. They found a ride through Mitfahrgelegenheit. People who drive from one city to another in Germany sometimes offer to take people with them for a small fee for gas. Yes that's German for you. You can say all that in just one word! Anyway, it's almost always cheaper than than trains and they will be arriving tomorrow night in Hamburg and I'll meet them at the station there and bring them back to Kiel on the train.

Friday, I went to school to have my teacher that I am replacing, while she is on leave for family matters after spring break, look over the lesson unit that I prepared on interviews. Hopefully it will be ok as is, because I did put a lot of though and effort into it.
I left here around 7 to get to Hamburg by 8 p.m. I wasn't sure exactly what time Beth Ann and Bethany would be coming but I figured it would be around this time. Unfortunately it took a little longer because of the weather. It was funny how we found each other...Beth Ann had tried to call my cell phone and for some reason it doesn't always work for people. Of course this was one of the times that it wouldn't work and so they were trying to find me and we just ended up running into each other. This may not sound strange to you, but if you knew how large the station at Hamburg is, then you would understand why it is! Anyway so we had just missed the next train and had to wait for the following one, so we decided to wander around for a little bit and I showed them the main attractions of Hamburg at night. We caught the next train which put us back in Kiel around 12 and then we walked back to my place and arrived about a half an hour later. We didn't get to bed until at least 3 a.m. Because we were sharing stories and had a lot to tell each other. It was great to see them both and it made me remember a lot of fun times we all had at Bethany College. The two of them of course are still there, but studying abroad this year in Europe.

On Saturday, we got up early ate breakfast and then packed a lunch and headed off to the beach because the weather looked as if it would hold out for us. We spent the afternoon there walking around and taking pictures and then we headed back to my place to gather our things and head to Rendsburg for the St. Patrick's Day party that my friends had planned. Beth Ann and Bethany got to meet all of my friends up here who are assistants and they fit right in with us all. It's hard to explain, but I think with all of us, it is easy to get to know us and we all seem to fit well together. I'm really happy that we have such a diverse mix of assistants here and that we all get along so well together and know how to have a good time. The party consisted of a large meal (as usual) when we get together. Rebecca made a Brunswick Stew, which is popular in the south of the U.S., together we made fried zucchini, and she also made homemade mac and cheese,. Black-eyed peas and a peach cobbler for dessert. After dinner, the three of us headed back to Kiel and Martin came along and I put him up here.

We woke up on Sunday, had breakfast and then were off to the beach at Laboe. We had wanted to take the boat there, but unfortunately it only goes in the summer season and that doesn't start until March 31st. So we ended up taking the bus to Laboe and going up in the Marine Ehrenmal. We used the 40 Euro jackpot that we had found in a cell phone card machine the night before to do this and then went for cake and coffee afterwards! It was nice for the three of us to not have to worry too much about spending money this day. We must of just had a little St. Patty's day luck in finding the post of gold. We cooked chili together in the evening and watched a movie.

Monday morning we woke up and headed to the bus station so I could send them off to the airport in Hamburg since they had found a really cheap flight from Hamburg to Munich. I sent them off, headed to the library to return and check out some books and then attempted to climb the Rathaus tower unsuccessfully. Apparently it is only open on Wednesdays and Saturdays and you have to schedule a tour in advance. I was really disappointed about this because the weather was perfect and it would have been a fabulous view, but o well, I guess I will have to call and make an appoitment!

I spent the rest of the day shopping and cleaning because I am recieving another visitor on Wednesday evening. Kathrin is coming for a few days before Natasha gets here. It's been almost a year since I have seen her too. I know we'll have a lot of fun exploring Kiel!

In the evening, a teacher from Dee's school had told her about a play at my school and had asked her to come along. Dee told her teacher, that the name of the school sounded familiar and could be mine, so she called to ask me and sure enough it was. Dee asked me if I would like to tag along too, since it was at my school. This is an interesting way of finding out about something at my own school...finding out from a teacher of a friend who works at another school! Anyway, I agreed to go and we biked to the school together. The play was "Die Welle." It was a great performance by the students and was also really interesting. The play is based on a movie made in the U.S. and the movie is based on a true story. The plot deals with a teacher who is trying to explain to his students about the Holocaust history of Germany and how Hitler came into power and was so good at convincing people to believe and support him. The kids don't understand how Hitler was able to do this and so the teacher ends up doing an experiment on his class (without them knowing) to demonstrate how easy it is to follow a leader. The experiment gets out of his control and finally he is forced to end it. I won't tell you the end of the story because you might want to watch the film or read about it. It has a great and unexpected twist. The movie is called "The Wave" in English for anyone interested.

After the play Dee and I biked to a restaurant near her place where we met up with the three teachers from her school again. We had drinks with them and a nice evening together.

Real hits (lessons, dinner, visits, and a car crash)

2008-03-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's a long one. I have quite a lot to share from last week.

Monday

I spent most of the morning cleaning my apartment because my host family is coming on Friday and Ryan and Helen are also staying with me this weekend. Yesterday, I had tried to go to my teacher's house in the afternoon because she told me to stop by again sometime soon, but noone was home. So, I decided to venture over today. I got there around 3 in the afternoon and stayed until around 10. Her son was sick and had a fever so he slept most of the time, while Mathilda and I drew pictures and then we had a picnic dinner. After the kids were in bed we watched some more British comedy DVDs and I left to go home. I enjoy spending time with them and she invited me to bring my sister over for dinner when she is here.

Tuesday

I prepared my presentation about me and Barnesville for my year 13. I decided putting some pictures on a power point slideshow would be the best way to show and tell them. I knew the kids were going to get a kick out of what I had to say, but I didn't think it would be as funny as it turned out to be. My students and teacher were laughing hysterically almost the whole time that I was talking and I was too! It was great. I warned them before I started my presentation, that what I was about to show and tell them was not like what they see in the movies or on tv. I told them, I'm from small town USA, where things are a lot different.

I put up some pictures of the town first. One of main street, some of the "historical" sites, some victorian houses, and a few churches. I told them this was pretty much it and they were already laughing. I talked about exaggerated patriotism (2 American flags on every pole in the town) and they started pointing them out whenever they saw them. I used a picture of the king pumpkin and they thought this was hillarious too. Then I showed some pictures of my family...don't worry, they didn't laugh at these! But when I put up the picture of my friends from home standing around a bonfire and told them this is what we country folk do for fun they were laughing again. Then came the Amish pictures and the picture of my grandpa with an old rusted tractor. I talked about farming being important to the area and the Amish population and their traditions. They found this really interesting and were asking me questions about the Amish. Then I talked about Bethany and showed some pictures of the college and some from graduation. The last two slides were meant to be ironic. I put pictures up of me from cheerleading and of my sorority and told them, that I know they probably didn't guess that I was either of the two, but that this proves that stereotypes are generalizations. The final slide was of pictures from Pittsburgh and I told them that I do get out of the country and into the big city every once in a while. This got a lot of laughs and a round of knocking on the tables (Germans traditionally knock on tables after a good presentation or class, they don't clap). I experienced this at the PH in Heidelberg after lectures everyday.

After talking, I let the students ask me questions and then showed them some flyers from Barnesville, Bethany, and my high school yearbook. These also got some laughs. After the presentation, I found out that one of my students had lived in Namibia for two years, after explaining that I had been there with my college. He told me that he went to the German school there and that his dad is a marine biologist and did research on the coast. All in all, the class and presentation were a huge success and my teacher complimented me, saying she thinks that I will be a great teacher because I can raise my voice well and I know how to make the kids laugh.

Wednesday

I was riding the bus to school because of my bike and one of my teachers drove by, saw me and picked me up. It was somewhat ironic, because the reason I had gotten up so early today was to go to her first period class. She invited me to come to her chemistry class after English, so I thought, why not? I actually understood everything she was talking about, even though it was German scientific terms and I got to participate in an experiment that she did with the class. It's fun to just sit in on random classes at the school.

After her classes, I had class with my sixth graders. They had a task to write down sentences, cut the words out individually and give them to their neighbor to put in the correct order. One of the girls asked me what she should do with her extra paper and I said throw it away. My teacher for that class Herr Meyer, sarcastically told them to eat it. Of course this led to the boys actually doing it and the girls yelling "Herr Meyer, Paul and Phillip are really eating it!" He and I just laughed and then his response was, "Millions of flies eat shit, can they all be wrong?" I couldn't believe that he had said this and I was laughing hysterically. The kids looked quite disgusted. After class, as the two of us were leaving the room, he said, "if I had told them to glue the paper to their belly buttons, they would have." This is one of the reasons, they are my favorite class to work with. They are so sweet and innocent and take everything so seriously.

My next class was to perform their Amish dialogues for me and I was to give them grades. They all did a really great job acting and most of them had memorized all of their lines. This was also quite funny.

My 13th graders just took their Arbitur last week and so they get to take a break and watch movies for the next few weeks until Easter Break. We started watching "The Color Purple" today. I have also never seen this film and so far it is very moving.

Thursday

My 10th graders presented role plays that they created on the topic of liberty and equality. They are working on the Revolutionary War and so they created scenarios leading up to the war either in England or the U.S. We had worked on these together last week and I was quite impressed with the final products.

I finished up my unit on immigration with my 12th graders today, using a caricature of Lady Liberty stirring immigrants in a bowl. I had the students talk about the picture and its symbolism. Then I had them work in pairs discussing whether the U.S. is best described as a melting pot or a salad bowl and then they had to present their opinion. Most of them sided for Salad Bowl, mentioning that many immigrants to the U.S. are proud of their heritage and retain their language and culture although they are part of America and its culture. Following this we had a discussion about immigration issues in the U.S.

In the evening, I met up with Dee, Cara (a friend of Dee's who was here visiting from Canada), Siobhan, and Ryan, who had flown in today from Sweden to stay and visit for the weekend. We headed to the Kieler Brauerei for dinner, where the portions are well worth the price. Of course it never fails, I can't go anywhere without meeting Americans in need of help. It just so happens, that while I was on my way back from the restroom, I ran into two Americans trying to buy cigarettes from a machine downstairs. They were trying to use their credit card but it wasn't working and they couldn't read what the machine was saying in German. So when they saw me, they asked me if I spoke English, I answered yes (knowing they had to be Americans) and then helped them figure out what they needed to do. After this, they started asking me questions about what I am doing here and where I am from in the states. I found out that they were here as part of a Naval fleet from NATO. A portuguese ship was also in the fleet and they were all out together. They invited me to come over and they introduced me to about 20 other American men and 2 women. Three of the men were from Ohio. They were all very nice and seemed really interested in what I am doing here. They did ask the question everyone asks...Why made you come here? I was thinking, do I have to have a reason!? Anyway, they are on a two-month tour around Europe. They had already been to England, Scotland, and France and were heading to Denmark from here and then to Eastern Europe. They said that the Germans were the friendliest and most helpful people that they had met thus far. And I said well what did you expect! : ) I even ended up talking to a few of the portuguese men that evening. The funniest part of the entire evening was when one of the guys thought that Ryan was my boyfriend...we both broke out into side-splittling laughter since Ryan isn't straight!

Friday

I only have one class on Fridays now as I think I mentioned before. So I went to school today, this time, for a one-on-one conversation class. The other two students were taking the Arbitur in a different subject and were therefore not in class. Of course the 45 minutes went by quickly and then I was free for the day. I met up with the usual suspects (the Kiel Crew) and we went out for cake and coffee. This involves each person selecting a different piece of amazing cake and us tasting each one. We usually reward ourselvs with this once a week. We like to think of ourselves as coffee and cake connoisseurs.

After this, I headed back to my apartment to start preparing dinner for my host family and host grandma. I guess I should have left to do this a bit earlier because my host family was extra punctual. They came early because they had ridden the bus from Altenholz. My suspicions are that they had planned in advance for us to go out for drinks after dinner : ) So anyway, I was running a bit behind with dinner preparations and felt like a horrible hostess at first, but then realized that this didn't matter at all. I was so happy to see them again and I could sense the same from them. I showed them to my room and they were very impressed with the size, location, and setup. They arrived with flowers and an Easter basket as a thank you for me cooking dinner for them. This is quite typical in Germany if you are invited to dinner, that you should bring a gift, but it is also just typical of my host family as they are very thoughtful and appreciative people. We exchanged stories from the past month or so and I found out that Tiki, the great grandmother who I had mentioned before was a 101 years old passed away 2 weeks ago. They hadn't told anyone really as they had been expecting it for quite some time. I was sad to hear the news, but knew that they had long been prepared for this moment and were happy that she was finally at peace and no longer just barely existing. Finally dinner was finished. I made a noodle casserole that we often eat at home. Everyone had seconds so I was under the assumption that it must have tasted good to them and then my assumptions were proven true after they said numerou times how delicious dinner was and that they were going to give me a "Kochmuetze." (chef's hat) They also wanted me to give them the recipe so that they could make it in the future. Following dinner, we had desert, which was supposed to be a type of tiramisu...apparently I didn't beat the egg whites long enough so the coating for the lady fingers remained a liquid. Just when I thought I had failed, my host family was there to boost my self esteem by eating it anyway and saying it was delicous. To be fair, they aren't people who would say this if it wasn't the truth (they are very honest) and so I believe that they really did like it, although it is also possible they saw my disappointment and felt sorry for me because I was putting forth such an effort to make things perfect, although I highly doubt this. I, too, thought that it was nevertheless delicious, in spite of the form and state it took.

After desert, my they tried to get me to let them do the dishes (we don't have a dishwasher and they do), but I reassured them it was the least I could do after all that they had done for me. After finally convincing them, that I would take care of the dishes later, my host dad, Helge, asked if it would be ok for us to go out for drinks down the street. So the four of us headed to the Irish pub down the street, where he knows the owner, Dennis. We spent two hours there talking more about current events in our lives and we filled out a postcard to send to their daughter who is in Australia for the year. There is something very special about these people and you don't find people like them too often. At one point, while at the pub, my hand accidently hit brushed the hand of my host grandma, and I grabbed her hand and she held mine and we both just smiled. I'm pretty sure, that at that moment, we felt deep into each other's hearts and she realized just how much I appreciate them allowing me to become a part of their family, while here. Even the first day I met them, it was as if we had known each other for a long time. I'm not sure if they felt the same way, but my host grandma always said, once you get to know someone here in the North, they will always be a part of your life.

When we finally called it a night a few hours later, I headed to Dee's, because Ryan an the rest of the Schleswig-Holstein Assistants crew were hanging out there. When I arrived, they all sensed my good mood and asked why I couldn't stop smiling, I told them that I was simply happy because I had just seen my host family and that I feel lucky in general. I then shared stories with them about when I lived with my host family and they basically said that I had been spoiled by them. I agreed. When we came back later, I walked into the kitchen and saw that the dishes were no longer piled up. I immediately felt like an idiot and knew that my roommate, Nicholas had done them. We take turns doing them and do them together a lot of times, but I totally felt like an idiot because there had been so many. I told him it was my turn now and he just laughed and said he was bored! Ha a man who does the dishes when he is bored! Here that ladies...and he isn't gay either (not sterotyping)!

Saturday

Nicholas had offered me his extra mattress in the morning so that Helen wouldn't have to sleep on the floor tonight. This was again really sweet of him. He's always really helpful.

Today it was such a beautiful day. Whenever Helen comes to Kiel, she somehow manages to bring nice weather with her. The two of us wanted to go up in the Rathaus tower to get the view of Kiel from above on the clear day. Ryan decided to go to the library so we headed out. Unfortunately the city hall is closed on Saturday and therefore, we couldn't go up the tower. This was disappointing, but we vowed to do it some other time. Instead, we decided to go for a walked to Schrevenpark. After walking through the park, we made our way down to the harbor. We spent three hours walking and finally met up with Ryan at a cafe to get some lunch. Dee and Siobhan had called and we planned to meet in an hour to get the next train to go to a small city called Ploen that is about 45 minutes or so from Kiel. They had a weekend ticket for the train that they had bought the day before and we decided to make use of it.

The city of Ploen is a nice little place with a castle and really old buildings and churches. We spent the afternoon wandering about and taking pictures. At one point we were walking along the lake there and there was a lot of dog crap in the grass. Ryan ended up stepping in it and having to clean off his shoe and as we continued to walk, we could still smell it. We then realized, that the smell wasn't just coming from his shoe but from the city in general. Every five steps there was dog crap beside the sidewalk and we decided, that this must be where the whole city walks their dogs. We finally got on the train back to Kiel and went to Subway to get dinner. Going to Subway in Germany is always an interesting experience because all of the sandwich names, bread names, and sauces are in English, but you order in German. It is really confusing. I wish they would just translate the stupid names into German because if you ask for the sauce using what it would be called in German, strange as it may sound, they stare at you like they don't understand you...and you are thinking but this is your language and English is not. It's funny to say the least. We ate dinner at Dee's and then Helen, Ryan and I came back to mine and crashed. On the way back we saw a lot of glass in the streets and realized that there had been a bad car accident on my street. A car had plowed into a huge potted plant on the corner and then smashed into the drugstore window. Luckily it wasn't completely broken through, but it still left quite a mess. Nicholas had heard it and said luckily, he didn't think it looked like any was hurt.

Sunday

Dee invited us over for pancakes in the morning since Ryan was leaving this afternoon. I spent the rest of the day relaxing and recovering from the exhausting, but fun-filled weekend.

I'm a true Kieler at heart

2008-03-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Febrary 26th

Had a flat on the way to school had to park my bike and walk the rest of the way. I had left with enough time to spare though because I knew that my tire hadn't been cooperating and was going to do this soon. I had tried to repair it last week (found 4 holes in the innertube and patched them, but there must have been one that I didn't find.)

I went to my 13th grade class and the teacher told me that I would be presenting on myself (hometown, college, etc) the next week in class. Then I went to my 10th grade class where we had an intern join us. She asked me if I could speak any German since I have been here for a while and I had to laugh...she didn't know that I studied German. She probably thought that I studied English and that was why I am here. So then I explained everything to her. I walked back from school to pick up my bike. When doing so it started pouring down rain and the wind was gusting at high speeds. My bike and I were being blown forward and I didn't even have to put much effort into walking, since the wind was aiding me in the right direction! I was pretty much soaked by the time I got back to my place and then changed and warmed up. This is usual weather on the Baltic Coast. It clouds over out of nowhere and then pours. This is what you get when you live by the water!

Wednesday February 27th

We started watching the movie American History X in my other grade 13 class. I don't know if anyone reading it has ever seen it, but it is an intense movie. Unfortunately, I won't get to see the end...but my teacher told me what happens. This led to a small discussion about extremist groups in the U.S. My teacher was shocked that they aren't outlawed and I told her that they can't outlaw them based on freedom of expression. Anyway the movie deals with a lot of major and controversial issues in today's society in the inner cities of America. The movie takes place in Venice Beach in California. I was quite appalled by the end of the first scene, but I won't go into too much detail about the movie. Watch it yourself or read about it online.

On a lighter note, I did a lesson on the Amish with my 10th graders. We had already watched the movie "The Witness," also a good movie for anyone interested in learning about the Amish and interesting in general, so since the kids already had background knowledge to work with, we listed the Pros and Cons of being Amish on the board and then they were assigned to form groups and write dialogues as parents trying to convince their child/children not to leave the Amish community. Next week, they will present these in class. I think the kids find it intriguing to know that there are people living in the 21st century as if they were living in the 16th. They asked me a few questions about the image of the Amish in the eyes of Americans and whether or not they are integrated into society.

Thursday February 28th

I did a lesson on immigration again with my 12th graders. This time, I compiled a bunch of pictures that I got offline that had to do with immigration from the past and present. Some of them were of Europeans on boats to the U.S., some of Mexicans crossing the border, one of the wall along the border, one of the KKK and so on. I had the students look at each picture, tell me what they saw, thought of, how it made them feel, and why they thought I chose the picture to represent immigration to the U.S. This was one of my best lessons so far. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to get through the whole slideshow, but I could tell that the students really found the lesson interesting.

Today, I took the bus to school and then walked back. I found out it only takes about 40-45 minutes which is shorter than i thought. Apparently Germans Crime Investigation Series "Tatort" was being filmed this day and I walked right past it and didn't even notice. One of the teachers from my school had seen me walking and told me that I missed the excitement. I guess I just wasn't paying any attention because the weather was so nice that it was distracting me.

Friday 29th

Today was an extra day in February. I found out what Leap year is called in German from one of my teachers. She told me the name for it and I was unsure as to why it was called what it was called. I thought I must have misunderstood, so I came back and looked up the word online to make sure I had heard right. The word in German is Schaltjahr. In English, this translates to switch year. This is similiarly pronounced to what I thought I heard her say... which was "Scheitjahr" translates to Shit year! Now you know why I thought I had to be wrong with my listening comprehension!! I only have one class on Fridays now because one of my teachers asked to change my schedule. This is nice, but also somewhat pointless... Anyway, the class was my conversation hour (with three students) and we were continuing our discussion on the movie "Forrest Gump." The three students I work with are preparing for an important test and therefore the teacher is having me work with them individually and seperate from the class itself. It's fun and they are good at English so that helps a lot. In the evening, I just spent time making travel plans.

Saturday March 1st (It's March already!!!??)

It rained almost all day, but I did manage to go for a run in the 25 minutes that it stopped. I brought my bike upstairs and Nicolas my roommate had a look at it for me. He found another hole, patched it and now it appears to be fine other than the fact that the tire is bulging... which means I will probably need a new one. He was impressed with my patchwork on the other holes. He said I did it right and that he was shocked because Anke, our other roommate was the first girl he ever met that could do this and now he had another one to add to the list. I didn't think it was that difficult to do even though it was my first time patching a tire. I told him he just doesn't know the right girls! In the evening, it hailed and the wind was so strong, I thought it might blow us away, but this is actually quite normal as I said before! Welcome to rainy coastal Germany! I don't mind it though. I have definitely gotten used to it. It also makes you appreciate the days that are nice more and I make full use of them when they come!

Sunday March 2nd

Today began rainy and I thought it would last all day, but it didn't. Around 2 the weather turned to blue skies and I went for a run and later for a nice walk down to the water and back. It's days like these that I realize how beautiful Kiel is. I know I have probably written this a million times now but this place has become a part of me and I have become a part of it. I like to think of myself as a Kieler. I find myself attracted to the water and find it to be the most appealing part of Kiel, as do it's inhabitants, I have also found myself defending Kiel's beauty to one of the interns at the school (she was comparing it to Heidelberg, after I told her I had been there), I greet people with the traditional "Moin," and I find myself saying "na" a lot, which can mean a number of things depending on the context of its usage.

To add a little change to my routine, I didn't wake up to my alarm or the sun shining in my window this morning. I woke up to a strange alarm going off outside. My first thought was that it was a fire alarm in our building because it was so loud. But then I remembered that Germany doesn't have these or smoke detectors in buildings. I know, it is quite surprising. I finally did find the source of the alarm, it was on a building directly across from ours, but I never figured out what is was for or what caused it to go off. After about 15 minutes it finally stopped.

Lazy week

2008-02-23T13:21:00.000-08:00

February 18-23

The past week has been pretty calm in comparison to the previous weeks. I didn't travel anywhere this week. I actually spent the whole week in Kiel. I didn't have a whole lot to do with my classes this week, as many of them were taking tests and such.

Tuesday, Kathrin, a friend I made in Heidelberg, sent me a message and is now coming to visit me on the 19th of March before Natasha gets here! I'm really excited to see her again and to show her around Kiel, even though she has been here before. I also talked to my host family on this evening because I had been wanting to invite them over to show them my apartment and cook dinner for them. The end result was that I now have a lot of things planned for the month of March, which will be fun.

I was late to school on Wednesday. This was the first time I have been late to class. There wasn't really a reason, I just for some reason thought that I didn't have class until 4th period and on the way to school remembered that it was only like that the week before because my 3rd period was cancelled. After realizing this, I tried to cycle as fast as possible to get to school halfway through 3rd period. When I walked into the classroom, the kids all started clapping and shouting"Vanessa is here!" I thought this was really sweet and funny at the same time. I had felt like an idiot for being late, but this made everything better. To top it off, my teacher didn't even ask why I was late. He just said "no problem" and we continued with the lesson. He is very laid back and therefore didn't want to make a big deal about it.

Wednesday night, I called a friend, Katharina, who is teaching near Nuernberg, in the south, because I am planning to visit her in April. It was nice to talk to her again, as the last time I saw or talked to her was when I left Heidelberg in January of '06.

On Friday, I had prepared a nice lesson for my 12th graders on "The New Colossus," the poem at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty. We discussed the poem and talked about immigration and then I gave them a caricature that had George Bush as the Statue of Liberty with a satirical comment on immigration and migrant workers replacing the poem. The kids loved this. Bush is not very popular in the image of Europeans and they therefore get a kick out of caricatures like this one. We compared the two and discussed problems associated with immigration.

Friday night, the other assistants and I went over to Dee's and we cooked a meal together. I brought over a cherry cake that I had made and together we made chicken curry, rice and stir-fry veggies. It was delicious. We spent the rest of the night just laying around and relaxing. Siobhan played the guitar and sang us some songs and we even made up some lyrics.

Saturday we went for a walk in Schrevenpark. It is one of the biggest parks in Kiel (there are many) and is very pretty. We spent a lot of time just being silly as usual and then we went food shopping and headed home.

Open-Air Museum, Me English is no good, Birthday party and more

2008-02-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

February 10-17

On Sunday, I was invited to go to the Molfsee Freilichtmuseum with one of the teacher's at my school and her two little children. The museum is an open air musuem on an extensive plot of land that consists of old farm houses and barns from every time period and every area of Schleswig-Holstein. When in full operation, it also has blacksmiths, basket weavers and other artisans of interest. In addition, there are farm animals of all types. It is the perfect place to take kids and spend the whole day. Unfortunately, my teacher got tied up at a friend's and after three attempts (every hour I rode my bike to her's, it's about 5 min. from my apartment), she finally called and said that she was running behind. A little before 3p.m. she picked me up. She didn't realize that the museum closes early in the winter and is therefore only open until 4. This didn't stop us though.

When we arrived there, my teacher met an old man at the ticket counter who was originally from England, but who had been living in Germany for over 40 years. He was speaking a mixture of German and English with her and she introduced me to him. Meanwhile, the kids grabbed a wagon and we were off. Once we got to where the goats were, Kirstin got out apples and carrots and started cutting them to feed to the goats. The kids were loving it. One goat became really excited and kept jumping on Kirstin as she was trying to cut up the carrots. She said she had never had that happen before, but she wasn't scared, she was just laughing about the dirt he got on her coat. After feeding the goats, the kids went to play on the playground and after a while we sat on the seesaw with them until this became boring and they wanted to play down by the lake. We were down there for quite some time and then decided we should start heading back as it was nearing 5 o' clock. On the way to the exit we stopped at the Blacksmith shop, which was surprising still open and she had a short discussion with him about chemicals and their burning points. Kirstin teaches English, Bio, and Chemistry and is writing an article about Harry Potter and the chemicals and such discussed in the book, which I found to be quite interesting. Finally, after taking the kids to see the rest of the animals (donkeys, peacocks, rabbits, chickens and more) it was time to go since the sun was starting to set. Kirstin explained to me that the museum is losing money because not many people are going there anymore. I can't seem to understand this, as it seems like the perfect place for families and for anyone interested in the history of the state. This disappoints me and I hope that this will change because I would hate to see something like this fall apart. On the way home, Kirstin invited me over for dinner and the kids tried to get me to stay the night again, though this wasn't possible on that evening. All in all, it was a fun day spent with my teacher and her two children.

Monday it was really foggy, but Dee and I decided to go for a 2 hour walk along the harbor anyway. We saw that flowers were starting to bloom in the parks because of the warm and sunny weather the last few days and hoped that they wouldn't die because it is cold once again. You couldn't even see more than 15 feet out onto the water of the harbor, but we enjoyed being outside in the fresh air. As we were heading down to the harbor, Kirstin (the teacher from the day before) rode by on her bicycle and yelled hello to us. This made me laugh, because it seems that I don't go a day in Kiel without seeing one of my students or a teacher at my school.

On Tuesday, I had to teach a lesson on store conversation to my sixth graders. I brought in some materials for this (fruits, magazines, books, etc) and the kids had to come up to the counter and ask for things and make purchases. This went really well and then the kids had to split up into pairs and do this with their partners. They have a week to practice and next week I will be grading them on creativity, naturalness, memorization, and grammar. My grade 13 teacher gave me some essays to take home and correct for the next week. This is always fun because you can't ever tell the kids that it's wrong without providing a reason and sometimes I just don't know the reason, but I know it is wrong. Lots of times it is because they try to directly translate from German to English, which a lot of times doesn't work. I also had to tutor again after school. I talked to one of the teachers about one of the students I tutor and she said that she has already noticed that she is more self-confident and participates more in class. This makes me very happy to know and am glad that I can be of help. I hope that the same goes for my other students which I tutor.

A funny side note to English in general: the other assistants and I have come to the conclusion, that we don't speak English as well as we used to. Some of the errors that our students/teachers make, we have started to make ourselves and we don't even realize it until the others notice it and say something. I guess if you hear the same mistakes a lot then it is possible that you start to use them. This always makes us laugh and we say that our German isn't getting much better and our English is only getting worse!

Funny side note to my classes: Sometimes when teachers ask me if something is right or wrong or if it can be said in a certain way, I am unsure. The meaning can be completely clear when reading what the students have written, even if it is written in a way that we would never write it..... This makes it very difficult. I also think that the teachers overcorrect (sometimes correcting what is right) and this makes my uncertainty even worse at times. I do get aggravated every now and then when I tell a teacher something and they don't believe me and then they look it up and act suprised that I am right. This makes me laugh. What is even funnier, is when the teachers ask me for a translation of a German word that I don't even know. Sometimes they think I should know more than I do. In addition, they also use a lot of British English terms that I have never heard of and ask me if they are correct. How should I know?! Do I look like I am British? This is usually my response to that.

Thursday, I was invited to one of my teacher's daughter's birthday party. She turned 5 on Valentine's day. I had to tutor after school, so as soon as I was done, I went to the store to get a small gift for Mathilda. I found a coloring book with farm pictures and animals (which reminded me of our trip to the Museum on Sunday) and so I bought this and some crayons, wrapped them and went over to their apartment. When I arrived, there were 5 little ones running around like crazy dressed up in costumes. They were really cute. I got to join the table of children and eat with them. Mathilda unwrapped her present and didn't seem to be too excited as she apparently had already recieved a coloring book. But then a few minutes later she opened it and realized there were animals and people in it and decided that she would color. Arthur, her six-year old brother decided to help and I joined in the fun. After it started getting late, Kirstin got the kids ready for bed and she got out an English book so that I could read them their good night story. This was really sweet and I was shocked how much they understood. They are really smart kids. After they went to bed, Kirstin, her husband Julianus and I watched some German and British comedy and then I headed out for the evening.

Friday, I was invited to have breakfast with one of the fifth grade classes by my mentor teacher. They were starting a new unit on table conversation and she thought it would be nice to invite me as a guest. The class can't speak much English. They have only really begun this year. They were able to ask me a few questions though, such as my age, name, etc. This made me think back to being in Croatia where the children start English in the first grade and can already ask these questions. Interesting to note that at least in the early stages of language learning, Croatia beats out Germany. They really sweet though and attempted to speak English the whole time as they were told to do. In the afternoon, I had my 12th graders with which I had them do a debate on whether or not tuition fees should be required. This turned out really well and the students ideas and opinions were quite impressive. Why this is a hot topic for them: up until now, education, i.e. University level was free to all Germans because it was supported through taxes (I believe Germans pay the second highest rate of taxes in the world), however, things began changing in 2005, while I was in Heidelberg. Tuition fees started being initiated in the southern states and have worked their way up the country. The only state currently without them is Schleswig-Holstein, where I live. This is one reason a lot more students than usual are studying in this state. This will probably change in the near future though when the state will finally have to cave in to external pressure. When I say tuition fees though, I am referring to about 2, 000 Euro or so per year. This doesn't sound like much in comparison to the U.S. and it really isn't, but keep in mind that students don't get room and board on campuses here, since the whole campus/dorm-life is non-existant.

In the evening, I met up with the other assistants from Kiel and we went to the movies at the cheap theater that costs only 2 Euro. We watched the movie Sternwanderer (Star Dust). It was long, but good. Later in the evening we had a spaghetti dinner at Dee's and all stayed the night.

On Saturday, we decided to go for a walk and enjoy the sunshine even though it was still very cold. We walked over 2 hours and then sat at a cafe on the waterfront where we had cake and coffee. We overheard the guy at the table next to us speaking German in a really bad accent and then after hearing him speak English, realized that he was American. He overheard us talking to and asked us before he left where we were all from and what we were doing here. I explained to him and he told me that he was from Philly and had met his girlfriend, who is German at a bar there and decided to move to Germany. I found this to be quite impressive, as I don't know many men in the U.S. who would do this, especially if they didn't speak the language. He told me that he got his master's in Hamburg in Media (classes in English). After we left the cafe, it was starting to get chilly so we headed back up to Dee's. Later we went out to get Doener for dinner.

Sunday, we (myself and some of the other assistants) travelled to Eutin for the day. Martin, from England, had his birthday the week before and we wanted to take him out for cake and have him show us around his city. We spent the day touring around. First we went up to an old windmill that Martin explained is now a pub. I thought this was funny. The Germans can turn anything into a bar! (this isn't meant to be sterotypical, just funny) He showed us his school, which looks very nice on the outside in comparison to mine. Then we walked past the watertower, which resembles a light house. After that we headed down to the lake, where Dee and I climbed a tree and we all were skipping rocks off the frozen top layer of the lake. The rocks made lovely music as they hit the ice. From the lake, we went into the city center where the palace is located. We walked around the courtyard and then starting to get cold headed for one of the only cafes open in Eutin on a Sunday. It was quite full, but we were able to find seats and warm up. After this we had to head out because Dee was meeting up with some of her teachers in the evening.

I decided to spend Monday relaxing, after a long weekend of running around. When I went to go shopping for food, I saw some random people crossing the road carrying a manequin. I'm not sure why, but it seems that there is always something strange going on in Kiel...

Dancing in the streets, chocolates that will knock you out, and interesting critique

2008-02-08T05:45:00.000-08:00

February 2

Today we went sightseeing in Duesseldorf in the morning. First we walked around the Altstadt and then we walked along the Rhine to the Medienhafen (Media Harbor). One of the buildings that houses the TV and Radio station for the state, NRW has little figures climbing on it and the other buildings haave really interesting architecture that were built in the !980's as office units. As we were walking along the Rhine, it began to snow/rain/hail and then a short while later (after we were wet) the sky cleared up and we had beautiful weather. We went to a cafe to warm up and try to dry off. After this, we decided it was time to buy something to make us fit in with all of the people at Karneval. We went across the street to a souvenir and costume shop, where we all bought crazy hats and facepaint. We went back to the hotel to change our socks and pants and dry out our shoes. Meanwhile I painted everyone's faces for the evening.

Shortly thereafter, we headed out to Koenigsallee to watch the Tuntenlauf or Homosexual race, which involved men running along a catwalk in high heels and drag. This was hillarious and some of the men could've passed for women had I not known... We also got to see some musical performances and German cheerleaders dancing. The music that they kept playing was typical for the Rhineland and was also hillarious. I think we know almost all of them by heart now since we heard them so often! We had a rrived to the place a bit late and the crowd was already overwhelming. There was a really nice woman and her husband who let us (Helen, the other Ohioan in Schleswig-Holstein and I) in front of her so we could see the whole event and take pictures. This was very nice of them because they were literally around six feet tall and before this we couldn't see hardly anything. Helen and I stayed around after the show to get our picture with the winner because his/her costume was very impressive. We met up with the others at an irish pub and then went out into the streets where all of the people seemed to be dancing and having a good time. It was the largest party that I have ever been to. There was music playing in the streets, everyone seemed to be in a good mood, random people were dancing with us and there were some really interesting costumes. It was a fun atmosphere in general.

The only thing that I didn't like was that there was trash everywhere. It is one of the only times you will ever see so much trash on the streets in Germany. You couldn't go anywhere without walking on broken glass or bottles, until you got out of the city center. Just as Helen and I were saying that we were getting bored, along came Mozzy, a guy from Iran, to make things more interesting. He was hitting on Helen. He was Emo and he had so much gel and mousse in his hair, that I thought it might catch on fire, seeing as we were standing next to a fire-producing heat lamp. It was really random and hillarious as his first words to me were (of course in German) "It's ok I'm not going to kill her." We spent the next half hour or so talking to him and then he asked Helen for her number. This is where the conversation came to an end of course and we headed to Burger King for the Restrooms. In Germany, you have to pay to use the restrooms and if you are going to pay, you might as well go where you know they will be clean. This is where we made all of our bathroom stops during Karneval.

February 3

Today we decided to sleep in, as we knew that nothing much would be open in the early morning. We wanted to go up in the Rheinturm or Rhine Tower to get an amazing view of the city from above, so we checked the price online and were off to see it. We were impressed with how cheap the prices were and when we got to the top the view was great. We had really nice weather and decided to sit down at the cafe on the 168th floor and have coffee and cake. We spent about 2 hours up in the tower and then left to check out what was going on in the city. We walked into a Children's parade and stopped to watch a bit of it. Then we went back to Koenigsallee, where everyone else was. They had lots of stands for food and drinks everywhere and the streets were packed full of people. We took some pictures, grabbed a bite to eat and then headed back to the hotel for a bit. We left for dinner and ate at an Italian restaurant that was also full of people. In the evening we went back to the Altstadt where the dancing was and joined the party. I ended up calling Ryan, the Scot who left us for Sweden, and he was really excited to hear from us. It's too bad that he couldn't have been there with us. He would've loved it.

February 4

We woke up around 6 so that we could pack and get to breakfast at 7. We were informed that it wasn't until 8 but the woman was nice and let us go ahead and eat. It was a good thing because we checked out right after that, so that we could get to the station to catch our train to Koeln for the Rosenmontagzug or Rose Parade. We wanted to get there early this time so that we would have good spots and we knew that it would be chaos if we arrived late. We got to Koeln at 8:30 and not too much was going on yet. People were most likely still in bed, but this didn't bother us because it meant that we would get better spots for the parade. We found one spot but then realized that the parade wouldn't be there until too late so we had to move closer to where the parade began. We got there just in time as it was filling up with people. We had to stand there for 2 and a half hours before the parade started and it had begun to rain. We met some really nice older German ladies. They heard us talking and asked us where we were from. We told them and then the one said that their sister has lived in New Mexico for 30 years and that she was there. We also got to talk to her and she was interested in what we were doing here. Throughout the parade they were picking up candy and filling our bags and they kept telling people that we came all the way from the U.S. This one guy who was in the parade came over and talked to us and she told him that we were from the states. We then recieved flowers and candy from him. The only thing I didn't like about where we were standing was toward the end when this really pushy German was trying to move me out of the way. I bent down to pick up candy and she had pushed herself into where I had been standing. I wasn't much at all suprised by this behavior as it seems to happen to me quite often, so I returned the favor and pushed her back.

As for the parade itself, there were lots of bands, cultural entries, political floats (which is one of the things that Karneval is known for), tons of flowers were thrown out and massive amounts of candy. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Helen and I were taking pictures and we would get hit in the head with boxes, yes I said boxes of chocolates. When the Germans do something they go all out. They don't just throw out piddly pieces of candy, they throw out chocolate truffles and big bags of Haribo!! They had vans full to the top of boxes that were filled with candy and flowers. It was a sight to see! We came away with lots of sweets as you could expect. One guy even tied a rope to his umbrella and dropped it down from his window and was catching candy in it upside down! Unfortunately, we only got to see the first half of the parade which lasted three hours! I would have loved to stay for the rest, but in Schleswig-Holstein we don't get vacation days for Fasching so we all had to leave to catch our train. This time we managed to get decent prices for the fast trains. There were people sitting in our sits that we had reserved and we had to tell them to move. They were hesitant at first, the guy actually stood up read the sign that said reserved and then sat back down, but we finally got them to leave.

February 5-8

School was pretty boring this week so I don't have too much to talk about there. A lot of my classes were cancelled and I didn't have to teach any lessons this week. I was however, informed by one of my teachers that my lesson on the "use of hyphens" was not interactive enough...she said that I didn't have the students talk enough. I was a bit puzzled as to how on earth you are supposed to motivate the students in a class to have a discussion when the topic is hyphens!! Here I am from the U.S. and could talk about anything with them, but no...the lesson she has me plan is about hyphens and then she critiques it by saying that?? Of course I just laughed at this after hearing it. What else are you supposed to do. I don't mind hearing feedback from the teachers, but I like the feedback to make sense. I would love to see her do the lesson differently. Other than that, I just sat in on a few lessons and tutored my three students after school.

Thursday night I went out with my roommate and some of her friends again. The weather has improved over the last few days. The sun is finally shining in Kiel and not just for a few minutes! It feels like spring is on its way and there are flowers starting to bloom, which makes me happy. My roommates have also returned from their world adventures. Nicholas was in Canada and Anke was on a cruise to Fiji and Togo.

Darth Vader Cake, Hyphens and Karneval begins

2008-02-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I haven't given you anything exciting to read in a few weeks. Things here have been quite busy for me and seem to be staying that way, but here is an update.

January 26

I was invited over to one of my English teacher's that I work with for cake and tea in the afternoon. She wanted me to read an article out loud and record it for the English department so that they could use it as a listening exercise. I left my apartment at 3 for her place which is about a ten minute walk down the street from mine. I didn't arrive back here until 8 and could have stayed longer. In the five hours that I was there, we had tea and Darth Vader Cake (left over from her son's birthday party), recorded the reading of the article, played games with her two children (Mathilda 4, Aurthur 6), ate dinner, and conversed. It was a very nice day spent there. She even sent me home with lots of sweets, Darth Vader cake, muffins and fudge. I think they (her and her husband, Kirstin and Julianus) would like for me to babysit for them because they asked if I have any experiecne doing that and because their kids really seemed to like me. Mathilda was begging me to spend the night and asked when I would be coming back. She also invited me to her birthday party, which will happen sometime in February. She told me that I was welcome to stop back anytime that I felt like it. I spent the rest of the evening talking to family and friends from home.

January 27

Mondays I have off and so do most of the other assistants in the area so we decided to head to Preetz a very small town not too far from Kiel to visit a friend of ours from England. We hadn't ever been to his place so we decided it was time to check it out. We took the bus and when we arrived at the stop where he told us to get out, I had to laugh. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. It looked like farmland with very few houses to be seen. We started walking down a grassy path and my friends told me that this was how we would get to Chris' place. After a while, we reached an open field and there was a concrete path. We saw Chris walking toward us from a distance and were being followed by two women on horseback. We walked from there another 4 minutes or so and arrived at Chris' interesting apartment. We decided that he lived in the most remote place of all the assistants that we know in Schleswig-Holstein. It was really quite random as the building looked like a big farm house turned into apartments. There were dogs, cats, chickens, cows and horses to be seen and the best of all is that there are also peacocks/hens on this farmland. We all found this strange yet intriguing. His apartment is actually really nice. When we went to leave to walk the hour to town, we got to meet his teacher and landlady, who might have the strongest grip/handshake that I have ever experienced!! I thought she might break my hand! We walked the roads through the fields of Preetz and finally made it to the city, where we had dinner at a bar/restaurant that we had been to once before that is cheap but has a great selection. I ordered gyros which were very delicious. After this we headed back to Kiel, this time by train and walked along the harbor for 2 hours, which was a calm and relaxing end to the evening even if we did have to walk through a deserted and dark park lit with the flashlight that Alex had on him to return to our apartments.

January 28

Dee Siobhan and I had planned a Brunch at my place for the day. This involved first going to the store and buying different sorts of bread rolls and toppings for the bread. We made coffee and had invited two other friends to join us. One being Dee's German roommate and the other being Heather, the teaching assistant from England in Kiel. We spent literally the whole day eating and watching tv. We have two favorite shows. One is called Auf und Davon which means Up an Away and is about students who leave Germany to do internships or study abroad. We like this perhaps while we ourselves are doing it. It is interesting to see all of the places that they go to and how different the experiences are for each individual. The other show is called Das perfekte Dinner in which 5 candidates cook a three course meal for each other. One person per day of the week and at the end they vote who did the best job and the winner recieves 3,000 Euro. It may sound stupid, but it is actually really interesting.

January 29

Today I recieved a new schedule at school so I am not sure how things will go. Hopefully just as well as the last half-year.

January 30

I prepared a lesson on hyphens for my year 13 because my teacher told me to. Yay, how exciting...it went well though. The kids have problems understanding when to use them so I gave them a few exercises and we went over the rules together. In the afternoon, I was invited by the mother of a girl that I will be tutoring to come to their place for tea. I found this a bit odd at first, but then assumed that she didn't want just anybody tutoring her daughter if she was going to be paying for it. I went over to their place after school. The mother is Turkish and so is the daughter. She is married to a German man now and has a 6-week old daughter to him. It was a great experience for me to be invited to their house because this is exactly what I wanted to do my research on while here in Germany, the identity of Turkish-Germans or Germans with migration backgrounds in general. The mother was very nice and offered me Turkish tea and sat out a plate of cookies as soon as I had arrived. We talked a bit about ourselves and then about her daughter, who I will begin tutoring next week. I was impressed with her German skills, but did find out that she has been living in Kiel for 30 years. Her mother called while I was there and the two of them spoke Turkish to each other. Her mother understands very little German. When the daughter came home, it was interesting to observe their interaction. The mother was speaking in Turkish to her daughter and the daughter was answering in German. I found this intersting. Later the husband came home and shortly after, I left feeling that there was not much more to talk about and not wanting to overstay my welcome.

January 31

I started tutoring my Turkish student and also another girl in the eighth grade, who one of my teachers recommended me too. Now I have three students, whom I tutor. Other than this, the day was spent packing and preparing for Karneval (German Mardi Gras), since I am leaving tomorrow for it. I have been wanting to go to German Karneval ever since I learned about it in my German classes in High School and at Bethany. I decided to send out an email and ask if any of the other assistants wanted to join me and 4 others responded. Together, we planned the weekend and booked a hotel.

February 1

I taught my 12th graders about the American Education System today. Talk about a difficult topic to explain because of its non-consistency throughout the U.S. For almost every question that the students asked, I had to respond that it depends! The American Education System is so diverse and the regulations differ state-to-state and therefore are impossible to generalize. This not only makes explaining it difficult, but also understanding it. It was a great class, however. My 12th graders are on of the best classes that I have, in that they are so curious and ask many questions without having to be pushed to participate. This makes me happy. My next class was conversation practice again and we discussed the film Forrest Gump. This also went smoothly and afterwards, I had to bolt out of the school, to make sure that I would catch my bus. I had less than an hour to get back to my apartment, pick up my stuff, get to the train station and catch my train. I was in a hurry and the bus took a bit longer than expected. I had to check the address for the hotel that we were staying in on my computer and in doing so forgot my ticket which was lying near it. As I boarded the bus to the station, I realized this, but there was no turning back or I would miss the train and throw us all off schedule. I decided I would just get a new ticket ticket if need be and use the other one some other time. I had to take the train to Hamburg to meet the others because I was the one with the latest day of classes. I made it to Hamburg just fine and met up with three of the others, but Andrew hadn't arrived yet. He told us he would meet us on the train, but didn't end up catching it. He arrived as it was pulling off and had to find his on way down with the latest version of hitchhiking in Germany. This is called "Mitfahrgelegenheit" which translates to Carpooling. This is another form of transport often used in Germany. I have to admit that I have never used it, but many of my friends have. Basically, people post on the internet that they are driving from one city to another and that they are willing to take other people along and then the people pay them a certain price for the trip for gas and such and get dropped off at a destination. I know you are thinking that this wouldn't work in the U.S. because people would get robbed, but guess what...Germany doesn't have a right -to-own-guns law! this makes the chances of this happening slim and to be honest crime in general is not a problem in Germany like in the U.S. Anyway, we took the slow trains and had to switch 4 times in places I had never heard of (also in the middle of nowhere) because we bought cheap group tickets that are only valid for the regional aka slow trains in Germany. It took us 7 hours to get from Kiel to Duesseldorf, but we paid less than half the price we would have had to pay if we had gotten there quicker. I was a little disappointed when we got to the main station in Duesseldorf, as I was expecting craziness to already be taking place. This was however not the case because the station is not in the center of the city where Karneval takes place, and because it was Friday night instead of Saturday. After arriving, we went directly to our hotel, which was not at all hard to find. We checked in and waited to hear from Andrew, who would be arriving soon. He finally got there an hour or so after we did and we brought his stuff up to the room. We were hungry after the long day of traveling and went in search of food. We ended up at a Chinese place. The food was good and the owner was complimenting us on our German. I had to laugh about this because here is a Chinese man who speaks broken German complimenting us on how good we speak. Well it was sweet anyway. He was a friendly man and we talked with him for a little while. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and crashed so that we would be ready for the next day.

Thrilling Classes and Chilling Stories

2008-01-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

January 21st

I once again didn't do too much. I made some no bake cookies for the history professors who are leaving on Friday, because we are having a good bye party for them. I have to admit that I am sad that they are leaving because they have been very nice to me, but I will still be seeing them on Fridays when we meet for our Stammtisch.

January 22

We actually had beautiful weather today. The sky was blue and it wasn't very cold. The weather has become a lot milder since about the second week of January. I prepared a lesson on the Simpsons for a year 13 class. My teacher had given me the episode copied onto DVD that she had acquired from her student. The episode was the first one of this year's season and was about the U.S. primary race and basically mocks the entire media and the idea of a forerunner being named after the New Hampshire Primary. There were a lot of puns and inuendos and I wasn't sure how many the class would catch, but they seemed to do a farely decent job. I had never taught this class before, but it turned out really well and they actively participated, which always makes things go more smoothly. I have a long day on Tuesdays and tutor a boy after I am done with classes, so I came home and fell asleep watching tv. Earlier that day, I was asked by my school director if I would be willing to tutor another student, a girl, and of course agreed to do so. Her mother called and wants to meet me next week, before I start the tutoring. I guess I can understand that she doesn't just want to hire anyone, so I am invited to her house for coffee in the afternoon on Wednesday of next week.

January 23

I was invited to go on a tour of a Marine bunker in Kiel by the two History teachers that I go on trips with from the school. The bunkers are/were apparently all over Kiel, but you don't know what they are until someone tells you (well at least I didn't). There were a total of 12 here in Kiel during WWII for the marines only. There were underground bunkers under where the train station currently is and where the market square is. Also, behind the city hall building was a large one. Civilians were not allowed to use them (with the exception of marine family members) until closer to the end of the war. Only a little over 2,000 people were killed in Kiel during WWII. This low number is due in part to the numerous bunkers. At the time of the war, Kiel housed one of the largest marine operating harbors in Germany, making it a target. It still has a small portion of the harbor that houses marine ships, but very few. In the 1890's, Bismarck turned Kiel into a marine hub and the population skyrocketed, increasing from a mere 2,500 to 250, 000 in around 20-30 years.

Mrs. Hamman, a survivor of WWII, lived in Kiel during the war and came to share some of her experiences and tell about how the past unfolded here, while we toured through the bunker. There was also a man from Berlin who came, but didn't have as much to tell. Mrs. Hamman talked about being sent to Austria, while the rest of her family remained here. Apparently they sent as many of the younger children there as possible. She told of how her father was sent to Russia and was killed on the front there and about how he was forced to join the NSDAP just to get a job. You would pretty much do anything in these times, I guess, if you wanted to support and keep your family alive. She remembers Kristallnacht and the synagogues burning and said that this was never explained to her at the time, but keep in mind she was only around five then, so her family probably didn't want to try to explain what was happening. After the war, her family relocated to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to live with her grandmother and when they came back to their house here in Kiel, it was still standing, but it was inhabited by another family. She explained how the two families lived together for about two years. They had to plan when meals would be cooked, when the bathroom was to be used by which family, etc. The man talked a bit about underground connections from one house to another in case one was to be hit, then the families could flee in this manner. One of the girls in the class asked about the Hitler youth and told us that her grandfather was in it and that he had talked some with her about it. I must admit, that this supprised me a bit, as I didn't think that most people who were a part of this would want to discuss it.

Kiel was 80 percent destroyed during the war and there were pictures in the bunker that showed the City hall building still standing, but everything else around it destroyed. The road I live on was also in the picture. My building that I live in actually survived the war at least to some extent, because it is referred to as an 'Altbau.' After the war, the Americans/Brits drilled into and bombed the bunkers so that they could not be further used. It is a shame because a lot of families could have lived there after the war, but we destroyed them out of fear so that they could not be used in the future.

They are now turning the bunker into a museum and Mrs. Hamman believes this is a great idea and has supported the cause by donating some of her own art and money to it. She said that it is important for generations who are out of touch with the idea of World War II to be informed and hear how it was from someone who lived through it, so that something that treacherous "never happens again." Mrs. Hamman looked me in the eyes and said that "Man creates war." "I think you agree with me, right?" Of course I agreed with her. I don't know how anyone could look a survivor of a war in the eyes and answer 'no' to this question. She said to me that she believes the war in Iraq is all about oil and we talked about American support for the war there.

All of the 10th graders were impressed with the tour and information and said that it is something that they can't imagine. I agree with Mrs. Hamman, in that the only way to imprint just how horrible war is to someone who hasn't experienced it first hand is to hear it from the mouths of others who have. This makes the connection and event real for the listener, when they know someone who has actually lived it. This is also dangerous, however, because once history becomes distant and the understanding of how terrible these things can be is lost (meaning those who have experienced it are gone), then there is a better chance of reoccurance. For me, this was a chilling expereince in more than one way. Not only was it freezing outside and in the bunker, but the stories and facts themselves were chilling.

January 24

I had a really easy day at school with not much to do and didn't do much after school because the weather was stormy, rainy, and really windy. I spent the day relaxing and reading.

January 25

We had breakfast with one of my classes since it was the end of term and grades were going to be handed out to the upper level students. This was nice and laidback and I got to put my German to use, which always makes me happy. I took "no bake" cookies to them that I had made a few days earlier. I explained that they were a very typical American food and that they should try them. It was interesting to see their response after eating them. They all found them very sweet, but most of the kids seemed to like them. I began working in a new class this week. Basically, I am working with three students who are preparing for the "Abitur" (German test required to go to the University) in English and my teacher requested that I work 1 on 3 with them so that they can practice their conversation skills an hour a week. The topic for this lesson was once again Primaries in the U.S. This has become such a major topic in the news here. My students informed me, that prior to this year's primaries, Germans never cared about them or had even heard of what they were. I think this shows, just how intense the race is this year and how up in the air it is. Usually parties have some idea at this point, as to who will win the nomination, however, this year there is no steady leader. Also, it shows how interested the rest of the world is in who will possibly be taking over the White House for the next few years. Other countries are just as eager to see change in U.S. politics and are therefore heavily following the race for the White House.

After fourth period, school was out for the day and the students recieved their grades. This allowed the faculty time for a Goodbye Party for a retiring faculty member and two of our so-called "student-teachers." In Germany, student-teaching (known as Referendar) lasts two years and is completed with a series of observation and exams that have to be passed. Unfortunately the two teachers who are leaving our school just happen to be the two history teachers that I get along with really well. It is sad to see them go because they always invited me along on field trips and have been very helpful in my adjustment to Kiel, but they have new positions at schools in the area and will be staying in Kiel. This means I will still be seeing them on occaisional weekends and therefore didn't really have to say goodbye. The party consisted of a huge table covered in food, to which I also contributed more "no bakes," and short speeches given by our school director Mr. Scholz. Of course what is a party without a little music...yes, that's right. My cell phone rang as Mr. Scholz was speaking...talk about embarassing!! Most of the time I never get phone calls, unless I am expecting them and I especially don't get them while at school! Of all of the moments that whoever it was that was calling me could have called, they just happened to do so while I was at school and during a speech that my school director was giving!! In a room of about fifty people, this can be quite uncomfortable when they are all staring at you. I felt horrible the rest of the afternoon, even though I realized that this could have happened to anyone. It was the fact that of course it had happened to me.

In the evening, I met Dee, Siobahn, Sabine (Dee's roommate) and some of Sabine's friends. We had planned to go to the movies all together to see "Keinohrhase" or No-ear Bunny. Unfortunately, the theater had changed the time that it was to play that day and we had already missed it. Instead we decided to go to a nearby restaurant where I just ordered a coffee. Following this, I met up with the two history teachers again for yet another Stammtisch Friday night at Wubbke, the Irish Pub/Restaurant.

January 26

I was Invited to one of my English teacher's that I work with for cake and tea. She wanted me to read an article out and record it for the department. I left here at 3 for her place which is about a ten minute walk down the street from mine. I didn't arrive back until 8 and could have stayed longer, but my family was supposed to be calling. In the five hours that I was there, we had tea and Darth Vader Cake (left over from her son's birthday party), recorded the reading of the article, played games with her two children (Mathilda 4, Aurthur 6), ate dinner, and conversed. It was a very nice day spent there. She even sent me home with lots of sweets, Darth Vader cake, muffins and fudge. I think they would like for me to babysit for them because they asked if I have any experiecne and because their kids really like me. Mathilda was begging me to stay the night and asked when I would be coming back. She also invited me to her birthday party. The evening I spent talking to family and friends from home. Nicholas left in the morning for Canada, so I once again have the apartment to myself and it is quite quiet, although it is quiet when my roommates are here, too.

Lessons, class trips and Abschied

2008-01-23T06:44:00.000-08:00

January 14th
I retrieved my computer from the Repair place, where I had taken it. It ended up costing 160 Euro, which is by no means cheap, but now I don't care becuase I at least I have a working computer and don't have to worry about it anymore. Ryan came by to visit since he would be leaving in three days and I tried to figure out how to get my internet to work.

Not much happened on Tuesday, I got my internet to work (since the wireless wasn't working, I bought a cable) and then Ryan came over in the evening and we watched a movie.

January 16th

On Wednesday, I went on a class field trip with a Marcus, one of the History teachers and his 9th graders. He and the other history teacher, always invite me along on their trips to special musuems or historical sites in and around Kiel and the nice thing is I get to experience/learn about historical aspects of Germany, first-hand, that I would otherwise not have the chance to do. This time the field trip was to the Bismark Stiftung in Freidrichsruh, close to Hamburg. The Bismarck Stiftung is a privately-run organization with the help of some government funding and is free for classes in Schleswig-Holstein to visit. The Stiftung houses over 10 million (insured) dollars worth of papers, writings, pictures and other archived realia of Bismarck and his fellow politicians. The land, which the Stiftung occupies, was presented to Bismarck as a gift and the house that he lived in remains standing on this piece of land. Marcus informed me that his decendents continue to inhabit the house. Unfortunately we only got to see this from a distance, but it was still interesting. There is also an exhibition/museum recording Bismarck's life and time as a ruler at the Stiftung.

We had a guided tour of this and then were allowed to look around ourselves, so that we could actually read some of what was written. Out of all of the influential historical figures of Germany's history, I would dare to say that Bismarck is the greatest and most positively portrayed throughout Germany. This is evident through the overwhelming presence of statues, memorials, and monuments in his honor. In addition, almost every city in Germany has a Bismarck square, and when not, then at least one street that is named after him. After doing the guided tour, we were split into two groups and given a short tour of the archives. The man who did the tour showed us some original documents written by Bismarck. Some of them were in French, as this is the language that the political elites used when they met in Europe during Bismarck's era. I think this was the highlight of the tour, knowing that we were in a room full of worthless in actuality/priceless in terms of what they are, pieces of paper. You don't get to do this every day. I must admit though, I had to laugh when he took out his white archival gloves (who knew they were the same all over the world, haha) because it made me think of Bethany's archives and when I was working some the summer before last with Jeanne Cobb, our archivist in the library. For those of you who don't realize how much work goes into preserving these articles, then you should take the time to visit a local archive and appreciate it. The work is dilligent and has to be exactly marked/ordered/packaged/housed or else it can be of no further use.

After seeing the archives, we had the opportunity to try and transcribe a text from the old german writing style. For me, this was almost completely impossible. I could only identify a few words, even though we were given a key to help decipher it. This didn't halp much because the r and e looked exactly the same and so did the f, h, and many other letters. Even the students found it to be extremely difficult, although they were able to read quite a bit at the end. This was the final activity of our trip and then it was time to head back to catch our train. We were already running behind, as the tour of the archives lasted longer than we had planned and so we had to walk really fast to catch the train at the next town/station which was a little over 20 minutes away. We made it there just in time to jump on and take off. We arrived back in Kiel around 5:30. It had been quite a long day and exhausting, even though half of it was traveling there and back. We didn't lose any kids though, so that was good. When I got off the train in Kiel, I was thanking my teacher for inviting me to come along and when I looked over, I saw Ryan, Deirdre and Siobhan, the other teaching assistants sitting on a bench at the station. They were supposed to be in Preetz visiting another assistant and I went to see why they hadn't left yet. They said that they missed two trains and then asked me if I wanted to go get a ticket and take the next one with them and that the train was leaving in like 3 minutes. I went to get a ticket and couldn't get what I wanted to come up. After I finally got it right, the train they wanted to take had left, making this the 3rd one they had missed. We all had a good laugh and waited around for the next one. We got to Preetz about an hour later and Chris met us at the station. He gave us a really quick (Preetz is tiny) tour and then we went to a Restaurant for dinner and spent a nice evening together.

After we got back from Preetz around 10:30, I wanted to get in the shower and then plan my lesson for the next morning on Sports in Australia, however, I didn't get to shower because our boiler wasn't working. It was freezing in our apartment and there wasn't any warm water. I ended up boiling water and using it to wash my hair. Nicholaus, one of my roommates and the one in charge of the apartment said he would call to see if he could get it fixed the next day.

January 17th

After waking up freezing, I headed to school. My class on Australian sports didn't really go as planned, but I guess you can only learn through trial and error. If I could do it over again, I would do a few things differently. I also got mad at this class because they were laughing at one of the weaker students while he was reading. The student got angry and I yelled at them and said that their behavior was unacceptable and not appreciated. I'm not sure if they knew what to think after that. After school I met Deirdre and Siobhan. We had planned to have lunch with Ryan in the afternoon and then get dressed up and go out for cocktails in the evening before Ryan boarded his ship to leave for Sweden for the next semester. Since Dee, Ryan and I went to a Subway the first time we all met up, that is where we went for lunch. Ryan of course being the punctual man he is, showed up almost two hours later than we had planned. He did, however think it was a sweet idea. After lunch we went back to Dee's and finished a calendar we made for him with pictures of all of us on it (idea taken from my friends in Heidelberg; they gave me one when I left and I loved it). We gave this to him and he really appreciated it, he even almost cried, but keep in mind he is... well let's just say a bit crooked ; ) Then we changed and went out for cocktails at the Blue Angel. It is a jazz club as one can imagine from the name and we had been there a few times before. The atmosphere is quite nice there, it is located directly on the harbor, and sometimes they have swing nights with really good dancers performing. After we all had a cocktail, it was time for Ryan to leave to board the Stena Line, his cruise ship to Sweden. We stood from a parking lot along the harbor and waved goodbye with our tissues (no sarcasm here, we actually did this because we are silly like that) and Ryan popped a bottle of champagne from the back deck of the ship. He wanted us to try and catch the cork, but it didn't travel that far. It probably will wash up on the Ostsee shore...I was really sad to see him go because he was my closest friend here and we had a lot of fun together in the short time that he was here, but I hope that he has a great time in Sweden. Who knows, maybe I will even get a chance to go visit.

January 18th

I had prepared a lesson on the primaries in the U.S. and the potential candidates for the 2008 election. I printed out articles from NPR.org on each of the most popular ones and then split the class up into groups of 2 and gave each one a candidate. They had to read the info. and present the main political viewpoints of each. At the end of the class I had them vote for their favorite candidate. The teacher of this class, thought it was a great idea and I think the students enjoyed it, too. I find that they are really interested in political issues in the U.S. and take advantage of every opportunity to ask me about them. I wish that students in the U.S. were as interested in politics as they are here. We're lucky if students in the U.S. can even form an opinon of their own on an issue. Mostly their ideas are taken directly from the mouths of their parents because it is just easier to go along with someone else's viewpoint than to come up with their own! That involves thinking and thinking is too much work...woops did I write that? In one of my other classes, we were dealing with the civil war and then we decided to connect the lesson and talk about the War in Iraq. Keep in mind that these lessons are all in English and that the students are able to clearly express themselves and their thoughts! The kids hat lots of questions about this and wanted to know my stance and perspective on it. They asked questions, such as if I knew anyone who was/is in the war and why the Americans supported it and if they still do. After school, I met Siobhan for coffee and cake and later we met up again with Dee and Heather at the Rathaus. Here we saw a random woman walking around in a Bee costume having her picture taken by people who appeared to be her friends. Just as this was happening, one of my students walked by and asked if I knew what the girl was doing. I told him that I had no clue and that there is always something crazy/random happening in Kiel. In the evening, I had plans to meet up with the history teachers from my school and some of their friends at the irish pub down the street from here. It is really nice that they invite me because it is a good opportunity to practice my German skills. They are the ones that take me on their class trips. They are also leaving our school this coming Friday when the term is over. They are currently doing their "referendar" what we as Americans would refer to as Student teaching. They just finished their exams and now have recieved jobs at other schools (our school doesn't have any openings for them).

January 19th

I woke up late because I had decided to sleep in. I had been helping plan a trip to Karneval in Duesseldorf (originally we wanted to go to Cologne) with 4 other assistants. Cologne is supposed to be the best place for Karneval but we had to settle for the second best, which is ok with me since I haven't ever been to Duesseldorf and I am sure it will be just as good. We ended up booking a hotel and figuring out how we were going to get there the chapest way possible. I have been wanting to go to Karneval (Mardi Gras) since I have read about it in my German books in the 8th grade and will finally get to experience it. My guess is, there will be tons of people dressed up in crazy outfits. In the afternoon, I went over to Dee's. Siobhan and I had planned to have her cut our hair and then we wanted to cook dinner together in the evening. I found out that Siobahn has more talents than just juggling. Apparently, she can sing, plays the guitar and writes her own songs. They are really good. She showed me her book with all of them written in it and I read through some of them. She played a few for me and Dee and then Dee cut our hair. Dinner in the evening consisted of carrots, potatoes, corn and chicken and was quite delicious if I might say so myself.

January 20th

I had been wanting to see the movie "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of the Others) for a long time and finally got to do so on Sunday. The film won an academy award in the U.S. for the best foreign language film and is about a German Stasi officer who is hired to observe and record the life of a playwright in the DDR. I went to a theater on my street to see it and my expectations were more than met. It was a great movie, one of my favorites now, and I would recommend it to anyone. Besides this, I didn't do a whole lot.

Burn's dinner and Sunday at the beach

2008-01-20T02:38:00.001-08:00

January 12th

I met Ryan in the afternoon and we went shopping. He had planned a goodbye dinner for all of our friends (other assistants in Schleswig-Holstein), since he is doing a semester in Sweden. The meal was a traditional Burn's dinner (he's Scottish), served with, you guessed it, Haggis (sheep stomach filled with meat aka heart, liver, and lungs and with onions and flour mixed in), neeps (turnips), tatties (potatoes), and oat cakes. The name of the Burn's dinner originates from the poet Robert Burns and is a yearly festival that takes place in Scotland. It actually is supposed to be held on his birthday, the 25th of January. We had to move it up a few weeks since Ryan was leaving on the coming Thursday. The two of us walked around the huge market at Exerzierplatz, which is there every Wednesday and Saturday. They sell fresh and home grown veggies, fruits, flowers, and almost anything else that you can imagine. Afterwards, we had lunch at a nice bakery and then we split up. I went to an internet cafe and he went to meet some of our friends at the station. Later, I made brownies for the Burn's dinner for Ryan and helped him with the preparations and cooking. When the meal was ready, he even gave the "Address to the Haggis," while he brought it in to be served.

January 13th

Sundays are really quiet in Germany and mostly spent outdoors. The weather was really warm and the sky was blue so we decided to go for a day at the beach with. The sea is so relaxing and the air there is wonderful. Siobhan and Dee were juggling and I was doing flips in the sand. We were quite the act and I kept saying, that we should have set out a hat and made some money : ) Dee and Ryan decided it would be a great idea to put their feet in the water to test how cold it was. They stayed in for 60 seconds, which was a long time for the temperature of the water. After the sun disappeared we sat in a nice cafe with a view of the sea and had coffee and cake. Following that, we made our way back home.

Back to school

2008-01-20T02:11:00.000-08:00

January 3rd

We left Vreden for Cologne. Janina's dad and Petra took us to the station and we said goodbye. It was a lot of fun staying with them and I hope they enjoyed having us as much as we enjoyed staying there. They were great hosts and such kind people. In Cologne we had to store our luggage and then we could leave the station to go sightseeing. I had already been to Cologne once before, so I played the tour guide after we grabbed a map from the tourist info. shop.
First, we went up to the Cathedral or Dome which is the most impressive one in Germany. After going inside there, we headed for the Chocolate Museum. The museum basically tells the history of the development of chocolate and how it is made, but also shows how it is made on conveyor belts, which is just as interesting. This took at least an hour and from here we walked back into the city and decided to sit at another cafe. Yes you are probably thinking this is all I do here. It is simply a part of the German culture and one I really like. Having coffee and cake in the afternoon is more like a conversation hour with the people you are with. Of course this can also be done at home (as one would do in the U.S.), but this is simply what you do if in a city in the afternoon and if it is cold!
After the cafe, we walked down the pedestrian zone where all the stores and shops are and went to the Kaethe Kollwitz Museum. The largest collection of her works is housed in Cologne. Janina and I had been to an exhibit of hers in Berlin and this is why we wanted to go this one (I hope Kim enjoyed it as much as I did). For those of you who haven't heard of her, Kaethe Kollwitz was an expressionist artist. A lot of her works reflect social issues (war, poverty, hunger, mothers and their children, etc.) and she used her art to express her feelings towards these issues, inspired by her husband who was a doctor, and the loss of a son in WWI. Her art was banned in the late 1930's as one can imagine because of her stance on these issues. Her message is quite universal and her works consist mainly of black and white prints and sculptures. Anyway, the exhibit was fabulous and this was a highlight of my day.
For dinner, we went to a Baltic Restaurant and the three of us order Cevapcici with sheep cheese...mmmm! It came with a salad, rice and fries, which was way too much. We could have split one meal amongst the three of us! After eating dinner, we decided to make our way back to the station and on the way there we passed the Dome. There were a lot of people running around in costumes holding banners and were lined up along the entrance to the Dome in a tunnel-like formation. The only thing that Janina and I could think of that they were doing, was kicking off Karneval in Cologne, hence the costumes and music. Karneval is the fest that leads up to Ash Wednesday and the biggest ones in Germany are in Cologne and Mainz. Little did we know, that this was just the beginnning of our excitement for the day...
When we got to the station, we retrieved our luggage and headed for the track, where we were to meet the assistants from the Deutsche Bahn who would help Janina get on the train. We were waiting and they didn't come so Janina went to find them. Of course, there was no elevator on the track that our train was supposed to leave from and the escalator option was out because it was also not functioning. I personally am not sure what other option this left us but the assistants SEEMED to know what they were doing. The one told Kim and I to meet him at the top of the stairs at the corner of the escalator. We were standing there for at least five minutes when I decided to start looking around. Finally the man found us and he proceeded by telling me that Kim and I had to go all the way to the other end of the train because that was where Janina would be. Kim and I took off running with our luggage for the other end of the train (we needed section E and were in A). We had to push our way through the crowd of people who had just gotten off of the trains and I was afraid that Kim wouldn't make it through the crowd. (In Germany, when you want to get from point A to point B, sometimes you have to just push your way through and not say excuse me or I'm sorry, most Germans will be offended by this, but they too do it on numerous occasions for example at the grocery store when the line is already clearly formed). Back to the story, so we made it to the other end of the train to get on, only to find that Janina was nowhere to be found. I started to panic, meanwhile Janina was too and I went to ask the conductor if he had seen her or knew if she was on the train. He told me that there wasn't anyone in a wheelchair on the train, or even registered for it! Now I was really freaking out, so I started running through the train trying to find her. When I got all the way to the other end she was sitting there trying to cal my cell phone to see where we were. This was a huge relief for the both of us. I went to gather my luggage and Kim and then we had a pretty quiet ride from there on out. We arrived in Frankfurt, said goodbye to Janina who headed back to Heidelberg, and Kim and I left for our hotel near the station. We were exhausted from all the traveling and basically just crashed.
January 4th-8th
Kim and I left the Frankfurt Hotel early the next morning to get Kim to the airport. We checked her in, sat around a bit, and then said our goodbyes. It was strange because I had jsut gotten used to her being here. I had a blast showing her around and I really hope she had a good time, even if she did say we were feeding her too much! (we wanted her to try everything foodwise, who knows when she will be back!?) After she went through security, I went to purchase my ticket to get back to Kiel. As I was doing this two American boys came up to me and asked me if I could help them buy a ticket. They saw me getting mine from the machine and I guess that they assumed I knew what I was doing. They were on their way to Bayern to visit a friend and so I helped them buy their tickets. I think they were quite relieved that someone helped them (they looked desperate) and they told me they wouldn't have figured it out on their own. I jumped on my train back to Kiel (which ended up being delayed by 20min.) I was so exhausted and still had a bit of a cold that I got while at Janina's dad's so I spent the next few days resting and cleaning my room and our apartment. I also went to the library and got some books on the Kentucky reading list for the German Master's program. Nothing like trying to get a head start. That Sunday, I went for a nice bike ride along the harbor. I realized how much I had missed being along the water, while I was traveling. When I'm in Kiel, I see it everyday. I was happy, though, to get to see some snow and to get to see the sun shine more than it does here. The sky is usually cloudy and grey here, but while I was in the South, we had some blue skies and longer hours of sun!
On Monday the 8th of January, I went to visit host family. I hadn't seen them for a little over a month and I thought I would drop by and surprise them. Normally, this is not something you would do in Germany, drop by unannounced, but it dpends on your relationship with the people. I was informed by my host family when I left, that I was more than welcome to stop by anytime, even unannounced. When I got to my host grandmother's (she lives beside my host family and it was the afternoon, so I knew my host mom and her were having tea) her and my host mom were really excited to see me and I was the same to see them. My host grandmoteher had a bad cold. She made me tea and placed a plate of cookies in front of me as was the norm, when I was there before. Not too much had changed in the meantime. Tiki, the 101 year old great grandma was still kicking (well not literally, I guess more appropriately just still breathing) and they didn't have too much news to tell. My host parents had been to Barcelona over New Year's and had a really great time there. We just shared stories about Christmas and our break and we talked about their daughter, who is still enjoying herself in Australia. I also told them that my sister is coming in March and they told me to stop by so that they can meet her. It was very nice to see them again and spend time with them.
January 9th

My Christmas break came to an end and school started back up. However, there was not much for me to do in those 3 days. Most of the teachers were stressed about giving out grades and were trying to catch up.
January 10th

I went to school and after school I met Ryan for a walk along the harbor. We were heading towards the Kunsthalle, which we have passed on numerous occasions and this time we decided we had time to go in. Most of the exhibitions were from artists from the region, for example, Emil Nolde. It was mostly contemporary art, but there was also a sculpture exhibition at the entrance with a lot of statues from Athens and Rome. I found the art museum really nice. I had expected it to be smaller and not to have too much but it was definitely worth seeing. After that we continued walking and spent the late afternoon in a cafe.

January 11th

One of the girls in my 13th grade class ave a presentation on her semester in Capetown, South Africa to my 12th grade class. She did this with a powerpoint of photos that she had taken. Each photo looked as if it was professionally taken. She also gave the presentation without notecards and only made only a few verbal/grammatical errors! This shows how high the standards are at my school! The presentation was really impressive and made me think about Namibia. South Africa is really similar to Namibia, in that the whites have all the money and the blacks live in the projects. The girl, her name is Shoreh and I believe she is originally from Iran, lived with a black family in a house with no running water that was miles from the main city. Her living situation, the conditions at her school, and the experiences she had and things she saw while there were overwhelming. Keep in mind that she was only about 16 at the time that she did this semester abroad. Her presentation did not focus only on the positive aspects of such an experience, it also made clear the various dangers she was in while there, but I, myself think that it demonstrated just how quickly kids grow-up/mature here. They go abroad at a much younger age and usually don't have any problems doing so, even in difficult situations. I wish I could say the same for all of the people who leave Bethany or the U.S. in general and study abroad. Perhaps this has to do with Germans being able to travel easily to other countries with different cultures and therefore "different" is more common to them, but I also believe, that you can see how being independent is engrained into the German society a lot more than in the U.S. Kids learn from an earlier age to be dependent on themselves and are given a lot more freedom to make decisions on their own which eventually they will have to completely rely on in the future (making their own decisions that is), in comparison to the U.S. where children are spoon-fed "at least" until they finish college and until then and even sometimes after, the world revolves around their needs and things should be the way they want without much thought of their own and effort.

After school, I wanted to catch a movie with Ryan but there weren't any good ones playing, so we went to the Metro (a movie theater with a cafe) and had milkshakes instead.

2008-01-15T07:35:00.000-08:00

December 29th

We left Heidelberg for Janina's Dad's place which is in Vreden close to Borken. If the names appear funny to you, it is because her dad lives close to the Dutch border. Of course we had problems on the train on the way there. From my experience, Germans (not all) can be quite impolite when it comes to space and their possessions. They were all placing their luggage where Janina was supposed to get through with her wheelchair and we politely asked them not do this so that if Janina had to go to the restroom or when we had to get off the train that this wouldn't be a problem. Of course they got angry because this is just howw Germans react in a situation like this. Even when we were trying to get off the train everyone is in such a hurry, that they can't wait two minutes for the wheelchair lift to let Janina off the train. This time though the man helping us started yelling at the people trying to push through. Germans go crazy when it comes to getting on or off of something. This includes buses. A woman was also very rude with us in Heidelberg when we were trying to exit the bus. She had to get on before we got off because God knows the bus would have left without her. Although I have seen this happen before, it does not justify her behavior. When we finally arrived at the train station in borken, Janina's dad and his girlfriend Petra met us there. From the station we headly straight to Winterswijk, Holland. The plan was to get fresh fruits and veggies from the market there and then walk around a bit. It was very nice. There were of course cyclists everywhere as Holland is famous for, but it was almost like being in Germany. The architecture was a bit different and the language slightly varies from German (it is a combination of English and German, which makes it easy to read but hard to speak because you don't know which pronunciation words take, the German, English or a mixture of the two). We went into a very nice cafe to warm up after walking around the town. After we got back to Janina's dad's place, we had dinner and then went for a walking tour of Vreden and its Nightlife. Her dad took us to the Brauhaus (Brewery) where they make their own Beer in the Restaurant.

December 30th

We headed to Muenster which was about a 45 minute drive from Vreden. I had never been to Muenster, so I was excited to see what it would be like. I had heard that it was a beautiful city and it turned out to be true. They had the city decorated nicely for Christmas and the architecture and churches there were quite impressive. We spent an hour or two just walking around the city taking pictures and then went to a cafe for something warm. After that we went to get dinner at a Doener Restaurant (mentioned in my previous entry as a favorite fast food of the Germans). We had tickets for the theater at 8 p.m. so we left the restaurant and headed to the Theater. It was a dinner/theater but we didn't get tickets for dinner, just for the show. It turned out that the show we were watching was a variety show and half of it was in English, which was great for Kim, since she wouldn't have gotten to appreciate it as much had she not understood it. The performance was called Oben Drauf and was basically about who is at the top today, men or women. The answer that they came up with was women (of course! : ) ). The show consisted of comedy performances and dance and gymnastic/acrobat numbers. It was hillarious and completely amazing at the same time. This was a great end to a great day in Muenster.

December 31st

We decided to take it easy this day and just walked around Vreden taking pictures and went to rent a movie. Her father and Petra had guests in the afternoon for coffee and cake and we joined them. In the evening we went over to a friend of her dad and Petra's. The woman and her husband have four children, the youngest two were twins and one of the twins took quite a liking to me. He must have been about five years old and his mom was laughing becuase he didn't stop talking after I started paying attention to him. She said he likes to flirt. I enjoy playing with German children because I can practice my language skills and because they don't even realize that you aren't from Germany. They can most likely distinguish an accent but wouldn't ever ask you where you are from based on hearing it! We started dinner around 8 p.m. when we got back to her dad's house and their guests for the evening had arrived. We ate raclette, which is a traditional German dinner for New Year's. I had had this once before at my friend Kathrin's, when I spent New Year's 2005 with her in Deinstedt. Raclette is a variety of veggies laid out on the table and each person can choose what he or she wants to eat. Everyone gets a little pan to put the food in and then you cover it in cheese and put it in this little machine that resembles a George Foreman (closest thing that we have to it). On top of the machine you can fry meat, which cooks at the same time. The reason this is a tradition in Germany is because the meal can then last as long as you want it to. You prepare your own pan each time you are finished eating from it and the meal then continues until you are no longer hungry. Usually bread or potatoes are also served with raclette. After we were finished eating, we played games. This was an interestin experience for Kim and I, as the guests that her dad and Petra had were quite competetive. Kim and I just wanted to play to have fun. We played Uno and a game I had never played before, where you had to place a round card on a top and spin the top and then everyone had to guess what the picture was on the card before the top stopped. This was a lot of fun. We watched the clock countdown on tv just as in the U.S. and toasted champagne for the New Year. We didn't really celebrate any differently than in the U.S. and after this we stayed up chatting
and then went to bed because we were so worn out from all of the traveling and late nights.

January 1st 2008!

A new year has begun, which is a bit hard to believe. Everything is closed on New Year's day in Germany so we decided to sleep in and woke up around 10 or 11. We had plum cake and coffee in the afternoon and then watched the German movie Barfuss, while her father and Petra entertained guests. We had dinner with the guests and this was pretty much all we did that day.

January 2nd

We went to Enschede, Holland. You could immediately tell that it is a bigger city than the one we first went to. There were a lot of square housing complexes like in Germany (once again an issue of population and space) and there was a huge shopping square/center. We wandered around a bit, went to a cafe, and window shopped. You could tell there had been quite a New Year's bash there becuase there was still a lot of trash on the streets and confetti everywhere.

Gulliver's travels

2008-01-08T02:42:00.000-08:00

December 26th

It was wild picking Kim up from the airport. It is really wierd to see someone you know from the states and show them around Germany. I forget how different things are for other people because I am so used to the way things are here. After meeting Kim, the three of us, including Janina, headed back to Heidelberg where we would be spending the next three days with Janina's Uncle Richie, Aunt Beate, and Cousin Lena. The first thing we did after arriving, was head into the city center of Heidelberg to give Kim a first impression of Heidelberg. I think it worked! It was nice because we were pretty much the only tourists out since it was still the 2nd day of Christmas and everything was closed. This meant that most of the American and Japanese tourists that are normally crowding the streets were not to be seen...except for Kim and I. That evening, Janina's family had a dinner planned at a restaurant that they usually go to every year. We decided to come along and make the group even bigger. It was fun and the food was delicious, but the portions were overwhelming. We recieved a plate for of Schnitzel which lasts a normal person 3 whole meals!!

December 27th

Janina's Uncle Richie took Kim and I on a driving tour of Heidelberg. First we ent to the castle and did the tour there so that kim could get pictures and see the famous landmark. Then we went from there to the monasteries that are on the mountain opposite the castle. From there you can get a breathtaking view of the castle. After that we went to the Thingstätte, which was a place used by the Nazis for rallying and Propaganda in the 1930's. I had seen all of this before but it was fun to tell Kim everything I knew about the places and to get Richie's input. He said these things are the must sees of Heidelberg and I agreed. That night the three of us went out ti Vater Rhein a local Restaruant and pub that is quite cheap.

December 28th

After shopping in the Haupstrasse, we decided to head to Mannheim, so that Kim could see another city, since we had pretty much exhausted Heidelberg. We just walked around the city and then sat in a cafe. Later Janina came to join us and we had Döner for dinner. This is a turkish version of a gyro and is the most popular form of fast food available in Germany. There are Döner stands on every corner.

To be continued....

Count down to Christmas

2008-01-07T02:17:00.000-08:00

So I am still way behind on my posts and I have lots of fun and interesting stories to tell so pray that my computer gets fixed soon so that I can share them all with you! I am sitting at an internet cafe right now so I will not be writing it all!

The week before Christmas break at school was very relaxed and a lot of fun. On Tuesday, I was invited to go ice skating with my sixth graders. They are one of my favorite classes because they are always so excited to see me and they are the sweetest kids. We spent two hours skating and then we walked around the Christmas market for half an hour. That was their class for the day! Mine too! That evening I had a ticket to the concert which I got for free, even though I was supposed to pay (let's just say the secretary likes me ;) She told me not to tell anyone though so keep it hush hush, ok! ) The concert was amazing. It lasted around 2 hours and nicluded singing performances and orchestral performances from all levels at the school. This is a stark contrast between German and American schools, when one sees how much importance is placed on the arts here.

The yearbooks also came in that week and i was able to bargain with the secretary again who gave me a big discount on it. There is a really short article written about me with a picture next to it. Two of my students wrote the article and I almost cried laughing. It is very sweet though. On Wednesday, we had a Jule Exchange with my grade 13 class. Unfortunately, I didn't know about it and so my teacher brought a gift for my person and I just had to wrap it for her. I recieved a bottle of Champagne from my person. Class was spent discussing the 'Arbitur' and eating cookies. I know! Strenuous! : ) Thursday, I taught two classes and Friday we had two parties, one with my sixth graders who impressed me with their extraordinary musical talents and one with my tenth graders.

Christmas at the Menz's in Crailsheim was a blast, that is after I finally got there...! Of course things had to go wrong with the train ride! My long train was delayed by about 20 minutes which meant that I would miss the next train that I was supposed to get on and so I ended up having to wait around 45 minutes to catch that one. Once I arrived at the last stop where I had to change trains, there weren't any more trains leaving there to go to Crailsheim...so i had to call Svenni and tell her I was stuck in Lauda, basically the middle of nowhere, and she and her mom had to drive an hour to come and get me. This made my total travel time from Kiel to Crailsheim around ten hours!! You can imagine, that I just crashed when we got there from exhaustion.

Her family fed me tons of delicious food and sweets! Germans celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. This is the day that the gifts are given and then they have two additional days of Christmas, the 25th and the 26th. On Christmas Eve, the tradition is that you eat Bratwurst and Potato Salad and then the big meal is the next day. The big meal consists of a soup and then the main meal with desert at the end. We had Sauerbraten with a delicious sauce, Knödel, veggies, and a type of Spätzle....mmm, heavenly!

I recieved a lot of nice gifts from Svenni and her family. Among them, a book about why men never listen and women can't park. I am reading it right now and I must admit it is very interesting and quite funny. I would recommend it to anyone with relationship troubles...perhaps it will help you better understand each other!

Mostly everything is closed on the Christmas days but some restaurants and bars are open and even some movie theaters. Svenni and i went to the christmas circus in Crailsheim and got our picture taken on a camel. For those of you with Facebook, she has it as her profile picture. We went to the movies with her friends and watched 'Enchanted' another one of Disney's stupid attempts at a funny movie...don't get me wrong, it is probably great for families and younger children but the boys and us weren't too exstatic. On the 25th the women, consisting of Svenni, Heike, Martina and I, drove to Schwäbisch Hall. It is a very beautiful, medieval city with impressive architecture in the heart of Schwabenland. The roads we took to get there reminded me of going to Bethany...the curves were just as bad! In addition to seeing Schwäbisch Hall, we saw some castle ruins and drove through a small village that was also very nice called Satteldorf. I left early on the morning of the 26th to pick up Kim Kelly from the airport in Frankfurt. On the way, I met Janina in Mannheim and we traveled together.

I would love to post about what Kim and Janina and i did in the 10 days that we were together but that will have to come in my next post as there is way too much to write about! Besides, it gives you something to look forward to, ne?

New Address and phone number

2007-12-14T01:39:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone! I know it has been forever since I have made a post. I apologize for that but things have been really crazy for me the last few weeks and to top things off, my computer crashed and doesn't seem to want to revive itself! Anyway I moved into my new room on Dec. 1st with the help of some of my teachers and a friend of mine. It is really nice and my roommates are very friendly. It now only takes me about 5-10 minutes to get to the city center and I bought a bike which I can ride to school. For those of you wishing to have my new address for the holidays here it is:

Vanessa Plumly
Holtenauerstr. 92
24105 Kiel, Germany

New Telephone Number: 0431-5789879

A recap of the last few weeks...I have been doing a lot of travelling around to christmas markets in the area. I have been to Lübeck's and Husum's and of course Kiel's. For those of you who don't knwo what a christmas market is, you are definitely missing out. There are a bunch of christmas decorated booths set up that sell all sorts of fattening foods from Bratwurst to Crepes to candied nuts and Lebkuchen. There are also booths that sell actual items such as hand stritched scarves and hats or craft items. There is something for everyone. Oh yeah and the most popular part of the Christmas markets is the Glühwein. It is a hot red wine served in the winter months in Germany.

Last weekend, I went to visit Svenni & family in Crailsheim for her and Sören's birthday. They had a huge party with around 40 guests and I got to meet a lot of her family, which was very nice. It was crazy to see her after 6 months, but we just picked up where we left off. Big and little sis. I will get to see her and the family again during christmas break, which is next Friday! WOW! Time flies when you are having fun. I can hardly believe that I have been here almost four months already. On my way back from Svenni's place, I had to switch trains in Nürnberg so I decided to use this opportunity to see the city and its famous christmas market. The city is very medieval and the Christmas market was huge!

This coming weekend all of the assistants in the area are planning a huge christmas feast and on Sunday we are going to do a "Glühwein Tour" of the rest of the x mas markets here in Schleswig-Holstein! I have tons of new pictures, so I will try to add a few at some point.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T00:18:00.000-08:00

Well, since yesterday was Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate for me to do an entry on the things that I am thankful for:

-the people who read this blog so I know I'm not just doing it for nothing!!
-family who have always stood behind me and believed in me
-my parents who have supported me in everything I have ever done and allowed me to pursue my dreams even if that means at their cost! : )
-my host family with whom I felt at home with from the very start and who have opened their home, lives, and hearts to me
-friends from all over the world who no matter how long it's been since you have seen them things are still the same as they were before, in addition, those who are willing to travel the many miles to visit me here
-the friendliness/kindness of strangers
-this entire opportunity
-everyone who made this opportunity possible- you know who you are- at least I hope
-the willingness of everyone here to help me, to make my time here worth while and to go out of their way for me
-my students who make me smile and who are eager to learn from me
-my college education and my mentors at Bethany, without which I would not have been here or have had the opportunities that I have had
-anyone who has ever helped me out in a time of need, I'm pretty sure that is everyone who is reading this, and I hope that I will have one day be able to return the favor

THANKS!!!!!!!!!

Visit from Home

2007-11-21T22:30:00.000-08:00

On Monday, I started aerobics. Let’s just say that everyone knew that I hadn’t been there before. I didn’t know where I was supposed to go and a lot of other things in addition to this, but it is fun. I also found out on Sunday night that my school was having an Orchester concert in the “Schloss” in Kiel. Just a little heads up for those of you who don’t know what a Schloss is. It is a palace or castle, however, one would not recognize the “Schloss” in Kiel as such because it looks nothing like a palace or castle. This is besides the point, but I do find it funny. Anyway the concert was to take place in the concert hall of the “Schloss” and the tickets are originally 10 Euro, but all staff members receive two free tickets and so I invited Dierdre the Canadian assistant in Kiel to come along with me to my student’s concert. It was actually very nice. They started out with classical composers the first half and the second half was modern music from famous films such as Pirates of the Carribean and Harry Potter. All of the students even those not participating were required to go to the concert so I saw a lot of them there.

Tuesday I started my trampoline gymnastics class at the university. It is tons of fun and I get to be around people my age! I have jumped around on a trampoline before and can do flips and such, but I have never learned the actual way you are supposed to do it according to competition and Olympic rules. This is what we do in the class. There are certain ways you have to jump and certain ways to move your arms. This is really interesting to learn and it is a workout at the same time!!

Wednesday…can’t really remember anything special about this day.

Thursday I got lucky and didn’t have school because they had an in-service day. This worked out really well because Dr. Menz (Harald) was in Germany and had planned to come and visit this weekend. He arrived on Thursday on one of the only trains that was driving (most didn’t run because of the strike). I picked him up from the main station and took him to his guesthouse. Then I gave him the grand tour of Kiel. It was really nice to be able to show someone from home around the city that has become my home and will be my home for another 7 months. It’s even better when the person is interested in what your doing. It was funny to see some of the things that struck him as odd about the city that I now find normal after three months, for example the accent and dialect spoken here and the huge cruise ships that come into the harbor. I don’t know if I have said this before, but Kiel is not much of a tourist city. The only things that attract tourists are the beaches in the surrounding area, so there wasn’t a whole lot to show him. We spent the afternoon walking along the harbor, through the old part of the city (this isn’t much), and through one of the parks. We also saw some seals being fed at the aquarium. Then we found a café and spent a lot of time talking about his Namibian/German research and my job here. In the evening we went out for Chinese.

Friday I had school as usual and later I met Harald again. He said that he had to “see the sea” while he was here, so we had planned to take the bus to Schilksee and to walk from there along the coast to Strande. The bus ride itself takes about about an hour from the city so after this we were ready for dinner and he happened to see a Baltic restaurant called “Dubrovnik” –the name of a city in Croatia. We decided to give this a try and it turned out to be a good choice. I had a meal called Satarasch, which is rice with a cooked meat, eggs, and fresh veggies in a spicy sauce. It was delicious. Harald had Cevapcici with rice. After dinner we went out for a drink at Mango’s for his birthday. I won’t say how old he is because he is also reading this blog : )

On the weekend, we traveled to Bremen. On Saturday we left our luggage at the station and then went on a tour of the city. I had been there once before with my friends Kathrin and Miriam, but to be honest I didn’t remember much about how the city looked because we saw it at night. Bremen is a beautiful city with lots of interesting architecture and it is also a harbor city. It was part of the Hanseatic League in the North. After taking pictures and seeing everything, we found a café so that we could unfreeze ourselves…I am not kidding! It was so cold there. We then went to get our bags at the station and checked into our hotel rooms. We decided to make dinner cheap and went to a store at the station (we walked around for about 45 minutes and didn’t find a single supermarket! This puzzled us…) where we bought bread rolls, lunch meat, cheese, nectarines and yogurt.

On Sunday we took the train to Bremerhaven. Harald had wanted to go to the German Emigration Museum. This was also a good choice. It was really interesting and was mainly over the emigration to the U.S. because that is where the largest number of Germans have emigrated. It reminded us of the Holocaust museum in a lot of ways because they had rebuilt ship rooms and such to make it look like it had back in the day. There was an overwhelming amount of information and you could even trace your ancestry at the end if you had the names. After the museum, we walked to the harbor to photograph a large four mast ship. An old woman informed us that you could go on board and look around free of charge, so we did. It turns out the ship belongs to the Russian Navy and there were some quite good looking Sailors on board! Don’t worry, I also looked at the ship J I had never been on such a ship, so this was fun. After the tour of the ship, it was once again time to find a café. I don’t know what it is about when you are looking for something you never find it and when you aren’t, you stumble upon it. So once again we were walking for at least half an hour before we found a café that was open. Keep in mind it is also Sunday, which usually means that most things are closed. After almost giving up we ran into an open café. Later we headed back to Bremen and found a cheap but nice restaurant called Casablanca where we ate dinner (of course along the way we found the supermarket we had been searching for the day before).

On Monday we grabbed breakfast at a Baker and headed back into the old city center of Bremen and walked around the area called “Schnoor.” This means ‘chain’ in Plattdeutsch, the northern German dialect. It is called this because it is a part of the town where all the houses were built on top of each other and they are really small. It was really beautiful. Then we checked out of our rooms and headed back to the station to catch our trains. Harald headed to the Duesseldorf airport to leave for Namibia and I headed back to Kiel on a delayed train. I was really glad that he took the time to come visit me. It was great to be able to share my experience here with him and to find out what’s going on at home. In addition, it was nice to leave Kiel and travel somewhere new. I haven't gotten to do this too much since I have been here so it broke up the monotony.

October 29th-November 11th

2007-11-21T22:14:00.000-08:00

Last week, I was invited by the head of English to come with her and her 11th grade class on their trip to Prague. Yeah, the schools here don’t just take trips to the next largest city, they actually go to other countries! I would almost venture to say that the Germans are the most traveled of all people in the world, but the Chinese probably top them. Traveling and vacations are very important to most Germans and many save up specifically for this reason. So anyway to get back to the point, she asked me if I had ever been to Prague and I told her that I hadn’t and she said I could come along if I wanted. Unfortunately, I think I will have to pay 320 Euro (she doesn’t know if they will be able to get a discount for me since they already have 2 chaperones), but I still think it is worth it because this includes our hotel and all activities and maybe even meals. So of course I agreed to go. Everyone who knows me knows that I wouldn’t turn down any offer to travel somewhere.

I was also able to finally find an apartment in Kiel so now I will be moving into the city and be closer to everything. I will be living with two students at the university. I think that they both study Geophysics. I know not necessarily my cup of tea, but they are really nice. The boy is from Belgium and the girl is German so I will still be making use of my German skills, even though I won’t be living with my host family anymore. The room is actually quite large and I don’t know how I am going to fill it or make it look homey, but I will do my best. All of the teachers at my school were kind enough to collect furniture and gather up things like bedding and towels and dishes for me so that I don’t have to waste money buying these. This is an extremely big help. It is always amazing how helpful everyone here is with everything.

I am excited about the move because right now, where my host family lives, I am a half an hour bus ride from the city and about the same from my school. This isn’t that bad in terms of Kiel because the city and its surrounding areas are huge, but it can also be a pain when someone calls you and wants to do something. Thankfully, my host mom usually drives me to school in the mornings so that it only takes about 10-15 minutes instead of 30. It is definitely going to be more convenient for me to live in Kiel, but I will miss my host family a lot. I’ve gotten really attached to them and will be sad to leave, but I already promised them I would be around to visit. Now I’ll actually have to cook for myself and do my own laundry… I did cook Chili this week for my host family. I think it turned out really good and they enjoyed it too. They hadn’t eaten it for a while themselves.

This week, I taught a lesson on Australia, which was pretty funny, since I don’t know that much about it. Who would’ve thought, even I can learn from this whole experience!? It was interesting, what the teacher said after the lesson. She said that different kids participate when I teach the class than when she does. I’m not really sure why this is because she is still in the classroom with me, but I found this to be a good thing. I also taught a lesson on American patriotism. The class that I prepared this lesson for is a 12th grade class and I do an hour of conversation with them. I find this really fun because the students are eager to participate and the class is very well behaved, which is not that easy to come by here. Anyway, I try to come up with creative ways of introducing the subject material and then we discuss it and I ask opinion questions, so that everyone has something to say. For this lesson, I printed out an American flag and hung it up. After everyone was in the classroom, I told them to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and I actually did this. They had all looked at me like I was completely wacko, but it was a good way to get their attention. I explained to them that this is how every day at school started for me and then we continued the lesson from there by discussing this and other patriotic habits of Americans. One thing about the lesson caught me completely off guard. My teacher that I was with asked the class if they had ever seen the German flag being hoisted and no one in the entire class of 20 or so had seen this! I couldn’t believe it because this is something that every American has seen and numerous amounts of times. This just goes to show that nationalism/patriotism and Germany don’t go hand in hand. I personally think it is quite sad that they can’t be proud of their country because of their past. Perhaps this will slowly change over the course of the future, but most Germans are afraid to fly a flag or would find it extremely awkward to sing the national anthem. The only time this was the norm, was when the world cup was here in the summer of ’06. All of this fear of appearing over patriotic because of a past that is over 60 years old, has caused the exact opposite result for the German people. Perhaps I should look at this as a positive thing. I, myself, hate seeing hundreds of flags flying around in the U.S. It seems like every two feet you take you run into one. I think there is a point when plenty becomes too many and the meaning of the flag seems to be lost because it isn’t anything special. I’m not hating on people who fly American flags, to each his own. This is just a personal opinion.

I finally signed up for sports at the university and got a pass for the fitness center there so I can go to aerobic classes. My friend Aenne, who studies English and Spanish for Secondary school invited me to go with her to do aerobics two or three times a week. I am also going to start a trampoline gymnastics course on Tuesday nights, which sounds like fun. The university is really close to where I will be moving and isn’t too far from the school where I teach.

The other teaching assistants and I went to Husum (where my host dad is from, it’s on the North Sea side of Schleswig-Holstein) on Friday night and the whole thing turned out to be quite an adventure. Unfortunately is was dark when we got there so I didn’t get to see much of the city and will have to go back at some point. We had been invited to dinner at one of the British assistant’s places and were planning to leave with the last train around midnight. We ended up missing our train because the line was changed and replaced with a bus and we didn’t know about this until we saw a small sign hanging in the station that notified people of this change. We headed back to Alex’s and had to sleep on the floor for 2 hours and then we came back to catch the bus at 4:00 in the morning. We were the only people on it until the next stop where one other person got on. At the end station we had to catch the train to Kiel and we arrived in Kiel around 6 a.m. I had to wait another half an hour on my bus and was freezing. It is already around 0 degrees C here at night and during the day, so it is cold. Once I got my bus and got home it was already 7 in the morning and my host mom was already awake and working on the computer. She was shocked to see me because I had told her I was staying at Dierdre’s for the night (my original plan, but it was now pointless to do that) and so I had to explain the story to her of how we missed the train which was actually a bus. She just laughed and told me to go to bed.

On Saturday Dierdre had the assistants over for Kraft dinner and a movie (Canadian Bacon, what else?) and on Sunday Ifinally signed my lease for my apartment.

Croatia: A Cultural Learning Experience

2007-11-03T04:41:00.000-07:00

I think you will soon understand why I chose to entitle this entry the way I did.

I’m sorry that this entry is so long, but there is so much that I have to write. I promise it will be worth it for you to read it all! Enjoy!

Why Croatia? Most Americans would be taken aback if you told them you spent your fall break in Croatia. They would question the reasoning behind this decision and say “you are in Europe and you chose to go to Croatia instead of flying to London or Paris or Rome! Are you crazy!” The Germans would say, “You went to Croatia and didn’t go to the coast?! What was the point of going?” Well, maybe I am crazy, but not for this reason. (I personally prefer to think of myself as someone who likes to be different, I’m not a big fan of following the crowd, I’ll stick to my path…it’s much better!) I would say to these people that my trip was worth every penny to me and I can’t wait to go back! The people who ask these kinds of questions, don’t see the worth in a cultural trip, a trip of learning about people and meeting people. It is in doing this that one can really experience a country to its fullest. The buildings in a country-made by the people-, the food of a country-also made by the people-, ah yes, and the people of a country, also made by the people! Maybe it is my love of people and interaction with people that made this trip so attractive to me. Perhaps it was also the reunion of friends after two years that also made the trip special. If it hadn’t been for them I may have never had the opportunity to have this unique and individual experience and I am glad that they made it possible. What I saw and experienced in Croatia was much more unforgettable and impressive than any coastline could be. The warmth with which I was welcomed, the generosity of everyone I met and the families of my friends, and simple yet touching moments such as a drawing given to me by a little Croatian girl. These are the things that count in life. These are the moments we remember most of all, they are moments that are shared and spent with other people.

Language: Bok! That means hello in Croatian. This is one of numerous words that I learned while in Croatia. The language is difficult for foreigners to actually learn because there are so many different cases, but it is possible to pick up on phrases, as I learned. I probably learned around 30 or so words and could understand more if I saw them written on the TV screen. In Croatia, TV isn’t synchronized like here in Germany and so all English, Spanish, and German stations are in these languages with subtitles and it is therefore very easy for children to learn languages. One of the boys in a class that I visited with my friend had learned German from watching TV. When I heard him speak I was completely stunned. This is definitely an advantage for these children.

My friends were quite impressed with the Croatian knowledge that I acquired, while there. Whenever I heard a word repeated a lot, I would ask what it meant. Some words are similar to English and some if heard are understood right away. Others have absolutely no connection and are completely foreign. From my observations, Croatians generally speak loudly and if one didn’t know this, one would probably assume that they argue a lot based on the intensity of the language. My host mom here in Germany found it interesting that my friends from Croatia and I conversed in German, although this is not the mother tongue of any of us. Usually there is one native speaker, when one speaks a language, but we have always spoken to each other in German, among us this is considered a third language. Unfortunately with their family’s it wasn’t as simple. My one friend’s family spoke Croatian and German to me and we understood each other through context. My other friend’s family spoke English, German, and Croatian with me. This was a totally interesting situation to be in. I don’t know that I have ever been in a situation, where I was with a person I could not communicate with at all. Even when my friend was gone and I was with her grandma during the day who only speaks Croatian, I still felt that we were able to communicate to each other even though I was speaking German and she was speaking Croatian! Body language conveys a lot of meaning to the receiver.

Country and Landscape: The flight was only an hour and a half from Germany. My friend Sara, one of the two friends from Croatia that I made in Heidelberg, and her father were at the airport to pick me up. I flew to Zagreb, which is the capital of Croatia, but one wouldn’t realize this from the size of the Airport. The only flights that come into this airport are with very small and cheap airline companies. I flew with German wings, because they fly from Hamburg. I would say this is the smallest airport I have ever been too but nothing tops the airport that Maike and I flew to in Venice to visit Andrea. I think there were only 2-4 gates there. Zagreb had 20. My first impression of Croatia was a bit blurred because I hadn’t seen my friend for 2 years and we spent the car ride catching up with each other, but I did manage to take in some of the scenery on our way to Varaždin. The countryside is absolutely beautiful and we drove through the mountains. Baroque churches and block houses adorn the countryside. The leaves on the trees were just starting to change and this added to the beauty. I recognized right away that Croatia is a country of farming and living off the land. Lots of corn and cabbage and vineyards were to be seen en route to Varaždin. This added to the patchwork quilt of fall colors of the land and made it even more attractive to me. Right outside of the city that my friends live in, many people gather their crops and sell them in front of their houses on the main road.

Food: Food is very important in Croatia. One of the most important things is that a guest be offered food so that they are not hungry. I of course never even had the chance to be hungry. Instead, I thought I might explode from eating too much. I was constantly offered some sort of food, cake, cookie, or chocolate or candy. Typical deserts are a type of cream puff, lots of pastries, and layered cakes. I’m not complaining; it was all absolutely delicious! I gained four pounds while being in Croatia!! Crazy, I know! Lunch. Lunch in Croatia is not at all like lunch in the U.S. It is more like dinner and then some. First a soup is served with bread. Usually this is a type of noodle soup or dumpling soup and then there is a large main course also served with a salad of some sort and then usually a desert. The first meal I had in Croatia, was typical of the northern region. We had some sort of fried dough served with baked chicken. Other traditional meals that I had while in Croatia were Sarma, this is a meat filled cabbage with broth that is served with mashed potatoes, all types of schnitzel, all sorts of potatoes, and eggs, scrambled and fried. Sara and I often went to a café called Sax. This is one of her favorite cafés and she goes there usually once a day for cappuccino. We were there approximately 10 times in 12 days while I was there. It has a nice atmosphere and of course the coffee is good. She knows all of the people who work there and most of the people who go there. Sometimes she even gets free drinks because she goes there so often.

School: Both of my Croatian friends studied Elementary Education with a concentration in German. They were the best in their class which is why they got to go to Germany. There are not as many exchange opportunities in Croatia to go abroad, which makes me appreciate the quality of study at Bethany and in the U.S. in general. This, however, does not mean that the quality of education in Croatia is lacking. Standards are very high for those wishing to attend a University and requirements must be met for every area of study. I had the opportunity to go to school with my friends and introduce myself to their students. I went to five schools total. My one friend, Sara, works at three different schools (the schools that she works at are mainly in the countryside and therefore do not have enough students to require a full time position for a German teacher), the other friend, Goga, has a constant position, and the fifth school was the school of a friend of their that I also went one day with. This was not only a very educational experience but also a very rewarding experience for both me and the students at these schools. The faculty and staff of all the schools welcomed me warmheartedly and attempted to speak what little bit of German or English that they could muster after long years of not speaking either. I wish I could have taken a picture of every child’s face as I told them that I was from America. They asked more than once if I really was from the U.S. Their jaws hit the floor and then as most children and younger students are, they became shy and chattered amongst each other. Their eyes, however, never strayed from me and if they did, they were likely to look back within a few seconds. I felt like the main attraction at a zoo, but it was adorable the way the children acted. I believe one of the teachers I met used the expression “you are something exotic to them. They don’t realize Americans are just normal people like us. To them you are something out of a TV.” Of course this is the truth for most Croatian children. America is and will probably remain to most of its inhabitants a foreign land that is unreachable. I am probably the closest interaction most of them will ever have in their lives with America. The older students were very shy when it came to asking questions. The most frequently asked questions were are you married and do you have kids! I had to laugh at these. But I also understand why they chose to ask these questions.

Family: Family and children are the most important things in Croatian culture. Dinner or our so-called lunch is held at home and the whole family is usually there to sit down and eat together. In the U.S. this hardly happens. I respect this from the Croatian culture. Although they don’t work tons of hours during the week like Americans and therefore don’t make as much money, it is a sacrifice they are willing to make in order to spend time with one another. Material possessions and money carry less worth than family and time together. It makes me question the American way of living. You work yourself to death trying to give your children everything you can yet you don’t have as much time with your family. Luckily for me, this wasn’t the case, but for many others it is. Sylvia, one of the teachers, at a school I went to explained to me why not very many Croatians move abroad, work abroad, or study abroad. They would simply become homesick she said.

Hosts. The Croatians from what I gathered while there are proud to be hosts and as hosts want to make sure that their guests are always satisfied. It’s not rude to leave food on your plate if you don’t like it or can’t eat it all. Tee, coffee, juice, and water are always offered. Even when I went to the schools, I was asked if I liked the school, if I felt comfortable, and was also offered food and drinks without cost. Throughout my stay, Sara bought me all different types of specialty chocolates and cookies for me to try. At the end of my stay, Goga and her family had gave me a bag full of gifts. I had not expected this at all. It was a complete surprise. Her grandmother hand stitches and she had made me a pillow case with an angel on it. I also received a small angel figurine from her mother. There was also a sort of hanging plaque made of wood with a print of the castle of Varazdin and an angel on it. These were not the only gifts. In addition, I received earrings and a t-shirt from Goga’s sister, a large box of specialty chocolates, and Kiki’s (a type of bon-bon similar to starburst) from Goga. The reason for the gifts involving angels is that they are a symbol of the city of Varazdin. This is because it is a baroque city.

Tradition. Sara dances in a Folk dance group in Varazdin. There is more than one in the city and there are many of these in the country. Each region has specific traditional clothing, music, songs and dances and the groups meet to practice these. They have numerous people ranging in age who play the traditional instruments, one example is the mandolin. The groups travel and perform all over Europe and don’t have to pay to do this because they make money from the performances and sell items pertaining to Croatia. The costumes they were are hand made and very intricate and they perform a variety of dances from regions all over Croatia, not just theirs. I got to attend their practices and tape a few clips there. And just by chance, Sara’s group happened to have a performance in the Varazdin Theater while I was there! We snuck in the back without paying and watched the first two performances. Her group was second and I taped the performance. They did an amazing job and the emotion that they put into this made the whole experience very powerful. I haven’t ever seen anything like it.

Nationalism & Pride. Croatians are very proud of their country. They support Croatian companies and products and take pride in this. My friends told me that the remnants of war are still present in southern parts of the country. Luckily, I was in the North and didn’t have to experience seeing that. For those reading this who don’t know much of the history of Croatia, it was formerly Yugoslavia and was split in the 90’s basically because of differences in language and ethnicity. I’m not sure it would have been something I would have wanted to see. The Croats are very hostile when it comes to Bosnia and Serbia and have all the reason to be so since their land was destroyed and their people killed by the Serbs. They told me that they would never travel through these countries and that they would rather drive a longer distance to get somewhere.

I hope you enjoyed my entry on Croatia and were able to learn something from it!

Finally!

2007-10-29T00:57:00.000-07:00

For the week of Oct. 7-15.

I know I haven’t written in a while and I apologize. I haven’t had the chance until now. The last three weeks have been crazy. I will give you a brief overview (ok as brief as possible) of three weeks ago and then my next entry will be about my two weeks that I just spent in Croatia. Pretend like you are reading this 3 weeks ago!

My week started out with making pumpkin pies on Monday. As you know I have Mondays free and I had my family send me pumpkin pie mix from home so that I could make them for my host family. The pie mix made two pies and I ended up taking the 2nd one with me to school on Tuesday. My first dilemma was in making the crust. I had to substitute a baking butter for Crisco, which I thought would cause the pies to burn, but it ended up working out really well. The pie was absolutely delicious and my host family thought so too. They couldn’t come up with a taste that resembled pumpkin. I told them it is a taste of its own. They hadn’t ever had it either. All of my colleagues seemed to like the pie too. They hadn’t ever had it either. One of my teachers bragged to her class about how good it was. I wasn’t at school the whole day on Tuesday because I went on a field trip with Mr. Meyer, but they said as soon as I left, the pie was cut and vanished. Everyone complimented me on Wednesday and I was glad that they enjoyed the taste of an American specialty. Pumpkin is not really very popular in Europe. I think it is probably just an American and Canadian thing. I enjoy exchanging American culture with my German colleagues and it is nice that we can both learn something new at the same time.

On Wednesday, I was once again traveling around with Mr. Meyer. Our students were doing internships at different businesses in Kiel (this is a requirement for school and they do this for 2 weeks) and so we had to visit four of them to make sure things were going well and to thank the companies/businesses for allowing the students to be there. This was very interesting for me since we have nothing like this in the U.S. The students are allowed to choose where they do the internship and the company or business has to agree. We went to 2 Kindergartens (here they are like preschools), a company that sells apartments, and then the most interesting of all, the Canal Island. The Canal Island is exactly that, an island that lies in the middle of the North-Baltic Sea Canal. Only people with special permission or people who pay to take a tour are allowed on the island besides the people who work there. Our student took us as VIPs into the museum and showed us the development and a model of the canal.

On Thursday I was invited to go with a 12th grade German class to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg to see Maria Stuart by Schiller. Of course I agreed to go. We left around 5 in the evening and returned at midnight. The drama was modernized, which I am not a huge fan of and was performed on a rotating stage. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see and the theater itself was impressive. This was a very nice evening and I must admit that the students were very well-behaved.

On Friday morning, the first two hours I was to have my very first self-prepared classes as a teaching assistant. I was allowed to choose the topic and went with Stereotypes for the first hour and American school for the second. I think both were very successful. My 8th graders had never heard of the word ‘stereotype’ so my lesson was very productive and they managed to learn exactly what I had wanted them to. I had them perform “freeze frames” (acting out a scenario without movement) filling in the blank of “All Americans ” It was interesting to see what the students came up with and how the others interpreted what they were acting out. One group chose to complete the sentence with “All Americans drive big cars” and one student interpreted it as “All Americans have Chauffeurs!” I found this hysterical and so did the actual teacher of the class. Another funny one was “All Americans have guns” and a student interpreted it as “All Americans are criminals.” This almost brought me to tears from laughter! I asked the kids if they thought I was a criminal and they all laughed. I told them it wouldn’t be possible for me to be here if that were the case!! We then discussed whether or not stereotypes are good or bad and where they come from. Keep in mind this is 8th grade and we did this all in English. Yeah, German schools are way more advanced in foreign languages than the U.S. We are lucky if we start a language in the 8th grade. Anyway I could rant for hours about that.

I think the kids also enjoyed the second lesson I taught. I brought in two yearbooks, one from my high school and one from Bethany and let the students look at them. They soon started playing a game of who could find the most pictures of me! I couldn’t help but laugh. My teacher said, “I didn’t know you were a cheerleader.” and then I had to go on the defensive end of “cheerleading as a sport” and the stereotypes of jocks and cheerleaders. I like to think of myself as breaking down stereotypes : )This was a good connection to my first lesson. After they looked at my yearbooks, we discussed some of the differences in American schools and German schools and things such as sports, clubs, prom, and homecoming.

On Friday, I had a short day and was allowed to leave early to pick up my friend Helen, who I lived with at the Fulbright Orientation. She teaches in Satrup, a village of 300 or so people and traveled to Kiel by bus, a 3 hour ride because the trains were striking AGAIN. She stayed until Sunday and I gave her the grand tour of Kiel. I took her to Laboe and to Schilksee where the ’72 water Olympics were held. Friday night we met the teaching assistant crew for Chinese…mmm.

On Saturday Helen and I were invited to Canadian Thanksgiving dinner (FYI held in October) hosted by my friend Dierdre from Nova Scotia. Dierdre is very sarcastic and likes to make fun of the U.S. She claims that Canadian Thanksgiving was first and that Americans copied and made their own date. Does anyone know the reality behind this? I don’t. Anyway there were around 20 people there. Twelve of us were teaching assistants and Helen and I were the only Americans. The rest were from Canada, Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland, quite a crowd if I may say so. We all prepared dinner together in D’s apartment. We had an assembly line going. People were peeling carrots and potatoes, while others were making pie, and a few people were cooking. Of course the girl from Ireland ended up eating the rest of the potatoes. I guess some stereotypes you just can’t avoid!! She was also juggling gourds if this tells you anything about my friends here.

On Sunday we went walking on the beach with my host mom and grandma. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention that we took a bus tour of the countryside by accident. Apparently there are two buses with the same exact number that stop at my bus stop and they go to two different places. We wanted to take the one to Schilksee but ended up in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. We knew we made a mistake when it was the last bus stop and we were the only people left on the bus. We got a good laugh out of this and I asked the bus driver about how to get where we wanted to go. He didn’t even have a clue! We rode the bus back to my stop and 2 minutes later we were sitting in the same number bus but arrived at the destination we originally wanted…yeah sometimes the bus system in Germany can be complicated...I still don’t understand what happened there!

Fun Fact

2007-10-06T10:23:00.000-07:00

So they took a picture of us at the consulate and I wasn't sure what it was for. Check it out if you want. Thought it was kind of cool.

http://hamburg.usconsulate.gov/

http://hamburg.usconsulate.gov/hamburg/meetus2008.html

Tag der deutschen Einheit!

2007-10-03T03:08:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone! Sorry I haven't written in a while! I thought since today is a holiday in Germany and I have the day off I would write what has been happening the past week or so. FYI the holiday today is German Unification day, so the day East and West were formally reunited into one country. This will be pretty long...so here goes.

As you all probably have seen in the news, the Euro hit an all time high this past month. It is trading at approximately 1.42 to the dollar, which is bad news for me since I have yet to get my paycheck...but will be good once I get paid!

Last week I actually got to take over a few of my classes and pretty much teach on my own. I was really nervous, but it was fun and my teachers seemed impressed with the way it went! I was excited to hear that. Slowly I am being integrated into the classroom and the students are getting used to seeing me around. The topic in 13th grade right now is the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms, the death penalty, and violence in the U.S. Sometimes I start to think that the only thing the students learn about the U.S. are the worst things. But looking at reality, there are a lot of things that need to be changed in the U.S. The students of course think that the 2nd Amendment is out of date and were shocked to learn that it comes after the rights of an individual. They couldn't believe that something like that would be seen as so important. They believe that the right to have a weapon is a vicious circle. I myself agree, however, many Americans feel that this is the only way they will be safe. In Germany guns are illegal for citizens to possess and the crime rate is MUCH lower than in the U.S.

On the weekend I was invited out to dinner with the head of our English dept. at the school, with whom I work very closely. First we met at her place and watched the Hamburg Soccer team play to victory (she is a huge soccer fan and they have a basement set up like a movie theater with a projector and big screen!!!) Then we went out to El Greco, a very nice Greek restaurant, where we met up with her sister, who really wanted to meet me and two of her friends. They are all in their thirties, but are a lot of fun. After dinner we went to a student bar called "Trotzdem." This was a very nice evening.

On Sunday, my hostmom, grandma and I went into the city to the Pottery market. This is once a year and there were so many amazing pottery pieces! If I had had a million dollars, I would have bought it all!

Monday, I went to Hamburg to the U.S. Consulate to meet with the director of the program "Meet US," in which I will be taking part. It is the outreach program for schools who do not have teaching assistants and want to have Americans come to speak to their students. I will be paid to do this and I think it will be a lot of fun. When I first got to the consulate, I felt like I was entering a prison with all the police and gates, but once I got inside it was much better. The director of the program gave us a tour of the building and told us that the 1st consulate general in Hamburg was a man from Scotland. I thought this was an interesting fact. There were 7 of us total who arrived for the meeting. Three of us are Fulbright teaching assistants and the other 4 are exchange students at high schools in the area.

Today, since we have the day off, my host mom, grandma and I went to Schilksee to walk around. The olympic games were held there in 1972. Sailing and such took place there. It is a beautiful day here so it was perfect for walking along the coast. A lot of fisherman were out today, my host dad included!

I'm starting to get used to Kiel and am better at finding my way around. I wanted to share some of the things that make Kiel and the surrounding area special or things that I now associate with it:

Horse Riding
Fields/farms/animals
Sailing/fishing
Handball (Kiel has the best Handball team in all of Europe, maybe I will get to watch a game!)
houses with straw roofs (in the outside villages)
Plattdeutsch--- Wat is dat? (a German dialect spoken here)
Wind energy
Beaches (sometimes you have to pay to enter certain areas of the beach...this is because they keep them very clean)
Strandkoerber (wicker seats that are rented out on the beach for people to sit in)

New adventures and the smell of the sea!

2007-09-23T04:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Settling in

2007-09-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-09-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

++++++A little addition to my address...you have to put Helge and Silke Carstensen before the address or the postman will not put it in the box, since my name is not on it.

Last Day of Orientation/New Start at School

2007-09-10T01:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-09-04T12:15:00.001-07:00

September 4, 2007

Yesterday Silke Helge and I ate breakfast at 6:30 am and then they dropped me off at the trainstation to catch the train at 8:21 to Hamburg where I switched to get on my train to Koeln. Once I got to the station in Koeln (the ride was around 5 hours) I tried to find the other fulbrighters. They were outside sitting on the steps of the Koelner Dom (Cologne Cathedral). There wouldn’t have been enough space for us all in the station…Luggage was piled up along the steps and total we were 180 students from English speaking countries and there are three rounds that come through orientation. One group was last week, we are this week and the last one comes next week. 150 of the 180 are Americans and the rest are a mixture of Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and British. So you can only imagine what a sight it was with all of us in the city. After waiting what seemed like hours and meeting a bunch of new and interesting people, we got on the buses that brought us to Haus Altenberg, where our actual orientation is taking place. It is an old monastery that has been turned into a place where students come for special meetings such as ours. It is solely used for this purpose, but there is a cathedral where the village people (not a pun) can come.

After arriving at Haus Altenberg we were immediately assigned to our rooms. This was done according to states where we are placed. I am living with Helen from Chillicothe, Ohio, who went to OU and Rebecca from Atlanta, Georgia. They are stationed about an hour and 2 and ½ hours respectively from me. Helen is living in a small village about 10 kilometers from Denmark so I might have to go visit her and we can cross the border together. I have been hanging out with my roommates most of the time because we are also in working groups with the people from our states but I have also met a wide variety of other people. Most are very interesting. The first person I actually met in Koeln was Stephanie, who is going to Munich. She’s is really sweet, so maybe if I get the chance to head south I will stop by and visit her. Of course the percentage of guys to girls ration is very good for the boys and not so good for the girls, but the guys that I have met thus far have been very nice. It’s amazing to see how many Americans actually study German. When you are a German major, you think you are one among maybe 20 in the country but it is nice to know there are more people than that, who find the language important in the states. Most people here know someone else here who either went to school with them or near them. Of course no one hear knows where Bethany College is so I try to explain it to them.

We have had sessions most of the time so I haven’t had much time for anything else. The socializing comes at dinner or after all of the sessions come to an end. Today we divided up into groups to do simulated lessons. There are two really strong personalities in my group so they argued the whole time (believe it or not, that does not include me), but we came up with a lesson plan despite the fact that I wanted to strangle the one girl. After the sessions Helen and I went wandering around the village checking out the creek, woods, etc. We are literally in the middle of nowhere. The cows even thought we were coming to feed them and took off full speed running at us. Well that is all for now. I'll right again at the end of orientation!

The next few days

2007-09-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

On Friday I went out to dinner with the two teachers that I will be working with most of the time, Katja and Andrea. They are lots of fun and again I have to admit that I am very lucky to have landed in Kiel with all of these great people. We had a great time and it was like we had known each other for a long time! I am excited that I will be working with such nice colleagues and am confident that they will be helpful with everything. They told me that on next Friday, my first day in the school, I can just sit and watch them and they will show me around. So no stress, we are taking everything pretty slow, which I find to be good. They are letting me decide which age level I want to work with, which I can’t decide because I have only taught some language labs at Bethany and teaching experience with other age levels, I lack. I guess I will just go where they need me.

My colleagues also signed me up for student housing through the university and I will find out in October if I will receive a room. If not, then I am thinking about possibly staying with my host family. Although it is not directly in the city, which I would prefer, it is nice to have someone to constantly talk to when I want and like I said before they are just very wonderful people in general. Last night we had a dish from India for dinner, which was delicious. After dinner, I spent the next few hours showing them pictures from my hometown, family, Bethany and much more. We had interesting and hilarious conversations the rest of the night.

The weather remains rainy and is a bit of a downer but this will hopefully be better next week. Silke, my host mother, said that if the weather is better next weekend that we can go to Denmark!! See what I mean, when I say they are amazing! It’s like I am really their kid and they want to show me everything. Today we had a large breakfast with lots of delicious German broetchen! Mmmm…nothing beats German bread. After breakfast we went into the heart of Kiel and I took a few pictures even though the weather was not so beautiful. Then we went to see the ships entering the Nord-Ostsee Kanal (North-Baltic Sea Canal). If I understood correctly, this canal is the most important in the world and the number of ships that go through it yearly is higher than anywhere else. It was created by Kaiser Wilhelm for military purposes and it is very practical because the ships do not have to go north to get around Scandinavia, they can simply use the canal, which shortens the length of travel. Currently one of the locks is damaged because a boat drove into it, so they are working to fix it. Right now everywhere in Kiel is a construction site. Lots of roads are closed for repairs in every direction.

Tomorrow I leave for my orientation in Cologne and I have to leave early to make sure I catch the train because we are not sure if I will have delays because of the construction.
Orientation is four days and is held in an old monastery in a small city called Altenberg that is about 30 minutes outside of Cologne. All hundred and some assistants from the U.S. are meeting in the train station, where the buses will then take us to the castle. Needless to say this should be interesting and I am already wondering what exactly we will do for three days.

One more interesting thing I would like to add that has nothing to do with orientation but that I find wild, is that Silke’s grandmother is still alive. She is 101 years old. I have never met a person that old…close…but not quite that old. When I met her she opened her eyes to see who I was, but she doesn’t talk. She sits in a chair until 4 in which she usually sleeps the day away and then she goes to bed to sleep more. It isn’t really much of a life. She doesn’t move much at all and she has to be spoon fed. My host grandmother who takes care of her says that she thinks she was forgotten by God, which is kind of sad but in a way seems to be true. Anyway, that’s all for now. My next entry will cover orientation, where hopefully I will meet more interesting people and maybe I will find out that there is someone placed in a location near me in Schleswig-Holstein. Until then…much love!

Flights and First day

2007-08-30T01:39:00.000-07:00

After a short but difficult goodbye with my family, I boarded the plane to Chicago, my first destination after Pittsburgh. I know it makes absolutely no sense to fly an hour in the opposite direction and then fly back that way, but it was simply cheaper.

Some interesting things happened on my flights. The first one to Chicago, I sat next to John, a very good looking 21 year old from California, who just joined the army in September as a paratrooper. We spent the beginning of the flight talking about this and he showed me a video he took while skydiving. It looked amazing. Maybe some day I will have the guts to do that. Yeah right. Then I found out he was going to Germany too because he is being deployed in Mannheim for 2 years. He asked me twenty questions because he has never traveled abroad, so I did my best to help him out and calm him down.

After arriving in Chicago we went to the food court to grab some lunch. Then we headed back to our departure gate for the flight to Frankfurt. We didn’t have seats too close to each other so we planned to meet again outside the plane to exchange contact info. Meanwhile I was sitting beside two Germans, who I didn’t speak to right away. The conversation between us didn’t start until the end of the flight and when it finally did, I found out that the couple was from Loerrach, where I had done my three week internship in Germany 2 years ago. Yes there’s more. They know the woman I stayed with while I was there! The woman on the plane…strangely enough we never exchanged names…said that she was going to call Birgit and let her know she met me on a plane coming from the U.S. So it’s definitely a small world when randomly you are sitting in an airplane next to someone who happens to have connections to you even though they are from another country. It turns out this woman is a teacher also, so we spent the rest of the flight talking about what I am doing here in Germany.

After getting off the plane, I met back up with John and helped him get to passport control and find his luggage. From there one of the German military men took him under his wing and helped him figure out how to get to Mannheim. We exchanged emails and I went on my merry way to check in for my transfer flight to Hamburg, which I would have to wait approximately 7 hours for. You can only imagine how hard it was to keep myself awake after hours of no sleep on the uncomfortable plane ride prior, but it all worked out and after paying 50 Euro for my extra luggage, which I hadn’t planned on having to do, I made it to Hamburg airport, where my host family was waiting right outside the baggage claim with German and American flags in hand. I couldn’t have missed them. I also couldn’t have predicted what they would look like they do. They are both very young. The wife more so than the husband. I would guess early 40’s but they haven’t told me how old they are. Anyway, we drove the hour back to Kiel and stopped in the actual city on the way to where they live in a suburb called Altenholz. The buildings are all fairly new that I could see- keep in mind I haven’t been to the old part of the city-but they informed me that most of Kiel had been destroyed in WWII. Even if the architecture is somewhat lacking, the view of the coast is beautiful and there are tons of bike trails, which make me excited.

We came back to the house where everything was already in place for me. I have my own room, wireless internet, a separate phone line, and a TV and the best thing is, is that they don’t want me to pay them a dime! Crazy, I know. I can already tell that I am going to enjoy myself here and that my family treats me like a queen. I really couldn’t ask for a better situation right now. It is amazing…these people didn’t even know me. They just found out about me through the school and decided they would let me live in their Apartment since their daughter is in Australia. Hospitality is one thing I can say that every German I have ever stayed with has never failed to give me. Dinner was cold cuts, cheeses, and breads. The typical “Abendbrot” in the North, but was of course good. My host grandma came over for dinner with us and was very excited to meet me. We might head into town together tomorrow afternoon, but first things first I have to get some sleep.

A side note on the weather. It is only like 60 degrees here and I showed up in capris and a t-shirt! Yeah, it’s cool already, but my family says that it only snowed one day last year so hopefully I won’t have to worry about that!

Address and phone #

2007-08-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

My address:
Regenbrook 1
24161 AltenholzGermany

My telephone number:
011-494315926183

2007-08-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

August 24, 2007

Hello everyone! I leave on Tuesday the 28th, so I just wanted to provide you all with some beginners information! Enjoy!

Many of you may not know that I have been placed in Northern Germany. Kiel to be exact. It is located in the much historically disputed and trouble-causing Schleswig Holstein that was formerly part of Denmark. This means that I am of course very close to Denmark and for you beach lovers, it has many beaches since it is on the Baltic coast. In addition, it is a large harbor city and the capital of the state.

Here is the website for my school if anyone would like to check it out. Of course it is in German, but if you click on "Neu am EBG" on the left side (it is under Start) then you can see pictures of the school at which I will be working. Because of the research I proposed to do on Turkish Immigrant Youth, I was placed at a school with a fairly high immigrant population. This is perfect for me as I will get to observe first-hand how well the students are integrated and hopefully be able to interview them.

www.ebg-kiel.de/

My school is a Gymnasium, which means that it is the highest level of high school you can attend in Germany. For those of you who don't know much about the German system, it is broken down into four different types of high schools. There is the Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium, and the Gesamtschule which is a combination of the three previously mentioned. Most of the time, only the students who attend the Gymnasium can proceed on to college, but there are exceptions if you meet certain standards and can prove yourself. Which school you will attend is decided around the age of ten. Yes, I said ten. And the person who usually decides this is a teacher of the student. So basically they determine whether your kid is smart or not at a very young age, nevermind the fact that they still have plenty of time to grow and learn. The Germans love structure, so I doubt this will ever change. I myself as you can already tell am skeptical that this hasty decision is a good thing. I believe it does not allow enough room for children to reach their potential or motivate them in any way. If they are told that they will be attending the Hauptschule then they will mostly assume that this is their destiny and will live with whatever jobs are thrown their way, not caring to advance because they have been labeled 'stupid.' When you are told something long enough, you are likely to believe it. I feel that the students who are placed into the lower level high schools do exactly this.

Anyway to continue, the Hauptschule is like a vocational school training its students in a technical skill so that they can enter the work force after grade 9 (most students enter technical training following this under apprenticeships. The Realschule goes until grade 10 and therefore lies somewhere in between and the Gymnasium usually goes up to grade 13. At the end of the 13th year the students at the Gymnasium will take a very important test which will determine what subjects they will be allowed to pursue at the college level. Preparation is long and arduous and the outcomes can be disastrous if a student fails to achieve a certain percentage in a field they are interested in.

So the system is flawed just like anywhere else, but perhaps in different ways. One thing's for sure the German education system knows what they are doing in terms of World Language studies. Most students will learn