plugging along

You know what's great? I got up at 7am this morning (after going to bed at 3am), ran four blocks to the bus stop because I was late, just to come in to school to sit and watch a fifth grade class like I do every tuesday morning, but then, when I got here, the teacher told me that, he forgot to call me, but they're taking a test so I don't need to come. And my next class to go to is not for four hours. "It's ok, I have a book, blah blah" *grumble grumble smolder smolder* Why don't they put some beds in the teachers lounge? a cott at least... I'm sooooo tired :(

ok... deep breath...rant over...

I haven't posted in a while. I've just been very boring lately and am pretty sure you all don't want to read me whining about the same things day after day. But as for the last week or so.... Last wednesday I tought a fifth grade class all by myself. It went reasonably well, plenty of room for improvement. It's hard to not go too fast with them, I think lots of the poor little ones were lost. I don't think any of my other lessons were too interesting. One of my discussion groups, the one with 9 girls, has decided they want to make a movie in english. I'm quite pleased, I never have to plan anything for them, they just talk and talk and talk. And now they have a project, so it's great. Who knows if the movie will acutally ever be made, as long as they practice a little english along the way. Although it would be a shame to not film it, so far the plot sounds pretty stellar. It involves "Cool Girls" and "Girly Girls" and a high school dance competition, and an action scene where the girly girls use their hand bags to fight against the Cool Girls' switch blades. I smell and Oscar.

Friday I babysat for a little 7 year old girl who I'm going to be watching every friday afternoon. It's a German family but they lived in the US for a while and want her to keep up her english. The problem is that after 4 months back here she already doesn't want to speak any english with me. So it's mostly a lot of her speaking in German and me responding in english. I'll have to come up with some games or something. Friday night Katie and I rented Chicago. I love musicals.

Saturday evening I went out to a few bars with the French TA here and her two friends visiting from Paris plus another TA from Quebec working in a small town north of here. Thank heavens the Austrailian TA came later to rescue me from sitting and listening to French with occasional english translations from the Canadian all night. :-P It was quite fun though.

Sunday... I slept and read and only left my room briefly to go for a run in the cold cold coldness. I wouldn't mind running in the cold so much if only my nose didn't run the whole time. Oh, and also if they would shovel something somewhere so I didn't have to run on snow and ice. At least it was sunny and peaceful. Though there are a suprising number of people out walking around in the woods still in the winter time.

Yesturday I actually had to go to work. That's right, only a three day weekend. boo hoo. I had to go in to school for a whole hour. I know, my life is so stressful you're wondering how I manage... anyway, I tought a fun lesson to some 10th graders involving making them write a poem. hee hee hoo hoo, I'll definitely be doing that again in the future. Yesturday evening I went to see Geisha with yet another French Canadian girl I met a few weeks ago. The movie was ok, of course dissapointing after i loved the book so much, as films so often are. The film felt rushed and too short. I think if you hadn't read the book it might be confusing and you woulnd't understand the charactors motivations most of the time. But it's very pretty and it was fun to see all the Kimonos and things I had been reading about. After the movie Diana (said Canadian) talked me into staying to watch the next showing of Munich because some of her coworkers were coming to meet her. So I did. It was good, certainly entertaining. Some very overly romantisized Spielberg moments and I'm sure the whole political situation was way over simplified and dramatized. But it was good and I think did a fairly good job at not being too confusing and trying to show the motivation behind all the terrorism. Usually movies that involve terrorism confuse me a lot, so I'd say that's and accomplishment. Plus it's super emotional and sappy as well, as expected. Also really quite gory, just to warn you.

I didn't get home until after 1am and then Eric called me! which was a lovely surprise. We don't talk on the phone often, or ever. I don't have a land line so I can't call the US unless I pay out the nose to use my cell phone. (So I hope you havn't been expecting a call from me) We e-mail and chat on IM a lot. I think its something about our english major nature, because sometiems we're better at writing things than speaking. I also have the tendancy to talk very very quietly, you may have noticed, which is not good for phone calls. But it sure is nice to hear his voice from time to time. If anyone else wants to call me, I'll be very happy to hear you!

Still four weeks to go until my next break at the end of Feb. I'll be traveling to Duisburg to stay with Lindsay and go to Karnival (Mardi Gras, Fasching, Fat Tuesday) in Cologne. Then hanging out somewhere up in northern germany, probably visiting Muenster at some point, until our Fulbright conference starts the next week in Berlin.

I'm working on planing spring break in April... planning on meeting a few other fulbrighters in Corfu, Greece. Hopefully Eric can come too, not sure yet. I'm soooooooo excited to go somewhere warm! Have I mentioned that it's cold here??