One day!!

One of these was supposed to be my trailer....

Guess not. For now we'll be squishing three into one trailer. It'll all work out.

Ah... the night before departure. The Focus is filled to the gills yet again. I would like to complain about how much I hate packing, but I realized while going through and trying to tag my old posts that I already have numerous posts about how much I hate packing, so you can just look back on those if you've forgotten. Man oh man. Moving again. Am I crazy? Yep, pretty sure that I am.

So, what have I been doing the last couple weeks at home? About the same thing I usually do when I'm home. Sleeping late, bumming around with friends and family. I've also been collecting massive amounts of books books and more books. My bumper is going to be scraping the asphalt there are so many books in my trunk right now. Most of them are for my future classroom library. Some of them are teacher books for me that I've been browsing through trying to figure out how to teach English, or rather how I want to teach English. I've got lots of ideas that will hopefully solidify over the next few weeks.

Oh, also a bridge collapsed which you probably all heard about. It's pretty crazy. I wasn't anywhere near it nor did I know anyone on it. I did see it last week when we went downtown to see a play. It's totally unreal.

Samantha Brown is on TV right now showing me around Madrid and I remember two years ago when I was sitting here watching her holding a beer in Munich just a few days before I moved there. So exciting! I miss Europe a little bit.

But- I couldn't be more ready for South Dakota! Ok, that's a little bit of a lie. I could be a lot more ready, but I think I'm ready enough. I don't think I could be totally ready. And really that would be pretty dull anyway, right? I'm excited and confident that I can do this and that it's going to be a great two years. Extremely challenging, but all the greater for every challenge to overcome.

Timing goes something like this- driving to St. Francis tomorrow to hopefully unload stuff into our trailer. Saturday morning- leave with 2o something other SoDak TFAers for a fun filled camping trip somewhere in the Black Hills I think. Monday starts four long weeks of teacher in-services at my school. Thankfully that will give me some time to settle in and to do lots and lots more planning for my classes.

Nervous? anxious? stressing out a little bit? Ummm, yeah.

This is scattered and has been written in chunks over the course of the day- forgive me. It's time to go to bed, not that I can ever sleep the night be for traveling, but I'll give it a shot. Call me tomorrow if you're bored because I sure will be (if you've ever driven though southern MN you'll understand)!

Institute: Week One

But first a flashback to pre-institute: At my interview last Thursday I found out that I will be teaching 9th grade English. Woo! Pretty pumped. The administrators and teacher I met were very nice and seemed happy to have us coming in, they have extremely high turnover, there's been three 9th grade English teachers in the last two years. But they seemed pretty positive and are working on a lot of programs to improve student achievement. Oh, and, I will in fact be living on a trailer on school property. Awesome.

Friday we packed up a few cars and started down the long road to Houston. Stop 1 was Witchita where some people had to take the Praxis test. Stop 2 was Denton, TX where were did some serious birthday partying as seen here.

Sunday we finally made it to lovely Moody Towers at the University of Houston (the two grey towers at the forefront of the picture) which we now call home along with the other 750 corps members here.

The registration process was pretty indicative of what was to come, we were whipped around several stations picking up and signing things while staff actually timed us and kept track of their registration room efficiency. Efficiency is the name of the game around here. Monday my bus to get to the school I'll be working at this summer left at 6:35 a.m. as it does every day. The first week has been very tough adjusting to TFA culture. We're kept on a super tight schedule with lots of rules and limits as they try to instill us with a sense of urgency to learn as much as possible while we're here so we can be effective in the classroom. It's pretty insane. The super structuredness definitely rubs me the wrong way, but I'm beginning to see the necessity of it. Week One is all sessions on things like lesson planning and classroom management. Week Two we start actually teaching kids in summer school. Ah! I'm teaching 9th grade English which works out well. I'll be splitting the 105min block into two periods with my collaborative partner. Our first lesson is on main ideas and supporting details. I still have a lot a lot of work to do preparing it. Teaching real stuff is way harder than the random fun lessons about cowboys that I got to teach in Germany. But I'm excited about the challenge and looking forward to really diving in and pushing myself. It's excited to be with 750 other people doing the same thing because they feel so passionately about reforming education and closing the gap. Pretty inspiring.

Last night I got eight hours of sleep for the first time in a long time and now I'm going to finish my laundry, iron some stuff that has been wrinkly since leaving DC and then get to work on some main ideas and supporting details.

Ra Ra for Richmond!

I can't believe how German I am sometimes... living there for so long affected me more than I thought. I bought a bike over the weekend and I can't even tell you how much I have complained (at least in my head) since then about the lack of bike-friendlyness in DC. Not only that but I find myself worried about rules and laws and feel distressed that there seem to be no laws about bikes. I'm sure there are, but no one knows or follows them. How can people bike without bike laws??? How can there not be a bike rack outside every building?? But riding a bike to work is fun, and a huge improvement over taking the bus, so I guess I'll relax about it. I would like to start a campaigne to make DC a more bike-friendly city. Someone out there get on that for me, would you?

Backpedaling a bit (haha, it's a bike joke!), I had a great weekend in Richmond. I drove down there Friday night and met Jackie and Emily at Jason's apartment. Saturday afternoon we went down to Carry Town and then to UR campus to wander around. It was weird but nice. I somehow forgot how incredibly beautiful it is. I guess you don't notice so much when you're living there, but it really is a perfect little bubble of prettyness. And they remodeled the science center AND the dining hall which blew me away, I'm a tiny bit jelouse. Overall it was nice to see it and made me happy that I went there and have so many fond memories, but I'm done with that part of my life and wouldn't want to go back now. It's a good feeling. What I miss most is my classes, but that just means I need to get my butt back in school soon, and I can manage that. Moving on, Saturday night some of Jason's friends from high school living in DC came down and we all went out for a very nice dinner at one of my favorite Richmond resturants. (The Hard Shell, in case you're interested) There was wine and bread and wine and crab legs and wine and key lime pie and a little more wine.... It all felt very posh and grown up. Richmond night life is kinda like that. After dinner we went out to a couple bars and then all went back to Jason's to continue the party..... a good time was had by all. Sunday I stopped at Target, bought a bike and a de-humidifier (oh the joys of living in a basement) and then spent half and hour with two high school aged target employees trying to fit it in my car, I finally had to buy a wrench to get the front wheel off and get it home. whew.

Now it's back to work for me. Work is getting a bit more interesting as I get involved with more projects. I'm very excited for the meeting I'm going to in Minneapolis in a few weeks because a)I finally get to meet some members and see some faces to go with all the names I'm e-mailing and it should be interesting and b) It's in Minneapolis which means it's a free trip home and I get to see everybody!! :)

York, PA

hmm, there's a new blogger. I'll have to play with that later. After 7 hours of sitting at a computer at work I'm not all that excited to log on when I get home, hence the not so frequent blogging. But here's a quick update on my life anyway. My weekend in York was really nice. It was great to see Caroline and be around a close friend who's known me longer than a few weeks. I'm hoping she's going to apply for the open position in my department.... we'll see! I didn't really see the tourist sights in York (there are some) but we did go shopping and I got to go to TWO family labaor day picnics and eat a lot a lot of picnic-y food. So it was nice and relaxing and good to be away from the city and all the stress of moving and whatnot.

This weekend promises to be a bit more on the wild side, at least that's what Jackie is hoping for. I was never really all that wild during the four years I lived in Richmond before, so I'm not sure if that will pan out... but we'll see. I could go for a let loose kinda weekend about now. This 9-5 cubical stuff is getting to me... it's a little scary that I'm actually starting to get used to it and I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

I saw Grant today! Here visiting his sister at George Mason, he invited everyone he knows in DC out to dinner, we had a two law students, two grad students and three young professionals. It's like I keep saying... DC is the place to be!

in fact it's so exciting here that I'm wiped out and may fall asleep right now before 10 pm. wooooo. it's a crazy life I lead. :)

Football Fever

and by football I mean soccer, obviously, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Since I last wrote....

I did indeed to go the beach near Rostock with Julia, it's called Warnemunde and it was pretty cool. Actually it was pretty hott, but the water was freezing, BUT there were jellyfish all over! And they don't sting, so you can pick them up and play with them and stuff, I was pretty excited about this, never having seen or touched a jelly fish before. Also of interest, while the part of the beach we were on was populated mostly by people in bathingsuits, at least bottoms -topless is standard in Europe- we took a walk further down the beach to the FKK (Freie Korper Kulture = Free Body Culture = naked people) section, which was an experience to say the least.

At some point I left Rostock and went to Greifswald once again to stay with Chris. We went to the beach there, no jellyfish. I also went to some of his classes with him which was pretty fun. It was nice to see another Fulbright TA at work and to see a school in a small east german town quite different from Munich. His school is smaller and he only has one, which I think is a whole lot better. He actually knows his classes and teaches the same ones on a regular basis. I think I would have prefered that. But, I got to live in Munich, so I really can't complain. We attempted to team teach a lesson on A Brave New World which I read about 2/3 of the night before, it turns out I read 2/3 more than most of the class, so it wasn't so much a discussion as it was me and Chris talking. I could definitely see the difference in students between the two schools. On the one hand, my kids are kind of rich and snotty and cheeky sometimes, but on the other hand, the advantage to working in a more affluent area is that many more of them also study abroad for a year and have more ambitions to go on to better Universities and so they really want and need to know English. East Germany is still a very different place from West Germany, especially Bavaria.

Speaking of Bavaria... Chris came back down to Munich with me on the very very long train ride on Thursday. We met his friend Greg, who's interning in Stuttgart, at the station. The fun started immeadiatly with a trip to the nearby beer garden for dinner followed by a little bar hopping in the Glockenbach and getting home around who knows when. Friday I was determined to make it to Andechs Monestary and Brewery (yes, most bavarian monestaries are also breweries) So we got up fairly early and made the hour or so long treck out into the country. I'd say it was worth it. The scenery was beautiful, the beer was cold and the schweinhaxen were the best. I wasn't really feeling the best after the beer, schweinhax'n, and direct sunlight all day... but it was still worth it. We crashed waaaay early Friday night and slept for a very long time. Saturday we had a little grill party on the Isar river, which I had also been wanting to do. Other than the ten minute downpour early in the afternoon it was pretty perfect and I got one more use out of my little grill.

Saturday night was the USA vs. Italy game. We went to the "Fan Park" which is at the Olympic center where they have a huge screen set up and naturally lots of beer and sausage vendors. I had been kind of down on all the world cup hype going on before, but being there was actually really cool. It's an amazing atmosphere. We met tons of people, lots of americans, as well as Austrailians who were in town for the Austrailia Brazil game in Munich on Sunday and people from just about every other country you can think of. Everyone was super friendly and just having fun and enjoying the moment. I'd have to say I'm becoming a bit of a World Cup fan. The US by the way is not doing so hot, they still have a very slim chance of making it to the next round. Germany, however, is doing pretty great and has won every game so far. So I think I'm about to become a Germany fan :) I'm going to be a little upset if they go on to win while i'm not here anymore.

I'm getting a little sad about leaving Munich in general. I was downtown today and ran into the crowd of Serbia-Montenegro fans on their way back from the stadium after their team won. They were singing on the escalator up the U-bahn, it was great. How could I want to leave? The weather has been so nice, and all the people here for football is so exciting, and tomorrow I have to say goodbye to my girls in my discussion group. sigh. Of course I'm also still super excited to go home and think of new things about America that I'm looking forward to every day. It's going to be so strange to be back after being gone for nearly a year. I'm definitely going to have some reverse culture shock. I've become so aclimated to everthing here. The US will be weird. But I think I'll get over it quickly. Hopefully I still remember how to drive a car. Hopefully I will also get a job and know what I'm doing soon!

For the next week I will be trying desperately to sell off and get rid of as much stuff as possible before I attempt to cram my most valued posessions into two suitcases. I hate moving, especially packing. Also as long as this heat and sunshine continues I plan on going to the outdoor pool near my school a lot in an attempt to begin the re-getting in shape plan and also to get very tan :)

I'll probably write something more reflective before I go. Until then, I encourage you to watch some football/soccer. ciao

P.S. Ignore the last few Flickr pics, it's just stuff I'm trying to sell, unless you are in Munich, in which case, buy my stuff!! Picture from the rest of my travels are up though!

Paris

Hello Hello. I'm back again. Seems I'm always just getting back or getting ready to leave these days. Never a dull moment. Anyway, I was in Paris with my mom for an extended weekend. She got in last friday, we flew out saturday morning and then flew back wednesday evening. It was a very fun trip. I'm glad I got to go back to Paris again, the last trip I took there was also fun but very rushed. We saw a lot more of the city in between the sights this time, and it is a very cool city indeed. So much history, so many important people, artists and writers and such, so many important movements and ideas started there. I liked walking around some of the nieghborhoods, the latin quarter and St. Germain and the Jewish quarter was really neat. Of course we also went to the Louvre and Orsay and the Pompidu, but half of it was closed :( We also made it to Versailles and Chartres. I really liked Chartres, an amazing Cathedral in a quaint little town. But then, I'm kind of a big nerd when it comes to Gothic cathedrals. I just think it's so amazing to ponder what people were thinking when they built these huge structures and how the hundreds of pilgrims who came through would have felt when they saw it. Like I said, big nerd :-P

I'm glad Mom decided to come and travel with me. It was nice spending so much time with her. I admit I had my concerns, especially at the begining when she was saying how she missed her car and her hot tub at home ten times a day. She may look younger than she is, but she complains like an old woman ;) She also took millions of pictures of me looking like a dork in front of every site in Paris, and then made me take one of her, all availible here for your viewing pleasure. But other than the obvious american touristyness... she's pretty cool for a mom and I'm very glad to have a good relationship with my mother and to be able to have fun together and talk about everything. This week she's in Karlsruhe teaching a week long class, she'll be back here in Munich next weekend for a trip with her Augsburg students.

I was dreading going back to school yesturday, but it was a pretty good day. My cowboy poetry lesson is always a hit and I did it twice. I'm in school today as well, I'm coming today and next friday to make up for the two days I missed. I taught the worlds worst lesson on New York in the last class... I was pretty much completely unprepared and it turned out they have already been learning about NYC and I didn't really have any new information or interesting activities for them. Oh well. I'll do a better job with Chicago next week.

This weekend I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing. Lots of sleeping, babysitting saturday, planning my June travels, maybe some more applying for jobs, figuring out what I'm going to do with my life two months from now... Seven weeks until I go home!!!! I'm so excited. I can't believe I've been in Europe for so long, it's time to get out of here. Who's throwing me a welcome home party?