Grinning

I just tought a whole period by myself to a 13th class once again about american resume's and applying for jobs. It was my advisor teacher's class and the first time I've really tought something for the whole class in front of him. And he was impressed :) He said he liked my style with the students, it's apparently "light" and fun. :-D I'm such a sucker for praise... but really it means a lot to me coming from him because I think he's a really good teacher and I'm always worried when I go and assist in his classes that he's secretly thinking that such a shy quite scatterbrained girl like me will never make a good teacher.... BUT I can be interesting and informative and even midly humorous in front of a classroom. So.. Yay! I'm happy. Maybe I really can do this as a career...

In other news... Phil is here! He got here Sunday and has been soaking in some Bavarian culture for the last few days. Monday I had pretty much all day to take him around. We saw three different Christmas markets, drank some Gluewein and some beer, went skating with lots of small children on the little outdoor rink downtown, saw some pretty churches, and ate some bavarian food. Pretty much the whole bavarian christmastime experience packed into one day. I'm totally mastering the gracious host and tour guide thing. Seriously, you're all in for a treat if you come visit! You can read his version of his trip here. Tonight I think we'll take a peek at the big crazy winter festival going on on the Oktoberfest grounds... it's supposed to be alternative and international... I'm a little afraid of what the German interpretation of those things is going to be...

Gobble Gobble

So... been getting a little lazy with the blogging. This week... was cold. really cold. Being here for Thanksgiving alone was a little sad. It wouldn't have been so bad except that I had to go to school and talk to german school kids about Thanksgiving traditions and how everyone in America was eating a big meal together with their families.... sigh.

One of my schools has a group of students from LA visiting for a week, so they had a party for them that I went to Thursday. they had bavarian food. on Thanksgiving. not the same. Thursday night I went out with the French TA here to the Erasmus party. She quickly found some french students and I didn't see her much after that. I actually found some americans also, so it was all good. I went out to a couple bars with them and got back in the not so wee hours of the morning Friday. Then Friday afternoon I went with the Californians to the concentration camp in Dachau. It was really really cold and we were ougtside for at least 2 hours. Poor kids, they looked like they were being tortured. It was a good excursion though, we had a specially arranged tour, so that was nice and very informative and of course as depressing and nausiating as you would expect it to be.

Saturday I went to a Thanksiving party orgainized by a bunch of Americans on the ToyTown website. It was nice, I finally got some good Turkey and pumpkin pie, mmmm. And they were all super nice.

Then I went and baby sat. My favorite thing about baby sitting American families is that they all have cable or satalite and get english television. I saw Jay Leno and Connan O'Brian! It was excellent.

In a few minutes I'm going to go pick up Phil from the train station! Hopefully we'll have some fun in the next few days, I'll be sure to take some pics.

Hope everyone else had a nice Thanksgiving!

Grand

My initial excitement over the snow didn't last long. My 20 min. trudge through 3 in of unplowed snow on the sidewalks on the way to school this morning pretty much put an end to any childlike feelings of joy and giddyness I may have had. Since I last posted it's been snowing almost continually, intermixed with freezing rain. I was not expecting this. Which probably explains why I was stupid and wore cute little sneakers this morning and not boots. Now I know. Weather is such a non-event here. I miss Minnesotans! No one is talking about it, more importantly, no one is complaining about it! Come on! Snow ploughs seem to be quite slow in getting things cleaned up. And once they do clear the side walks there's no salt or sand, so the plough only succedes in clearing away most of the snow and leaving a thin layer of super slipery compacted snow. And it's cold. And there's a lot of snow. Shouldn't we be talking about this? What if it's a record or something? What if it's slightly unusual in any way? What's going to happen tomorrow? No one ever knows the forcast around here. It drives me nuts. Who care's if it's hardly ever right. Then at least you can talk about whether it was right or wrong. Stupid Germans and their lack of smalltalk and interest in the weather.

Anyway.

This weekend was all about the Irish girls. Katie had two friends come visit her for her birthday so i hung out with them friday and saturday night. Friday we went out to a couple bars, including the Irish Pub Katie is working at. They had a U2 cover band, it was fun. We stayed out really late, until the U-bahns start running agian in the morning. They are super sweet, really lovely as they would say. Saturday we went out to dinner and saw Harry Potter (in English) it was brilliant! Much darker and thriller like than the others, but also really funny. I liked it. I'm reeeeaaaaaally excited for Narnia to come out in a couple weeks! I'm definitely going to see it opening weekend.

Last night I went out with Peter to a German improv show. It was really fun, but after hanging out with the irish girls and picking up an Irish accent all weekend my German was extra terrible it seemed like. But I did understand the improve for the most part, which is good. It was really funny, I want to go back again sometime.

So last week one teacher asked me to prepare a text to teach her class on something about American art. Any american art, painting, music, litereature, museums.... a somewhat broad topic. I found a good text on Jackson Pollock n "The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry" (which was a good thing to bring along) it was a bit to difficult for them possibly, with some vocabulary that I think the teacher didn't even know, like succinct and interlocutor, but they got the gist of it I think. And at the very least they know now who Jackson Pollock is.

I havn't read the book we're starting to talk about in class tonight... oops, I'm such a slacker :-P better go work on that now...

Schnee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Translation: Snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This morning I woke up, opened my crazy scary mechanical metal blinds, and wonder of wonders... snow! all over! an inch at least all over everything. Sticking to all the tree brances and rooftops, still falling softly. There's nothing like waking up to see the first snow of winter. Wonderful, magical, I love it!

Everything is already set up for Christmas downtown. There's a great big Christmas tree on Marienplatz and every store has decorartions out, it's pretty :) The stalls are already set up for the christmas market which opens next friday. Nothing can compare to Christmas in the Kitsch capitol of the world :) Fa la la la la...fa la la la

Feeling so romantical...

Lots to look forward to: Phil is coming next week, I'm going to Neuremburg for a weekend with Other Fubrighters in December, my parents are coming for Christmas AND..... drum roll please... Eric is coming for New Years!

I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
[Christmas] is all around us
and so the feeling grows...

I need to rent a copy of Love Actually this weekend...

Couchkartoffel

I have a television! Which possibly explains the lack of blogging the last few days.... I'm not one to watch tons of TV, but it's nice to have and fun to watch German TV. Really I need it to fully experience the culture. yeah, that's it... MTV, Sex in the City (dubbed), and CNN international... very German. Sometimes a girl just needs to unwind.

This week has been quite good. Wednesday was Buss und Bet Tag, The day of prayer and atonment, apparently a catholic holiday that I was unaware of. Anyway, we didn't have school, so yay for a catholic state! I don't know what we were thinking with all that separation of church and state stuff, they get way more vacation days here.

I met a few of the other non-American TA's working in Munich! One girl sent out an e-mail to bunch of us so we had a little meet up and went to cafe downtown, one Spanish Girl, one French, one from Austailia, and one other American who lives an hour or so away. It was fun, and now I have more friends! We talked about what a great job we have... working 12 hrs a week, not having to plan much, not having to grade anything... this is the life really.

Later Wednesday I met with a girl who e-mailed me through the Sprachduo website. She needed someone to read over a resume and cover leter to send american companies. She happens to work as a tour guid here, and in exchange for my english expertise she gave me a private tour of the Altstadt. It was fun, I learned lots of interesting facts about the city, so much history. You're just going to have to come here yourself and ask me for a tour if you want to find out about them.

Today in school I tought one lesson about the Declaration of Independence. We got through the first paragraph and a half in 45 min, so many big words. Half the class looked like they were zoned out, one girl was actually sleeping, but at least some of them were interested. In another class I tought a lesson about Tall Tales from the midwest, specifically Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed and it was really fun! They loved the Paul Bunyan stories, and the illustrations I tried to draw on the board to explain them. So, pat on the back for that idea, Anne :)

And now... I'm exahsted. I'm going to crawl in bed with my remote control and probably fall asleep in a matter of minutes.

Have a lovely day.

Heidschi Bumbeidschi

I bought a CD at Wallmart on Saturday called "Schlager und Stars: zur Weihnachtszeit", German folk stars (yes, they have popular folk music, called Schlager, and popular singers to go along with it) singing German chrismas songs, it's fabulous! My favorite song is "Heidschi Bumbeidschi" as far as I can tell it doesn't actually mean anything, just a nonsence word. It's a quality song. I'm listening to it now while eating a Brez'n (Pretzle)... Have I mentioned that I love Bavaria?

So.. the last few days... nothing terribly thrilling. I finally cleaned my room slightly, at least unpacked my suitcase. I went swimming and then baby-sat on Saturday. Sunday I met Peter at the Neue Pinotek, one of the three big art musuems, this one with art from the 18th and 19th Centuries. It's a good museum. It's not Paris of course, but they have a very decent collection of Impressionism along with lots and lots of really boring Romantic landscapes. It was fun walking around and talking about them all with Peter. This week we spoke in english, so it was easy. Next week will be German.

Today I went to Walmart yet again and I bought a bike! Weeeee! I'm excited. I've been looking for one for a while, but haven't been able to find a good used one. They're all either expensive or look like their going to fall apart. The bike from Wallmart is not the highest quality, BUT it has a one year warrenty. So if it falls apart they have to fix it for me! I learned my lesson from all my bike troubles in muenster. I don't trust people, I trust Wallmart. :-P Now I can ride my bike to school! Well, to one of the schools, the other is a bit far, but I can at least ride to the S-bahn stop. I suppose it's slightly crazy to buy a bike at the begining of winter, but I'm tough, i think i can do it for a while longer yet. I may go back to taking the bus when it snows, but that still involves a good but of walking, so we'll see.

I've also found someone who's going to sell me a used TV with DVD player!! Hopefully I can pick it up tomorrow or wednesday. Then my life here will finally be complete....

This evening I had my Food in Literature english class, which I really like. I'm going to be doing a group project with two other girls on Food in Film. yay school!

I wore a sweatshirt and jeans to class because I'm feeling lazy and I get sick of having to look presentable at school everyday, but I felt like such a slob. Stupid Europeans looking nice and sylish all the time. It's worse than Richmond even. And now everyone is doing the whole jeans tucked into boots thing. It drives me a little nuts, but I'll probably be doing it before long. I have my Cowgirl boots with me.... must.... assimilate....

Germany in the news

Because I occasionally feel compelled to put something educational or informative in my Blog, here's an article from CNN.com today on the grand coalition lead by Angele Merkel which is now the head of the German government. I would offer some personal commentary but I have a very difficult time understanding what the heck is going on myself. It's so completely different from American politics. It's like if in the last election, since it was so close, the Democrats and the Republicans had just decided to call it a tie and rule the country together....Ok, republicans, you can have Bush as president, but we get to have the speaker of the house and the vice president... huh?? Doesn't seem to me like a whole lot would get done with two opposing parties ruling together. I guess we'll see. Sounds like they're getting along so far. And raising taxes... my capitalist instinct is that raising taxes is not going to help the ailing economy, Germans are stingy enough as it is, but time will tell. I'm pretty much lost when it comes to politics, all I can say is: Germans are crazy.

Why am I not asleep yet?

This was the view yesturday evening from my kitchen. The sun is setting way to early for my tastes... I looked it up and Munich is actually ever so slightly further north of the twin cities. geeze. Anyway, it was pretty. That pyramid thing is the subway station and the big metal building on the right is the clinic. Yes, I live between a hospital and a graveyard. Germans are known for being efficient.

I am so exahsted I feel like a zombie, and yet for some reason I continue to sit at my computer screen... hmm. I am so so excited to sleep late tomorrow. Getting up at 6 and walking 10 min to the bus stop at 7 in the freezing cold is not fun. not fun at all. Teaching, however, is pretty fun, so I guess it's worth it in the end. But if I decide to persue it has a carreer, which is likely, I'm going to have to dramatically improve my spelling.... I made several more errors that the kids called me out on today while I was trying to direct a discussion on themes in American history. like Independance... arg. It's hard when you have to write things on the board, you suddenly doubt every letter.
I love my first discussion group on thursdays. They had a serious case of the giggles today, I could hardly speak for all the laughing going on, girls girls girls. I decided to teach them "I'm a little Tea Pot" and now everytime anyone says anything in German they have to get up and sing it and do the little dance for the rest of us. It's brilliant.
I corrected some short essays today for one of the english teachers. It's really fun :) It reminded me of when I worked as a tutor for student athletes at Richmond, only far less depressing since these kids are German and actually have an excuse for not being able to write coherent sentances all the time. It's funny because I can tell that they are trying to translate German sentances directly, and it just doesn't work. German sentances are necessarily overly complicated so when you translate them it just turns into far too many words all shoved into one sentance. And they use passive voice ALL the time. I wish I had them with me so I could remember some of the more amusing sentances.... maybe next time.

Ok, I'm going to sleep now so I can do my translation homework in the morning... speaking of rediculous German grammar

Schlaf Gut.

It's never to early for a little Christmas cheer

I've been stuggling a bit to get back into things the last couple days. I was a little dissapointed that I didn't exactly feel happy to be back in Munich like I was hoping I would. But in Oslo it was nice having Phil to talk to and meeting his friends, and in Berlin it was nice having Caroline to talk to and meeting other Fulbrighters and then coming back here.... no one to talk to, no good friends, no one to pick me up at the station and welcome me home. I miss all my friends at home horribly, especially Chelsea and Alexis (I hope you two are saving up your money, because you better come visit me!!!). And I miss all my friends who are scattered around the country and the globe, I'm looking forward to Shannon and Jackie possibly visiting in the spring. I feel so disconnected and like it was crazy to ever want to go off and spend a year an ocean away from everyone I care about. Sigh. School's been fine, I just still feel like I'm not particularily needed. It's getting better and teachers are asking me to do more now, but it's still kind of awkward and I don't always know where to go when and what I'm supposed to be doing. Oh, side note, yesterday I was leading a discussion on alternative energy sources and writing notes on the board and I made not one, not two, but THREE spelling mistakes during the class which the teacher corrected. Brilliant Anne, way to know you're own native language... Anyway besides my terrible spelling, things are improving and I'm looking forward to seeing my conversation class again on Thursday. As far as my social life, I just have to get back in gear, several more people e-mailed me about being language partners... so I guess I'll be meeting some new people! and Peter and I are going to a museum or something together this weekend I think. I did have dinner with Katie last night, which was nice. In my effort to reaclimate to Bavarian culture I made Spaetzle with cheese, it was tasty.

Anyway, I was sitting around my messy room not wanting to do anything this afternoon and I finally decided to go to the grocery store just to get out for a bit and there I found these adorable little lights:

I came home and hung them on my window and I'm now feeling considerably better about being back. It's amazing what a few little plastic snowmen can do for my moral... I'm pretty excited about being here for the Christmas season. For all their whining about American commercialism they sure go all out for Christmas here, there's been Christmas stuff in the stores for a few weeks now already, before Halloween was over even. In a few weeks the Christmas markets will be opening up which I'm really excited for. Gluehwein is so delicious... Also in about a month and a half the Schwalbe family will be diving into Munich, much like our namesake, the swallow. I'm a little sad to not be going home for the holidays where I could see everyone... but I'm super excited to show my family around Munich and it's nice that they will get to see where I'm spending the year.

Hmm, maybe I should clean up around here... nah, feels homier with a few piles of clothes on the floor. I think I'll turn on some Christmas music and look at my happy little snowmen for a while :)

A really long post about my recent travels

I put off writing in here last night because I
was so tired and the task seems so daunting, I've done so much in the last week or so! It's all been really great though, a very good break all together.
So from the begining... I left very very early Sunday morning and after a very long train ride arrived at Rostock, a smallish city a couple hours north of Berlin, sometime in the afternoon where I met up with Chris and Julia, two other TAs, at the station. The other TAs from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (German state north of Berlin) also came. It was really interesting to hear about all their experiences thus far. Definitely completely different from mine. They are mostly in these tiny towns where the differences between East and West are still very apparent. Unemployment is really high, it sounded like many of their students have unemployed parents. We talked about German's perspectives on reunification. Many east Germans feel that they lost something when they unified, lost their identity in a way. I could go into a long schpiel here about recent German history, but I'll spare you until a later date. It's just such a different atmosphere in the East from my ritzy suburbs of Munich.
Julia and her flat mates threw a Halloween party in their place Sunday night. It was great fun, a good mix of Americans, Germans, and Brits. I think I stayed up later than I have since getting to Germany. Monday afternoon I walked around Rostock a little with Julia, it was nice to catch up a bit. Rostock is quite a nice little city, I was suprised, it's bigger than I expected.

Monday evening I made my way to Berlin where I stayed with Caroline. No sight seeing or anything, but we did go out to dinner at a Japanese place where I had some very tasty noodles and laughed at Caroline attempting to eat noodle soup with chop-sticks.

Tuesday I flew to Oslo! Phil picked me up at the train station. I hardly recognized him, he had a mustache! apparently it was part of a halloween costume from the night before. He was also limping. He somehow hurt his knee and it had been getting progressively worse and worse until he could hardly walk by wednesday. So he didn't get to go out sight seeing with me. But we did get plenty of time to chat and catch up on the last few years which was nice. I also met some of the others in his study abroad program. So many Minnesotans! I guess it makes sense... who else would go to Norway? It seems like a really cool program though, very well organized. I wish I had done something like that for study abroad, as opposed to my year of being lost and confused in Muenster. It was interesting talking about and comparing Norway, Germany, and the US with them. I got a better perspective on Oslo talking to other americans who've been living there than I would have just being there alone I think.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I did lots of wandering and sight seeing. I saw the Nobel Peace Center which is a brand new super cool interactive museum dedicated to the spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize and those who have won it. It was an inspiring place.

I went to a few art museums including the Edvard Munch museum and the national galery where I saw his painting, "The Scream".

For the most part the city of Oslo is not particularily beautiful, not as pretty as Munich anyway, but there is one little section of town with cute little scandiavian houses.
I also saw some real Viking ships which was pretty cool. They were found buried in clay so they were remarkably well preserved.


Friday I took the ferry boat out to one of the islands just off shore near the harbor. I hiked around a little, saw the ruins of an old abby, took some pictures, it was fun. I pretty much had the whole island to myself. Not a whole lot of tourists out on a rainy fall day.




One of my favorite things in Oslo was the sculpture park designed by Gustave Vigeland. It's full of sculptures of people in a wide range of poses and showing a range of emotions and phases of life. It's really big and really cool. I took a ton of pictures and could have easily walked around all day looking at each sculpture. I'm not entirely sure what kind of emotion this man juggling babies is supposed to represent... but I think I've felt it before after a long day of baby sitting.

so in conclusion: Oslo is cool.

Satuday I flew back to Berlin where Caroline picked me up. We met up with some other Berlin Fulbrighters and went out to her favorite pizza place. Afterwords we went to another Fulbrighters apartment for a very christmasy type party with Gluwein (warm spiced wine) and lebkuchen (German ginger bread), yum. After the party we went out to a swingin' little bar where I very hapily paid 2.60 for half a liter of delicious German beer. Norway is rediculously expensive and the beer is definitely not up to par now that my tastbuds are aclimated Bavarian brew. We did a little dancing and hung out quite late. I ran into a Fulbright TA who I vaugely remembered from Orientation which was really crazy. I'm slightly jelouse of the Fulbrighters in Berlin... it's such a big cool raw gritty kind of city, totally the opposite of kitschy gemuehlich little Munich, but I love them both. Caroline has a view of the television tower in Alexanderplatz from outside her apartment, which I think is pretty cool, every time you step out the door it's like, hello communism!

It was fun meeting some other research Fulbrighters, it's such a strange program. It's a bunch of intelligent people partying and studying in Germany for a year, in that order. And they are all studying random stuff, it's the only group of people I could tell about my research proposal about the German facination with Native Americans and they wouldn't even batt and eye. Hooray for obscure academic research topics...

Yesturday I spent mostly sitting on a train on my way back. Today I got up at 6am to go to school which was quite a shock to my system. It's going to take me a few days to get back into the swing of things here. I came home to a rather messy room and I don't have the energy or motivation to clean it at the moment. Right now I've go to go try to do some of the reading I didn't do for class tonight.

That's all for my super long post. I hope the pictures made it slightly more readable :) There are lots more in my Flickr account.

Ciao.

Oslo

It's dark! and has been dark for an hour or so already, yikes. I sure wouldn't want to live here in the winter.

I'm not going to write about everything now because I'm in the university library and have to stand to use this computer and I've been walking around all day and my feet hurt! So I'll just say that I've seen lots of cool stuff, enjoyed catching up with Phil and meeting his friends here, and I've not so much enjoyed the rainy weather... but what are you going to do?

I'll fill in the details when I get back home, just thought I'd let you know that I'm alive and well.

Ciao.

Ich will mit dem Zirkus weg laufen

Have I mentioned that there is a circus accross the street? It's the smallest circus I've ever seen and it's such a random spot to have it. It's just a little square of grass right outside the U-bahn stop. All week whenever I get off the U-bahn I've been greeted with the sent of elephants. It makes me smile whenever I see it though, the little yellow and red striped tent with kitchy circus music coming from it. It's the kind of circus that I'd like to run away with if I ran away with a circus.


So I'm in the midst of doing laundry and cleaning and packing... which you all know how much I love doing :-P I'm so excited to get on a train in the morning! I love traveling by train, I wish we had a better train network in the US. Someone out there needs to get on that.

This week flew by. There were lots of classroom discussions about Halloween in the US, and a few little class Halloween parties including the little party I made for my discussion group. I made carmel apples for them, they went over quite well and we had fun playing games and eating sweets. School is fun :) Halloween has only come to Europe in the past ten years or so. American comercialism is taking over the world.... A few kids go trick-or-treating (They say Suesses oder Saueres) but those that do are usually greeted with several people who are very confused and certainly don't have candy prepared for them. One girl said she went trick-or-treating last year and a woman at one of the houses they went to went off on a rant on how Halloween was all American nonsense. She was probably right, it is nonsense, but it sure it fun! I miss Jack-O-Lanterns and candy corn...

I met a couple more potential language partners. Martin, 22, sociology major. Very alternative type guy, we talked about the mass media and how sensationalized the news is and how he thinks the major German news programs have a conservative bias. He prefers the public stations or Austrian stations. Then I met Karl, 29, Austrian, working and studying here to get his Ph.D. in Computer Science. We talked about the Sound of Music, German and Austrian dialects, the pros and cons of living in a big city (he's also from a smaller town in the country).

I also met Peter again Thursday night at a get together for other language tandem partners, it was fun. I went to a party with Katha and her friends Friday. It was an 80s party, I like people who have theme parties. I miss Chelsea and Alexis..... The party was ok, a little awkward since it was smallish and they mostly all knew each other.

Today I slept super late. It was wonderful, I've been exahsted all week it seems like. I went to the train station to buy my tickets and then I decided to take a little stroll to Marienplatz just for fun. It was really crowded, it always feels festive on the weekends. I got some hot roasted chesnuts from a stand and then stood and listened to a classical quartet performing on the street. I love Munich :)

I'm really going to pack now...

Servus!

I finally saw them!

So I've been living in Munich for over a month now and I had yet to see the Alps. I had seen postcards of the city with the Alps in the backdrop, and people kept telling me you could see them from this or that place in the city, but I was begining to disbelieve them because everytime I tried to see them it was too hazy. But I had heard that we were having Föhn conditions the last few days which is supposed to be the best time to see them. I was done at school by noon, so I took a short trip to Lake Starnberg to see if I could catch a glimps of the elusive peaks. And sure enough, there they were, plain as day! They looked so close, it's hard to tell in the picuture, but I could even make out the snow caps on the biggest peak. It was quite breathtaking. I'm really not used to mountains, so it's a bit strange to see this wall of rocks out there in the distance.... In Colorado and Navada I didn't like them much, I feel too trapped having mountains all around. But they are far enough away here, and only on one side, so it's just exciting to see them. Plus, they're the Alps!


Here's a close up of the tallest peak, you can make out a bit of snow even in the photo:

Overload

So last week I found this website called Sprachduo set up to find tandem language partners in Munich. Great idea! I need to meet more people my age, and I need to speak more German. I looked on the site and there's just a big list of names, what language they speak, and what they'd like to practice. Other than that it just had ages and what school they're at. So, I figured I'd just send out an e-mail to the first 12 or so people my age looking to practice English. I thought probably a lot of people still have their name on the site who already have a partner or aren't interested anymore or something, but aparently I was wrong. Now I have like 6 people who want to practice English/German with me! Yesturday afternoon I met with Peter, 25, studying medicine here. He's sweet, very typically Munich I think. He actually went to one of the schools I teach at! Today I met with Katharina. Also really nice, she's studying to be an English and French teacher. She's from northern Bavaria (there's a large distinction between northern and southern Bavaria). She spent a year in France as a TA doing the same thing I am now, so we had plenty to talk about. She invited me to go out with her friends tomorrow night, I'm going out with real German students!! There are still like four more people who've e-mailed me, but I don't have any time left in the week! I can't say no though... I feel like I'm interviewing people to be my friend or something, it's a little strange.

So... rewinding a bit...

Saturday I baby sat. The boys I'm watching are so sweet. They're always excited to see me and never want me to leave! In the afternoon I had synchro. The girls on the rutine I'm learning had to leave early and the coach, Claudia was a little upset with them for leaving I think, so she worked with just me for a while, and boy did she make me work! It was really fun for me actually, to have such a good experienced coach working with just me on verticals and spins. We never had enough time to do a lot of drills or one on one work at UR. It's nice to have a more familiar physical challenge to work on and escape from the other daily challenges here.

Saturday night I went out with Uta and Marcus, two of the teachers from one of my schools. Both I think are Referendaren, or student teachers. It was really fun, Uta's friend had rented out a bar for her birthday party. Lots of her friends are also teachers. I did some dancing and spoke lots of German. It was funny to be hanging out with real teachers... young professionals mostly in their mid-late twenties. Uta is a hoot, she's really sweet and it was nice to see her and Marcus outside school, I think it will be easier to talk to them at school now. I usually sit alone in the teachers lounge when I don't have a class to go to and feel awkward because no one knows quite what I'm supposed to be doing there, and niether do I. So at least now I have a few teachers to talk to!

Sunday I met Peter and then I baby sat for a new family. Just one little boy. Yay for money!

Today at school in one of the classes I went to we talked about their stereotyps of Americans, here's the list they came up with:
fat
conservative
patriotic
uneducated/ignorant
focused only on America
fond of weapons
helpful
friendly
hospitable
religious
willing to attack other nations
positive way of dealing with tragedy

They they made a list of what they thought our stereotyps of Germans are:
beer
saurkraut
bratwurst
Hitler/Nazis
punctual
cowards (for not joining the war in Iraq)
law abiding
boring
no fun
thrifty
unpatriotic
serious
cold
serious

You can make of that what you will, I just thought it might be interesting.

This afternoon I went to the english class about food in literature. It's quite good. We're reading The Devil's Larder by Jim Crace. I like it. It's not a novel really, more of an experimental kind of collection of pieces all of which involve food. The writing is very good, he really captures a wide range of emotions and passions all connected to foods.

So, clearly I've been a bit busy! I'm looking forward to our break next week. I'm going to Oslo! I guess I haven't even mentioned that here yet... First I'm possibly going to Rostock, near Berlin, to visit another Fulbrighter and then to Berlin to stay with Caroline, my flight to Olso is on Tuesday. There I will be staying with Phil for a few days. I'm excited but I've had so much other stuff to think about it hasn't really sunk in yet. It will be nice to travel again, it's been like what? 6 weeks now? I've got a bit of Wanderlust again :)

This post is totally all over the place... but so am I, so you'll just have to deal with it.

Servus!

back to school

Thursday at school: Yet another discussion on American high schools. I've got the whole rutine down pat now for any teacher who asks me to come to their class and talk about American high schools. I start by asking them what they know about American high schools and we make a mind map on the board (teachers here are crazy about mind maps, and they call them "mind maps" in english, it's funny), the first things they usually say are that we have school uniforms, I don't know where they got that from, I have to explain that only some private schools have uniforms. Then they usually say that we have cafeterias, which I explain is because we are in school all day until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Here most of them are done at 1pm, so they go home for lunch. Then dances come up, prom, homecoming, prom king and queen, social stuff like that. Then of course sports, football and cheerleaders. So, in case you were wondering, those are the defining aspects of "American High school" according to German high school students.

In my conversation class, which, incidentally is all girls around 15 years old, I had asked them to bring along an item for show and tell. It was a good excersize. We ended up talking about vacations, because several of their items had to do with places they had traveled. I knew before that the schools I'm working at are in pretty posh areas, but I hadn't realized quite how posh... most of their families had a second house in Italy or somewhere and they had traveled all over, Greece, Croatia, Sylt (an island in northern Germany near Hamburg), London, Irland, far more traveled than I was at that age. My family usually just drove to Ohio to visit my Grandparents, or a couple times to California also to visit relatives. I guess the distances are conperable, but still. I was a little suprised by just how affluent their families are. One girl's father is friends with the president of Egypt and they're going to visit him for the upcoming fall break! At the end of class I busted out electronic Catch Phrase which was a huge hit (Thanks Mom for sending it!).

Today I went to school as a student! Being a student is so much easier than being a teacher. You just have to show up and play along, teaching involves soooo much preparation. Anyway, first I went to an incredibly boring lecture on romantic poetry, I don't think I'll be going back to that one. I don't quite see the point in Vorlesungs, Lecture courses, it's just one hour once a week of listening to the professor read off their note cards. Blah, if I want to know about romantic poets I'll read a book, thank you very much. Next I went to a seminar on Animan figures in romantic literature. I think I might stick with that one. It would be hard for me, being that it's in German, but I don't have to get credit or anything, so I should be ok. And the reading is interesting, I've always wanted to read Puss and Boots in German :) Next I went to an English-German translation course for non-native speakers. Holy Brittish and Irish people... heaps and heaps of them. Also a couple american girls here doing Junior year abroad. I'm looking forward to the class, the teacher is cool and it will be great for improving my really terrible German grammar!

Tonight I went for a great run in the woods and now I'm quite contentedly staying in my room for the night. It's been an exahsting week and tomorrow I'm booked solid, babysitting in the morning, then synchro practice then one of the student teachers from my school invited me to go out with her and her friends. Yay german friends!


Geez.. .so much to do... it's like I actually live here or something....

Sciurus Vulgaris

As far as natural environment goes, Munich is, for the most part, pretty similar to Minnesota. The weather is about the same (this morning was freezing), the plant life is about the same, it's flat for the most part (I know the Alps are out there somewhere, but I haven't seen them yet), there are even a couple lakes, though they aren't nearly as nice as at home. So most of the time when I'm walking around it doesn't really feel like i'm living on another continent. But every so often one of these little alien creatures shows up running up a tree or scampering accross the sidewalk with it's funny looking big ears and scrawny little black tail and I suddenly feel very out of place. It is, of course, the European red squirrel. Granted, it's not exactly and alien creature, but to me they are rather exotic looking and it's enough to make me remember that there's a whole ocean between here and my native soil. Incidentally, the grey squirrel has actually begun to take over the habitat in much of Europe, and the Red Squirrel population has been declining. Hmm... A North American breed slowly taking over and pushing out the traditional European breed... What a great extended metaphor or motif that would make in a novel about modern Europe...

Today in school: I gave a little speal on American resume's. I think the differences between the American resume and the German Lebenslauf say something about our different cultures. The Lebenslauf, litterally translated "Life run" is traditionally written in letter form with paragraph. It always begins with date and place of birth and includes your elementary school and high school before you University education. It also nearly always includes a picture. It's pretty strait forward, there aren't any tricks to it, it's quite simply your life story to this point. The American resume, on the other hand is all about marketing. We use every trick in the book to make ourselves sound as impressive as possible. No paragraphs to read through, everything important in bolded or underlined. We would never dream of including a birth date or place or our elementary school. We don't include a birthdate because then employers could discriminate based on age. Employers aren't even allowed to ask your age in the US. It's a similar story with the picture, a picture would indicate, age, race, sex, all things that could be discriminated against, so it's not included. So Germans simply say, "This is me, where I was born and where I grew up are part of who I am, my age, my appearance, my race and my sex are also part of who I am and the group I belong to. These are the things that I have done in my life." On the other hand an American resume says "Look at me! I am not my age, my race, my birthplace or my sex, I am unique and special, my identity trancends such practical labels. I am better and more qualified than anyone else and here's why." Hello American individualism. Like our grey squirrels, the American style of resume has begun to take hold here and the Lebenslauf in now sometimes written in bullet points. Poor little Red Squirrels (They're even RED squirrels... it is a living metaphor!)

An interesting side note on gender: There is a law in Germany that the name of your child must indicate his or her sex. So Alexis could not have been Alexis in Germany.

Culinary Adventures

Today I went grocery shopping at PennyMarkt, where shopping is always an adventure. It's one of the discount grocery stores where you never know what they will have from day to day. Sometimes oranges, sometimes peaches, sometimes turkey, sometimes ham. It's not the kind of place you can bring a shopping list to, you just have to go and see. There is also a section in the center of the store with random stuff like sheets, pots and pans, rugs, a dvd player, small apliances, socks, shoes, ya never know. Today I found a hand held blender for 9 euros. I was pretty excited about this because I've really wanted one ever since Gudrun made me all kinds of yummy vegatable soups with hers. So after finding the blender I went to see what kind of vegatables i could find. I decided on a bag of brussel sprouts. I'm not sure why, I never eat them at home, in fact I think I've only had them in the Richmond dining hall. This afternoon I made my very own brussel sprout soup. It is suprisingly good. Something about good hot soup on a crisp fall day like today... mmmm. I have lots of it left over since I figured I might as well use up the whole bag of sprouts. The recipe is from the BBC, as you can see, thank goodness I have an Irish next door neighbor to explain to me what a knob of butter is!

This evening I went to class! Yay school! I'm really excited about it, Katie is taking it too so I went with her. It's about food! One of my favoritest topics. It's called something like Food in politics and poetics, and it's in english! yay english! The professor is really nice and there's only 15 or so of us in the class. I'm still waiting to hear back from a family who may want me to babysit monday evenings though, so I'm not positive I'll be able to take it. I thought I was burnt out on school, but it felt really good to be back in a classroom as a student again, and I think it will be good to take a class on something I havn't studied before and to take a class totally voluntarily with no huge daunting research paper to write. I'm looking for other classes I can take on Fridays. There's one German philosophy course I think I'll try to get into, that one's auf Deutsch. There are a ton of really interesting courses, unfortunately not many of them are on Friday, so my choices are limited.

Things I miss: The Food Network, gargantuan grocery stores open 24/7

Waldfriedhof

friedhof1
Originally uploaded by annieswims05.

I went for a long ramble today in the big (really really big) cemetary nearby. It's quite beautiful. Several people I've talked to think walking in cemetaries is creepy or something, but you wouldn't think so if you saw this cemetary. It's a nice place for wandering and conemplating.

contemporary? modern? post modern? or just junk?

hornbed
Originally uploaded by annieswims05.

Saturday night was the Long Night of Munich Museums, a city wide event where something like 80 different museums, tours, and exhibitions open their doors from 7pm to 2am. I went with my neighbor, Katie. I decided to avoid the big museums that I could see on any weekend and we went to several small strange modern art exhibitions. Some were not terribly interesting, but a few were really cool. My favorite was this exhibition inside an old hotel. A bunch of different rooms had various installments in them, some were strange, but in an interesting to look at kind of way which I enjoy in modern art. There was another exhibit in a church which I thought was quite neat, you can see the pics in flickr.

Ein frische Lüftchen

I just came accross this website with some very nice pictures of Munich. Much nicer than any I will ever take, so I suggest you look at them if you want to see what the city is like!
I like this one very much. While Caroline and Grant were here, we stopped in this little covered shopping area one evening and there was a lovely quartet of older men playing classical music. A beatiful moment in a beautiful place. The street performers in Munich are incredibly talented, I've been blown away by quite a few of them. Exept for the statue people, they're just weird.

I've actually not been into the city center for the last few days. Thursday I had school. I got to watch part of The Merchant of Venice (a well done film, I think) with one of the advanced classes. They're reading it now in class. The teacher actually asked me if Shakespear was read in all American high schools and she was suprised when I said, "Of course!" We aren't barbarians after all... anyone who speaks the english language should at least have to read one Shakespear play. I went to yet another class where they are learning about the American South, it's almost enough to make me start missing Virginia! In my conversation class we played some improv games which they liked so I think I'll do more with them in the future, and we continued our discussion of American and German high schools. Of course they all said that American high school looked like it was more fun. I tried to tell them that we did actually go to class, not just football games and dances and pep fests, but they seemed unconvinced.

Last night I went with Katie, the Irish girl who lives next door, to a party for international students. I feel in many ways like I'm still in college and just studying abroad again, only this time is far more fun so far. I feel strange telling people that I have a Bachelor's already. The party was PACKED, probably because it's the first one before classes start next week. I met some people, did some dancing, it was a good time. I haven't met any American exchange students here yet, I know they are around somewhere, but it's probably best if I don't know them anyway.

Today I had no school! I have Friday's off for good now, my schedule is finally somewhat solidified. I cleaned ay little room. It's quite nice now. I've been trying to figure out how the heat works because it's getting pretty cilly at night. Most buildings here have radiators heated with hot water. Have I mentioned German's and their obsesion with frische Luft (fresh air) yet? They open the windows all the time, even when it's freezing outside. At school they always open them between classes and then close them again after five minutes or so. I don't know if there is an actual reason for this, like buildings aren't well ventilated, or if it's just a crazy german old wives tale that it's good for your health. There is actually a sheet that came along with my rental agreement about room temperature and it says to open the windows for at least three minutes a day even in winter to circulate the air, but to make sure to turn off the heat for those three minutes. More proof that Germans are crazy...

Tonight I baby sat. Yay for money! The kids were sweet, three boys. We played chutes and ladders which I used to love, but for the life of me can't remember why, it's not a terribly exciting game. When they went to bed I got to watch TV! I don't have a TV in my room, so it it something of a rare treat. As was lounging on big comfy couches in a real house. I'm going to stop now before I make myself homesick and get into my lonely little bitty dorm room bed.

Gute Nacht!