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?

Spring Break Part II: Ein Prosit der Gemuehtlichkeit

It's not over yet!!! Tuesday afternoon Marissa and I finally arrived back at my room. Two hours later we were joined by Chris who flew into Munich from Athens. The three of us gathered up some food and beer and and rented a movie and a few hours later were joined by my friend Elena, who you may remember from my Muenster blogs. She is currently teaching for Teach for America in NYC and came to Germany for her spring break. So we had quite a party in my kitchen/bedroom and for the first time ever my nieghbors had to tell me to keep it down! ha! We somehow all managed to get to sleep on the sea of air matresses in my room at some point. Marissa took off in the morning and Chris tagged along while I gave Elena my well rehersed tour of the major sites in Munich including a beer garden and later on the Hofbrauhaus. It was great to see Elena again and I definitely want to go visit her in New York. I was so lucky to have her in Muenster, I wish she were still just downstairs, Munich would be way more fun.

Sadly, Elena had to leave for home on Thursday. Chris and I got some much needed rest before a friend of his studying in Switzerland showed up with a couple more friends in tow (don't worry, they got a hotel and didn't have to squish into my room!) I let Chris take over the tour giving and met up with them later to hit up the beer garden and the hofbrauhaus for the second time in two days. We went to a few bars and then I took them to my favorite little dive of a place in the wee hours of the morning where the bartender in a russian army hat gave me a sucker and a kiss and gave us all a free glass of house champain. We ended up talking with some germans who invited us back to their apartment for an after party. We didn't leave until the sun was coming up and then we wandered the city until 8am when the resturants opened and we got ourselves a traditional Weisswurst Fruhstuck (white sausage breakfast) with Weissbier and all. It was possibly the most fun night i have had in Munich yet (with the obvious exception of Eric's last night here). I'm not sure how we managed it, but we somehow got a grill party together in the park near me on Friday afternoon, and I'm very glad we did. The weather was beautiful and the sausages were mighty tasty.

Friday night I went to bed very early and slept for a good long time before waking up, cleaning my room and meeting Chris for lunch (at another beer garden) before riding with him to see him off at the airport because his flight left right before Shannon's got in. That's right, it's STILL not over!! Shannon visited me!! I heart Shannon :) We did a lot of chit chatting about boyfriends and jobs and weddings and 401K's, Yikes we're old. Her German friend, Connie, who she studied with in Spain, also came to visit for a day. We went to the Hofbrauhaus yet again, but this time I went to the dinner show upstairs and it was all the Kitsch I could have hoped for. We also did some shopping and wandering and jogging and beer garden going, it was nice. Shannon left Thursday so I've been all alone in my room since then. But my niehbor Katie is back, so I've got someone to pop in every so often and share her boyfriend drama (which occurs entirely over SMS to Ireland) with me :-P

I had to go back to school this week. blah. I'm so ready to be done with this whole assisatnt teacher thing. although I'm not sure I'm ready to be done with my year of playing around in Erope, but I am ready to go home and see my friends, but I'm not, but I am! ah! I applied for some more jobs in DC and Minneapolis this weekend. I don't want to grow up :-( And yet I do... I'm torn. Two months left to be young and crazy and responsibility free in Europe. Not too crazy though, my mom is coming next weekend! And we're going to Paris! Yay for trips with Mom and real hotels and fancy resturants! I'm excited to go to some great museums and I have to see Versailles and Chartres, and generally soak in as much culture as possible.

It has finally stopped raining and the sun is out so I think it's time for a run! Ciao!

Spring Break Part I: Abenteuer in Griechenland

Happy May Day! It's a national holiday here, which means no school and a four day weekend for me! weeee. It's been an incredibly boring one, but probably much needed after all the exitement of the last few weeks. Anyway, now that I've got some time I think it's about time I filled you all in.

Greece was AMAZING. I wish I could go back and do it all over again right now. It was the crazy beachy spring break I never had. I went with four other Fulbright TAs; Lindsay, Matt, Chris and Marissa, who are spread out all over Germany. We all flew into Bari, Italy where we met up and hopped on the overnight ferry to Greece. The ferry ride was pretty crazy, I think we were all a little too exited to be on vacation and ready to let loose and have fun, and an overnight ferry with a bunch of your friends is a pretty darn good place to have some fun. It was something of a miracle that we made it off the boat at our stop at 6am, and we even managed to pick up an extra friend on the way.

After one more short ferry ride we made it to the Pink Palace on Corfu at 9am or so and crashed out on the beach for the afternoon where I got a nice sun burn. The Pink Palace Hostel is like an oasis of American and Canadian college students in the middle of a Greek island. Everything is in english, the staff takes care of you, everything is pink -- including the Uzo, happy hour is from 6-11 and they throw weekly toga parties. It's probably not the kind of hostel I would have picked out on my own, but it was definitely a good time. We attended a pink toga party and got to meet lots of people. I'm glad I did it now because we were already just about the oldest guests there. Corfu itself is absolutely gorgeous and once I had recovered from the ferry ride I did lots of hiking around soaking things in. I met a very friendly donkey, found a privatle little chapel on a mountain, and picked some fresh lemons and orages off the trees. Lindsay Marissa and I even found our own little private lagoon one day and it was definitely the most beautiful place I've ever been swimming (and the only place I've ever been skinny dipping ;) )! The water was crystal clear and bright bright blue, if a tad bit on the chilly side.

We all rented four wheelers our third day there and whith the help of Matt's guide map did a big long tour of the island. We went up the Kaiser's Throne where King Wilhelm used to hang out, drove through countless quaint Greek towns, and hiked around the ruins of an old castle set up on a cliff. It was a great trip until we had a minor incident on the way back. I was right behind Marissa and I watched as she swerved out of control and off the road flipping her bike into a ditch. Chris and I both jumped off our bikes after her, but she was luckily not injured. I however, must not have thouroughly pushed down the parking break beacause as soon as we saw that Marissa was ok Chris turned around and started shouting, Anne! Stop the bike! But I was seconds too late and my four weeler had already bumped into the bumper of a Greek man who had just pulled over to help us. I grabbed the bike and apologized, but he would have none of it, "Sorry?? No Sorry! Problem! Problem!" He shouted at me pointing to the minute indent in his bumper. Oh lord. He didn't speak much english, just a little bit of German and he kept saying, "Polizei, Polizei, Zuzammen ins Buro, Zuzammen ins Buro" indicating that he wanted us to come to the police station with him. Luckily, another nicer Greek man had also pulled over to help us and the two yelled at each other for quite a while in Greek while he tried to convince him to give the poor American kids a break. Finally we gave him 50 euros cash and he left. Whew. So the five of us were left freezing cold on the side of the road, Marissa's bike suspended by vines five yards above a dirt side road. We called the hostel to come get Marissa and her bike and the four of us left so that we could make the 40 min ride home before dark.

By the end of our stay we were all a bit worse for the wear, especially Marissa, but it was well worth it. Thursday night we all got on an overnight ferry and then bus to Athens, but Marissa and I got off at Patras, which is on Mainland Greece in the Poloponese around 3am. After staying in the Pink Palace for so long it was kind of a shock to realize that we were actually in Greece and didn't know a single word of the language (Other than Cheers) and can't even read the leters. But the two of us managed to make it to a nice hostel and get lots and lots of sleep. We didn't actually have any plans for the rest of our trip except some vauge idea of maybe going to Olympia or another beach somewhere. The next day we found a very tasty greece resturant where I ate lots of hummos and cheese and then we headed out into Patras to find a tourist office. We decided we didn't really have any desire to do educational and cultural things like looking at old ruins and would rather go to another island. Unfortunatley, the only information they had on the nearby islands at the tourist information office was in French. So, between Marissa's two week course in Frence and just looking at the pretty pictures we decided on Zante island, which also happend to be the southernmost island we could get to. The woman at the office gave us a map and circled the intersection where the bus station where buses to Zante was. It wasn't far, so Marissa and I got our bags and set off. We found the intersection but there was no station or busses to be seen. We asked a series of random Greek people who told us in broken english, right here, left there, each sending us to a diferent spot around and around in circles. Over an hour later we finally found the place which turned out to be more of an office than a station with no busses in site at all and the only indication that there were busses headed to Zante was written in Greek. But, we found it, so all was well and we drank Frappe's which are delicious sugary foamy cold Greek coffe drinks.

After ferry ride #4 we arrived on Zante island Friday night. We wanted to stay in one of the small beach towns, but alas, we were two weeks to early and it was completely deserted and closed, so we ended up at a very fancy schmancy hotel in the main city of Zakynthos. The nice thing about the off season was that the hotel was quite cheap as were the resturants. Saturday we found out that no busses were running on the weekends and after an attempt to walk along the coast until we ran into a beach, we finally just got in a taxi and took it to the largest beach on the island and asked the driver to pretty please come pick us up in four hours. The beaches we went to on Zante island were amazing and almost completely deserted. I definitely want to go back there, only next time I'm bringing my boyfriend and renting a car :) Saturday night we were awoken by a small earthquake. Yes, that's right, I looked it up later and it registered at about 5.4 on the ricter scale and was actually centered right on our island which is aparently on an active fault line! So, I've now lived through two earthquakes! Sunday was Easter Sunday in the Catholic church, but Palm Sunday in the Greek Orthodox calendar and I convinced Marissa to come with me to a Greek Orthodox mass at the very pretty church at 8am. It was very cool, there were palms hung all over the church and at some point in the sermon (I don't know what point, it was in Greek obviously) everyone started jumping up and taking the palms, which I thought was a fun game because I was on average a good six inches taller than everyone in there :) The service seemed to go on forever and we finally snuck out after 2 and a half hours, but I'm glad we went. I like the Greek Orthodox chuch, it's kind of like Catholocism, but more ornate and with more kissing of things.

Sunday night we went back to Patras and Monday we had some time to walk around and see the city, which, it turned out, I really liked. The first time we were there there were massive amounts of garbage on the streets, but it had been picked up by the time we came back, so walking around was more pleastant. Patras is a very cool city, apparetntly it's a big college town and there were tons of cafes, bars, resturants, and lots of shopping. And I don't think I saw a single McDonals or Starbucks or American chain resurant of any kind -- Except for one random TGIFridays. There is also a big beautiful Cathedral with the remains of St. Andrew, and an ancient Greek theather and castle on the hill with spectacular views of the mountains. I would definitely go back to Patras. I've decided it would be a great place to start a study abroad program. It's a big, but not overwhelming city, four hours from Athens, a hop skip and a jump from loads of Greek islands, and it's a cool city in it's own right.

Monday night we had our very last ferry ride (#6 if you are keeping track), and it was the longest yet at about 10 hours. We met a few other americans and I uncharictoristically played the role of the outgoing one and got us all together for some card games. We crashed pretty early on some very uncomfortable theater style seating and woke up back in Bari, back where it all began and in plenty of time to catch our flight back to Munich!

pictures are up, post to follow soon!

Yamas!

Thats cheers in greek. Probably spelled wrong. I'm in Greece!!!!!!!! It's amazingly gorgeous here. We took an overnight ferry from bari the night before last, which was quite an experience. Now we are hapily settled in at the Pink Palace hostel in Corfu. I definitely laid on the beach and swam in the sea yesturday and it was fabulous. Well, except for the sundburn I have now! oh well. totally worth it. I love the sun :) Today there may be some kyaking, or four wheeling or hiking... or all of the above. I can't express how happy I am to be here. You all need to come to greece right now!

Ciao Ciao

I spoke too soon...

And it then it snowed... yes, in April. I suppose I should be used to this or something, certainly I've experienced white Easters before, but all the same. bah! There was a good three inches on the ground by this morning, it actually was kind of pretty, I may even have appreciated it had I not been cursing and shaking my fist at the heavens. Oh well, it's all sloppy and melting now. And hey, guess what? I'm leaving in two days!!!!!!!!!!! wooooooo!!!!!!!!

Just a few more hours of school... two of my classes are taking tests today so I ended up being here three hours too early for my conversation groups. oh well. I'm currently searching Monster.com and sending my resume in to a bunch of places. They make it so easy, just *click* and you've applied for the job! This means that I've definitely appied for a few jobs that I'm certainly not qualified for, but might as well give it a shot, eh? They probably get so many applications they'll barely look at mine anyway. I've decided I would very much like to find something in printing or publishing or editing or writing. I've had enough of small children for a little while. I would like something creative and challenging.

Even the snow can't bring me down right now. I am so freaking excited for this trip and the rest of the spring :-D

Spring!

Yesturday was absolutely beautiful outside. I finished babysitting at 2 and the family I'm working for lives just a block of two away from this beer garden at the Chinese Tower in the English Garden so I walked through on my way back. It was PACKED and the band was playing bavarian music up in the tower and people were happy and drinking and it was so festive and...Munich. I love it. I wish I had had a friend around to sit and have a liter with me. sigh. Instead I walked into the city and did some shopping. I decided I deserved it after all the babysitting I'm doing and it was fun, but crazy crazy crowded. And tourist season hasn't even started yet! Man, I don't want to think what a saturday afternoon in June is going to be like. It's fun though, I really like Munich when the weather is nice.

I'm so so happy that winter is over. And the time changed last week so now it's light until like 8pm! It looks nice out today too, if I manage to find the motivation to leave my room this afternoon. I'm baby sitting tonight and every evening this week before I leave. Ah! Not sure when I'm going to clean and pack and such...hmm. The bity baby I've been watching is adorable. He mostly just eats and sleeps and crys and occasionally smiles. But it so fun to watch a little baby, especially when it's not yours and you get to go home and sleep all night!

I finished The Red Tent yesturday. So so SO good! I finished it in less than a week I was so into it. It's really beautiful. It's part of the old testament told from the point of view of Dinah, Jacob's only daughtor and Joseph's only sister. I've been reading a lot this year. I finished Middle Sex a few weeks ago which I also really liked, a very remarkable work of literature. And I read the first of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency books which is just fun and well written.

Perhaps I should get started on that cleaning stuff now... ciao ciao

Maybe I shouldn't have made out with that swan...

Yesturday was the most beautiful day outside since september, and where was I? Sick in bed. boo :-( I rarely get sick so it was really out of the blue for me. I hope it's not bird flue :-0 ! I seem to be better now, I guess it was just a 24 hr thing, but I skipped school this morning anyway... no one feels good at 6am. Sigh. Caroline is here with her mom and grandma too, and I couldn't even go meet them for dinner. Hopefully I'll see them tonight after their trip to Neuschwanstein. I was perfectly healthy all weekend doing absolutely nothing, and then as soon as I have things to do.... bah. And now it's raining again and it's supposed to keep raining for the next two weeks.

Have I mentioned how excited I am to go to Greece??? It better be warm and sunny! I'm also excited because I have lots of babysitting work in the next two weeks. I just met a new mom this weekend with a teeny tiny little 8 week old baby. So cute :) They're going out of town around the same time I am for three months, so she only needs me the next two weeks, which works out well. I had to miss going yesturday of course, but will go this afternoon. I'm excited to hang out with a bity baby, it's been a while since I've had one of those around, and I'm excited to make some extra money to spend on my trip.

That's all my news for the week... Things should remail pretty dull for the next 11 days

Pics from Vienna are up!

Good morning

It's unusually early for me to be posting, but I just got up to say good-bye to Jackie and it's too early to get ready for school. It was really nice to have her, I feel so popular with all my visitors :) It was strange as well. Jackie studied abroad in Vienna two years ago and was back in Europe for the first time since then. And she was so incredibly excited about everything European and being here and begging me to speak German with her. It made me realize... hey, I'm probably going to miss this some day. I'm so adjusted to all the little things that are different here. Walking to the grocery store, public transportation, sitting in a cafe for two hours in the middle of the afternoon, hearing German everywhere, beautiful historic buildings all around, being just a train ride away from six different countries, liters of German beer, and buying Milka chocolate bars on a regular basis! I've been kind of bored with it all the past couple months, missing home and waiting for it to be over. I don't especially love my job here right now. But I know a year from now I'm going to be sceaming and planning how I can get back to europe again (or convincing Eric to learn German). I still have three months left and I'm definitely going to enjoy them. In German they say "geniessen", to enjoy, savor, or relish. It's a word they use A LOT, which probably says something about their european mentality.

Spring seems to finally be arriving here, it's supposed to rain all week, which is better than snow. In Vienna they were putting in flowers already and Jackie saw them setting up tables in the Beer garden in downtown Munich-- a sure sign of spring around here! This weekend I have three days with absolutely nothing to do and I'm definitely going to savor, enjoy and relish it. I've been gone the past four weekends, I'm looking forward to some down time.

Wien

Jackie arrived here Friday morning. We did some shopping friday because I desperately needed a new wallet. Then we rented Sissi which I absolutely had to see before going to Vienna :)

We left for Vienna (Wien in German) on Saturday where we met Chris, Jackies friend who studied in Richmond whil I was abroad in Muenster, we stayed in his place. We did a walking tour of the city Friday and ate some Wienerschnitzle because I insisted that i had to eat it once while i was there! It is a really beautiful city. Considerably more impressive and big city like than Munich, despite actually being smaller. Sunday we went to three different museums which were all really good and I finally found out where all of Klimt's work has been hiding from me :) I got to see his "The Kiss" Along with his Bethoven freeze. It was very impressive, deffinitely something to see in person, with all the shiny gold and its really pretty big.


Monday we went to the Palace Schonbrunn and had coffe and the famouse Sacher Torte at the Sacher hotel. After some speedy shopping we were back on a train headed back to Munich. It was a quick trip, but I'm really glad I got to see Vienna and of course it was much better to see it with someone who has studied there and a real live Wiener (hee hee).

I'm at school now. blah. I'm meeting Jackie tonight at the Hofbrauhaus which I've been to, but have yet to actually eat or drink in, so it should be fun. I'll take pictures. I have pictures from the trip too of course. My camera cord hasn't shown up yet, I'll clean more thougholy this weekend.

Bis Bald

brrr

icey flag
Originally uploaded by annieswims05.

icy cold germany

will spring ever come?

vogelgrippe!!!!

vogelgrippe!!!!
Originally uploaded by annieswims05.

The avian flu is coming to get you...

Karnival

the whole gang
Originally uploaded by annieswims05.

Blue hawiian cowgirl, santas helper, two kitties, and one masked man... sounds like a recipie for a good time!

Karnival pics are up :)

Socialist Breakfast and other Berlin Adventures

If I lose one more thing.... I'm going to lose my mind along with it! I can't find the cable for my camera. Which is why I'm not uploading Karnival photos right now. But I didn't bring it with me so it has to be here somewhere, hopefully when (and if) I clean my room I'll come accross it.

So! It has been quite a week. One of the greatest I've had here I'd have to say. The conference was great. The actual conference parts as well as the massive amount of partying and socializing that went along with it. I love my Fulbrighter friends. I got to Berlin a couple days before the actual conference started to hang out with Caroline. Chris came down as well to escape bird flue up north :-P We did some exploring around berlin together. We also went to a socialist breakfast. Hee hee, I get a kick out of that every time I say it. They had a buffet of cold breakfast foods, all vegetarian and vegan, and when you were done you paid between 3 and 7 euros depending on how much money you have and feel you should pay. I love it.

Sunday we got to check into our fancy schmancy hotel on Alexanderplatz. Gotta love Fulbright. The next four days were kind of a blur. I went to some workshops, one on the push for elite universities in Germany (never going to happen in my opinion), one on Muslims in Germany, one on the city in german literature, and some research presentations. We heard the Mayor of Berlin speak as well as some other important people. It was a great atmosphere of academics and intellectuals. It really made me want to go back to grad school after next year. There were also of course free dinners and, more importantly, free wine! There was some exploring of Berlin, although mostly of the nightlife. There was a really really impressive Music Galla at the end with all the Fulbrighters studying music performance here. I met lots of people, got to hang out with my favorite people, and had a generally great time. When the conference ended Thursday afternoon I went back to caroline's and promptly crawled into bed for the rest of the afternoon. It was an intense exahsting experience.

Last weekend I got to hang out and play with Caroline and once again wish that I were living in Berlin with her. We saw a great art exhibit at the New National Gallery on the theme of Melencholy, we ate wonderful food, I got to go to Desperate Houswives night with some of Caroline's friends. Saturday we went to an amazingly cool poetry/rap/music open mic performance at a tiny callery/bar/soup place. There were some really really talented poet/rappers there and it was just so very... Berlin, big city. I liked it. Sunday I took a bus back to Munich because it's like a quarter of the price of a train. It was not as bad as I expected. I managed to sleep almost the entire 8 hours.

All in all, despite losing my wallet, my hat, my scarf, and my phone charger....it was a great trip! I wasn't terribly excited to come back to munich again, but I have so much to do and plan now that it doesn't really bother me. Jackie gets in this friday and we're going to Vienna together for the weekend, Caroline and her mom and Grandma will be here the week after next, then I leave for the big trip to greece! As soon as I get back Elena will be here and as soon as she leaves Shannon will be here and a week after that I'm going to Paris with Mom! So I'm not too worried about being lonely and bored anymore.

By the by, I just discoved "SkypeIn" and "SkypeOut" yesturday, so now I can call land lines in the US and I also have my own number with a VA Beach area code that anyone can call and reach my computer. It's pretty nifty. Technology is cool.

Viva Colognia

Greetings from snowy Berlin! It's been a heckuva week. Karnival and chocolate and drinking and dancing and parades and pick pockets--- but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I very hapily bit fairwell to the shoe box that I call home in Munich on Saturday morning and borded a packed train where I got to sit in the smoking car allll the way to Duisburg. I'm pretty sure I lost two years of my life on that train. So, then in Duisburg I met Matt, Lindsay, and Chris and then promptly turned around and took a train back to Colonge to get Caroline and Marrissa. After luggage was saftely stowed in lockers we went out to hit the town. I heart Cologne. We waisted no time in finding some drinks and jumping into the throng on people on the streets. There were groups of tribal type drummers and costumes galore. I have loads of pictures that I'll upload when I get home. It was PACKED. Karnival costumes don't have to follow any particular rules, it's pretty much like Halloween, anything out of the ordinary goes and most everyone is dressed up. Somehow we ended up at some bars and did a whole lot of dancing- at least I did. We also met the TA who works in Cologne. Things get a little hazy at that point so I'm not quite sure how all the logistics worked out (I'm pretty sure Lindsay is the one to thank!), but we made it back to the train station in time to get the train back to Duisburg and crash there. It was an obsenely fun evening.

Sunday was considerably more low key. We went out in Dusseldorf-- oh the high school memories-- the city where I went to my first real bar ever! Monday was the big parade day in Cologne, it's called Rosenmontag (pink monday?), We got up really really early and Caroline and I somehow managed to paint on some wiskers and noses as well as craft some snazzy cat ears on teh incredibly crowded train. Yeah I know, a cat, my old fall back costume. We ate the traditional karnival food, Berliners, known in the south as Krapfen, known in the US as jelly dohnuts which go surprising well with the also traditional cheap champain drunk out of the bottle ;-P Then we waited outside in teh SNOW for nearly two hours before the parade started, but we got a darn good spot. The floats weren't really that impressive, they are mostly political cartoons. I had heard that karnival is kind of the one time in Germany when they can let down their guard and say and do whatever, including making lewd jokes about polititions and such. What the parade did have was candy and flowers and lots of them. We all suddenly became seven years old again waving and screaming and pushing to get as many low quality chocolates and candies as we could. And Marrisa worked her charms up front collecting a whopping boxload of roses and carnations among others. We left a bit before the end of the parade to avoid some of the crowds and because we were pooped. Matt left and it was just us girls for the night. We finally made ourselves some semi-healthy nourisment and crashed early.

Tuesday Marrissa left and in the midsts of cleaning up a bit and gathering my things I realized that my wallet was not in my purse. We searched the apartment with no success. I was still hoping it would miraculously show up somewhere, but then we went to the Deutschebank to report my lost cash card and found out someone had already tried to use it. :( So I cancelled it as well as my american credit cards. Thank goodness I still have my passport. I lost 50 euros cash :( And I found out in Muenster at the bank yesturday that someone took out 300 from my account on tuesday before I got in to cancell it. I reported it to the police and everything, and the banker had my sign some things, so hopefully they'll return the money too me. For the next week I just can only get money by going to a bank during open hours. Kinda sucks, but could be worse. I'm pretty sure someone must have grabbed my wallet while I was buying a bratwurst at the parade. I had some difficulty getting the mustard out and probably hadn't thourouhly zipped my purse yet. How can people be so mean? Sigh, ok, I've let it go now and I'm getting on with having fun for the rest of my vacation.

Wednesday I took the train to Muenster where I was welcomed with open arms by Eva. We hung out, had some meals, some coffe, of course cake, took a little buble around the city. Silke came over for a little bit but is busy working on her masters thesis. It was good to see them again, and nice that I always have someone to visit back in Muenster. Apparently there's another Richmond student coming in the spring! exciting.

Today I hoped yet another train to Berlin where I am at the moment with Caroline. Not sure what we'll do for the next couple days. The conference starts sunday. Good times, yay for Berlin!

updates and pictures will be coming in a while...

The F word (future!)

Guess where I am?

Right, at school.

Guess what I'm doing?

Did you say nothing? Right again!

This is the stupidest job ever. Once again I was signed up to go to a class today and cover for my advisor who isn't here, but I guess he forgot to tell his class or the administration this because no class showed up. grr. I may or may not have one class to go to in another couple hours. If she doesn't needs me and I came all the way here (it takes about an hour to get here) and sat here all morning when I could have just stayed home... grrrrrr. I suppose I have no right to be annoyed since I don't actually have anything else to be doing and I am getting paid for this. But really. I feel so useless. I need to find a useful job for next year. I've been thinking a lot lately about my not so distant future...

Hey, what the heck am I doing after this gig is over? You may be asking yourselves. I wish i knew. I'll be back home in MN in July and will spend the summer and fall there happily living with my parents, hopefully working somewhere. Nannying, or looking for an internship or volunteering or something (Ideas anyone?). Beyond that I have to wait and see. Eric is currently working on a congressional campain in VA Beach. Should they win in November then he may have a job in DC, in which case I would go along and look for a job there and eventually for a grad school- maybe. If not then I will somehow lure Eric up to Minneapolis. My plan is to get him to visit in the summer so that he thinks it's a nice warm pretty place. He wont realize until much later what he's gotten himself into. I would be quite happy either way. DC is a cool city and it would be fun to live there (and Shannon may be there too!). Minniapolis is also cool and I would really like to live near my family and friends for an extended period of time again.

Anyway, probably most of you already knew this, just thought I'd fill the rest of you in in case you were wondering. Most important is that I will be home in July and there will be much rejoicing and party throwing and swimming in lakes and boating and driving my car and waving american flags around while singing patriotic songs, eating apple pie, and playing baseball.

It's official... just talked to another teacher... no one needs me today. Sigh. At least I can go home and take a nap.

I guess I'm not the only one who's noticed the problems in Germany's school system...

UN condemns German school system





Last weekend I went to a comedy night at an Irish pub with Peter, I think the Irish comedians may have been a bit difficult for him to understand, but it was fun. Sunday I helped Uta move, well, actually I was a bit late and she had a bunch of other friends also also so I didn't actually do much moving, but I did eat a Weisswurst breakfast with them. yum. Sunday I went ice skating with Diana and other assorted people.

Now I'm counting down the days until break this weekend... can't wait to get out of here, this room is starting to close in on me!

sniff sniff

I just watched Tatanic on TV. Great movie. The string quartet playing on the deck at the end always gets me. Kate Winslet is fantastic. I want to be her. When she goes and gets the ax and then goes back through the flooded halway hanging from the pipes above to save Jack...what a heroin. I definitely like her better than Mr. Leo. I'm pretty sure I hadn't watched Titanic since nineth grade when I saw it at least three times in theaters with Chelsea. I miss Chelsea :( Can we have a costume party this summer guys? pleeeease? We can have it at my house... ooh, at the lake house. Another Tatanic party... on the pontoon boat! hahahaha, oh, I kill myself... seriously though. There will be a themed party of some variety this summer.

Summer... mmm... that sounds... far away. Although it's been getting pretty warm around here. And all that ice and snow I was complaining about? well it's turning all of Bavaria into a giant slushy right now now, if only I had a giant bottle of cherry flavored syrup. It's pretty messy out there. On the one hand I'm happy that it's raining instead of snowing, but I'm not too optimistic that this is the end of winter just yet.

It was a boring week at school with not very much to do... hopefully the weekend will be more eventful. Tomorrow I'm tutoring a little boy. I haven't met him yet, his mom hung a flyer on my building, looking for an english tutor with good pronunciation. She was a little leary when i called because I'm american and of course they teach british english. but I assured her that it would be fine. I'm pretty sure if he goes into school with a perfect american accent they won't mind. Stupid British English. Seriously. If this whole experience has made me think differently about anything it's that I now loath British English. Have you got a pencil? No, I haven't got a pencil, I've got a pen. Arg, who talks like that? and stupid "can" and "caaaaaahhhn't". I don't care if it confuses the fifth graders, I can't say caaahhhn't. It would unpatriotic :-P And we read a text last week called, "Can you fetch us Mum?" fetch us? is Mum a dog? because otherwise I don't see how she could fetch you. And everyone, EVERYONE sounds rediculous when they say trousers. and jumper. I had a ten minute discussion last week with a teacher over whether of not americans really pronouce missile like mistle. yes, yes we do, don't you think I would probably know possibly better than you would?

whew, glad I got that off my chest ;) sorry if I offended any Brits out there.

time for bed I think. night night.

Pink, Hearts, Chocolates, and Roses

Happy V-day! I miss seeing the Vaginia Monologues at UR... they must be going on sometime this week. Good show, you should see it. I saw it three times and it was just as powerful, funny, enlightening every time.

I also miss my Valentine date :( He got up early to call me on my cell this afternoon, so that was sweet. But now I'm home alone watching an old episode of Home Improvement in German... woo hoo. The show, by the way, is called "Listen to who is hammering" in German, roughly translated. It's stupid. Oh well. The clerk in the super market was giving out a rose to every costomer today, and he gave me TWO, so at least I have roses!

Anyway... Last weekend was good... Saturday night I went out with Uta, the student teacher, and her boyfriend and a couple friends. We went to a bar and then to a club. Turned out the club was having a 60s night, only it was more like every song you've never heard from the 60s. Gag. It was pretty terrible... But the germans were dancing to it all the same. They're so cute... they each have their own little step. Left together right... or forword and back.. and they just keep doing it over and over and over regardless of the music. Germans. Uta and the other students teachers are all leaving after this week, which is the end of the semester. Which means that all the young nice teachers who actually talk to me are leaving. boo.

Just a week and a half before break!!! yay!!! I can't stop looking at my calendar over and over... Karnival, Berlin conference, then Jackie is visiting in March, then spring break in Greece in April, then Elena is coming, then Shannon, then in May my Mommy and then it's June already!! fun things.

Hope you all had a love and chocolate filled day.

Passion Lives here

I swear I wrote about the German eduaction system and tracking in here somewhere, but I can't find it and it bears repeating. German students are tracked into three different types of schools when they go into fifth grade. Realschule, the lowest, a few years shorter and sometimes leading to an aprenticeship or something in some sort of handwork trade, or more likely unemployment at the moment. Haubtschule, in the middle, also shorter and often leading to aprenticeships but often in more technical trades I think, or maybe other bluecollar jobs or basic secritarial administrative stuff. Not entirely sure. And then Gymnasiums, like the schools I teach at, goes through 13th grade and nearly all students go on to University. The students are tracked based on test scores and performance in school so far, but the school and teachers actually can only make recomendations, the ultimate decision in up to the parents. Of course after a year or two in Gymnasium a student can be moved down, or, less often, a Haubtschule student can move up. Of course the system is biased. The class that I mentioned was all boys was actually an advanced class within the Gymnasium. Other than that there seem to be an eaqual number of boys as girls in the Gymnasiums. There is a more recognizable bias when it comes to immigrants. One of the biggest reasons being that they don't have any kind of "German as a second language" programs for young students, so obviously those kids who don't learn German at home stuggle more in school and tend to be held back and placed lower. Immigrant students and families may also have different priorities and sending their kids to university may not be as high on the list. Economic class can also play a role, but it's not so outright, since the parents decide. If the kids parents are lawyer or doctors then of course they're going to think their kid should be in a Gymnasium, where as the child of electicians or janitors is less likely to be pushed into the college track. The same thing happens in the US. I don't know that the German system is more or less fair. At least funding is evenly spread out among the schools so that in theory everyone has the same oportunities regardless of where they live, small town or big city. One thing that is certainly less fair is that their programs for students with learning disorders are barely existent and someone with say, dislexia, is not likely to make it to the college track.
Hope that helps :)

And now on a completely different topic: STOP SNOWING!!!! enough already, seriously. It was blizzard conditions most of the day yesturday and continued all day today as it has been all week. I never want to leave my room. ever. Right now I'm staying in and watching the Opening ceremonies of the Olympics. yay Olympics! They're so close to me this year. If it had been the summer games I would have gone in a heartbeat. But winter sports aren't quite enough for me to spend the money and fight the crowds. Someday I'll go to a summer Olympics.... I'm afraid I have to give up my dream of actually being in them now, I'm too old :( and synchro is way too hard :-P But I can at least go see it! I've stopped going to synchro here... it was just too awkward. I can't actually compete with them. and all the girls were like 18. And they were nice... but not really friendly or eager to make friends with me... so yeah. no synchro this year. I'll join a masters team when I get home and it's in english again :)

Ok... time for bed...

PS. Thanks for the package Shannon! It came at just the right time... I was bored and stuck in my room not wanting to go out in the snow storm. I miss Oprah...

Hi

Hi. Have I really only posted three times since christmas break? I seems like it's been an eternity and a half since then. I am once again at school with nothing to do because a teacher signed up to have me come in, but then forgot and doesn't actually need me so I've got three hours of down time... if only it didn't take me a full hour to get home. Oh well, I'm not quite so upset this time because it was the fourth hour rather than the second and I got plenty of sleep last night. So So So... how was my week?

I don't really remember the rest of classes last week, so I guess they weren't exciting. Friday I had the most frustrating afternoon ever trying to straiten out a ticket I got because my transport was was expired... missing my S-bahn to baby sit, taking the next train which only went to the stop one before mine, taking the next train from there which mysteriously decided to skip the next two stops and go to the end stations, waiting in Holzkirchen in the middle of nowhere at the end of the S-bahn line for 40 min, finally getting a train back to my stop only to find that the family had already left and taken the kids with them. God I miss my car. After that I went over to Jen's apartment. She's the other American TA here in Munich and I hadn't seen her since like October, so it was nice to catch up a little and see what her life here is like.

Saturday I got up at the crack of dawn to go to the train station and head out to the mountains for some cross country skiing! woo hoo! I met Diana and a couple woment we got in contact with on the Toytown site. Katie decided she also wanted to come along, though I hope she didn't end up regretting it. She had never been any kind of skiing before and isn't exactly the athletic type. I thought that cross country would be fairly easy to start with. I was apparently wrong. I really didn't think a person could possibly fall so many times on flat ski tracks. Poor Katie. She ended up waiting in the lodge for us while we went out a second time. It was a really really gorgeous trail and a lot of fun to get out there and ski around. I wish I had my skis with me because I want to go again and again and again. I think I'll try a closer place this weekend.

School has been good this week. I did another creative writing kind of lesson with a class on monday. Yesturday I tought a lesson on cowboy which was great. They had a lot of ideas that I had to straiten out a bit. Some seemed to think that there weren't really cowboys, that it's all a myth, others think a cowboy was just anyone walking around the american west with a hat on. oiy. We read some old cowboy poetry, it was fun. I also found out yesturday that the lower grades each have a special advanced group separated based on intelligence tests. And in most cases it's all boys. Hmm. Something smells fishy. The teacher said boys are just pushed more and that girls prefer to stay in the regular class with their friends which boys are more excited to be in an advanced class. I don't know....


It's been snowing a lot this week and things are all messy and slushy. Yesturday morning I had a bit of a scare when my bus was in an accident. It wasn't too bad, but one woman fell out of her seat and was hurt, I'm not sure how badly. Everyone just got off the bus and walked away right away. It seemed like we should have had to wait for the police or something... but I guess not. Anyway, I missed my first class but am otherwise quite alright, I'm glad it wasn't worse. I guess that's the advantage of not driving a car, I don't have to drive in snow or deal with all the repercussions of accidents. It seems weird to just walk away and not have to worry about insurance and accident reports and everything. The inpact of the crash would have been a whole lot worse on a little car as well.


That's all at the moment... nothing particularily intelligent to say... maybe next time ;-) ciao

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??

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose...

But you can't pick your friends' noses.

I was reminded of those great words of wisdom today when the little boy I was babysitting tried to pick my nose. But when I shared my little saying with him he promply responded, "No, mom says we can't pick our nose." The obvious solution being to pick mine instead... kids are weird. At least the little ones are more managable than the older ones....

The seventh grade classes are currently practicing for or have recently taken oral exams and a few teachers have asked me to help by taking half the class into another room to oversee some roleplay excersizes. This is generally the kind of task that I like, one in which everything is pre-planned for me, and I feel useful. But the last class I've worked with the last couple weeks if awful. They know I'm not a real teacher, I can't give them grades, i can't punish them , I can't test them, so why should they listen to me or do anything I say? arg. They can be soooooo obnoxious and horrible and rude. It's unbelievable how inconsiderate seventh graders are. I mean, I fogive them for it, because they are 12 or so and life is rough, but the lengths some of the boys will go to to get attention and show off are rediculous. gah.

That's all for my rant today.

In general life has been pretty slow... hence the blogging has also been slow. I've taken to reading a lot, I nearly forgot how much I enjoyed it. I finished Kafka on the Shore last week, and read Five Quarters of the Orange, now I'm on to Memiors of a Geisha which I plan to finish this week so I can see the film Sunday or Monday. I would be quite content to stay in my room under my warm covers with a stack of books for the next couple months until it gets warm outside again. I know.... I'm a terrible Minnesotan. But really, it's cold. And my bed is warm. I'm going to get into it now.

warm wishes!

cold cold cold

dark and cold. is how I'd describe munich at the moment.... most of the northern hemisphere I suppose. sigh... january... blah.

So, this week... school was fine. definitely had trouble adjusting to getting up early, not that I was every really adjusted, it doesn't work when you only have to get up early three days a week. I'm still figuring out which classes I may kind of switch into within the next couple weeks. It's frustrating. I wish more teachers would approach me and ask me to do something, and not "oh, just do anything for 45 min" that's the worst, I wish more of them had specific things for me to do. I don't feel particularily useful most of the time.

Anyway. I haven't done much during my four day weekend... a little shopping, a bit of running out in the cold cold coldness, watching movies on tv. I cleaned my room finally. Yesturday I went to Narnia with Katie (I love it!), met Peter for coffe and the baby sat. Today I got my hair cut finally. It's a bit shorter than I intended, but it works. Also, I wanted to excersize today but couldn't bring myself to go outside in the cold again, so I jump-roped, in my tiny little room. If you could see my room you would realize how rediculous this picture is, but I manged without hitting anything and now I have something to do while I watch Gilmore Girls every day at 4pm! Tonight I went and saw Match Point with Peter and his friends. It was really good, but I'd like to see it again in English next time, I don't mind watching some movies dubbed in German, but this one has Brittish and Irish and American accents and it seems like so much of the charactors is missing without the language. And I think I missed a lot of the humor, it's quite dark at parts and all the germans were lauging and I could see how it could be funny... it's just hard for me to read tone of voice when I'm listening to German.

Tomorrow it's back to school.... three long days....

I've been a bit down this week, I had been looking forward to seeing my family and Eric for so long, and now it's over and I don't have anything to look forward to for a while. My next break is at the end of February when I plan to go visit Lindsay near Cologne to go to Karnival there and then we have the Berlin conference the next week. So all that will be fun. And Munich can be fun too... I just am kind of sick of it I guess, and less anxious to make friends and settle in more because I'll just be leaving again in five months. Five months is plenty of time I know. That's like more than more whole semester abroad. So I can certainly make more friends and continue to make myself more at home here in that amount of time. I miss home! I know I still have a lot left to learn and experience here somehow, I just don't see what it is at the moment. I'm sure I'll figure it out. I'm looking forward to springtime.

Better get to bed... I'm teaching and babysitting tomorrow so it's going to be a long one!

Winter Break Part Two: Eric!!

snow angels!!
Originally uploaded by annieswims05.

After my parents left I had one day to chill and clean my room before getting up well before dawn to go and pick Eric up from the airport.

I shall try not to be to nausiatingly mushy here, but really it was a magical week together. Walking around Munich, going out to eat, cooking together, seeing firworks on New Years Eve --- which was crazy! I thought there would be like a big city sponsored display and then a few people with sparklers, oh no! Everyone and their mother was out with huge amounts of explosives and alcohole in town shooting off fireworks wherever they pleased all over the city. It was fun and exciting and very terrifying all at the same time. We also went to Salzburg for a couple days which was soooo pretty. They had just had like three feet of snow and it continued to snow the entire time we were there. We hiked around the mountain with the castle on it. It looked like what I imagine Narnia would have looked like to Lucy when she stepped out of the wardrom. Seriously. Gorgeous. We wandered, threw snowballs, made snow angels, went back to town and had some beer and soup. It was great :)

It was very hard to say goodbye saterday morning and I spent all of Saturday sitting in bed holding back tears and watching every movie on television includeing some really bad ones, like 'The Fly'. gross. By Sunday I pulled myself out of it and even went out ice skating with a girl from Toytown and a random guy staying with her through couchsurfing.com, Oh internet... how would people ever make connections without you?

Monday I went to the city to the housing office to try and figure out why they had sent me an eviction letter a couple weeks ago. Did I mention that? yeah. Turns out I didn't give them a copy of the reciept I got when I registered my address with the city, which no one ever told me I was supposed to give them in the first place. Luckily I've learned by now that Germans like paperwork and I managed to find the little flimsy carbon copy slip at the bottom of my drawer. So I have to go back friday and give that to them.

Since then it's been back to teaching! whoopy... I have to go teach now in fact, so I'll continue this later. But it's been nice catching up.

Happy New Year!

Winter Break Part One: Family time

neuschwanstein
Originally uploaded by photoschwalbe.

This photo is the winner of our family vacation photo contest which my parents ingeniously came up with during their trip here. It kept Scott at least mildly entertained trying to take the best pictures at all the horribly boring (for a 12 year old boy) sites that we visited. Sadly Scott's photos were beat out by the Japanese tourist who snapped this shot for us. Sorry Scott.

I had a great week with my family despite some hectic moments despite being somewhat unprepared for EVERYTHING being closed the 24th-26th. We still managed to get in some shopping, we saw the Nymphenburg Palace and the Deutsches museum, and ate our fair share of Bavarian food. The last couple days we went to Garmish, but stoped on the way to see Neuschwanstein (King Ludwig II's fairy tale castle in the Alps). We did some skiing and walking around the cute little town in Garmish before they had to head back home. I'm happy that they came, but sad that I couldn't go home and see everyone, I miss everone and everything. July seems awfly far away sometimes....

On to part two...

Froeliche Weinachted

I've been having a merry last few days here with my family plus Julia who came down from Rostock. Today we are off to Garmish for some skiing.

Just wanted to write a quick update and wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Peace and Love,
Anne

Happy Winter Solstice

From today on the days start getting longer instead of shorter.

Yay!!!!

That means my year abroad can only get better from here :)

But maybe I should get a mask and dance around a fire to scare off evil spirits just to be sure. You can never be too safe when it comes to evil spirits.

I need a costume like this:

These are the "Krampus", around Austria and Bavaria they come during Christmas time, or sometimes along with St. Nickolous to punish or kidnap bad children. Lindsay and I saw them at the Christmas market last weekend walking around scaring women and children. They're pretty cool. I'm sure it's some kind of hold over from pegan times. I like those kind of traditions.

My family will be here in about 12 hours! yay! and... yikes... time to clean!

but do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?

Allright, so it's been quite a while. Last weekend was really boring and lazy. This weekend was crazy hectic and very fun :) This week at school was fine, lots of christmasy type lessons, and there will be more this week. I did some carol singing which was interesting considering I really can't sing, but I figured at least then the kids would feel more confident! Friday night was the big sleepover. oiy veh. Remind me to never do that again. We managed to get them to do a few organized activities, we made paper fireplaces and christmas cards, sang Rudolf, they went on a christmas scavaenger hunt for envelopes we had hid outside... except that we hid them BEFORE it snowed three inches!! But then we ordered Pizza and it ended up taking like two hours to get there and things kind of disolved into chaos at that point. I manged to play dreidle with a smaller group of boys. Much of the evening they played cops and robbers all over the school building with the lights out. At least they weren't killing each other. We also decorated ginger bread men, most of the boys ended up breaking them or stabbing then with toothpicks and putting red icing on them for blood. boys will be boys.... Finally we wachted the Grinch (the new one) and went to bed. The other teachers had to get up every hour pretty much all night to go in and yell at them to be quiet and go to bed. I'm just glad I didn't have to be the responsible one!

Saturday morning I made lots and lots of scrambled eggs and bacon for the little beasts.... then I left and just made quick stop at my room before heading to Nuemburg to meet a bunch of other Fulbrighters there for the Biggest (or possibly oldest) christmas market in Germany. It was PACKED. Seriously, could barely even move. We were only there for a couple hours and then I went back with them to Regensburg. I was planning on coming back to Munich saturday night, but I didn't end up making the last train so I just crashed with them in Matt's tiny little room on the floor.... good times. It's always fun getting together with them all and seeing other americans my age doing the same thing, comparing lesson plans and experiences and everything. A very nice bunch of people. Lindsay came back to Munich with me Sunday morning and we went with Katie to most of the big christmas markets in Munich. We hit up the Tollwood winter festival, the central Marienplatz market, the Medival market and the Artsy Schwabinger market. Whew. Then we went to the Irish Pub Katie works at and ate and sat around for a long long time and watched some really bad German kereoke.

I'm dangerously close to being all Christmased out... good thing it's only a week away!

Lindsay left this morning and now i have a couple hours to relax and possibly clean before I have a meeting for all Fulbrighters in Bavaria.

OOh! Gilmor Girls is on... forget cleaning! I'll do it sometime before my family gets here... on THURSDAY! ahh! so soon! so much to do! I really hope everything goes well... I don't really have everything worked out yet, like reservations and stuff. I'm a little nervouse. But I think it will all be ok. As long as we're together, that's the important part right?. I'm excited to go into the mountains and go skiing after christmas. I'll finally see the alps close up.

And then Eric will come and we'll have New Years together and it will be wonderful.


EEEEEEEE so much going on and so much to look forward to. I'm begining to think that things are never really going to settle down this year. There's always traveling and visitors and crazyness. Oh well. It's fun for a year :)

Chrismukkah

Today I have to do NOTHING AT ALL until baby sitting at 7pm. I had/still have a lot of good intentions for the day. Like:
-running,
-cleaning my room so I can stop falling over the air mattress to get from my bed to my computer
-grocery shopping so I don't have to eat nothing but spagetti and cereal tomorrow,
-crocheting the scarf I've been working on for two months,
-reading the book we're going to talk about in class on monday,
-planning some stellar lessons instead of coming up with something ten min before each class next week,
-writting christmas cards
-or at the very least updating my blog.

Ta da! guess what the first thing on that list that's getting done today is? right.
it's 2:10 and I have yet to put pants on. Yessssss.
Eh, I still have like four hours, I can do a couple of those things yet. And hey, it's saturday.

So... update time.
Where did the week go?
In school I did lessons on job interviews, some everyday situation role plays, some pictionary with English idioms, and gave a little talk on my personal experience of being German in America, which also turned into a little bit of being American in Germany. I told them about my family history and my teacher wanted me to talk about what it means to be german in the US... the problem is that something like 40% of Americans have German heritage, so it's not exactly something rare and exciting. My family is closer to our German roots than most, since I'm only second generation American. But still, my mom and her siblings didn't learn German at home and besides a few traditions like St. Nickolous day and familie recipies, we don't exactly stick out from the rest of the population. I told them there are some German towns in the US, like New Ulm. And that lots of cities have Oktoberfest celebrations. Which they think is funny, because Oktoberfest is only a Munich thing, even other German cities don't have Oktoberfest celebrations. We eat Bratwurst and say Gesundheit when someone sneezes... but that's about the extent of Germaness it would seem. I explained that after the War being German was not exactly popular, so Germans in the US weren't big on showing pride for their heritage or speaking the language. It makes sense. but things have changed. I still cared about my heritage enough to decide to learn the language, and I have liked the country enough to keep coming back and to live and work here for a year, but I certainly don't feel like I belong here because of my roots, or like this is my country or nationality. I'm proud of my German history now as well, but I'm still American, through and through, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Here's one good reason why... all that "PC" stuff that we make fun of at times and that Europeans think in completely rediculous, well, now I appreciate and understand it. Bavaria is a Catholic state. You won't find any German equivilant of "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" around here. It's all about Christmas and nothing else. I find it overwhelming and I'm catholic! One of the families I'm babysitting for is Jewish and I talked to their Mom a bit last week about being Jewish here. Her son's school (an international english speaking school by the way) is doing a Christmas market fundraiser. She's trying to be understanding that she's in Bavaria, but is bothered when they call her to ask her to volunteer for something which is not her Holdiay, especially asking her to voluteer on a Saturday, which she can't do. There is not a very big Jewish population here anymore, there are Jews, just not a lot and I have been suprised by how little contact Germans have with Jewish culture (or any other culture for that matter).

At one of my schools I'm helping to plan an "English Christmas Sleepover" for seventh grade boys. The plan is to spend the evening speaking english and learning about American and British Christmas traditions. Great. But, the thing is, something like that would never happen in America to begin with at a public school. I told the teachers this and that in American schools around the holidays we always learn about Hanukkah and Kwanza and even Native American winter solstice tradiontions along with Christmas, even at my catholic elementary school. I think most americans have some idea of what Hanukkah is even if they don't know the whole story. Here, however, they have absolutely no idea. I suggested that we incorporate some kind of Hanukkah activity into the sleepover, learning about the holiday and then maybe playing the dreidel or something. The teachers were a little taken aback I think, and uncertain of what the kids would make of soemthing like that. They also know pretty much nothing at all about Hanukkah themselves. Had never heard of a dreidel, or manorah, nothing, they don't learn about other religions at all. But anyway, they agreed that I could be in charge of finding something Hanukkah related to do at the sleepover, so I'm looking for ideas and will ask the family I baby sit for also. Jewish items are pretty hard to come by in Munich, so I'll have to be a little creative I think, but it should be interesting. The sleepover is next Friday, I'll let you know how it goes.
So anyway, the moral of the story is, even if being "PC" can get out of hand or seem stupid in the US, I like that we are sensitive to other peoples religions and cultures and that we actually have people from other religions and cultures in the US and that schools care about teaching kids about other cultures and traditions. Germany is still lacking when it comes to multiculturalism. Despite the large Muslim population I think it will be a long time before they are teaching German school kids about Islamic holidays and traditions. but that's a whole other can of worms.

Hooray for the melting pot/salad bowl/mosaic that is American culture and multiculturalism. German Americans and Jewish Amercans and everything else. It's not perfect, obviously there is still a lot of discrimination and self segregation, but I feel like a lot of intelligent open minded people are making an effort and that it is generally recognized that valuing each individual culture and still treating everyone eaqually despite their cultural background is something to strive for. I don't get that feeling in Germany. Maybe all us Fulbrighters will eventually make a difference :) There are some parts of American culture and idealism that I don't mind trying to spread to the rest of the world, as long as we do it in the right way. I'll do my part by playing dreidel with 20 some German seventh graders :)

I <3 Berlin

So... where the heck have I been the last few days? I'm sure you've all been worried sick...

Well, Phil was headed to Berlin all by his lonesome after Munich so he begged and pleaded and twisted my arm and eventually I gave in and decided to go with him. Ha! Actually the mere suggestion of escaping the sometimes stiffling gemuehtlichkeit in Munich for a weekend to be a tourist and see Caroline in the coolest city ever was all I needed to pack up a back pack and meet Phil at the train station after class on Thursday. I love Berlin! Love it! It's just so....dynamic, raw, exciting, romantic, new, old, everything and anything

We ended up staying at a hostel because Caroline's roomate's boyfriend was also in town and for some crazy reason they wanted some privacy or something.... ;-P But it was a very nice hostel and kinda fun to stay in a hostel again, it's been a while. I took Phil to my favoritest tourist sites in Berlin, the Pergamon, the TV tower and the Reichstag... all in the first day! It was really really cold, but no matter, fun all the same. Caroline came with us to the Reichstag and then we went to a little dinner party at her place with some of her Fulbrighter friends. Lots of wine and good times.

Saturday we went to the new Jewish Museum which is really really good I think. The building itself is awesome. Designed by Daniel Liebeskind, very powerful. The exhibit is really good, covering the entire history of Jews in Germany and in Berlin. I liked that it didn't focus on the Holocaust. I read quite a bit about Jews in Germany for my thesis last year. It was nice to see a musuem with information about the long history Jewish diasphora (sp?) and a contemporary section on what has happened to German Jews since and what it means to be a German Jew today. Lots of films and museums focus on the Holocaust experience, but don't show what happened after...there are still Jewish people in Germany. Of course remembering the Holocaust is important, I was just at a concentration camp last week after all, but it's also important to not let that be the whole of the connection between Germaness and Jewishness, it's important to be able to move forward as well.

We also went to the New National Gallery where they had two special exhibits going. We went to one by contemporary German artist Jorg Immendorff, it was pretty cool. Very political, really interestingly laid out, very German and very appropriatly located in Berlin.

After that Phil and I pretty much crashed. Went back to the hostel and didn't get farther away than accross the street for dinner. I warned Phil that mexican in Germany would probably not be good...

Phil left early Sunday morning for Amsterdam and will be heading home this week. It was fun to travel at bit with him, I'm glad we reconected. It's nice to see high school friends who've turned out to be such nice considerate mature interesting people... not that all my friends weren't all those things in high school... but you know what I mean. It was a bit strange being with someone all done with their european experience and looking forward to going home when I'm only like 1/3 of the way through mine... which is actually really far, I can't believe it's going so fast, and yet can't believe I won't be home again until July... that's a long long time....

Anyway, so I kinda bummed around Sunday, went over to Caroline's, chit chatted about life and ate lunch with her and then went out and wandered around Alexanderplatz, the Christmas markets, and some of the surrounding streets for a little bit before it was time to go see Caroline's German Synchro depute... that's right, I went to a synchro show in Berlin, and it was super :) Synchro shows are always guarenteed to be velveata level cheesy and really really fun. Caroline was excellent as a swan in their production of Cinderella and I'm glad I got to go see it. After we went to yet another dinner party at another Fulbrighters house. Apparently this is all they do in Berlin. It was very nice and I ate lots and lots and then some peanut butter cookies- yay americans and imported american baking products! They all have really cool big apartments in east berlin that actually have some charactor, as opposed to my steril little white box in the suburbs, and they're probably all paying lower rent than I am.... I'm a tiny bit jelouse in case you couldn't tell.

So yeah, that was my lovely weekend in Berlin, I'm quite glad I went. And it actually wasn't so bad coming back to munich this time because I had presents waiting for me! There was a package from Alexis on my doorstep when I got back, it was like the next best thing to actually havinga person to welcome me home. Thanks Alexis, I love it and I'm listening to the Chistmas CD right now and I'm really excited about the new Nickel Creek CD because the old one is one of my favorites to listen to on trains :-D
Also when I got back I had FOUR windows to open in my advent calendar which meant four pieces of chocolate all at once. mmm.

This week I actually have a fair bit of lesson planning to do, yikes. Next weekend I don't have plans, probably some baby sitting or something- definitely need to make and not spend money for a while, the weekend after that I'm going to Nuemburg and the weekend after that my parents are coming and it's Christmas!!! Wee. I love living in Europe and going on spontaneous weekend trips.

You should all go out and rent "Wings of Desire" right now because it's one of my favorite German movies and it's kind of about Berlin, and does a good job at capturing the city back when the wall was up. go watch it. You should also rend Goodbye Lenin, also good and also about and in Berlin. I would recoment some books by the Jewish German authors I studied but the ones I read don't all have translations....

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.