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...