Friday before vacation

Well, I am officially done with school work for the next two weeks, although next week I will still be busy. Today I gave two lessons in two different classes, and it was so fun! The teachers all say that the students are excited to have me in their class, because it is one less hour they have to look at the teacher. There is usually one guy in the back of the class who won't answer my questions and will only mutter rude things like the equivalent of "this sucks", but that is the other cool part of my job. I'm not the disciplinarian. I can't write people up. That's why the teacher has to stay in the class with me. So it's not really my problem. So, in one class I talked about elementary school, and in the other class about sports. I learned things like in the winter you can ice surf on the lake in storkow. who knew.

I hadn't seen Frau Florschütz to tell her that I would be going to Berlin yesterday to go see a play, and apparently she was telling a fellow teacher here last night when they were at the sauna together that she was worried that I had never come home from school yesterday. So I can't write much longer, because I need to go home and tell her that I am in fact here, and fine.

It was good to get out a little bit in Berlin. We saw a play at what is apparently the largest children's theater in Germany. This was the premiere of a dutch play that was translated into german about girl and her mother, and the fights they have after the father moves out. It was all very edgy and modern, with card board boxes as the props and the stage spinning around and a big video screen in the back. it was interesting, and not badly performed, but it was sort of intense for a 6 year old, which is who the program said it was aimed at. well, 6 and up. It was too confusing for a child who hadn't lived through something similar to understand what was going on, and too intense for one who had. I'm still glad I went though.

It was in a part of Berlin that I wasn't as familiar with, but now I know how to get from Storkow to the city with the train. It takes about an hour, to get there, another 45 to get into the heart of the city, but is still pretty navigable. I'm hoping to get up there for some of the second week of vacation.

Fall has really set in here, with grey skies, cold temperatures, and enough rain just to keep everything wet. But the heat has finally come on in my apartment, and so I'm not really that bad off. But when the sun actually manages to break through the clouds every so often, I try to get outside for it. just take whatever I'm doing and put on a third layer and sit on the porch until it's not sunny anymore.

I'm going to go now, visit Frau Florschütz and tell her my schedule for next week, which involves visiting about three different lakes, a water purifying facility, the labyrinth in the corn field, the local bike man who makes functioning bikes bigger than a house and smaller than a skateboard, a canoe trip down the canal, this huge contraption that lifts boats from one level of the lake to the other, because the difference between them is too big for a lock, and a trip through the spreewald. At some point during which we will roast bread on sticks in a german tipi. At least, that's what I got from the explanation the leader gave me. Anyway, I'll be busy and far from a computer, so I don't know when I'll write next. But certainly some time during the week after that I can get to the library and write again. I hope that everyone is well, and knows that I am thinking of them.