Getting back to School

Hi Everyone! Last week the school had its "Projektwoche", during which half the school went on various trips, and everyone else stayed here to complete some kind of project. Getting me acquainted with the school and with the town was the project of three of the students. The teacher responsible for them was also in charge of getting my paperwork at the various bureaucratic offices in town taken care of, and so we all went around together. I have now registered my address, applied for a visa, opened a bank account, applied for "Wohngeld" (extra money from the government to pay my rent)and had a tour of Storkow, Beeskow, and the school grounds. It was a mostly relaxing way to meet a couple of students, and get to know Storkow better. Now the real school work is beginning. I am visiting all kinds of classes this week to see what they are like and where I will be able to help the most, and by next week I will hopefully have a set schedule. For the most part, the teachers here are nice, and excited to have me in their classes.

Yesterday was a little more difficult, because I sat in on 8th and 9th grade classes. They didn't want to have to start regular class again after their trip to London, and were generally pretty restless and disinterested. I havn't been helping teach yet, I just sit in the background and watch. Today was a lot more engaging. The most advanced class is reading Catcher in the Rye, and seemed to mostly understand it. Rereading it with them though, I wonder if they aren't a little more confused than they're letting on. At least, the discussion we had today always went better after I explained what that paragraph really meant. But this might have just been a particularly difficult passage. The next class down was analyzing the rhetorical style of Bush's first inaugural speech, and then started watching Bowling for Columbine. So right off the bat getting into pretty heft material. But I think it keeps the kids more engaged, when it's something a little more real.

Finally I got to sit in on a seventh grade class, and the difference is huge! Of course they only started the language last year or the year before that, so they're not very advanced. But they have so much energy, and so many interesting things to say. I just hope that if I#m ever in charge of the class, I can get some of that energy focused on the lesson, and not on making faces and throwing balls of paper, which is a lot of what happened in this one. Watching the back and forth between the teacher and the students, though, reminded me of seventh grade in the states, too, and just how much and how often the teachers had to stop class to yell at us. It's sort of remarkable how much of what I remember from elementary school being when the teacher finally lost it. All pretty funny.

Still, despite the progress in school here and all the paperwork pretty much being done, no phone, and no internet. I found the quiet teacher lounge where there is rarely a wait for the computer, and so I can get on here about every day, which is great. I'm still going to try and get the Florschützes to get an ISDN for the apartment. Lars says it shouldn't be hard (Lars being the son, btw), but Klaus and Marlies (the parents) still belong to the generation where, when i said i was going to see about getting a cell phone, they said "oh, young people and their cell phones! I remember in the DDR (east Germany) when we didn't even have phones! If you wanted to know if someone was at home, you rode your bike there and asked. It was much simpler. Of course, once we did get phones, you never knew who else was listening..."

I am getting along very well with Familie Florschütz, even though we're still all using the formal You, which is tricky for me. They're the people I have spent the most time with, but are pretty much the only ones I still Sietz. Oh well. Marlies has a friend who grows pumpkins. And she keeps getting these huge pumpkins, and having to cook them. So she invites me to dinner so there will be more people eating the pumpkin soup. This weekend I had Saturday and Sunday dinner over there. After Sunday dinner we took a road trip down to Eisenhüttenstadt and then Neuzelle. Eisenhüttenstadt wasn't a town until the DDR put a steelworks there, and then it exploded to like, 60,000 people. And now that the steelworks has closed, it's emptying out. But it was for a long time the model east german city. Then Neuzelle has a lovely baroque church that we didn't get to see. It is part of a monastary, and Klaus wanted to go see the brewery first, and by the time we got done there, the church was closed. At this brewery, I have to mention, you can buy "bath beer". Yes, beer that you buy to bathe in. You can even buy a set that comes with a towel and everything. They also have their own distillery, where Marlies and I went to sample the various local specialties. She ended up buying their herbal mix, which is pretty tasty, and a bright pink color. Tomorrow the Familie and I are going to IKEA to get a laundry basket, and then Thursday Marlies and I are going to try and get down to hear this local author read at the House of Art. Oh, and I am glad, because it has been shown to me that Storkow actually is a big town for around here. Well, a Städtchen, rather than a dorf. A little city, not a village. Because it has 4 supermarkets and a bank. And there are towns just down the road that don't have anything like that. Just houses clumped up together. So there you go.

I'm going to head on out now, but one last thing. I started explaining pumpkin pie to the Familie as Marlies was talking about how she could cook all these pumpkins. And somehow ended up volunteering to make one. Does anyone have a recipe for pumpkin pie that doesn't involve the pumpkin out of a can? Or know how to get a pumpkin to look like the stuff from the can? Please help! Also doubt they have pumpkin pie spice here, so need to get estimates on that, too.

Hope you are all well, and look forward to hearing from you!