1. Advent

Happy First Advent everyone!

As the holidays approach everyone here is getting stressed. There are lots of tests to be taken before the Holidays, all the teachers are being evaluated on Dec. 1 and 2 by strangers from a board of eduaction or something like that, for 15 minutes a piece. Because the evaluators only have about 4 hours of time, or something. You can imagine how thrilled the teachers are about that. Then there is also stress because one of the schools in Storkow has to be shut down, there isn't enough money for all three. And it will be one of the elementary schools, and everyone wants to protect their elementary school, which makes sense, because they are all really lovely. So the teachers' lounge is always full about the latest crazy thing that was said at a meeting to discuss all this. It is also really cold in the school buildings, because there is not enough money to heat them at the level we normally would.

Our first chorus performance is on Friday, and there are a lot of words I still need to memorize. Some because we havn't really practiced the songs everybody knows, like all the verses of silent night, because well everyone knows them already! Except for me. And I can't read them since they are hand written and not very well copied, since no one else really needs them written down. Also, apparently, Silent Night is ok to sing because it is not really a church song anymore, but O Come All Ye Faithful is too churchy. A guy has it as a solo, and another lady in the choir only wants it sung in a church, and no where else. because it is too churchy. OK. And one of my students thought that Martin Luther King was British. Right.

Still, it is neat seeing everything get ready for Christmas. The big fir tree close to the market is all lit up, (just like it was when it was East Germany, too, I was told) and just about every room at school has a little table top display, something with candles and pine branches and bells. Yes, the land where every room in a public school gets christmas decorations, and where Baby Jesus brings the christmas presents, can't handle singing O Come All Ye Faithful in a retirement home, because it has to do with church. OK. Friday is also the christmas pageant at the elementary school, and I am going. This weekend there will be a Christmas market in Storkow, and that is the official opening of it. Sunday we went to the Christmas market in Beeskow, where there was the kitchy market on the square, with a ferris wheel and loud music, and then the nicer one inside the church, with ceramic and hand woven hats and candles and soaps. Sunday we're singing in Frankfurt (Oder) at their Christmas market, which should be a little bigger.

That's all for now, I should scoot, but thanks for all the Thanksgiving reports, and I hope this finds you all well (and warm! Only don't bother telling me how warm it is in Atlanta, I don't want to think about it.)

It's snowing!

Yay for the first snow! And it's so perfect that it happened today, since after Thanksgiving yesterday I have been feeling all christmas-y.

The dinner went off without a hitch. And whatever was left over from the dinner was eaten up by my students at conversation hour right afterwards. Except for maybe one third of one of the pumpkin pies, and the teachers are polishing that off in the teacher's lounge now. I managed to make a pumpkin pie, and am proud about that. The crust was from a German crust mix, that tasted like sugar cookies. and I could not convince the teacher who was cooking with me that you make it thin on the bottom, not like a German pie, so it was a little like a layer cake. Top layer pumpkin pie filling, bottom layer, sugar cookie. But it still tasted yummy. And I also couldn't convince her that you cut the pieces out of the pie pan. so she took it out of the springform pan, and miraculously, it held together. (this was about ... 20 minutes after it came out of the oven. the recipes reccomended cooling it at least like, an hour.) then she tried to take the bottom of the springform off. and it all fell apart. naturally. she decided to let the other one stay in the pan. Everyone wants the recipes I used, so they can have a "real American turkey dinner". Ooo-kay.

Conversation hour was not as well attended as I expected, but it worked out anyway, and everything got cleaned up. Then I had chorus practice, and that went well, too. And at the end I told them that on Thanksgiving everyone is supposed to say what they're thankful for, and that I wanted to tell them how thankful I am that I can be a part of the chorus for this year. Well, you can imagine how much everyone loved hearing that, and I got a round of applause. This is sort of a regular thing though in the chorus, every so often someone has an announcement to make about someone's birthday, anniversary with the chorus, or praise for how well we've done about something, and then everyone applauds. And shakes hands afterwards.

This weekend is the first Advent weekend, of course, and Christmas decorations are well underweigh. At least half of the houses on our street have had lights up since Monday (The custom is that Christmas decorations can go up immediately after Totensonntag (dead sunday) here, which was last sunday). Tomorrow afternoon I am baking Christmas cookies with a lady from Choir and her Ukrainian friend, and Sunday hopefully I will go visit a Weihnachtsmarkt with Familie Florschütz. I want to see about getting some decorations for my windows, too, but I have to either get something goofy I won't want to take home, or something that will fit well in a suitcase... sort of a tricky match. we'll see.

I am almost completely over my cold now, and in part thanks to another crazy German medecine: Klosterfrau Melissengeist. It is a distilled form of a lot of different herbs... and 79% alcohol. It cures everything, according to the package. Nerve trouble, headaches, muscle aches, and colds. Pretty much any problem, either rub it on, or dilute it and drink it, and it will go away. It's what little old lady alcoholics use to calm their nerves. The bottle has a picture of the award it got... from Queen Victoria. It was a present from a teacher who also sings with me in choir. She said "Don't go to the doctor, all they can do is give you more crap antibiotics. This is what My grandmother used, my mom used, it helped me, and it will help you." For a cold you're supposed to drink a cup of tea with a couple of spoons of this in it before bed, and it will help you sleep. Noo kidding. I don't think I could have gotten up if I wanted to. But since I hadn't been sleeping for all the coughing the couple of nights before, it was exaclty what I needed. The packaging it too good to be true, and it is definently coming home with me.

Alright, I want to get home and get my weekend started, after a busy week with a cold, there's plenty I still have to take care of. Hope you are all well, and that you had a nice Thanksgiving.

PS - I have only gotten one Thanksgiving report. I know that it's still early Friday morning for you all, and that not everyone obessively checks here for news from me, but I mean it! I want to hear some Thanksgiving stories, from you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi everyone!

I am pretty much over my cold, so it shouldn't be a problem when I cook a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone here. I asked for some things from home (cranberry sauce and french fried onions) and they all got here on time! So now I just have to cook it. I am even going to try making pumpkin pie.

This morning I only had one class, the little guys in seventh grade, who are my favorite for this sort of thing. We all sang "Over the River and Through the Woods", and made hand turkeys. Everyone has to take their Turkeys home and give them to someone they're thankful for.

At four is the Thanksgiving Project (what I am cooking for), then at six I have my English conversation hour, and then at seven I have Chorus practice. So it'll be a long day. But I'm glad I get to be with so many people.

I have a request though. I want everyone to write me about their Thanksgiving. Where you all went, how it was, if there are any funny stories. Did Bailey White have a new Thanksgiving story for NPR?

Hope this finds you well, and that everyone's turkeys turn out well. Everyone hope for mine, too! (well ok, it's four turkey legs. Close enough.)

German tv

So I managed to catch one of the many colds that are floating around the school. I just hope I get over it quickly so that I can cook thanksgiving dinner for the kids at school without worrying about infecting them all. The teacher that was going to help me cook has pneumonia. So I really have to be there. And then there are all the choir rehearsals and concerts coming up. So I am taking it as easy as possible this weekend, so I can get better ASAP.

Which means I have been watching quite a bit of German TV, and it struck me that really, a fair amount of this might be interesting to someone back home.

I get about 30 channels on my TV here, but the CNN doesn't work. So if I want to hear some english, I have to wait for a show on MTV that they have subtitled, or watch Bob Ross paint happy little trees on bavarian PBS. Both of which are strangely comforting here, even if I never watch them at home. But I watch plenty of the German stuff, too. Today's highlights were...

A documentary about all the families that still live in their castles. And really more in the tone of how it's not that easy being "the other half" of society, that there are lots of problems really with living in a castle. Like you can't dance in the ballroom anymore, since the whole building shakes. well, it is sitting on 80 oak pillars in the middle of a pond, after all. And the boys help out with maintaining the park around the castle, but they have trouble sometimes, too. For example, when they're small, and the family goes on vacation, the kids can't tell the difference between the hotel and a house, and live in the hotel like they live at home. But yeah. People here get a lot more excited about royalty here than in the states. Btw, Monaco now officially has a new Prince. Albert has taken over for his father who died last april.

Yesterday was "Domino Day 2005", which was officially the world's biggest Domino chain reaction event ever. over 4 million stones were tipped over live on tv, for 3 hours. there were pendulums that were set off at various points to allow for commercial breaks. All the dominos made pictures telling various fairy tales. Yep, a new world record was set this year. There are some people in China who are just as fanatic about all this, and for seven years the world title keeps being sent back and forth, as each continent, Europe vs Asia, keeps one upping each other. The dominos were set up by teenagers from all over europe over a time span of about 2 months, if i remember right. During the event they had some parts where some of these staffers had to build the missing domino links before the chain reaction got there. The final one had never worked in any trial. it was a two person attempt, one had to hold a beam of wood steady in a gap between the dominos, at about shoulder height. The second person had to line up dominos on the beam in time so that the chain reaction would keep going. And they managed to do it on TV. you really had to get caught up in it all. I wish Christopher Guest would choose it as his next mockumentary. that would be amazing.

Gerhard Schröder officially stepped down as Kanzler today, and was honored with a military musical salute called a "Zapfstreich". Started in the 16th century, when officers in the army would go through the pubs and bang on the beer taps to let the soldiers know it was time to go back on duty, this one included the german national anthem (naturally) and " I did it my way". The army band was surrounded by soldiers with torches. it was a little odd.

Finally I caught the end of a program that I really can't explain. At the point I started watching, the focus of the documentary was showing the host all the reflective spinning steel balls he had installed all over his bavarian hillside. they apparently represent the wholeness of the whole. This man is 88 years old and looks mostly like albert einstein. no moustache, but with the big white hair. He then invited everyone from the show for drinks, which was wine from a golden goblet, and he insisted that the camera person partake too, which made the camera sort of tilt. In his garden he has busts of plato, his father, and himself. the bust of plato had a quote, that he read, and it was in german, and I didn't understand any of it. It was after watching this program for about 10 minutes I decided a little tribute to German tv might be blog worthy. Hope this has entertained, and that you are all doing well.

Names

Alright, this will be a quick one, because I want to write this down and get rid of the paper I have been carrying around. Last week we discussed families. I had already brought my big picture of my family, and introduced you all to them (surprise!) and now they introduced their family to me. I had to write down my favorite names. For me, and for you. Here we go, in no particular order:(all selected either for their popularity or because of their rarity in America. Sometimes, both.)
Jörg
Conny
Edelgardd
Siegfried
Gerd (Jörg and Gerd being by far the most popular names for grandfathers)
Ulf
Änne
Roswitha
Til
Bernd
Helmut
Ronald (pronounced ROH-nahld)
Patryk
And finally:
Bogwina, her children Kuba and Dominika, and niece Asia.

Right.

Pics of Storkow

Alright, since I won't have this connection all the time, I am going to try and add some more pics while it is not a painfully slow process. This time, of Storkow itself!

Here is my house:



I love all the colorful roof tiles you can see everywhere here:

And now for some of the pretty streets and nature between me and the Altstadt:

Pictures of the Apt.

Alright boys and girls, Jessica is going to learn a little bit right now about how to put pictures in her blog, because she finally got her laptop on the internet at a cafe in berlin that is actually... high speed internet. oooooh...

First, here is a picture of me at the train station in Cologne, with all my stuff. What you might not be able to tell is how heavy all those bags are. Did I mention that when the helpful hotel staff tried to lift that biggest bag, all i heard was a loud "oof!" and the sound of the bag hitting the floor again?



Here are some pics of my life in Storkow:

First my kitchen, which opens onto ...... my stairs and door to the apartment

Then my living room.... and finally, my bedroom.



















SO, there we go. My apartment.

A toast to Klaus, Marlies, and Jessica (and Lars)

Well, yesterday evening I got to experience quite the German custom that strikes me as a little odd, because we hae no formal and informal form of address in English. Up until now, my landlords and I have always used the formal form of address with each other, although I have at least one meal with them every weekend, and we take trips together, which apparently has not taken place to the same degree with the other language assistants that have lived here before (why? because, obviously, I really am that much better than all the rest of them). Yesterday evening though, when I came over to ask them to turn on the pump so that I could do laundry (apparently we need some kind of pump in the basement for the washing machine to work. I don't know why, and it bugs me that I can't turn it on and off myself. But it means I have to go over and talk to them every so often, even if for no other reason) They invited me in for dinner, although I told them I had already eaten, and then we toasted to the informal you, and the official start of us calling each other Klaus, Marlies, Lars, and Jessica.(as opposed to Herr and Frau Florschütz, Lars, and Jessica). Apparently I jumped the gun a little since I was using the informal with Lars like, a few weeks ago, but he didn't say anything to stop me, and I thought that I could go ahead with it since we sort of vaguely fall in the same category of "younger than your parents but older than your children", or since neither of us have kids, Lars's nephew. This custom of toasting to the informal you is quite the tradition, but is dying out, because the informal is becoming more and more common place. I was told it was fine to go ahead and "du" all of my fellow teachers, even though I find it awkward, because I don't even know their names, and somehow to use the informal when you can't address them by first name seems very rude to me. I don't know their names because I forgot them as soon as they introduced themselves, so mostly it's still my fault, but still. Anyway, even though the formal made things a little awkward for a while there, I am glad I got to experience this tradition with people to whom it still means a lot.

Yesterday I was also at the 160th birthday party of the elementary school in the old part of the city. The kids gave little sketches showing the history of the school, and I was pleasantly surprised by how open they were about showing a lot of the more difficult parts of the school's history. One kid was hit in class for not knowing his times tables, at another point the school was really unsafe and dirty, and in another scene a boy tried to come to terms with seeing his father destroy a Jewish family's home. The part that was still pretty cheery was of course, the DDR time. There were lots of kids and everyone was happy when it was still East Germany. I wish I could see the 200th anniversary of the school, and see how its represented then. The one unspoken part of the whole program was, no matter how much people love this school (and they really seem to) they may close it next year, because there are not enough children in the region to keep the school going. It is the same way all over Germany, and is making things tough for teachers.

Alright, I am going to move on now, but hope all is well, and that you all write me when you get a chance!

Love, Jess

Long Weekend

Well, it's been a little bit since I have written, we'll see how much I can remember to put in here.

Last Thursday my Halloween party with the seventh graders went great. I was worried that they would be too cool to play along, but they were all scared by my monster story, and all bobbed for apples like champs. Then Friday I went into Berlin, which is always great, and had way more success shopping that I thought I could. Usually if I have a specific goal in mind, and a short deadline, I never find what I need. But I found dressy heels and a sweater to wear with my dress to the Sängerball with no trouble. Amazing. Saturday was of course the Sängerball. It mostly went well, except for the basses not starting the first song off, and for the choir director playing right through the important bit of dialogue in the other song. But the costumes were amazing, and everyone seemed to have a good time. We were in the newspaper, and I am getting copies of the pictures taken by the newspaper people. I got a round of applause from the choir on tuesday for having learned the words so quickly, which was a little embarassing, but sweet. They seem excited to have me here.

Sunday Frau Florschütz came over to invite me to lunch at 12:30 in half an hour, when it was only 11:00. But she hadn't set her clocks back, and that was quite the topic of discusssion at lunch. That and the opening of the Frauenkirche in Dreseden. I don't know if anyone heard about it at home, but the Frauenkirche has been rebuilt after being left as a ruin for 40 years as a war memorial. They have done some really amazing things with the reconstruction, and it was quite the news story here. The whole service was broadcast live sunday morning. But lunch was great. Frau Florschütz has been trying to serve a different kind of traditional German dish every time I come over, and has agreed to let me learn how to cook some of it from her. This time it was Rindkouladen (ground pork wrapped in beef) and Klöße(potato balls). We took our time with lunch and kept chatting, and then I spent the afternoon hanging out with Lars after his parents went to a birthday party. I always do better when I spend time with people, not alone at home. Then Monday was Reformation Sunday. We (Frau and Herr Florschütz, Lars, Ina Winter (Fr. Florschütz's best friend and my co-teacher) and I) went to Wittenberg, to see the church where Martin Luther nailed the Theses on the day it was done. They made a film about Luther in the last couple of years, only they couldn't film in Wittenberg, because the town is like one giant memorial to Luther, with his face and words everywhere. But it was definently cool singing "A mighty fortress is our God" in German in Wittenberg. I got a whole bunch of pamphlets from everywhere, including the local bulletin from the church. What also made it great was the company. Frau Florschütz and Ina together are too funny, and it's a good thing that Herr Florschütz is used to ignoring his wife's backseat driving. She never wanted to take any detours, and was often offering to get out and tell the trucks in front of us to pull over so we could pass them.

Of course Monday was also Halloween, and when we got back the trick-or-treaters were already out in full force. In Germany they take the trick part pretty seriously, and one of my teachers got a driveway full of toothpaste. We only had kids with shaving cream on our street. And although the older Florschütz son, Rayk, had said he wasn't going to have a big Halloween party, he decided to have a spontaneous one anyway, complete with Glühwein over the campfire (naturally). Tuesday I had to myself, to get my apartment back in shape after not spending much time there for a while. Today it was back in the routine of classes, and my four lessons went really well, I think. Tomorrow is the celebration of the 160th anniversary of the elementary school in the old part of the city. The kids are all presenting skits about the school over the years, and I have been invited to attend (this is the school where Frau Florschütz works). So that means that I may only have tutoring tomorrow, with one class cancelled since the teacher will be at this thing, too, and my other teacher saying that if the show runs long, I should see it to the end, rather than leave to get back for her class. We'll see.

Going to go now, time to cook dinner. It's 6:00 and has been dark for over an hour. Whee Fall! But really, the weather has been staying surprisingly nice here. A lot of the trees have leaves, although by this time normally they have been rained off. Hope this finds you all well, be in touch, I love to hear from you!