Notes from Atlanta

Well, I made it. Ten months have come and gone, and I am back where I started, in Atlanta. Everything worked out great my last week in Storkow. Got to see everyone and say goodbye. The send off was wonderful, and I received amazing pictures and mementos from my many friends, none of which broke on the trip home.

It is good to be home. I really feel like I achieved everything I set out to do during the last year. I did a lot of good work at the school. I got out into the community with the chorus, and I made a lot of friends that I hope I can stay in touch with. Storkow is going to be a comfortable, familiar place that I can always come back to on any other trips I take to Germany. I am very sad to have to say goodbye, but I know that for at least some of my friends it really is just a see you later.

And to all of you here, I can't wait to see you and hear from you! Thanks for all the emails and the greetings while I was away, and I am really looking forward to getting the chance to spend the next bit of time with you. I have the same cell phone number I had last summer, if that means something to any of you, and will be sure and be in touch soon.

Rainbow weather

Hi everyone!

well, I am staying late in the school building alone, and I hope that isn't something I am not allowed to do, but it is the best time to use the fancy computer in the media classroom. But to keep it not so creepy, I wanted to listen to music, and so am subject to the bizarre bad music that is saved on this computer. I keep almost turning it off, then deciding no, it is better than silence... but not a lot better.

Things are pretty hectic as it all wraps up here. I am having a hard time keeping straight what day it is. But that is important because after today, I have some sort of engagement for every other evening in Storkow. Tomorrow, Abi ball, which is sort of relatzed to prom only the families come, too, and it is in the gym. Saturday morning I have a coffee date, and Saturday night I am riding my bike with some friends to Dorffest (that's right, village festival) in Philadelphia. it is only a handful of kilometers away, and it's not in pennsylvania. Ok. Sunday is lunch with the Florschützes, then going to the sauna with a friend from chorus. We have to go for at least 4 hours, is what she said. alright... Monday evening there is a sort of farewell dinner with the teachers. tuesday is the last chorus practice, and since last week it was cancelled, I have to go to this one to exchange addresses and the like. Wednesday I am going to the opera in Berlin, and Thursday night I will be on a night train to Trier. I will be in Trier for the weekend, come back on Sunday, and fly home Monday morning really early. Oh, did I mention I am giving lessons all next week like normal, too? Of course I am. I need to plan in when I am going to pack, otherwise it is not going to happen, I think.

Anyway, despite how hectic that all sounds, I am taking time to enjoy my last week in Storkow. And one thing that is sometimes enjoyable is the weather. Yesterday and today have been full of sun and very short showers. At one point walking to school I needed an umbrella and sunglasses at the same time. The nice part is that the little bit of rain has been enough to cool everything off and keep the sand from flying around as much as it does when it is really hot and dry. My neighbors water the dirt street when it doesn't rain enough so that the house doesn't get dusty. And then there is the lady on our street who I have seen twice watering the yard by holding the sprinkler in her hands and spraying it back and forth across the yard. I guess she missed the part about them doing that automatically.

Anyway the really neyt thing about the weather that I really wanted to mention is that yesterday evening there was an amazing rainbow, it was so great. And it reminded me that the last time I was in Germany there was a rainbow right before I left, too. Somehow it made me feel a lot more ready to come home.

I am also excited about the fact there are air conditioners at home! Here it has been pretty warm, especially inside the classrooms where you can't leave the windows open at night. And there is no AC, and not even fans. That is the part that confused me, in the summer if you don't have airconditioning you at least have a fan somewhere. Not in Germany. Because in germany, constant air blowing past the back of your neck causes problems. Either a stiff neck... a cold... kidney infection, no idea really what, but so far I have heard lots of different motherly ladies reprimand someone for not making sure they are out of the breeze. And then these people freak out in the summer because they don't know how to make anything cooler. Sigh.

Alright, need to get going and not keep leaving the school open. Hope you are all well, and am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Halle

Hi everyone, this is another short one, but going to throw a picture up when I can.

Halle was great, the weather is wonderful, and watching Germany win their first game in the world cup was very cool.

The picture is of the Halle Marketplace. Haale has 5 towers. 4 on the church (it used to be two separate churches and they turned it into one big one) and the red tower, which the people built for themselves as opposition to the church. They also have a Roland. Not sure if Handel is on the picture or not, but his statue is on the square, too, surrounded by red and white balloons.

Hope you are doing well, and that I hear from you soon.

WM-mania

Well, for those of you not living in the land that is hosting the World Cup and somehow missed it, today is indeed, the day that has been anticipated at least as long as I have been here, the opening day of the World Cup. It took less than 10 minutes for me to be reminded of it today. I turned on the radio and boom, the first words out of the announcers mouth (and repeated about every 7 minutes, not counting the commericals that reminded you too) were "today is the opening day of the world cup". bizarre. Have I mentioned what a big deal this is here? You can get just about anything in a Germany and/or a football version. There is football bread. There is football butter. There is football nutella. There are football sausages. Just about everyone is an official sponsor of the German national team, and has big flags on it (very very rare in Germany otherwise.) Tonight the game starts at 6 oclock and I imagine for the next 90 minutes plus some, absolutely nothing else will happen. ALthough apparently a lot of stores are staying open later than usualy during the world cup. Maybe it is because they lose all the business during game time, and to make it up, they are open later. What I didn't hear is if they are closing while the game is on. It seems like a distinct possiblity.

I am taking a trip to Halle on the Salle this weekend, and I am looking forward to it. We would have left tonight, but we couldn't leave early enough so that the husband in the couple I am travelling with could be in Halle in time to see the game. So we have to leave early tomorrow morning. At least this way I can spend the evening with my frinds here in Storkow, as they all watch too.

Alright, need to go, a class is coming into the computer classroom. Hope to hear from you soon!

Dresden

Hi everyone,

this has to be short because I need to go to a coffee date. But I was in Dresden yesterday, and it was lovely, and I can send you all a picture of it. Before we were in Dreseden we climbed through the Elbe Sandsteingebirge, and my legs are still tired. The night before that I went to the Komischer Oper in Berlin with my chorus director. We saw Prokoviev's The Love for the three Oranges, and it was amazing. Which is why I am attaching now a picture of the Opera house in Dresden (the Semperoper).

Hope you all are well and having a nice beginning of June! (One month left...)

Men's Day Holiday

Hello again after a long pause. I am back in Storkow after taking a couple of quick trips to new (to me) parts of Germany. We had three days off of school this week for Ascension Day, and so I decided to make the most of it. Ascension Day is the official name, here everyone calls it Maennertag (Men's day). Traditionally, all the men would decorate their bikes with birch branches, pack a back pack full of beer, and go riding through the countryside together, stopping at every bar in the small towns to have a beer. Now mostly they just skip the bike part, and spend the day drinking. Everyone tells me how much nicer it was in East Germany when they still did the bike part. Back then it wasn't an official holiday, all the men would work double the day before, and take the next day off.

I had been invited to go to the Baltic sea with a couple from chorus, and that is what we did Wednesday. We went to Warnemuende, which is where Rostock's harbor begins. In what was East Germany, there were no ports for large ships to the Baltic sea. So they needed to build one, and decided on Rostock. It was really important for trade particularly with scandinavian countries. Now most trade has moved back to other ports in the west, so business is slower, but we still saw some ships while we were there. Warnemuende is a lot smaller, and set up for tourists. Lots of boutiques and cafes, and a nice long beach. Even though the weather report had predicted rain, it was mostly sunny, but with a strong wind. It took a day or two before I got all the sand out of my hair. We had a really nice day, and I can say now that I have waded in the Baltic sea. For anything else it was way too cold. We left the car with the aunt of the couple I was there with. Her ex husband who still lives with her was there when we got the car to go home. He has gone deaf from working in all the noise from shipbuilding, but can read lips pretty well, and didn't have anymore trouble understanding me than anyone else. Spending one day on the coast was really too short, but it was all we had planned, and I needed to get back for the next day.

Once I got home I went to one friend's house for a men's day pre-party. An unexpected event, and a lot of fun.

Early early the next morning I caught a train to Bremen. I would have gotten to my hotel a lot faster if the trams in the city weren't completely torn up. There was construction being done over the holiday, of course. But I got there finally, out by the space center that isn't anymore. A couple of years ago they decided to make this big space museum, very hands on and interactive, and it closed after 6 months. But the hotel that was built to house all the guests is still there. Pretty much completely outside Bremen, but there. So everything in the hotel is space themed and futuristic. The elevator is lit from inside with black light, and the walls are glass, so you can see the universe painted on the elevator shaft wall in neon colors. I have no desire to be in a building with that much navy blue, lemon yellow, and stainless steel again for while.

But Bremen itself was really neat. A really compact Altstadt, and a really interesting history of being independent and liberal for the past 800 years. The churches went reformed really early, and had already been putting the state power before the church for a century or two. They got the first greens elected in the 1970s. Their state symbol, Roland, is way bigger than I expected, and has extremely pointy knees that you could hang cloth on. The distance between his knees was the official unit of measurement for cloth since the middle ages. I also got my picture taken with the Bremen town musicians, which I am going to try and include in this post. It is good luck to hold both of the donkey's front feet and make a wish. At least, someone did that and then Germany won the world cup in 1953. Or something like that. Lately, almost everything has some sort of connection with Germany winning the world cup. There is a really great street off the main market place that the inventor of decaf coffee (kaffee hag) bought and redid completely arte nouveau. Very interesting, also when you see the parts that he sort of sold out to and made Nazi-symbolism friendly. On this street is a Glockenspiel with meissen porcelain bells and a rotating frieze showing the history of seafaring. It also has the first museum dedicated to a single female artist in Germany, the Paula Modersohn-Becker museum. I have been a fan of hers since we saw some of her work in school, and it was a real treat to get to see her works up close. Closer to the water is where the poorer Bremeners lived, which means the houses are completely squashed together. It has been completely renovated and is now the "most romatic" part of Bremen, with lots of windy streets and little shops and cafes. Overall I had a really positive impression of Bremen, and wouldn't mind going back.

I got home late last night and have spent most of today recovering and getting used to being back. I would love to hear from you all, write when you get the chance!

OH! ps I need strawberry rhubarb pie recipes? Anyone have a successful one? And barbecue sauce recipes. Again, I know I can just look some up somewhere, but a tried and true would be really super. Thanks!

Springing forward

Hi everyone!

Well, things have been pretty busy here for the last chunk of time. This past weekend, Gitti the social worker had a birthday party, and I was invited to come a little early and help set up, which I was very willing to do. Gitti has hurt her knee, and her boyfriend Heiko and both of her parents are on crutches, and can't really help carry all the stuff out to the garden where we were, and they were really glad to have be be the runner back and forth. After staying up late talking, we got a c ouple of hours of sleep before I got picked up by Frau Kühne and her Family and we drove to Seiffen, a small town in the Erzgebirge on the Czech border. Seiffen is where all the wooden christmas decorations come from, the nutcrackers, Räuchermännchen and Schwibbogen. It is a little like disney world only with christmas figures. That was a full day (since it was a good 2 and a half to 3 hour drive there) and I got home and crashed. Sunday was dinner with the Florschützes, a short bike ride, coffee with the Florschützes, and then an Amway event. Terrifying. Anyway, I have plenty to take care of at home, so naturally I am sitting here online rather than going grocery shopping or vaccuuming.

This coming weekend the Polish chorus is coming to us, and we are giving two big concerts. It will be quite a whirl. And the weekend after that is another chorus concert and probably a trip to Wörlitzer park with the Florschützes.

The weeks are pretty full too. We've been having two chorus rehearsals a week rather than one preparing for the concerts, and I have been taking dance lessons on Wednesdays down at the army base. Rayk has also been away for his job most of the week, and since I usually write my blog from over there, I havn't found a lot of time to update.

Lessons continue to go well. The thirteenth graders are all taking their A-levels now, which means they have stopped having classes. The 10th graders are preparing for their exams, and the last three weeks I will be here (I have found out) the 9th and 10th graders will also be gone. So I will have 11th, 12th, 7th, and 8th graders. I don't know how my lessons will be divided out exactly, I think I will have to double up on the lessons for some of the classes or something. Visit twice a week rather once. We will see.

The weather is also fantastic and I have been trying to spend plenty of time outside. The cherry tree has stopped blooming, and the peach is about over. But there are lots of other flowers that are taking their places, and after everything being so bare for so long, it seems hard to believe how much green there really can be everywhere. And there is still more to come. I am enjoying it all, and not thinking too much about how soon I will be home. Hope you are all well, and would love to hear from you when you have the chance.

Family visit

Hey folks! To my regular followers here, sorry for the long pause. For those of you who check here less often, why? Why aren't you checking at least once a day? You should be hanging on my every word! ha ha, just kidding, phew... (hoping for a laugh...)

Ok. So, just (well yesterday) went with my family to the airport to send them back after they came to visit for a little over a week. They all said they had a good time, and I'm willing to believe them. It wasn't the mostly structured trip in the world, but it was good that way, because it made time for the invitations we received. Frau Kuehne and her family and already invited us over to a cook out after I went with them to Eisenach. In fact they bought the bratwurst on that trip, since that is the best place to get bratwurst, Thuringen. Familie Florschuetz was also eager to meet my "real" or "other" family, and so we went over for coffee and cake on the first day. As Marlies described it "I was going to just buy some cake from the store, but it got too complicated and I just decided to go ahead and bake everything myself." Not the order that I would have done it in, but hey. She made three wonderful cakes for us, themselves, and Lars's new girlfriend, who everyone is excited about. I mentioned that Alex being the thoughtful guy he is, brought his juggling balls with him to Germany to juggle for Marvin, and so we planned to meet again for the Easter egg hunt on Monday. (Easter is a 2 day holiday here. And all the stores close on Good Friday, too, so the stores on the Thursday and Saturday before Easter, and the Tuesday after, are nightmarish.) When we got to the house Monday morning, Alex and I found out that we had easter baskets to hunt, too. The parents were supposed to hunt for the regular eggs (parents: My parents and Herr and Frau Florschutz) and the kids all had easter baskets that were hidden as well (kids: Marvin (6), Peter (16), Alex (20), me (22), Rayk (36 and Marvin and Peter's dad), Heike (Marvin and Peter's mom), Lars (also above 30), and Lars's girlfriend (who had been introduced to Lars's parents... 4 days earlier. But, I suppose, so had Alex). Marvin was enchanted by the juggling, and Alex ended up playing catch with him the rest of the visit. Marvin is like the energizer bunny. Marlies wanted us all to come over at least one more time, and it worked out that the only time could be the very next evening, when Rayk was there to help translate. So we went over again on Tuesday for a very nice dinner, where there wasn't enough room for the guests and the food to all be at the table at once.

In our spare time, we did get to do a little sightseeing. We went to Beeskow to a medieval festival, saw the castle Sans Sousci in Potsdam, saw the main sights in Berlin, took in a few museums there, and saw Blue Man Group. Everything went well, although I have to say it is nice not to have to translate quite as often now. But I am really glad that they all could take the time to come out and see me and little Storkow.

School starts tomorrow, although I don't have to be back until Tuesday, and like almost any vacation, this one feels too short. The 13th graders will be gone, which is going to be odd, so I will be getting a few new classes. I am also trying to remember any really interesting points of American culture that I want to pass on before I leave in 10 weeks. I think July will be here far too quickly, and once the concert schedule with the choir picks up, the time will really fly by. But everything is greening up, and the forsythia are blooming like crazy. (It is traditional here to hang easter eggs inside the house from Forsythia branches before they bloom, so they bloom inside. The flowers were falling off of mine, so they had to depart).

Hope everything is going well for you all, and that you had a nice Easter!

Sunday in April

Well, let's take stock of the day. Overall, I feel pretty good about it.

The sun was shining again this morning, so I went out to drink my coffee on the little stoop I have. In my pajamas, naturally. And who walks by? One of the boys from my 7th grade class. Just walking down the street like a 13 year old does, singing to himself and whacking a twip into everything in arm's reach. He noticed me just as he walked behind my neighbor's hedge, stopped, walked backwards, looked to make sure it was me, I waved, he waved embarrassed back, went back behind the hedge, and took one last peek before he walked away. Oh, small towns.

Marlies invited me over for lunch, and we got to eat out on the porch again, where I first had coffee with them 7 months ago, and where we havn't been able to sit since october. That was fine, Marvin her grandson has a "real" bike now, only he hasn't figured out brakes. So he didn't want to sit at the table during lunch, because he wanted to carreen across the yard into the bushes or the carport, yelling, of course. We wanted to take him for a short bike ride, but he had to go. Marlies and I decided to go on a short one hour bike ride together. We turned back after Philadelphia to ride across the salt meadow fields, and my bike stopped working. the back wheel was completely turned, and the chain was off the gears. So we had to push it back. That is when we realized that neither of us brought our cell phone with us, or any money to put in the pay phone (not to mention no bike tools. But a tire pump and an umbrella we did have). So we couldn't call someone to pick us up when we got back to the road (because we were on a muddy path in a field), we had to walk all the way home. We left my bike in the bike stand at the grocery store.

When we got back, we had coffee and cake, and it took Klaus like, 5 minutes to fix my bike. Naturally. After coffee we went to Lars's lot to dig up crocuses and plant them in my part of the yard. Only it started to rain when we were there, and we went inside the little garden house, and Marlies and I had a completely new plan of how to set it up, with exposed beams and a sleeping loft. Once the rain was over we walked back and planted the crocuses, and now I am here on the computer writing to you all about it. I am sort of tired after pushing a bike a few kilometers with a back wheel that didn't turn, but overall, I think it was a good day. Hope to hear from you soon.

Yay for the weekend

SO, not much new has happened in the last week, except that I have been spending most of the past couple of days in the sunlight reading in bed, just because I can. I did have another shopping experience today, which I figured I would relate, even if it is not as exciting as it might have been at the beginning. Still, after being here for almost 7 months now, the grocery store is a jungle of german-english deception. OK it's not that bad. Here we go. I have a cook book here that is all in English. Which is good for me when cooking. What is not so great is going shopping for the stuff in the recipes. For example, broccoli rabe. I don't know what that is, but if I went to a grocery store in America, I might find someone who did. Here, I definently won't. They might know the german word for it, but I don't. And I can't even describe it. Today the search was for cumin, coriander, and turmeric. I have a new recipe to try, and I had already ordered the ground beef at the meat counter (which here is called Hackepeter or "hacked peter" and people eat raw on slices of bread. with raw onions on top.) I found coriander (koriander) and even turmeric (kurkuma). I was pretty sure that I remembered cumin being kummel, and there was no other bottle that looked like it could be cumin, so I picked up kummel. Well, I got it home, opened it to smell and see if it was the right one, and it smelled like a rye bagel. And as far as I could remember, rye bagels didn't have cumin seeds in them. But I couldn't remember the word "carraway" and so I started to wonder, maybe there are cumin seeds in a rye bagel, and i just forgot what cumin smells like. I decided to go check here at Rayk's house to be sure, and explained my problem to him. And he said "cumin?" (the english word) I have that in my cabinet. And sure enough. Kreuzkummel. Smelled just like I remembered. The good news is, I can make my recipe now. The bad news is, I have a baggie of ground carraway in my cabinet, and don't know what to do with it.

Otherwise, things here are fine, weather has stayed mild and rainy, and as long as it doesn't flood, it should be a nice spring. Hope you all are well, and I would love to hear from you.

Sommergewinn

Well, this weekend I was in Eisenach with the family of my advising teacher. It was a little stressful because even though she is officially in charge of me, I work a lot more with other teachers, so I don't know her that well. And I don't know her family at all. But everyone was very friendly, and I was really sad when it was time to leave. Eisenach is a very pretty city in Thuringen, which is sort of right in the middle of Germany, and is where the best Bratwurst comes from. Outside of Eisenach is the Wartburg, which is where the Saengerkrieg happened (which is what Wagner's opera Tannhaeuser is based on), where Martin Luther translated the New Testament, and was restored because Goethe thought it should be. It was very cool to be up there and see the old restored buildings, but it was hard not to be distracted by the crowds of tourists. One in particular is worth mentioning. As we were walking back down the hill to the car from the Wartburg, there was a man in front of us, who kept looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching, as he took fistfulls of moss from the wooden railing and shoved them into a grocery bag. It was really wierd. We passed him (it is hard to walk quickly and steal moss at the same time) and we caught up with some of his fellow travelers all walking to the bus. One of them turned around and asked "where is Gottfried?" (or some equally german sounding name), saw the guy, and then said "Oh, he is gathering moss, he's gathering moss" as if there was no more normal activity for this guy to be doing, and sort of like he'd been gathering moss the whole trip. So I of course now have an image of this guy who has a basement full of moss samples from famous sites in Germany, all in plastic grocery bags. Whatever.

We chose this weekend because it was the Sommergewinn, where Herr Winter is banished by Frau Sonne, after a big parade through the city. Included in the parade were scenes from the Saengerkrieg, Martin Luther throwing the ink bottle at the devil, and the ancient Germans who rolled a big fire wheel through the city, that would have been a lot more dangerous if the fire wasn't out of crepe paper. The whole city was also decked out with hand made crepe paper flowers to celebrate the start of spring.

And so far, it seems like it worked! Today has been lovely. I don't mind the occasional rain shower because it melts the snow, and it got up to aorund 70 degrees for the first time since, oh, late october. I am in such a better mood. Which makes me a little sad that I have less than 100 days in Germany now. And am really on my last third of the year here. Now that the weather is nice, it makes it easier to want to stay. But I am looking forward to being home, too.

Hope you all are enjoying some spring weather, and find the time to drop me a line.

10th grade TV show

So, a while back for a "fun" lesson with one tenth grade class (who always manages to take the fun assignments so seriously that they aren't fun at all) I tried to have them pretend they were on a talk show. They had researched their topics, and now, rather than a formal, boring debate, I invited them in pairs to talk about it on my talk show. Apparently, most of them can't handle being on television and totally clammed up. They talked about it with their teacher, and dedcided to turn the tables. Now they were going to introduce themselves on a talk show as various celebrities, and I had to guess who they were. The ones I knew were Paris Hilton, Heidi Klum, Madonna, Martin Luther, and Beethoven. (apparently they ran out of contemporary stars). The other half of the class were popular German artists I had never heard of. Well and one American I am also too uncool to know. They thought it was funny, and so did I, because they had some really great quotes from their debate trying to decide who of all of them were the most influential. Here are some:

"My TV shows make people funny"

"The little bit of ass shaking can I too"

"At least I didn't enlarge my chests!" (naturally with accompanying hand gestures)

"The violence in TV is big."

"Thank you for your coming."

And directed at Martin Luther,

"To your time gave it Gott. To our time gives it Gott, Buddha, Odin."

Hope these quotes make you smile a little like they did for me, and that you are all doing well.

Lieber Fruhling, kommt doch wieder...

"Dear Spring, please come back..." That is the song that we have been warming up with in chorus lately. Still, from today on out, the days are all longer than the nights, which is a clear improvement.

This weekend we were in Poland for the first meeting with the other chorus that we will be working with. It was pretty crazy. The hotel was an old castle that had been renovated, and was trying way too hard to squeeze as many "old" things together as possible, and ended up just looking way over done and fake. At first glance, you had the impression that it was very nice, and the longer you looked, the worse it got. There was no free space on any wall. There was always some picture, hung in a giant ornate frame, on really loud wallpaper. If possible, with a little figure in front of it on a shelf. But half the time the lightbulbs were exposed, or didn't work. Still, we got a lot of singing done, and that was good.

Tomorrow I go back to school, and I think I have a fair amount of work ahead. Everything is centering around the fact that the 13th graders have to take their Abitur exams in a few weeks, which will determine if they can study and in what. So it is a big deal.

It is still cold, but it hasn't snowed for a while, and the snow is melting away noticably faster this time around. The other morning I saw three deer outside of my window. One lady in the choir says they have been visiting her too, and eating all her grape vines, which has been bothering her. I wrote down some really winning quotes from class the other day, and I will try and find the time to write them down this week.

Hope everything is going well for you all, and that you find the time to write! I would love to hear from you.

Back at school

Well, after a lovely two week break, it is time to get back to work here in Storkow. The school trrip to Lübeck was very nice. Lübeck is a lovely old city, and even though there wasn't a lot of gelling within the group (as was hoped) I think everyone learned a fair amount, and had a good time. Even if all they remember is that Thomas Mann might have been gay, and that Günter Grass thinks that mushrooms are phallic.

Last week of course was when James was here to visit, and when I had my Fulbright conference in Berlin. Visiting with James was, of course, wonderful, and made me wish I could show you all Storkow and my friends here. The conference was alright. It was great to get to be in Berlin for four days and visit all the parts of town I know. But even though there were a lot of people at the conference, almost all of the talks I went to were pretty sparsely attended, which was disappointing. But it was good to get away for a week, and it was good to hear other people's horror stories and be reminded of just how good I have it here.

One aspect of the last week that I didn't find so charming, but my guest from balmy Atlanta did, was that it snowed. All week. We havn't had snow like that for like a month. I didn't think we were going to again. But we did. A lot of it. And it will stay... certainly all week. And I think we are supposed to be getting more. At least today the sun is shining a lot.

Oh! How could I forget? I got a very lovely valentine's day package from the church last week. It was so exciting to get snacks from home, and to know that I am in your thoughts. I am trying not to eat everything up all at once! Thanks for thinking of me, it really means a lot.

Now that I am back with fairly regular internet access, I will try and be better about staying in touch. Do write when you can, I miss hearing about all the stuff that is happening at home.

A note from Lübeck

Good morning everyone! Yep, made it through the last week of classes for a while there, and am now in Lübeck. Where it is snowing. I am not amused. What I have seen of Lübeck so far is very pretty. The city started in the middle ages on an island in a river, so the oldest part is very compact with great picturesque side streets, etc. The youth hostel is quite nice, and the kids havn't been too awful yet.

Today we have polish lessons, then a scavenger hunt through the city (and the snow....) and then tours of the Gunter Grass House and the BUddenbrooks House. The kids have to complete various presentations by the end, and so there is lots of time set aside for group work. And for going out and having fun, too. Lübeck is known for its marzipan, and THE marzipan store is having its 200th anniversary tomorrow. So another teacher and I are going to make a point of checking that out.

One complaint is that the internet is pretty expensive at this hostel, probably to keep lines from forming. So I will probably write again when I get back, but if you have the time I would love to hear from you. Hope all is well and that you have a good Fasching (Mardi Gras), even if the folks up here don't seem very excited about it, and that I will hear from you soon.

Das singende klingende Baumchen

One week closer to spring, and we had a lovely reminder of that this morning. The sky was clear and the sun was shining warm. Birds were singing, and geese were flying back from the south. By four o'clock it was back to being grey and rainy, but for a little while there, the hope that spring will eventually come was strengthened. In my happiness at forgetting winter for a few hours, I had forgotten that in Germany everything closes at 12 on saturdays, and so couldn't go to the book store or the bakery like I had wanted. Well, I went there, but they were both already closed. Fortunately the grocery stores still stay open until the afternoon (some even until 8 pm!) so I could still get that shopping done.

This week I got to do more lessons than last week, but still not as many as I should be doing. We will see what this week with it's yet again revamped schedule will bring. Since I won't have a normal schedule anyway for the two weeks after this coming week, I am not getting too attached to any schedule. First I will be going to Lubeck with students from our school and from a school in Berlin and from Poland, then the week after that is the Fulbright conference and a visit from James, and I won't have to work that week either (yay!). So starting the second week of March, the teachers should know what their schedule looks like, and we'll set up a plan then for the rest of the year (hopefully).

Last night we finally got to have our Fairy Tale Night. It turned into watching fairy tale movie night rather than reading fairy tales, but that was fine. I have now seen the two DDR fairy tale movies that every east german child grew up with: "Der kleine Muck" and "Das singende klingende Baumchen". The first is set roughly in the middle east, and since it was filmed in a studio here in Brandenburg, all the characters are played by white people with really dark makeup. Which was sort of distracting. And the second is the story of an arrogant princess and a good prince who is turned into a bear by the mean dwarf, but the magic of the singing, ringing little tree is strong enough to save them all. It is wierd seeing a beloved children's movie for the first time as an adult, just because the people who grew up with it are like "isn't it the most amazing movie?" and I can't stop thinking about how annoying the princess's drawn on eyebrows were. Oh well. It's important to have experienced to round out my experiences here.
In some Storkow unrelated news, for anyone who hasn't heard already, I have been accepted to Vanderbilt University for the Fall, and with a full scholarship package. It was my first choice, and I am really excited to get to go there, and get the next 5 years or so until my PhD in German literature started. Yay!

Hope you are all doing well, and can find the time to drop me a line. I love to hear news from home!

Real American Breakfast

Well, I have the first week of the new half-year just about behind me, and things are pretty hectic. I still don't have a clear schedule for this semester, because one of the teachers that I have a lot of lessons with is sick, and hasn't been here to put in her request. I still havn't been to half of the classes that are on the schedule, because the teacher is still figuring out how they want to set up the new semester, and havn't found a way of working me in yet. It didn't help that Wednesday morning I had to go back to the doctor to get a final check up on my arm, and since the doctor started his appointments that morning about 2 hours late, I missed the lessons I was supposed to do then. Still, sometime in the next couple of weeks I should get a routine that I can then stick with. This time there seem to be more early morning classes, which means that will have to be getting up even earlier. Fortunately, it is getting lighter again, and it shouldn't mean walking to school in the dark anymore.

This weekend is Chorlager (chorus camp) and the whole chorus is meeting at what I assume to be a kind of retreat center to practice our new music intensively over the weekend. It starts tonight and goes until Sudnay afternoon. The only problem is that it is also the school open house on Saturday morning. So there will be someone who will come and pick me up, drive me to school Saturday morning, wait while I try and play games with next year's 5th, 6th, and 7th graders in English for 3 hours, and then drive me back to camp just in time to miss lunch. It'll be quite the experience. Oh, the lady from the local news paper will be at the open house, too, and it is possible I will be interviewed. My name has already made it into a newspaper article about the school. Marlies clipped it out and has madee me a copy.

The excitement for today though was that my ninth grade class and I got to make a real American breakfast this morning. I brought in recipes for buttermilk biscuits, pancakes, and cinnamon swirl rolls a few weeks ago, and they had to translate the recipes. Then they divided up ingredients, and brought everything in today. There was also bacon (true bavarian bacon, naturally) and eggs. I had them work with a recipe for grits, too, but no one seemed very excited about it, and since I wasn't sure if you could use Polenta for grits, we decided not to try it. There was also maple syrup for the pancakes and peanut butter for the toast. No one believes me that peanut butter an jelly not only go together, but that that is the way you eat it back home. Oh well, one thing at a time. And in what I have decided is true german fasion, they immediately said that biscuits taste just like brötchen. Which of course, they don't, but germans like to think that anything you can eat or get in the states you can, in fact, get here too. Which isn't really the case, but hey. I think they just want me to feel at home, and that I can get those bits of home here, too. A little like how they said that pumpkin pie tasted like lebkuchen. It does have some of the same spices, but the comparison stops there.

Even though it is a little crazy here right now, it still felt really good to come home from England. I was excited to get back to speaking German, and on the train back from the airport I happened to find one of my friends here who works in Berlin, and we rode back together. It was great to be back in my cozy little apartment, and in my muddy icy street. It was worth taking a little trip away just to see how comfortable I am here. I think the next few months are really going to fly by. There is something almost every weekend, and especially once the classes become routine again, that will also go by quickly.

I hope you are all doing well, and aren't having the crazy weather we are. The past few days it was warm and raining, and now it is snowing again. Right before it started to snow though, it was almost spring for a few hours. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, there was a great breeze, and rain puddles everywhere. That really helped to imagine that there will, in fact, be spring before too much longer. Well, in a month or so, anyway. Take care, and I'd love to hear from you all.

Hello from England!

Hi everyone!

Well I am flying back to Germany tomorrow after spending the semester break in Manchester. It has been a nice trip, and it was of course nice to visit again with my friend from college, Mike. The one thing that I was really hoping to get to see when I was here was something from Jane Austen or Pride and Prejudice. It turns out that the Jane Austen birthplace and museum deal are way on the other side of the island, and so we didn't try to get down there. That will be the next trip. What we did get to see, and anyone who knows how much I love the BBC edition of Pride and Prejudice will understand, was Pemberly! Mr. Darcy's house. Oh, yes. Well ok. It's real name is Lyme Park, and it is the house that they used for the outside shots of Pemberly in the miniseries. But it was so cool! I was at Pemberly. The house was closed for the winter, as was the front garden, so we actually only got to see the back side of it, but we walked all over the grounds, and now I feel like I have experienced one of those long walks that characters are forever taking in Jane Austen novels. Ok, so it was February, and it was really cold, and very foggy, but still totally worth it.

The next day I was pretty exaughsted, and it is hard to top going to see Pemberly. So we saw a little bit of central Manchester, and went and bought train tickets for the trip we decided to take for the next day, to nowhere else but Stratford upon Avon. This has become quite the little literary trip. Because of the most unbelieveable traffic, we missed our first train and ended up getting there an hour later than we had hoped. And because it is a three hour train ride, that had us getting in at like, 1:30 in the afternoon, and all the houses close at 4. We wandered into town, hoping to find the tourist information center to get a map and tickets to the house and whatever else. And we got to the river, and saw a sign that a walking tour was starting at 2:00, in just a few minutes. And since we had to choose between the two, I wanted to learn more about the town in general and take the tour, rather than just see one of the shakespeare houses. So we took the tour which was great, since we were the only two people on it. Because I was American, the tour guide made sure to point out all the times that anything American has crossed paths with Stratford, which was sweet. After the tour we went and bought me a perfectly touristy tea towel with william's face on it. As you do. Then we went and had dinner in the only building in Stratford that still has a thatch roof, and made sure we were at the train station in plenty of time to catch our train back home. Even though it was a really short visit, I am really glad that we went.

Then it was Saturday, and we had Mike's mom's season tickets to the Stockport County soccer game. Stockport has been a team since the 1880s, and not too long ago was challenging to make it up to the highest division, and now is the worst or second worst in the lowest division. Some very bad managing. If they keep losing, the team will have to be kicked out. They played fairly well on Saturday, unfortunately the ref made lots of calls against Stockport. The tying goal didn't count, and most people are still not sure about why. It was pretty messy, and the referee had to have a police escort home, which is not usually the case for this team, whose fans are very enthusiastic, but not hooligans. After the game we went just about all the way across Manchester to see "Anything Goes". Mike has just gotten into a production of it, and since it is full of great music, we decided to go see it. We got the tickets and went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant next door, which had some of the wierdest service I have seen in a while. I don't think there was one interchange between us and a waiter that didn't involve lots of "what? what did you say?" and repeating everything. Usually the waiter would ask a question, we would answer, get this wierd look like.... they want what?? they would ask again, we'd repeat it, and eventually everything would be sorted out. Then we went and saw the show and it was very nice. We had good seats, and the music and dancing was lovely. The only thing I had a little trouble with were the accents. Since it is an American show, and it is sort of important that they are all American except for one british guy, they all had American accents. And most people were alright. The male lead kept slipping sometimes, but I was probably the only one who could hear it. But there was one lady who had the wildest attempts at an American accent I have heard. She would start off wobbly, clearly a british person trying not to sound british, then it would change, sometimes mid sentence, into a "southern lady" drawl, and usually by the end her last word or two would come right out of the midwest. It was totally confusing, because I couldn't decide if it was on purpose or not. But I am thinking it was not. Then we walked along the water (the quay, if that helps) back to the tram to get back into town, and at one point were confronted by hungry swans who were sure we had bread crumbs for them. If you have ever been approached by a swan walking to you very purposefully, you might know just how sinister an experience it is. I recorded a little bit of it on my camera, before we decided it would be best to put some distance between us and our new "friend". Before we went home we had a few drinks, and made another friend, who thinks my name is Jericho, and who told us his whole life story and what we should learn from him. Oh well. Over all, it was a long but very nice day.

Today is another quiet day, I am going to pack up some of my stuff and go meet Mike at Evensong at the Cathedral, where he sings, since he has been at a rehearsal for Anything Goes all day. It is nice to have a little time to myself, since tomorrow will be spent in the airports and getting ready to go back to school early Tuesday morning.

Hope you all are well and that I will hear from you soon!

Humaine Klinik Bad Saarow

Well, I have now officially had my first experience with a German Emergency room. Yesterday afternoon I fell on the ice and caught myself with my right hand. It was really a cartoon fall, the only thing that was missing were the bongo drums as my feet slipped on the same place a good three or four times before falling. Oh, it was in the middle of the school courtyard, too, in front of approxomately the entire student body. Anyway, I convinced myself that it wasn't that bad, and went on with my two lessons. After which my elbow was completely swollen, and I couldn't really move it at all. Great. Well I got my stuff and went home and asked Klaus if he could find a doctor for me and take me there. Of course at this point it is 3 o'clock on a Tuesday, so all the normal doctor's offices are closed. So we had to go to the emergency room at the closest hospital, in Bad Saarow. After a total of almost 3 hours waiting time for two x rays and a bandage, I got sent home again with three extra strength ibuprofen and phone number to call in the morning to see when I should come in to the D-Arzt. Since I fell at school it is a work related accident, and I have to go to the doctor for that. I got there around 9:30 and had to wait again. Even though this is a hospital, it's also for a small area, so there is actually only one waiting room for the emergency room and the other doctors, and there were multiple people who we recognized from last night who were all back too. When anyone walks in or out of the waiting room, everyone greets them, and they have to greet back, of course. When the doctor saw me this morning, he didn't take any more x-rays like they said might happen, and actually only needed me there to see my elbow and to giver answers like "yes, it hurts there." The rest of the conversation was directed at the secretary who typed up a report of everything that was wrong with my elbow. I now have a pretty ugly elbow brace (dirty gray with blue stripes around the elbow. If I was athletic and had this as a battle wound, it might not be so bad, but as it is, I am really glad that I have to wear long sleeves.) Today my arm can already move more than yesterday, so I am hoping it will continue that way and heal quickly. After coming home I managed to get my arm in the sleeve of my coat for the first time since I fell, so that was also an improvement. Anyway, that was sort of the shock of the day, and hopefully of the week. I need to walk very carefully across the ice to class now, and I hope that all of you are warm and well.

Wintry Weekend

I know, I talk a lot about the weather, but it's been sort of impressive lately.

I mentioned last time all the snow we just got. It was such a pretty snow, all the rooftops and trees white again... Well Friday evening it rained, just enough so that everything was immediately frozen. Spiegeleis was what everyone was calling it, mirror ice. It kept me from wanting to go down the icy stairs to the microwave in the laundry room, because walking on ice that slippery with a dish in the hands sounded like a disaster. Because of the ice the fairy tale evening was cancelled, since so meany people didn't want to drive over. Saturday it kept raining, and got up to a good 3 if not 5 degrees. So the entire town was slush. Imagine walking through an exploded snowcone factory. Huge, car sized puddles of slush. And with it being so warm, people were walking around without jackets. But this was the warm air right before a cold front. That night it got down to 12 if not 15 degrees below zero (all in celcius over here, of course.) My friends and I went bowling and then dancing, and as we were walking home in the wee hours of the morning, the puddles were still in the process of freezing. But since they were puddles of slush, there wasn't that sheet of ice to break through into water beneath, the whole thing was freezing slowly. So when you stepped on a puddle, it bent. The wierdest walk home I have had in quite a while. And normally on our street when it snows, the Florschützes and other consciencious neighbors sweep a walking path in front of the house, so there is a strip of ground free of slippery packed snow. But you can't really sweep slush, and since it all froze in the middle of the night, the whole street now is a good chunk of ice. But it's not even flat ice, all the tracks and footprints in the slush froze that way. So it is pretty much impossible to ride a bike on. I have to walk my bike up the corner where there is a cleared sidewalk, and then I can start to ride. And since we have such a quiet street, you can always hear when a car is coming, and for quite a ways. But on Sunday you could hear the cars for a lot longer, because first you heard the crunching ice for a good 30 seconds before you could hear the motor. It got down to negative 18 last night, and is up to 10 during the day, I think, and will be hitting the 15 mark or so again tonight. The nice part is, it is really sunny. The not so nice is that it is not worth it at all to go walking outside. People here are sort of excited about it, because it hasn't been this cold since 1978. Ooh, lucky me. :)

Hope everything is well with you all, and think warm thoughts for me!

Snow Shovel Symphony

At least, that is what I thought of the other morning when I walked out on my porch after we had another good snow. After weeks without alot of new snow, only the shady patches still had much left, and now everything is packed back in with a new 3 or 4 inches. Anyway, as I was getting ready to go to school, all along my street I could hear the snow shovels scraping in rhythm, with the drone of the occasional snow plow/lawnmower as various neighbors were getting the way clear to drive to work. It was an interesting experience, just because it's not a sound I grew up with, or that really reminds me of how much work is involved in making it.

Now that we have snow again, we also have snowballs again. No one yet has tried to hit me with one, I think I have a sort of diplomatic immunity. At least this go round there havn't been any more yells of "Make way for America!" as I cross the main line of fire, but lots of "Man, nicht auf Jessica werfen!" Even if it makes getting to school a little more hazardous, everything being beautiful and white again makes the cold a little more worth it.

My lessons continue to go well. I dragged two classes through "O Captain! My Captain", and considering they were 12th and 13th grades and had never once heard the name "Walt Whitman" I think it was a good thing, even if it's not my favorite poem. The other day I also experienced a class revolt when they saw their class participation grades. Ooh, if that doesn't teach me to keep real good notes on class participation someday, I don't know what will. The trick was the teacher didn't just look at how many times someone raised their hands, and then how many times they said a correct answer, but also how many times has she had to stop class to tell them to stop talking. This is my "bubble" class - eleventh graders who I have to keep telling to stop hitting each other, stop slapping each other with rulers, and stop drawing on each other with markers. We have little chats about personal space bubbles, and how you're not allowed to pop anyone else's bubbles. The thing is, even when they're unruly, they are smart, and participate way more with the real material in class than my other 11th graders, even if the other class is better behaved. Still, this period we didn't get to have hardly any class participation, because the argument about the grades lasted almost the whole time. I think the air will be alot more clear here when all the grades are printed and done, and everyone is a little less stressed about them all.

That is sort of all that is new here. Tomorrow night is the Märchenabend here with the Schülerclub, a lock in where we read fairy tales and watch fairy tale movies. It should be a good time, as long as my cough doesn't get too much worse. Then just one more week, and then vacation! Good old European work calendar with lots of breaks.

Back in the swing of things

Hello again,

Well things here have picked up now that we're finished with the second week of school in the new year. This week has gond by really quickly, and I think that the next one will, too. We have been having multiple sunny days in a row here, which has made everything a lot easier to bear. The lake is frozen, but since it keeps dipping up to 0 degrees and maybe for a few hours a little above, I have been advised not to try walking on it. We took a walk today and saw people skating, but yesterday a little girl drowned not too far from here because the ice broke under her, and it took 40 minutes for the fire department to get there.

My classes are going pretty well. Got to have Nonsense Olympics with the seventh graders, games where they had to balance balloons on rulers and stuff like that, and have been working on Martin Luther King with some of the older grades, because there isn't a lot of material about him in the books. Sometime around seventh or eighth grade they read part of "I have a dream", but that's about it. I figured I'd try and use the holiday as a springboard for getting it into the lessons.

Yesterday I went swimming in the thermal baths in Bad Saarow. Oh man are those a good idea. It was so great to finally not be wearing five layers of clothes. You can swim inside and outside, and there are all kids of different jets and whirlpools and all of that so you can sort of get a massage. I also tried out the music/light therapy pool, where they play music underwater, then you lie on your back and look at the colored patterns on the ceiling. I liked it except for the music selection. But what can you do to change it?

Tuesday night to Wednesday morning we had a short, light rain shower, so that the entire world on Wednesday was a giant icy marble, it seemed like. I had gotten used to looking for the not slippery parts of the packed snow that is the road in front of my house, but there were no places that were not slippery. Walking to school takes usually somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes, and this time it took more like 15 to 20, because you had to go the whole way with slow little baby steps. ridiculous. But today it was sunny, and most of it has melted.

Alright, I am going to get a move on, but I hope that everyone is doing well, and that you are not slipping on ice all over the place like we are here. But if you have the time, do write, Most of my new email lately has just been advertisements that I never read anyway. Very sad.

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone, I wish you all a healthy new year! I don't think this holiday is long enough for me to get in a true habit of saying that to everyone I see, which is sort of expected. I feel like here it is a lot more normal to have a little speech ready to say to people. You don't really just say "Happy Birthday!" You say "I wish you a happy birthday with your friends and family, and a year full of hapiness and health, and everything good." Or some variation on that, anyway, it's a lot longer. I have seen people give much longer expressions of good wishes on a birthday (and of course you shake the person's hand the whole time) but I havn't picked up on what all else there is to say. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have a store of polite German phrases to say to people on special occasions.

School started back up today, and everyone, teachers included, were sort of dragging. The next week and a half are still normal school, then the final grades for the semester have to be handed in, even though there will be another week and a half before the semester ends. During that last week or so we will either do nothing, or continue with assignments that then count for the next semester. although it technically hasn't started here. At least that is how it was explained to me, I am still a little fuzzy on why that is. All the grades are then collected by a teacher who is in charge of the whole section of students, and then he or she writes up the semester reports. When I told my students about what I remember from my high school days, where the grades were entered into a computer, then sent to the main school computer somehow, and then you were finished, at least as I remember it, they just sort of blinked. It just makes me that much happier that I don't have to grade papers. I did startle my one class today though because I collected what they had written in class to read over. I think they have gotten used to anything they write when I am there not really "counting". Heh heh. It won't get a grade, but I will go over it all with them next week.

I need to get back and get to bed so that I don't oversleep by an hour again (I am just glad it was only an hour, so I could still make a lunch before I left for school, though I did try leaving the house in my slippers) but I hope this finds you all well, and that you find the time to write me an email. I love to hear from all of you!