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!