Friday, March 31, 2006

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.

Monday, March 27, 2006

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.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

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.

Monday, March 20, 2006

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.

Monday, March 13, 2006

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.