Notes from Storkow

Notes from Atlanta

2006-07-05T18:08:00.000+02:00

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

2006-06-22T16:42:00.000+02:00

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

2006-06-11T17:26:00.000+02:00

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

2006-06-09T11:51:00.000+02:00

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

2006-06-04T15:47:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-27T16:03:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-08T12:01:00.000+02:00

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

2006-04-23T21:13:00.000+02:00

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

2006-04-02T19:24:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-31T17:22:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-27T17:33:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-21T12:29:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-03-20T18:11:00.000+01:00

"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

2006-03-13T12:48:00.000+01:00

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

2006-02-28T07:55:00.000+01:00

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

2006-02-18T18:02:00.000+01:00

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

2006-02-10T09:39:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-02-05T15:56:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-25T13:32:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-23T14:58:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-19T15:11:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-14T15:53:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-01-04T21:16:00.000+01:00

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!

Oh Tannenbaum

2005-12-28T17:26:00.000+01:00

Winter Wonderlands

2005-12-28T16:58:00.000+01:00

Dear All,

I am back home in Storkow now after my very long but totally worth it trip to Austria for Christmas. When I left here it was just rainy, but when I got back, it had snowed, so I went from one snowy landscape to another. It's great. Last week my last few lessons went alright, but once the project was over on monday, I was pretty much on vacation in my mind. As were my students, so that worked out about right. Except for the ones who had to take an english test on the last day before vacation. But that meant I didn't have any lessons on that day, which was nice for me! Thursday I spent cleaning up and packing for my trip, and that evening I visited with Familie Florschutz. We played Rummy and I didn't win a single round. Oops. But they are very impressed that I can shuffle cards the fancy way. This is not as widespread in Germany as I feel like it is in the states, because my students get pretty impressed by it too. Thanks for teaching me, mom! :)

Friday Lars took me to the train station at 4:30 in the morning so I could get my train. The train ride went as smoothly as it could, considering how long it was. I make friends everywhere, so on the first half of the ride I met an ethiopian freelance magician and actor, and on the second half a very shy professor of greek-catholic theology, which is a mix of orthodox and catholic that came about after one of the failed attempts to reunite the catholic and orthodox churches. I know a lot about it now, because that was sort of the only thing he knew how to talk about without being really nervous. Anyway, I didn't have to pay for my own cup of coffee the whole way, which I consider a success. Gerald was there to pick me up at the train station when my train made it in to St. Poelten surprisingly on time. In austria they like to show that they are not as fanatically detail oriented as the Germans are. We picked up Park a little later when his train got in, and then drove to Gerald's parents house. If you want to find where I was on a map, it'll take a little estimation. Once you see St. Poelten, look for Krems to the northwest a little. Then look for a big hill behind Krems, away from the Danube. Somewhere in there is where his parents live. The name of the town closest to it is Traunstein, not to be confused with the bigger Traunstein in Germany. Once we had stopped making hairpin turns in the snow driving up the hill to his parent's house, it was easier to enjoy just how beautiful the landscape was. I took pictures, but getting to see it all first hand was a real treat. It was great to be with friends from wooster again, especially when the whole point was to eat cookies, decorate the tree, drink gluehwein, and eat some more. And take a nap when you felt like it. I got to sing in the choir on Christmas eve, but I didn't make it to the other services when I was there because I was sort of fighting a cold. And singing in an unheated church isn't really the best for that. Gerald's parents were very nice hosts, and by the end of our stay there, I could usually understand half of what they said, most of the time. I have a hard time with Austrian dialects, but I managed ok. His parents helped by speaking more clearly for me. And repeating. a lot.

On the 26 (Stephanestag, St. Stevens day, which explained to me finally why "Good King Wenceslas" is a Christmas song) we went to Vienna to pick up Angelica at the airport, also a language assistant from Woo last year. I got a recomendation from the theology prof to see what the exhibit at the Albertina art museum was, and it turns out they were showing drawings by Egon Schiele, one of my favorite expressionist artists. I was really excited, but since lots of drawings of naked people colored blue and orange wasn't everyone's cup of tea, I went to the exhibit while the others walked around vienna some. It was so great I bought the catalog (some also because for a catalog it wasn't really expensive, even though it was really nice). Then we went on the giant ferris wheel in Vienna, which is about as kitschy as it gets, but still a tradition. Still, the highlight of the trip wasn't any activity we undertook, but definently getting to be with friends and catching up. Talking to people with so many of the same reference points was so refreshing, not having to explain life wooster or life here, just being able to say "you know?" and knowing the other person does. Ahh. I couldn't have had a better reminder at Christmas of just how important friends are. And thanks again Gerald, for inviting us to spend the holidays with you!

So on that note, I will wrap this up. If I can I will see about uploading a picture or two some time in the near future. I hope that you all had a very merry christmas, and I would love to hear more about what it was like when you find the time to write me an email! Until then, all the best.

3...2...1...Christmas!

2005-12-19T14:51:00.000+01:00

Hello again! Well, it is snowing now, with the really big fluffy flakes, and it is really pretty to look at. Two major events are now past. Yesterday was the final Chorus performance for 2005. It went really well, and no one in the audience got up and left like they have done in years past when it went too long. It was almost 2 hours, and did I mention the church is so drafty it basically isn't heated? That's why in the waiting room for us there was coffee, tea, and glühwein. So we could be warm enough to perform! My duet went well, and I have already ordered the DVD they were making. So I won't tell you any more about it, for fear of ruining the anticipation when you ALL watch it when I get home. ..Just kidding!

Today was our christmas project. Finally over. Over 50 sixth graders descended on us. We baked a whole lotta cookies today. Mostly the kids were really sweet, if a little over excited. A few were really terrible. The whole idea was that it was an English project. We would do christmasy things from America and England, and speak english while doing it. Well this one kid yelled at me "Deutsch! DU musst Deutsch mit mir reden! Verstehst du? D-E-U-T-C-H Deutsch." First of all, he never should have used the informal "you" with me. Second of all, he misspelled "Deutsch" when he spelled it at me. A real charmer. I am really glad I am at a high school and not at an elementary school.

My train tickets are also all in order now for me to go to Austria on the 23rd. I will be coming back on the 27th, because I want to be here for new year's. I asked Gerald if I should bring nice clothes for church on Christmas eve. He said it wouldn't be a bad idea, and that we'll be going to church the 24th, 25th, and 26th. Um, a little different from "o come all ye faithful" being unspeakably churchy. And I should bring warm things, cause it is cold. And where I will be isn't really on a map, since it's made up of 15 houses. I can't wait. I have to go now, I'm a little late for Marlies's birthday party. In case I don't get back online for a while, Everyone have a Merry Christmas! I will be able to read email again after I get back from Austria. Maybe in Austria, too, but You never know.

Phew!

2005-12-15T15:33:00.000+01:00

Well, like I had hoped, December is going by very quickly, because there is so much to do. I think I have gotten to at least one Christmas market every weekend so far, and been to Berlin twice (once to shop, once to dance.) We're working on a christmas project here at the school that will finally be done on Monday, and Sunday is our last choir performance. With that out of the way, at least the work load will slow down, but not the calendar. Marlies's birthday is Monday, as is the teacher's christmas party. The choir party is that tuesday (I think...) and Wednesday I am going to the bowling christmas party of Marlies's sports group. Thursday I head down to Austria for Christmas itself. Then when I get back if it is a little quiet, I think I will be ready for the break!

I need to scoot now, but I have some stories that I hope I have the time to send to you all. My conversation group is starting in just a minute! Hope to hear from you soon!

Nikolaustag!

2005-12-06T09:47:00.000+01:00

Happy Nikolaustag everyone!

I am having a lovely day, since St. Nick found me at home and at school. So I have three boots full of chocolate, a little toy reindeer, and a music box full of lebkuchen. I must have been a very good girl this year. My reindeer is coming with me to my classes today (he or she is sort of beanie baby sized) and I feel very festive.

So this has been a pretty busy week. Last week we had two very long choir rehearsals since our first performance was Friday afternoon. At Thursday's rehearsal I got a real treat. I get to sing with music! I don't have to memorize the words! Life got a lot better after that. Friday's performance, however, was a little disappointing. But I sang my duet for the first time in front of an audience, and everyone said that it went well. Saturday was christmas baking day. First we made pumpkin pie, for the first time with Familie Florschütz. We rolled the pie crust very thin and it turned out lots better. Everyone was stunned that it actually tasted good, because it doesn't taste like pumpkin, and we all had two pieces. Then we also made christmas cookies, which no one here thinks is very american. alright. Nice sugar cookies cut out with cookie cutters and then baked with almonds on top and then with a chocolate rum glaze. Oh, yes. I still have a bowl waiting for me at home. Saturday night I went out to the dance club/disco in town, Capitol, which used to be a movie theater. I was there with friends I met through Rayk, who can't believe I'm only 22. Surely I am in my thirties like them. I just take it as a sign of how young at heart they are, and as a compliment that they want to include me in their social group. I couldn't stay out so very late though, because Sunday morning we had another concert in Frankfurt, which went a lot better. But I had been invited to lunch with the family of the woman I am singing a duet with, so we had to leave a lot earlier.

Frankfurt (Oder) is about an hour away and one of the main border crossings with Poland. The church we were singing technically still belongs to the Swedish crown, that's right, from the 30 years war. When Sweden took over this part of Europe. It had lovely stained glass windows that were stolen by the russian troops in world war II, and have only recently been recovered and are being slowly bought back by the oragnization that is restoring the church. It is only in the last few years that the church has gotten a roof back. It was hit by a bomb in WWII during a church service and 500 people were killed. It was left as a memorial for a long time, but now they are trying to rebuild it. They were able to recognize the stained glass windows because they are very famous. They have the only depiction of the anti-christ that was displayed inside a church (at least as it was explained to me). They have one window restored and placed in its frame, others are being restored now, and some still have yet to be bought back.

The christmas market was inside the church, since it is so big and empty, and was very nice. Lots of lovely things to see. I'm getting lots of christmas present ideas!

I need to run off to a lesson now, but I hope you all are well, and that if you have the chance you'll write to me.

Zu meine andere Chormitglieder(innen) die auch ab und zu mal hier lesen: ich bedanke mich für Eure besuch! Ich hoffe, dass es euch gefällt!

1. Advent

2005-11-30T13:09:00.000+01:00

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!

2005-11-25T11:22:00.000+01:00

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!

2005-11-24T12:19:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-19T21:51:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-15T15:51:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-12T14:17:00.000+01:00

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.

2005-11-07T17:28:00.000+01:00

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)

2005-11-04T15:43:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-02T17:19:00.000+01:00

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!

Things I have yet to get used to (2)

2005-10-27T10:42:00.000+02:00

1. My neighbor who still heats his house with wood because he likes it better, and therefore spends a good part of the afternoon chopping wood

2. How great any sun is after days of rain

3. Did I mention my chorus director accompanies us on the accordion?

Also, minor tragedy: My breadslicer has died. I don't know what happened. It's probably only 20 years old.

And not to forget:

Happy Hellowien! (How one of my students spells it)

Yep, I am working with my 7th graders on Halloween projects. We have a party in just a little bit. I have copied my favorite sentences from their art projects, for your amusement and my memory:

I'd didn't going to play trick or sweat. I'd stay at home. I'd look TV and eat sweat.

Hellowien - I'll frighten startle people.

Children collekt candys.

Children are going from House to House with a costüm.

We make many disgusting eat.

In Halloweentime I have got in my room very much Pumpkings.

Halloween is a ghost fete.

We make our celebrate with our friends.

(A picture of a broomstick was labeled Whichstix).

By Halloween I go from House to House with my friends. We bekame much sweets.

I love working here.

Storkower Singverein

2005-10-21T13:19:00.000+02:00

So, I gave you a teaser yesterday about the Chorus I am in. I am really liking it, and it's a pretty laid back group of people. It's just tricky getting used to having to shake everyone's hand at the beginning (all 30 or 40 odd people). The Director has been leading the chorus here for a good 35 years, starting back when it was still East Germany, kept right going through Unification, and still going strong now. Music Director is a universal language. I have already seen every impatient gesture and heard every phrase she's said at any rehearsal, only in English, from every Director I've had. That isn't the hard part. (Especially since everyone is so thrilled that someone is singing with them who has had actual experience. I can't imagine what would happen if someone who had studied music came in the door. They'd never let them leave.)Like any community choir like this there are 2 women for every man, and they do the best they can at trying to be heard over the womens voices. I am probably the youngest there by abou 15 years, and the average age i am guessing is at least 20 or 25 years older than me. maybe more. On trips we take where you have to pay, the make provisions for those who don't have as high incomes: me, as a student, and half the choir, who is in retirement. :) But they're all excited to see me there, and get very worried when they hear things like I'm not going home for christmas. Right now we're preparing for the Sängerball, which is a dinner, a singing concert, and a dance party afterwards. At least, from what I gather. I asked what we should wear, and was told "something chic!" I have no idea what that means, considering where I am living. I mean, i love it here, but chic may just mean something nicer than jeans, a sweater and a vest. And then later someone told me about the fact we have to wear costumes, too. And since our theme is forest and hunting songs, I need to have a forest peasant girl costume...? But all the grandmas are helping out, and I now have a blue velevet head scarf, a shoulder scarf, i said i had a white blouse, and everyone went home to see if they can find me a big colorful flower print skirt. Everyone says that the head scarf really makes me look right... which I am taking as a compliment. But yes, it is an evening full of folk songs and hunting songs. There is one where the audiencec sings along, about how the woodcutter Michel is not doing well, because we can't hear him. So we all sing " Ich old wood michel still singing?" and when the refrain is over, one chorus member from off stage has to start wailing out a song, at which point the choir and audience all start the second refrain "Yes! he's still singing!". Only it's a lot more repetitive than that as you might imagine. A few of the songs are being acted out in front of the audience, and one has been turned into a doo-wop boogie. Or, as much of one as is possible. During that song we all do the twist. It's really something I sort of want a video of, just because of how amazing it all is. THe only problem for me really is that everyone knows these songs. So we sing them once, put them in an order, and call it a rehearsal. I have never heard these songs before, and they use old fashioned dialect german, and i only understand half of what I'm saying anyway! I hope that I can take some time with one of the ladies here who have been the most helpful, and get them to sing through it again with me.

I should go, but be thinking about me around 7 tonight, when I'll be at choir practice, singing about the joys of wood chopping.

Aufenthaltsgenehmigung

2005-10-20T11:39:00.000+02:00

OK. So I have been in Storkow now well over a month. And one of the first things I did upon my arrival was plow through the 20 pages of burocratic forms i had to fill out to stay here. One of them being my Aufenthaltsgenehmigung, which allows me to stay here longer than my 3 month tourist allowance. This has to be glued into my passport, and so I had to give up my passport, too. I got a card saying they had recieved my application and everything was normal almost a month to the day ago. And had not heard from them since. I was getting worried about not having my passport and not really knowing where it was, so I asked the school secretary to help me call them, because I'm still not so good on the phone with big words. Anyway, we tracked down the Ausländerbehörde for Landkreis Oder-Spree, and talked with the lady there. First she wanted to know why I had chosen "such an expensive apartment", not that it's any of her business, and then told me that my passport has been there, for me to come pick up, for two weeks. apparently, when it came back, she called one of the three Herr Florschützes, and told him that it was there, which she souldn't have done, she should have called the school, where i mailed it from. anyway, he, whichever one it was, never passed the message on to me. so. So today, now that I am done with classes, I am taking a second fieldtrip to Beeskow. to the Ausländerbehörde. To retrieve my passport. I will try and write soon about the songs we're singing in chorus. One really is the german lumberjack song, like you would hear in Monty Python. Only its the real thing. "The very most fun folk are lumberjack-folk, hi holdrio holdrio... With arms full of strength and hearts full of laughter, hi holdrio holdrio... they pick up their axe and tell themselves they're cutting the legs of the devil in two, the very most fun folk are lumberjack-folk, hi holdrio holdrio." Oh yes. The chorus thinks its so cute that i enjoy the music so much, but i can't stop smiling mostly because of how unreal it all seems. That being said, I am off to get back my most important form of ID here. that has been sitting on someone's desk for two weeks. bye!

Back in School

2005-10-18T12:33:00.000+02:00

Well, the two week vacation is over, and I am back at the high school here. I wasn't really looking forward to having the next 9 weeks follow essentially the same schedule all the time, it seemed sort of dull compared to the previous 9 weeks. But it turns out that it won't be a problem, because they have redone all the teachers' schedules, and now I have a whole new weekly plan. I think I have it worked out so that I am still seeing the same kids though, which makes me happy. But this week I am still meeting classes for the first time. So if I keep this schedule through Christmas, that will be a break from routine in and of itself.

It was wonderful to visit Berlin with Jason. Rather than make a lot of touristy stops, we mostly just visited the spots of town that I knew, where I had spent a lot of time, and got caught up. It was a great break, because I could talk as much as I wanted to, as fast as I wanted to, for almost an entire week, in English, and not ever have to ask if he had the vocabulary to understand me. We got him to his very early flight, and he should be there by now, getting to see his school and family in Arusha, Tanzania.

The weather must have know it was vacation, because for the last 2 weeks it was amazing. Rarely cloudy, it might have drizzled once, if that much, and some afternoons it was warm enough to go out without a jacket or sweater. Starting Sunday though, the grey rolled in and hasn't left. In a couple of weeks I think we hit daylight savings time, but then it just keeps getting darker and darker until the sun rises around 8 or 8:30 and its dark again at 4. I am looking forward to the fact that even though it will get colder in January, technically the days are already getting longer, and that can only be a good thing.

The kids seem to be holding up pretty well considering they just got back from vacation. Today I heard a presentation on "Billy Jo-el" (like Noel) which was full of some great sentences. "In 1980 he was made the singing disc on his band." Which was aiming for he made an album in 1980 with his band. I can't get enough of constructions like that.

Well, I have the 8th graders now, which should be fun, so I have to go, but I hope you are all well, and that you can drop me a line when you get the chance.

A Note from Berlin

2005-10-10T13:55:00.000+02:00

Well, the project week is over. It was exaughsting, but I'm glad I did it. I volunteered as translator during any tours we took, since the groups from Poland and the Czech Republic couldn't actually speak German as well as they said they could. In some cases, they couldn't speak German at all. And there was some confusion about whether or not we were all working together, or if we were the hosts and they the guests, in which case we should do all the cooking and cleaning. It wasn't very satisfying in the meeting people from other countries part, all the countries were pretty clique-y. But I got to know the Germans a lot better, and it will help to have some more familiar and friendly faces in the classrooms. And now I know just how difficult it is to paddle a canoe (my partner and I had to separated part way through because we couldn't stop turning in circles) and how nice it is to come home after a 25km bike ride. I have seen a lot more of this part of Brandenburg, and it kept me busy during the first week of fall vacation. Saturday evening I was at a 50th wedding anniversary party. I sing in a choir here, and one of the members just had her 50th anniversary, and it is quite standard here to throw a big party. If the choir isn't invited, they show up anyway, sing a few songs, have a glass (or two) of sekt, and then leave. But this time we were really invited for the dinner and everything, and it was a really nice time. I swayed along with the whole table as they all sang drinking songs along with the music, and came home with a purse full of the small bottles of liquor that the waiters kept bringing around (sleeping drops, as one helpful lady at the table said). It was a fun time, and I'm glad I had the chance to see a party like that, another chance isn't likely to come my way soon.

This is the first day of the second week of vacation. Jason, my friend from Wooster, is coming to visit. I thought at first he was coming for a day, but it turns out his ticket was from today until sunday. Only, he flight got messed up, and now he is coming tomorrow. Still I am looking forward to showing him a little of Germany while he is here. I don't know when my next update will be, hopefully no later than next tuesday.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Friday before vacation

2005-09-30T11:02:00.000+02:00

Well, I am officially done with school work for the next two weeks, although next week I will still be busy. Today I gave two lessons in two different classes, and it was so fun! The teachers all say that the students are excited to have me in their class, because it is one less hour they have to look at the teacher. There is usually one guy in the back of the class who won't answer my questions and will only mutter rude things like the equivalent of "this sucks", but that is the other cool part of my job. I'm not the disciplinarian. I can't write people up. That's why the teacher has to stay in the class with me. So it's not really my problem. So, in one class I talked about elementary school, and in the other class about sports. I learned things like in the winter you can ice surf on the lake in storkow. who knew.

I hadn't seen Frau Florschütz to tell her that I would be going to Berlin yesterday to go see a play, and apparently she was telling a fellow teacher here last night when they were at the sauna together that she was worried that I had never come home from school yesterday. So I can't write much longer, because I need to go home and tell her that I am in fact here, and fine.

It was good to get out a little bit in Berlin. We saw a play at what is apparently the largest children's theater in Germany. This was the premiere of a dutch play that was translated into german about girl and her mother, and the fights they have after the father moves out. It was all very edgy and modern, with card board boxes as the props and the stage spinning around and a big video screen in the back. it was interesting, and not badly performed, but it was sort of intense for a 6 year old, which is who the program said it was aimed at. well, 6 and up. It was too confusing for a child who hadn't lived through something similar to understand what was going on, and too intense for one who had. I'm still glad I went though.

It was in a part of Berlin that I wasn't as familiar with, but now I know how to get from Storkow to the city with the train. It takes about an hour, to get there, another 45 to get into the heart of the city, but is still pretty navigable. I'm hoping to get up there for some of the second week of vacation.

Fall has really set in here, with grey skies, cold temperatures, and enough rain just to keep everything wet. But the heat has finally come on in my apartment, and so I'm not really that bad off. But when the sun actually manages to break through the clouds every so often, I try to get outside for it. just take whatever I'm doing and put on a third layer and sit on the porch until it's not sunny anymore.

I'm going to go now, visit Frau Florschütz and tell her my schedule for next week, which involves visiting about three different lakes, a water purifying facility, the labyrinth in the corn field, the local bike man who makes functioning bikes bigger than a house and smaller than a skateboard, a canoe trip down the canal, this huge contraption that lifts boats from one level of the lake to the other, because the difference between them is too big for a lock, and a trip through the spreewald. At some point during which we will roast bread on sticks in a german tipi. At least, that's what I got from the explanation the leader gave me. Anyway, I'll be busy and far from a computer, so I don't know when I'll write next. But certainly some time during the week after that I can get to the library and write again. I hope that everyone is well, and knows that I am thinking of them.

Things I have yet to get used to

2005-09-28T15:14:00.000+02:00

1. How having a dirt road to my apartment is really messy

2. Hearing roosters from my front porch

3. Just how big snails can get

Long Weekend

2005-09-27T11:55:00.000+02:00

This was my first three day weekend since I got here, even though that is how it is going to be the rest of the time. Marlies and Klaus's grandson was visiting this weekend, Marvin. Marvin is 5 and quite a handful. It's tricky to talk to him, first because he's five, and the art of conversation isn't really there yet. And he makes mistakes sometimes, and I don't know if I misheard him, or if he's really wrong, or if it's just another construction that I don't know. Usually he's wrong. Still, he's a sweetheart, and came with on all of our fieldtrips. Saturday there was a Harvest Festival in Friedersdorf, just down the road. Marvin came with Marlies and Klaus and I. There was a parade with everyone's horses either decorated or pulling decorated wagons, and then came the tractors, also decked out in the best this harvest had to offer. A lot of people wore traditional costumes or just clothes typical for a farm a hundred years ago. It was really neat, and it's fun taking a little kid to a parade. He alternated between standing on the trashcan so he could see over everyone's heads and running up to the edge of the street to collect candy that was being thrown to the kids in the crowd.

Sunday we planned to take a bicycle ride after lunch, but Sunday morning Lars collapsed while working in the garden, and when he went to the doctor, the doctor sent him right to the hospital. We were all pretty worried, but it looks like it's nothing worse than too much stress at work overwhelming him. He has to take a week off of work, and get some more tests, but they let him go from the hospital the same afternoon. Then Monday we were going to go to Ikea after Marlies went to the doctor early. Well, that appointment took hours longer than she expected, and it turns out she's going to have to have surgery. She's hoping to be able to put it off until after Christmas, if at all possible.

After she got back though we did make it to Ikea, which was really fun. I now have a new bookcase, laundry basket, and dishwashing brush.

Today is the first day of my real schedule, although it's already been changed once, and other parts of it aren't happening today for what must be like field day here. All the seventh and eight graders are having sport competitions. I have gotten most of the books I am going to need for all the classes I'll be working with.

So far, we have had a lovely mild start to fall. Mostly still very sunny and warm. And the local folklore says that if it starts like this, it will stay that way, and we will have a mild winter. No way to know for sure, but I can hope. :)

Another bit of good news - I've already gotten paid! I thought it was going to take much longer, another couple of weeks at least. But once I told Fulbright my bank account information, it only took a week for the money to get to me. Which is awesome.

This is the last week before our two week fall break. The first week (next week) I will be working with the Schülerclub from this school and two other clubs from schools in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is the third time that these three schools have met, and this time they're meeting here in Storkow and taking lots of field trips to various important sites regarding water. I think it will be fun, we'll see a lot of great stuff. We have to sleep on the floor in one of the buildings here... I may see about sneaking home one or two nights, but otherwise it will be great. And I will be completely provided for with meals and everything, and all for free. The Student club program is apparently very well funded, and can take another student along no problem. Anyway, most of next week I expect not to be able to get online. And that is why.

On thursday this week I've been invited to go see a play premier in Berlin with the drama class. I am really looking forward to it. Drama kids are always fun, the teacher seems really nice, and I havn't been back to Berlin yet since I got here. And all I saw before that was what i could see from the train as it drove through town.

I think that is all I have to say for now. Hope all of you are well, and know that I think about you often.

Two weeks down

2005-09-23T11:46:00.000+02:00

Well, I got my schedule all worked out. And I don't have to come in every day at 7:30! So great to hear. I also got a cell phone, and am at least partway back in touch with modern communication systems. If I were to have internet at home, all would be peachy.

I think I have to finish reading Catcher in the Rye this weekend, so that I can be ready to discuss it on Tuesday. (Oh yeah, I always get Monday off). Otherwise I don't really know how to prepare for next week. But I will have one week following my schedule, and then comes a two week Fall Break. The social worker here has a project planned for the first week that I will be helping with. But the second week I will have to myself. I may see about calling up friends in Berlin and visit there for a bit. I havn't seen anything since I rode the train through it to get to Storkow.

Frau Florschütz got the cold I had all last week, so the trip to Ikea was shot. And the local author reading is actually next Thursday, not this Thursday. So this week was a little quieter than I expected. But Saturday the Familie and I will be going to.. a nearby town whose name I've forgotten, to see the Harvest festival. And since I have Monday off, we're taking the trip to Ikea then. Apparently, it's in quite the shopping center. There's even a movie theater there, and if there's anything good showing we just may go see it.

The Familie is also letting me read their newspaper every day. The first section (there are only two) is international and national news, all in the equivalent of AP soundbites. But the second section is the real treat - local news. There was a story about the favorites in the local table tennis league this year. Of course about all the high school sports teams. There's usually an advice column from one of the local administrative offices, with telephone numbers. This last one was from one office that for a few hours you could call with any questions concerning how to write a will. My favorite story so far though was a short blurb. "Unknown horse found dead in field." Apparently two people were taking a stroll through the meadow (as many do here) and happend upon a horse that had been killed with a blunt object. That was the whole story.

Well I need to go into town, go to the market for some fresh veggies. I don't need much fresh fruit, because Lars Florschütz brought me apples, pears, and grapes from his garden yesterday. All very lovely, and naturally never treated with anything, so I have to be sure to cut the apples open before I eat them, since there really may be a worm in there. The apples look like the ones from story books of snow white. Bright red with paler whitish spots, round, and inside as bright white as anything. Just lovely.

Hope all is well, and I'll write more when I get back to school next week.

German household appliances

2005-09-21T09:35:00.000+02:00

Well, really only one, but my new favorite German household appliance that I hadn't seen, let alone used, until last week: The BREADSLICER! Yes. Germans eat a lot of heavy dark bread. the only way to eat it is in thin slices that are difficult to make evenly. and you have to make a lot of them to feed your german family. so what do you do? Invent the bread slicer, that always makes them as thin and even as you like. Every german kitchen has one. Here at least. It's just really cool. If I ever get to putting up pictures, I may take a picture and put it up here. Just to show you all how cool it really is.

I think that's all for now, just wanted to pass along that tidbit I forgot. bye!

Getting back to School

2005-09-20T22:00:00.000+02:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm here! (and in the library)

2005-09-13T14:14:00.000+02:00

I am writing to you from the library in storkow. I got here no problem, the only problem is that there is no phone line, and naturally no internet, in my apartment, and i have no cell phone still. I am hoping I can get some of that changed in the next few days, but there's really no telling. Apparently my landlords figure that if I have my own phone line I will call home too much. Mostly though, I want a line so I can call at like midnight, when it is a good time to reach my folks at home.
It is really pretty here. I have borrowed and ridden (?) a bike already... that sounds funny. and it is so great to ride a bike where it is flat. it was really cold yesterday, but it is warm and sunny again today. We went to the foreigner registration office today, and they basically could do nothing besides give me a form to fill out and tell me to come back in a week. whoopee.
the apartment aside from the phone thing is really nice. small, but nice, I don't think I'll feel too alone there ever, which is a good thing.

but yeah, this is a tiny tiny town. everyone really does know everyone else. My hosts, the florschüzt family is great though. the parents are like... late fifties? early sixties? and their son that lives with them is like 30. but some of my dishes say "made in the GDR" and that made me really happy. But the place is beautiful, lots of windows and natural wood. The ceilings are wood paneled, which is a little funny, but makes it very cozy. the kitchen is tiny. the stove is two electric burners, and there is no oven. there is a small sink, and a fridge that fits under the counter. that's about it. a lot of the dishes are kept in the living room, because there isn't enough cabinet space in the kitchen. the bathroom is tiny, too, but that means there is less to clean, which im ok with. The living room has a two person table that mosly fills the room. there is a sofa, and a cd player, and a tv that is apparently sort of confusing to use. There is a wall with shallow shelves, and that is great overflow storage space. The bedroom is separated from the living room by a door with glass window that has curtains on both sides. there is a big double bed, but one set of pillows and sheets. there is a desk and a wardrobe, too, and the entire far wall is a bank of windows. it's realy pretty.

Anyway, I should go and get shopping. I need something to cook for dinner tonight! I will try and post more later, and eventually will get to like, pictures and stuff. Bis später!

First entry

2005-09-02T16:24:00.000+02:00

Well, as I've been telling peple, I have now officially created a blog for updates from my time in Storkow (SHTOHR-koh). It'll still be a little bit before I get there, leaving Tuesday, then a week of orientation outside of Cologne, then getting settled in. For the most part though, this title will work, and so I'm keeping it. I'll write more later!