Barcelona

Well, I think it's definitely time to update. Last weekend, the 23rd through 26th, I was in Barcelona, Spain! There's somewhere I never imagined I'd get to visit. It was a short trip, but definitely worth it. I was also excited by a layover in Switzerland, where I got to hear some fascinating German. It sounds like German with a Swedish accent and better attitude. They also gave us plenty of free Swiss chocolate (not to mention all the free alcoholic/regular beverage we want. Oh Europe : ) As we were landing in Barcelona, I sat back and listened to the announcements in German, English, and French, waiting for the Spanish. As the Spanish came on, I was mildly alarmed by the fact that it not only sounded like Italian, but was apparently neither language and I couldn't understand it. Only after being in Barcelona for an hour did it slowly dawn on me: oh that's right, they also speak Catalan in Spain! haha I was so confused for a while and even thought maybe I'd gotten on the wrong plane after all ("don't they speak Spanish in Spain??" I kept thinking). Catalan is fascinating and I wish someone would've taught me some.

I was very happy to spend time with my friend Mark again as well. It was his idea that we have a look at works by Antonio Gaudi, who designed a number of buildings, a church, and even a park there. The church was Sagrada Familia and incredibly fascinating. The front has very angular representations of biblical characters attached to the facade. The back facade is also littered with various biblical characters, but in a very different style. Everything seems to be melting, and on a massive scale. Inside the church there are giant pillars, starburst ceilings, and colorful glass windows. We waited in line for an hour just so we could take the elevator to the top and see the beautiful view from there. Several of the peaks in the church are covered with giant fruits. I thought it was a nice touch.

In the Gaudi park, you can find the world's longest bench. There is also a building he also designed that really looked like a gingerbread candy house to me, with an undulating roof. The next day we went to the Picasso museum. It's amazing to think I got to look around and look at original Picasso works. The museum is inside of 3 mansions that were connected to host the works, so some of the rooms are rather grand looking. What really got my attention was the fact that he had such a variety of styles throughout his life. His earlier paintings are very realistic, very faithful representations of real life in great detail. Then as you move on you can see them become more impressionistic, colorful, and then suddenly you see the Picasso we're more familiar with: colorful oddly proportioned figures with body parts in unusual places. The fact that he could have rendered the subjects realistically but didn't gives the whole thing a new sense of intent and depth.

I enjoyed the paella and sangria in Barcelona. The whole casual atmosphere and the fact that people in shops in cafes would automatically speak to me and stay in Spanish, rather than English, made me feel like I fit in more there. In Germany I'm still 'the foreigner', even though my German is much better than my Spanish. While I was sad to leave the beautiful weather, it was nice coming back to Germany. After 3 months, Germany has started to have a home-like feel for me. I was kinda happy when I went through passport control: I had to go through the Non-EU nationals line and hand over my American passport, which always makes me feel like a big outsider. But then when he asked where I was headed (to test my English I guess? I told him Wiesbaden), he flipped through the passport and saw my newly acquired residence permit and then, switching to German suddenly, said "Oh, you live there!" with a smile. It was just nice; it was like I was part of the club : ) I had another moment as I went down into the train station (there's a train station inside the Frankfurt airport) and saw these two, I think, Indian punching all the wrong button at the ticket machine trying to get a train ticket. I went over, said "kann ich Ihnen helfen?" and then "Can I help you?" in English and they looked relieved. So suddenly I was the one helping foreigners figure out the ticket machines, rather than the one asking random people to please help me.

So now I have a 3 week vacation to plan for. I'm thinking about seeing another country, possibly the Czech Republic to see Prague. I'd love to spend time in Switzerland, but it's apparently quite expensive.

Snow!!

It started snowing this week! I was wondering when it finally would, though everyone warned me it doesn't snow much here. It was odd, because when I was in class, I saw streams and streams of snow flying past the windows, but when I went outside it was all gone. They did tell me the snow doesn't stick, but it was weird to see.

I'm pretty happy with how things are going at the school, especially after this week. One of the teachers had to miss a few classes this week, so I substituted for a double period class of his. They're practicing debating in English. I had them run through two debates that they had prepared and then we had 15 minutes left over, so we did a "speed debate." I had 4 people come up, on the spot, and do a sped up version of a debate on a topic of my choosing. I chose nuclear power and whether it should be used more prevalently in Germany (they aren't allowed to build any additional nuclear power plants and people are very distrustful of it here). I was impressed with how they were able to come up with good arguments on the spot and be able to debate in a foreign language.

On Thursday I held my first discussion group on the Great Gatsby. I have a group of 17 students and am teaching this book completely on my own. I was happy with this first meeting. The students were into it and we had a nice rapport going. Everyone participated and seemed interested to talk about the book. I especially like it, because this way I'm becoming more of the every day life here. I think I'm starting to stick out less and less and be a little more accepted. I also did a double period crash course in Hamlet for the same teacher just today with him observing. That was a little nerve racking, but I ended up pulling it off! I was pretty happy, since I was up most of the night worrying about it, actually.

So, the strikes have gotten worse here and I can't ride the train to Wiesbaden this weekend. I am displeased. It's ending this Saturday (for now), but there's no reason to go anywhere on Sunday since everything will be closed. I'm actually going to a concert on Sunday along with some of the students, though (there's a shuttle). In other news, I'm going to Barcelona next weekend (the 23rd) and meeting Mark there, who's in Europe this week. I'm excited about seeing the Dali and Picasso museums. Time to buy more batteries for the camera...

Accidental Theft

So, last Friday I took over a double period English grammar class for one of my colleagues. He said to let the student pick the topics, which meant that I didn't have anything prepared. So, that discussion didn't go as well as I had hoped it would. Meanwhile, another one of the teachers silently came in and started taking pictures...I completely forgot about this until the next day when I went to the Hansenberg website to look something up and saw this right on the home page:
There I am, pretending to be a teacher and looking awkward : ) I'm hoping the book discussions this week go better.

In other news, I played in two team chess tournaments for the Geisenheim club (I played in the 1st and 2nd team). The first team won against Wiesbaden, while the second team ended up tying. This was my first time playing with a team, which was kind of a new fun thing to do. Before the game in the 2nd team, the team leader told me I shouldn't accept or offer a draw without discussing it with him first. This was news to me...I guess as team leader it's his job to first come and assess the position, compare it with the outcomes of the other team member's games, and decided whether or not I should draw or play on. Anyway, this ended up not being an issue since I got kind of a decisive win right away. I'm not bragging; it just was a bad match, I think. They don't really know much about me as a player yet, so I think they've been playing it safe and putting me on the lower boards.

Finally, I was surprised by my landlady knocking on my door at 11 today to tell me that "something was wrong with the rent." At first I thought that somehow the transfer didn't go through, that I was out of money, etc....it ended up being worse than that. I had filled out the form wrong at the bank and had transferred 250 euros from her account into mine. Ahhhhhh not good....not good. Needless to say, she was pretty confused about that. Isn't it amazing that the bank just did it though without asking questions? I can understand them not questioning deposits in to people's accounts, but to go and demand money from someone's account and not verify it? That's pretty strange. Of course this is all to blame on my inability to understand bank-German, though. This was the first time the teller didn't just fill the form out for me and left it to me to try to puzzle out what goes where. I went to the bank right away to make sure she got the rent after all and, well, they recognized the name and were sure to lecture me on how to fill out the form properly. *sigh*

I still have to go to Bad Schwalbach to finish registering. I was planning on going today, but just wasn't in the mood. I guess I'll go next week.

So these are some of my pictures from our trip to Mainz. This last one is a church that was destroyed during the war. They kept it like this as a memorial (in another picture you can see it also doesn't have a roof).

Well, I'm going to finish preparing something good for the introduction to Gatsby tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Trading Candy Corn for Potatoes

You know, I've never really cared about Halloween before. It was just some distraction that came a couple weeks after my birthday involving piles of candy and having to repeatedly answer the door during my favorite TV shows. So of course, now that I'm sitting 6,000 miles away from my beloved candy corn and caramel apple pops, I miss it. Halloween has made its way to Germany in the past 4 or so years, but it is not widely celebrated at all and the most you'll see is the occasional carved pumpkin. Where are the candy apples, the tiny sheet ghosts trotting down the streets, the French maids off to the local bar's costume contest? It's especially a shame Halloween hasn't caught on here, because the rows and rows of the vineyards or one of the labyrinthine abbeys or castles would make a killer haunted house.

I suppose this is coming almost 2 weeks too late now, but now that it's passed I suppose I'm realizing more that I missed it altogether. Not to mention Thanksgiving, which I guess I'll also be missing. There's a group of Hessen assistants who meet in Frankfurt every other Thursday and I think they might be planning something for Thanksgiving. But they meet later in the day, it's a 40min ride there, and I would have class the next day anyway. Maybe I'll have my students draw hand turkeys ...

In other news, my role at the school is expanding. I'm assisting with 2 book discussions (Brave New World and Hamlet) and I've also been assigned my own discussion group to teach the Great Gatsby over 11 class hours completely on my own (spread over 2 or 3 weeks). I'm excited to have something more interesting to do. I have all sorts of ideas for Gatsby, but I'm not sure how to plan for 11 class hours of it. I had my first experience teaching a class today. They had "Studientag" at the school; it's a day they have once a month where, instead of normal classes, the teachers set up optional workshops for the student to attend, where they can practice concepts from class or learn something new. One of the English teachers couldn't make it and so he asked me to take over his grammar workshop he was offering for 2 consecutive periods. He didn't give me much to go off of, beyond saying to let the students pick which topics they needed help with and to take it from there. Well, it wasn't terrible, but I really don't think I got much done. They wanted to know the rules and difference behind the different forms of the passive voice (was eaten, would have eaten, would have had eaten, will have had eaten, etc etc). Since I spent the past 10 years studying and teaching German grammar...I wasn't that prepared to try to explain the finer points of English grammar to them. I think they may have left more confused than when they came. Oh well. I really think the book discussions will go much better. There's so much more you can do with literature.

So, after these first couple of months I feel more comfortable here. I've figured out the trains, the heating in my room, everyday expressions people expect you to use, I have a cellphone now, and other little things (though I still haven't figured out the can openers here...it's driving me nuts). I've been going with one of the teachers once a week to the local chess cub in Geisenheim and participated in their team tournament last weekend. It was the Geisenheim team versus a visiting team from Wiesbaden. We had a decided victory. I won my game against a man with a 1780 ELO rating, so I was pretty happy about that. I'm going to see if there are any official tournaments I can play in as well.

Well, the above pictures are all from Wiesbaden, which is only 30 min from my town. The first is the Kurhaus and the second is the state theatre where they put on weird modernized versions of old plays. The third is a 'spring' next to the Kochbrunnen; this is where water comes up and is naturally hot. Local lore is that the water is rejuvenating. The fourth is the Nassauer Landesdom, a cathedral. Finally, here is a picture of me with Ben posing behind the Kochbrunnen (the main fountain they built for this rejuvenating hot spring):

So finally, my first picture of me in Germany (happy?). You can click on any of the pictures to make them (a lot) bigger. Well, now I'm off to play the 3rd round in an ongoing club tournament.

Wait, So Fanta Isn't Juice..??

And there you have it. I think that pretty much captures the past two months so far. Book fairs don't sell books, chicken patties are actually fried cheese, "pepperoni" is actually a pepper, not meat, and now I find out Fanta is a carbonated drink. My guess is all of you were in on that one way before me, but it just kind of added to the general frustration of today (I was really parched and the last thing I wanted was something carbonated. "How about that really popular juice drink?" I thought to myself. Stupidly).

I spent the entire day in transit. No joke. I got up, got dressed, and headed out to the bus stop. Today's plan was to head out to Bad Schwalbach and finally register at the Foreigner registration office. It's important, because if I don't within the next 35 days, then I no longer have permission to be in Germany. Now this place is 40 minutes away, which doesn't sound that bad. Until you realize that taking public transportation will double that. I stepped on the bus at 10:30 and at 2:45 finally found myself in Bad Schwalbach. Just ridiculous. Once I finally got there, I had an address but no idea how to find it. And for some reason, people in that city are not as friendly, so that was frustrating. I was annoyed with them and annoyed with the long crowded trip there and so I was ready to explode when (after wandering around and getting lost) I finally found the building and the woman promptly told me: they're closed for today. No, no they are not reopening any time today, you'll have to come back tomorrow.

AUUUGHH

I'm not blowing another 17 euros tomorrow, no. What a waste.

At that point I just wanted to get home. Which I think is why the bus I was riding on was hexed and ended up breaking. The doors wouldn't open without being forced, so the driver took us to the bus lot and we all had to get off and switch busses. The 14 min trip home turned into a half hour trip...and on top of it, he didn't stop at my bus stop, so I had to get off in a different town and wait an hour outside for the next bus to come along. And then got dropped off 15 minutes downhill from my house.....

So, I'm still not registered and I'm out 17 euros. Grrr...I'll have to find someone at the school who's willing to take me I guess.

Anyway, I'm done ranting. I'll have the Wiesbaden and Mainz pictures up next post, I promise!