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.