I guess my blog is becoming a once-a-month tradition--I hope some of you are still tuning in. Here's an update on the latter part of October and first half of November.The map on the left is of Germany, and the red dot is Rheda-Wiedenbrück. You can see how Nordrhein-Westfalen is the most populous-concentrated state in Germany by the many brown dots (cities) to the left of Rheda-Wiedenbrück.
First, my BIG news:
After 8 weeks, Lufthansa finally located my lost bag. I was shocked, SHOCKED when they called and told me they had found it. Apparently it had been sitting in JFK the entire time. Lesson learned: I will never again be paranoid about the threatening loudspeaker announcements at airports regarding leaving your luggage unattended. Nothing was damaged, and within 24 hours of locating it the bag was sitting at my doorstep.
There she is, safe and sound.
Upon the return of my bag, I really noticed how regular my life has finally become here.
My Teaching Life:
I am participating regularly (once or twice a week) in a 5th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade English class. Sometimes the teacher prepares a lesson plan for me, which I then work on in a separate room with a smaller group of students, and other times I just lead one or two activities in the hour with the whole class. I also have the opportunity to bring some of my own ideas/class projects to the classroom. For example, to close a unit on love poetry in the 11th grade class we analyzed the lyrics to the song "Such Great Heights" by Postal Service. Next week I will be playing Alphabet Bingo with the 5th graders and teaching the 8th graders about Thanksgiving. I'm also starting a newspaper project with the 11th graders. (They don't really have student newspapers here so my mom is sending me copies of Clayton's Globe and Pomona's The Student Life to share with them as examples).
I also run 4 classes a week that are all my own. One of these is an after-school English club for 5th-7th graders. It is an interesting challenge to work with students spanning these English levels because despite the fact that they are all beginners, some have learned English for less than half a year and others for 2 years, so there is a relatively large difference in their abilities. They are all (15 students) really sweet, and they told me that the best hour of the week at school is my club! (I gave them candy and let them bob for apples for Halloween...maybe that had something to do with it.)
My other 3 classes are conversation classes for the 13th graders who are preparing for their huge high school exit exams (Abitur), which they will be taking in May or June. We have been talking about Globalization and the United Nations. All these students chose to work with me, and there are about 30 in total. It is also hard work to prepare for their classes because I have to keep them engaged and find appropriate teaching materials. I can't really resort to playing silly English games with them like I can with the younger kids. But I really enjoy it anyway!
My colleagues continue to be wonderful. I socialize with a few of them regularly, and the others are just generally warm and welcoming. One teacher invited a big group from the English Department over to her house for Raclette (Swiss dinner party style food).
They're mostly women my mom's age, but it's an important community for me here nonetheless. Lilo, my host teacher, who I adore, is third from the left.
My Learning Life:
I take a night class for foreigners learning German two nights a week (Wed & Thurs) at the University nearby. I'm in the highest level they offer and there are only 7 of us in the class, so it is really great! I commute for about an hour each way, but I really enjoy having an excuse to get out of Rheda-Wiedenbrück and go to Bielefeld regularly. I also enjoy being surrounded for a few brief moments by a crowd of students going to and from classes--I definitely still have a fondness for being in an educational setting and surrounded by my peers.
My Social Life:
I've started to make friends! Actually, to be more specific, I've made two friends. But they introduce me to others as well... I met both Carina and Julia through my host teacher's daughter, Anna. They both study at Uni Bielefeld but live at home here in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. I hang out with them a lot and am totally grateful that they have included me in their lives. I probably see them 2-4 evenings a week and we have all kinds of grandiose plans for the year including a trip to islands on the North Sea and a ski trip. Having people to spend time with is also invaluable for helping me improve my German. Anna is back in town from Berlin this weekend and last night she told me that my German has improved since last month, which is largely due to the time I have spent hanging out with her friends!
I also went to a regional meeting in Düsseldorf of all the foreign language assistants in my area last weekend. It was great to reconnect with a lot of the Americans I met at our first orientation and to see Lauren again (who I went to Munich with). I also met people from Russia, France, Australia, and Britain who are all teaching in the area.
coal mining in Nordrhein-Westfalen (Ruhrgebiet area to be more specific),
which was the major industry in this area throughout the 20th century,
but the mines are mostly empty now.
We also saw this cool old industrial area that has been converted into a huge public park. It's hard to describe this place because it is SO crazy (and our tour was at night in the rain with the park dimly lit by flourescent colored lights everywhere--we all felt like we were in some surreal, fantastical movie). One crazy example: they took the old huge gas tank and turned it into a diving site where local diving clubs come scuba-diving to see everything that has been intentionally submerged there for their entertainment, including a small airplane. It is also really a popular park with climbers who scamper up all parts of the old industrial-site. I wish I could describe it better. Just know that it is an incredibly cool and odd-ball idea that was imagined to celebrate the industrial character/history of this part of Germany while also reusing the structures that were already in place. It is completely open to the public 24 hours a day and not always well-lit. Many of us were surprised by that because it could never exist in America...there would be too many fears about accidents and lawsuits. Here's one pic that doesn't even capture the place or experience, but is maybe a start:
My Active Life:
I take a yoga class on Monday evenings, and I always wish that it was held more regularly in the week after finishing with my hour and a half practice. I've also joined a running group, which is awesome. It is a group of anywhere from 7-30 people who show up 2-3 times a week, regardless of shitty weather, to run for an hour. They welcome all running levels, and currently we are all training for the Christkindlauf, which is a 10k race through Wiedenbrück the night of November 30th. The race attracts a thousand runners from the area and is the official start of Wiedenbrück's Christmas market. I'm stoked. Since daylight savings time, our weekly runs have become a very dark evening runs through a partially lit park trail. We are a charging force of reflective vests and shining headlamps--what a sight! It's good for me to learn that cold weather shouldn't be an excuse to avoid physically activity. I'm also planning on trading Carina English lessons for tennis lessons in the near future. I wish I had more chances to go hiking, but I'm still looking for companions who want to go with me on day hikes, who know where to go, and how to get there (with public transportation or have a car to offer).
My Culinary Life:
I'm cooking all vegetarian for myself. I can whip up some pretty tasty things on my electric hotplate and mini-electrical oven. Some highlights include eggplant caponata, homemade applesauce, mushroom barley leek soup, homemade hummus, and raisin-sunflower seed scones, and fresh pumpkin-apple butter.
German culinary things I'm most addicted to: everything from their bakeries. There are these great bakeries everywhere in Germany. They have tasty sweet pastries, my favorite pretzel-breads, and the indisposable German roll (brötchen), but most importantly they have a million sorts of wonderful whole-wheat breads often made with rye and a variety of seeds/nuts. I'm also a fan of the German coffee & cake tradition, which is always on Sunday and often any other day of the week around mid-afternoon. They also have wonderful yogurts here. My favorite so far is poppy seed-marzipan flavored, but all of the limited edition winter/christmas varieties just showed up in the supermarket (fruitcake, pear cinnamon, candied almonds, etc) so there are more to try.
Next Saturday I'm going to visit Lauren and we'll be preparing a Thanksgiving feast (albeit three days late) for our friends, so that should be fun!
My Winter Life:
Earlier this week it snowed. Not a lot, and nothing stuck, but there was precipitation and the temperature was below freezing. Needless to say, Germany is definitely a predominantly Christian country, so culturally Winter pretty much means the Christmas-season. Stores have been filled with Christmas decorations since November 1st and every town will have a Christmas market for the entire Advent time starting Dec. 1st. I even baked my first batch of Christmas cookies with Carina and her boyfriend, David, last weekend.
My whole family, including (drumroll please) my grandparents, are coming here for Christmas and New Years, so I am very excited about the end-of-the-year holidays and I'm planning fun activities for us to do. (Such a wonderful way to celebrate family after last winter, which was a time of struggle for all of us to help my dad heal.)
Despite the fact that I like to complain about the cold regularly, after four years in California, I am loving the return of seasons. It's great fun to see people bundle up and bustle through town--something about it explicitly shows the relationship between nature and urbanized society. And the return of Spring will be a notably festive occasion!
Have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
