My Fulbright Year

My Triumphant Return…

To those of you who still read this, I have decided to revive my blog for my upcoming two week jaunt to Germany.  Be prepared to read of debauchery, multiple job offers and binges.

Or of course the more likely scenario of my ranting about how unjust the European Union’s policies towards foreign workers are. Either way, it should be fun.

90 people get the swine flu and everybody wants to wear a mask. A million people have AIDS and no one wants to wear a condom.

(via jessicachu)

Thanks to rob for pointing this out to me.  

Interesting Discussion

The theme for the 12th and 13th grade English courses this semester is “The American South”.  I couldn’t tell you how many times the teachers have asked me specific questions about the South “because you’re from the South”.  Last time I checked, Saint Louis is not considered to be the South.  Oh well.  On Thursday I was working with a 12th grade Leistungskurs (the harder English class as opposed to the Grundkurs).  I took 15 students out of the class for 45 minutes and the other 15 for the last 45 minutes.  We talked about lynching and read a short text and listened to the song “Strange Fruit”.  Nobody had read about lynching before, so they were pretty shocked to see that something like that existed in the US.  I had really good discussions with both groups of students, and naturally the discussion shifted to comparing lynching to the actions of the Nazis during WW2.  I was amazed that there was almost an even split amongst the 30 students:  half thought the Holocaust was much worse and the other half thought lynching was worse.  It was really the first open dialogue I’ve had about the Holocaust, and I posed some good questions that made them figure out how to back up their arguments.  It didn’t really concern me which side they fell on, I just wanted them to be able to argue and defend without notes or anything.  I felt like I was actually doing my job.  

I am still trying new techniques to try to get the older students to participate more and ask questions.  I gave a lecture on the American political system, and the printer was broken, so I couldn’t print out my graphics in order to make overheads.  Made things difficult, and I knew they would have questions.  I explicitly stated that if they have a question (vocabulary or simply not following what I was saying), that they could ask me at any time during the lesson.  I could see in their faces that most of them were lost, yet nobody stopped me.  I then stopped and asked them questions (explain the Judiciary’s check on the Executive), and nobody could answer them.  I’m not sure if they comprehended what I was saying, and were just scared to make mistakes in front of me.  If it isn’t that, then they simply weren’t following me, and that is problematic since everything I talked about will be on their test.  

Going to be traveling the next two weekends, and then I will have about a month left.  As Germans would say, “Die Zeit vergeht ganz schnell” which means time goes by quickly.  Very true.  The weather is finally warming up a bit, and now I just need to find a basketball court.  More to come soon.

Welcome Mat?

Hannover is known for having large trade shows.  Every year Hannover hosts CeBit which is the largest technology conference in the world.  There are trade shows about 3 times a month during Spring and Summer.  Now, when there are trade shows, the trams that take you throughout the city will announce the stop, which side the doors open on as well as whether or not you can transfer to other trains at said stop.  During the trade show period, these announcements are not only in German, but they are also in English.  As soon as the trade show is over, the English announcements disappear.  

This might not seem odd, because of course I am in Germany, so the announcements should only be in German.  However, in every other large city I’ve been to (Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Cologne), the announcements are always in German and English.  So now I am sitting here wondering why Hannover doesn’t do the same.  Any ideas?

Back To School

Today was my first day back at school after a little over 2 weeks off.  I only had 3 lessons today, and they went swimmingly (see mom, I can be positive).  The first lesson I worked with a 10th grade class.  I had to do a worksheet with them about adjectives.  There were about 40 adjectives on the page, and then they had to sort them into two groups “positive and negative” as well as two subgroups “physical and behavioral”.  I had the worksheet a few days in advance, so I went over the adjectives, and I knew there were about 6 or 7 that they wouldn’t know (i.e. happy-go-lucky and unkempt).  I told them to read over the list and ask me if they weren’t sure what some of the adjectives meant.  Nobody asked me about any of the adjectives, so I was a little surprised that they knew all of the words.  About 5 minutes into sorting the adjectives, I could hear them asking other students what some of the words meant.  I am still trying to figure out why they don’t ask me (seeing as I am only 4 years older than they are), and I am not intimidating in the slightest.  After awhile I just picked out the adjectives I knew they were unfamiliar with, and asked if they knew the meanings.  They didn’t, so I explained the words to them.

I had a 2 hour break before my next lesson, so I walked around a bit and then talked to Julia.  One thing I love to observe is how Germans dress.  Sometimes it is way ahead of what is going on in the USA, and other times they wear things that make me laugh.  For example, men here wear capris.  Yes, just like the capris girls wear.  It’s not just older guys, or younger guys.  It’s literally a large, equally distributed group of men who wear them.  I’ll never be caught dead wearing them.  The other thing I see a lot of is sandals with thick, wool socks.  I never understood that when people did it in the USA, but I saw a ton of people wearing socks and sandals today (one guy takes the cake because he had capris AND socks and sandals on).  It’s great.

I picked up a new book today that was only €2.95 called “Der, Die, Das”.  It is similar to the book I am working on, however he tends to focus more on grammar.  The author is an American who moves to Germany and talks about the transition, language and troubles he has while he’s here.  About 2/3 of the book is purely grammatical, and my book won’t focus on grammar at all.  It’ll be a good read to see how he shapes his story.

Before I left today I discussed a few topics I’ll be teaching about in the following weeks in Simone’s classes.  She is one of my favorites at school, and she really lets me use my ideas in class which is rare, but much appreciated.  Today she said she has to cover The Great Depression, Politics in the USA, and parent-teenager interactions in the USA.  Now I get to do whatever I want with those topics, so I will have some planning to do this weekend, and I think I will like talking about those themes.  

That’s it for now.  Julia will be here this weekend, and the following week is my first full week back at school.  Hard to believe I have about 9 weeks left until I head back home.