German Girl

Friday morning I made it to the UBahn without incident. No dogs! :) This class is also wonderful. I was afraid that teaching 3 of the same class would be...sucky. Once I started, though, it was awesome!! I am totally in love with one of my students. (shh...) He is a future teacher at a vocational school in 'Wood Technologies.' I had them fill out these information index cards, and he put that he had trained to be a 'janitor' after HS. As we were talking--I went around to meet everyone--I knew that wasn't what he meant, but I didn't want to offend him. I mean, what if that really was what he meant and I made some awful comment like, 'You needed to train to be a janitor? Hmm...' Of course, we finally came around to the fact that he meant 'carpenter.' Whoops. It is fun to find out random info about my students, although (and I told them this) sometimes I remember the info but not their name. I saw one of my students on the UBahn and could not remember her name at all but definitely recalled that she has a turtle named Bruce. It is interesting to think about grading all their work, too. I have just been putting fun comments on the 'Oprah' surveys, but I am getting anxious about that. At WM, a prof could put notes on your paper in shorthand or whatever, and it didn't matter. It was never an example of English for you, but now I am afraid of showing them something wrong even in a stupid little comment. I am getting insecure in my English--eek!! I am also realizing how much work it will be to grade papers, but I love love love this. I was sitting in the classroom while they were writing just thinking about how much I belong there. It was incredible! Then I thought, could I really take another year off? If I do I have to keep teaching at the Uni-level. [Later that night, one of my favorite WM profs sent me an e-mail about a 1year MA program at the Uni of Heidelberg. Stay in Germany!? Go to an incredibly prestigious uni with a course I LOVE taught in English?? Definitely applying]

Friday afternoon the kids and I had our first 'HeatherFest.' It was just a fun afternoon of being random. Henrik was reluctant to go at first--he was frustrated cause it's vaycay and he is bored but none of his friends are around, but he came around. We picked up Kathi and went on a little mini-exploration of 'Downtown Bothfeld' aka the 10 shops on Kurze-Kamp-Strasse. We went into this cute candy shop and they each got to spend about 50 cents. Henrik found a ladybug, which he took a bag for and spent the rest of the afternoon building an elaborate home for. We stopped in the bakery and the kids each got a Berliner (which is a donut. Maybe you have heard the famous story of JFK saying, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' He meant--and the people understood his spirit!--that he was a resident of Berlin at heart. He said, 'I am a donut.') We mailed some letters and stopped at VMarkt to buy gummies for our project.

I took the kids to the Uni and we went up to the 14th floor for lunch. It was cool but a little overwhelming--I wasn't quite sure how their caf worked. We finally settled down to sandwiches and working on our HeatherFest activity--making ghosts for Halloween. We put candy in our tissues, twisted the tissue around and tied it--making a little ghost. Then we put faces on our ghosts. They are cute. At one point two of my students came over to say Hi. We gave them some Halloween ghosts and they spoke some rapid German with Henrik, which left me sitting there grinning like an idiot. (Plus the fact that I didn't remember their names--Thorsten & Christiane--until like 1/2 hour later.) When we were leaving, Henrik said he had to pee and went over to the side of the building--the side right near the front door! AHHH! I ran them back inside and showed them the bathroom. Now that would have been lovely--'hey look! there is our English teacher? Is she letting that kid pee on the school?!?'

Overall, a good week!