First Week at School

My first week at school is very over. I get Fridays off as well as the weekend, so I've been doing nothing since Thursday evening.

I really like my school so far. I saw one of the 8th grade girls (name: Gina. She asked me if all Americans were fat in my first lesson) in the street today and got excited because I recognized her, but I didn't say anything to her. The commute to work takes about 30 minutes, but it doesn't feel that long. I got my schedule for my actual teaching today: I'll have lessons with 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th graders. Most of the lessons are with 8th and 11th graders - 8th grade English focuses on America, and 11th graders will be able to get a full year in with me before they hit their senior year.

I still have a few questions that I keep on forgetting to ask about school and Germany in general (for example: are those two guys who seem as clueless as I am student teaching?). I did, however, discover that the letter after the class number doesn't mean anything. German classes are called 12A, 12B, 12C, etc., but that just shows that they take all their compulsory subjects together.

I'm going to get a key to the teachers' room next week. This will be nice because I have to knock every time now and some of the teachers give me odd looks because I kinda look like a student. (The teachers' room is really important because teachers switch classrooms every hour like collegiate teachers do in the US, so they need a place to leave their stuff. It is also important because of coffee.)

I'm trying to decide what I want to do over my school breaks. All I really know is that I'm going to Great Britain on July 1st...or maybe a few days later if I can swing getting my visa extended that long. I have 4 significant breaks and a three-day weekend every week, so I should be able to get some nice traveling done.

Today I went into town to get out of the house, and I listened to a bit of an MLPD speech. It was what you'd expect from a communist party. The lady seemed to hate both Obama and Westerwelle. Then I got handed some leaflets from the FPD, so I'm pretty close to completing my collection of German election materials. I really just need something from the CDU and the Green Party now, although having something from the Piraten and Free Voters would be nice as well.

Although this whole Germany thing sounds crazy exciting, it's not quite as glamorous as it sounds. I searched the dairy section of the grocery store yesterday for margarine before realizing that Germans don't feel the need to refrigerate it. Eww. But I bought it anyway because I want to try to make cookies. I have a lot of free time - yesterday I discovered that German Comedy Central shows Parks & Rec twice a week, and I was really excited about that. Mostly I'm just looking forward to the Uni starting so I can meet some other people. Okay, maybe it is a lot more glamorous than grad school would be, but it's not all roses. I mean, I keep on sticking my used bottles in the cabinet because I'm too nervous to take them back to the store for the refund. (You can get money back for virtually every kind of bottle or can in Germany. My cabinet is full of water and juice bottles.)