An Expat Thanksgiving!

It snowed last week for a bit.

This is an ad from the store C&A - it means a warm welcome home. (Or just welcome home. Germans always use the "herzlich" though.)

A permit sign for one of the booths at the Weingemarkt part of the Christmas market, which began on Tuesday.

It's about to get cold cause I'm eating beans in chilly sauce.

I bought whole green beans to make green bean casserole on Thanksgiving.

Since I had to work on Thanksgiving, I cut up my ingredients the night before.

My beautifully finished green bean casserole.

My Thanksgiving feast. I've eaten it for two meals and barely made a dent in it. If you can't tell, it's mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, dressing, and chicken. I bought the roast chicken in town on my way home from school.

The highlight of the day was skyping with my family for a total of three hours. Since I've only skyped with Emily and Kaylee since leaving for Germany, it was nice to see my mom, dad, and grandparents again!

Today I went to Media Markt and got a new phone, but I forgot to get a plan to go with it, so I'm going to go to Saturn tomorrow to get one!

School

Hello everyone! I don't have any exciting pictures of picturesque Erfurt today (but I'm going to the Weihnachtsmarkt this weekend so there will be LOTS of pictures then), but I do have a few good school stories. (Warning: bad language ahead.)

Yesterday I was walking through the halls before my 11th grade class when I thought I heard the words "David Tennant" from behind me. I assumed I was imagining it because I spent a lot of time last weekend watching Doctor Who (and I loved the 50th!) and kept walking. Then I got into the classroom where two of the guys walked in behind me. Then, in English, one said "Okay, so I say I'm the doctor and you're supposed to say 'Doctor Who?'" It made my day that some of my students watch Doctor Who as well!

I taught a lesson on smoking in the US and Germany to that same class. (Did you know that 47% of young German  men 18-29 smoke?) I couldn't figure out how to download that creepy CDC ad with the woman named Terrie who doesn't have a voicebox, so I just had a poster of it on a powerpoint to show the students. This interested the students enough that they got the teacher's permission to look up the actual ad on their phones and about half the class watched it. Then I had them all do short anti-smoking ads for the US. We didn't have much time, so only two of the four groups had an idea to present. One group was very theatrical and hilarious, while the other featured a guy doing a horrible smoker's voice and saying "I started smoking two weeks ago and now I sound like this." I'm not sure how seriously they took the lesson, but I had fun teaching it.

Today I was watching half the class while they were working on short video projects. Someone called me over to see if they should say "F*** this" or "F*** that." I'm glad they still cared about the grammar in this situation. Sometimes I think my students learned English by watching The Boondock Saints.

There was a map similar to the one above in the back of the classroom where I was. Someone had put post-it flags on the small box in the map labeling Canada as "USA" and USA as "haesslich" (ugly or horrible). I moved the "haesslich" post-it so it was right over Baton Rouge. I probably won't win any points for maturity, but then again, I had just been asked about grammar and obscenities. 

After I got done with work today, I went to Anger to pay my rent at my bank. (There are 3 little terminals reserved for people wiring money at every branch of my bank. They're with the ATMs, so you can always access them. It's why wiring money is so popular in Germany - it's really easy to do and checks aren't really used here.) After that, I went to H&M and got myself two new shirts that I'm putting away for Christmas. Buying myself Christmas clothes makes me feel like my mom.

After that I went to idee (this is a picture I took the first time I was there. They have an entire glitter section.) to look for yarn. That store is so amazing, like Hobby Lobby without all the annoying decorations - just the girly craft stuff. It also smells just like Northfork Baptist Church, so I feel like I'm 7 and at Bible school again.

I found out yesterday that my school is out on Monday in honor of the first Sunday of Advent. I think it's amazing - my favorite time of year is Advent, and most Americans don't even celebrate it. Here it's Christmas markets and chocolate filled Advent calendars and days off school! I'll probably spend Friday buying cheap Christmas decorations so I can make my apartment a bit more festive. I'm going to try to make a little bit of Thanksgiving food tomorrow - we'll see how that goes.

Bis spaeter!

November & Stuff

Things here have been pretty normal for the past week. I've gone to work and then come back home again. It's been cold, but since it isn't windy it's actually not that bad. (I talked to Emily the other day and described the weathers as "relatively warm - it's in the 40s.") It snowed a bit last night and this morning, but by the time I got to work the snow had melted into rain, so the weather was just kind of gross.

Since the construction on the trams is over now, the stop I have to wait at in Anger is right outside a huge bookstore. It's very dangerous for me, especially since the bookstore knows people will wander in while waiting for the tram so they always have their doors wide open. I haven't bought anything yet, though.

In my class at the university about the 80s in East Germany we've been talking about youth in the DDR, so now I know a lot more about the punk movement that I ever thought I needed to know.

The other day I took the Number 3 all the way down to Urbicher Kreuz because I had nothing better to do than ride to the end of the line. The tram stops there for a few minutes - they were using the old-timey tram that day.

This is a different, newer tram. I was the only person on it, so I took a picture of the inside. The orange box is where you stick your ticket to validate it.

Look at the right part of this picture. Bernd das Brot feels the same way I do about the fact that there's still construction going on downtown. (Bernd is a character from KiKa, the children's channel in Germany. Since they have their headquarters in Erfurt, there are giant statues of KiKa characters all over town.)

Bedbugen, Carlos, Turows, and Karl-Marx-Stadt

So I went to Poland this past weekend. A group of 11 of us met up on the train from Dresden-Goerlitz. I stayed at a Fulbrighter's apartment in Arnsdorf, which is near Dresden, on Friday and Saturday nights, which was really fun. I like hanging out with the other English teaching assistants because we can commiserate and talk about American things we miss and inappropriate things we've been asked in class.

On Saturday we took the train to Goerlitz, which is located on the German/Polish border. The Polish half of the town is called Zgorzelec.

A church in Goerlitz.

Frauenturm in Goerlitz

Kitty's back and Poland as seen from Germany.

The river between the two countries

I'm standing between Germany & Poland!

Jesus Bakery.

We went to see the Heilige Grab, which is this recreation of sites from the Holy Land for people who couldn't afford an actual trip to Isral.

The church in Goerlitz is really pretty, but you had to pay to take pictures inside of it.

Germany as seen from Poland.

A pretty Polish building

We had to get Polish money to pay for our tickets to the basketball game. (Poland's not on the Euro, by the way.) This is worth about 25 Euros.

We stopped to get a snack at a bakery before going to see Polish basketball. This cake was amazing and delicious and cost 4.95 in Polish money, which means it cost about a Euro.

We stopped at a Polish grocery store as well!

Professional Polish basketball.

Just kidding. A bunch of kids played as the halftime entertainment. The actual game was pretty legit. The arena was pretty small - maybe as big as a 3A high school gym in the US. The fans were intense - they acted like they were at a soccer game with scarves and flags. The Turows are definitely my favorite Polish basketball team.

I don't know what this says, but I saw it in the bathroom.

Goerlitz's Hauptbahnhof

On the way from Goerlitz to Arnsdorf, we ended up having six people sit in four seats. There were more empty seats, but all ten of us wanted to sit where we could talk to one another. The Germans kept on giving us double takes when they noticed us.

On Sunday four of us met Hannah in Chemnitz for lunch. I finally got to see Karl-Marx-Stadt in real life. It's better than I could've imagined.

Hi, Karl. (Point of reference: the podium that looks like a small step in front of Karl is too big for me to climb up on.)

We ate really good German food. I had a Duroc pig.

Penguins!

As always, there were difficulties with the deutsche Bahn, but they ended up being minor for me and I got home quickly and safely. My last connecting train waited for the train I was on because it was late and filled with people who were trying to get back to Erfurt. Once we got on the final train, the conductor's welcome announcement roughly translated was "Welcome on board the Regional Express to Erfurt. We weren't running late, but we had to wait on the people from the other late train, so we'll be in Erfurt 10 minutes later than expected."

Once the people who got group pictures of the weekend put their pictures up on Facebook or their blogs, I'll add them in here. Bis spaeter!

Back to Work

On Sunday Erfurt was featured on Tatort! I thought the episode was very good because
1) I've been to all the places on it.
2) the main characters are two young male detectives and a girl who's doing her internship. The girl doing her internship was fantastic. In one scene she was unsure what to do with the slats for her bed, which I identified with because I was similarly confused last fall.

After a seemingly endless fall break, I went back to work this week. It was odd being so busy after not having anything to do for so long - I guess this is how teachers feel all the time.

However, on Monday 3 of the 4 classes I was supposed to be in didn't meet. In the 4th, I just corrected papers that a class had written on teenage pregnancy. The assignment was to write a diary entry if they found out that they/their girlfriend was pregnant. The best of the lot were (verbatim) "Oh for f***s sake!" (She wrote the stars herself. Who teaches these kids this stuff?!) and a guy who wrote two diary entries, one from his perspective and another from his best friend's perspective. Spoiler alert: his best friend was the father of his girlfriend's baby.

Monday evening I went to English Cafe at the university, which was fun! It was mostly native speakers this week, but will probably be more non-native English speakers as the semester goes on.

Tuesday was an eleventh grade class. (I love my eleventh graders. All of them. I want all of my classes to be with the 11th grade because they're amazing and smart and funny.) The kids just performed dialogues and I helped give feedback. Tuesday evening was my history class at the university - very interesting.

Wednesday I had two classes - a 8th grade class and 11th grade class. I talked about baseball with a small group of 8th grade boys - they started playing using a rolled up newspaper when we finished a bit early. I probably should've stopped them, but the classroom we were in is a spare and didn't have anything in it that they could've broken. After my classes, I went to the university where I talked about growing up in the US in a course taught by the same woman who runs the English Cafe. The best part was bringing Eufaula High School's student handbook up on the projector for everyone to look at! (They didn't understand the drug dog.) That evening was band rehearsal. I can't go on Tuesdays anymore because of my class, but the director is nice and doesn't care as long as I come when I can.

The best part of band practice was when the director said he wanted to see how the song would sound with just the woodwinds and a tuba player responded "It'll sound like crap!" (He was one of the adult members of the band.) The second best part was when the guy sitting next to me opened a beer during rehearsal and drank it when he wasn't playing the baritone. (Although that is a dreadful thing to do to your instrument. He was also an adult member of the band.)

Today was my long day at school, but it was a good day! I talked about binge drinking the US in two different classes, and the students had a lot of questions about what Americans think of drinking. One of the teachers asked me if there was a topic I'd like to talk about, so I immediately responded that I want to talk about smoking and how it's horrible for you because so many of the 11th and 12th grade students smoke!

I saw this at the grocery store earlier this week:

It was with a lot of other kinds of Christmas incense. 

I'm going to Poland on Saturday with some other Fulbrighters. Bis später!

Soccer Saturday + A Bonfire + Schloss Sonntag

Guys, I'm getting better at soccer! (I am shocked by this development.) I actually was a significant player in the game and I assisted on a goal. I also learned that in soccer, when you hit the ball with any part of your arm it's a hand ball. I argued with an old German man for about a minute before one of the sisters explained that rule to me. There was a different sister at soccer - one of the pair I originally met had been transferred somewhere else. They invited me to come with them to a bonfire at their church that evening, so I made plans to meet them at the train station at 5:30 since I had no idea where their church was.

There was something terribly wrong with the trams yesterday evening. I waited for 10 minutes until a tram came by, but it wasn't the 3, which was confusing because no trains besides the 3 come to my stop. After realizing that my tram should've been there 8 minutes ago, I decided to walk down to the next stop, which gets service from 2 trams, to try my luck. I caught the tram there immediately, but I still ended up being 10 minutes late to the station! German efficiency may be a bit over exaggerated...

The bonfire was fun. There were Americans from Gotha there as well, and we made smores and toasted bread dough over the fire. Now my coat smells like smoke...
I also got to see the church, which looked just like a normal church, and I got to watch the boys mop the floor before we left.

Today I went to Schloss Moldorf with my Fremde werden Freunde family. (It's a project that the University and Fachhochschule put on that matches foreign students with a couple or a family to make their lives in Erfurt easier!) My family is a couple with a three year old. Last week we met for the first time and had coffee, and today we went walking around the castle grounds as well as touring the castle.

The tour guide kept on going on about how horribly the Americans had treated the castle (I think they just removed the original furniture...), and Mathias and I kept on laughing because the guide didn't know I was American. At the end of the tour there was an exhibition of Otto Knoepfer's art, which I really liked. It was kind of a Rockwell meets Van Gogh vibe.

Jetzt kommt die Fotos! (This is a pun because on German tv, they say "Jetzt kommt die Werbung" before commercial breaks, which I find insulting. I'm mature enough to know when I'm being exposed to advertising.)

I finished my craft project! You can't see it very well, but I embroidered arrows onto my reusable shopping bag.

I filled my Gelbe Sack! This is the sack that all your non-paper recyclables go in.

On Reformation Day, the tours of the Augustinerkloster were being given for donations instead of a set tour price. It was pretty interesting.

This part of the church sustained the only major damage that Erfurt had during World War II.

I made fried chicken! It was unbelievably delicious. This gravy probably knocked Germany several places down on many world health rankings.

Today the new season of Tatort begins. It's kinda like a German CSI, except it's been on tv forever here. They still use the same opening from the first season for every episode. The new season takes place in Erfurt, so I'm excited to watch it! Here's a clip from a news magazine about it - they just speak German but they're in Erfurt for the whole thing so you can see a bit of my beautiful city in the background!

Link: Tatort Erfurt

Tomorrow I have to go back to work. Hopefully I still remember how to do my job - it's been a long two weeks away!