Last Week of School!

Exhibit A: Homemade Christmas cookies

It's the last week of school before Christmas break begins! As such, there has been an outpouring in the amount of baked goods that have come in contact with my face. Some of the teachers gave me baked goods, which were and are delicious! I also got to eat some leftovers from the 6th grade Christmas celebration last week.

In addition to the free goodies, the amount of bake sales at ASG is at an all-time high. The kids sell nice, homemade treats for a pittance because they have obviously never had to buy groceries for themselves. The food is always delicious! Today someone let a group of 6th or 7th grade girls (I don't know - I'm not in their class) into the teachers' room. They were so excited because students are almost NEVER allowed inside. I think I've bought stuff from student bake sales at least 3 times in the past two weeks. (Every class does bake sales individually - e.g. 1 sale per 25 kids in a school of ~700 kids.)

The sunrise as I was leaving for work.
I didn't have to work until 8:50.

Today I was reading over essays that a 10th grade class had written. Their prompt dictated that they all write about how Anna was dumped via text then met a new guy at a cafe. However, two students took it above and beyond and had me laughing while I read.

The first wrote the story about Anna as prompted then added a paragraph saying that ten years later, Anna and the guy she met that day got married and were expecting their first kid. The kid had magical powers that meant that he could kill people when he made eye contact with them, so he killed Anna & her husband accidentally. He's now at a special school for magical kids to learn to control his powers.

I broke a glass in the sink earlier this week
by dropping a bowl on it while washing dishes.
#glamour

The second added that Anna was so delightful that it made the guy forget all about his old boyfriend. They made plans to meet up later, but unfortunately Anna had fallen in love with him so he had to friendzone her because he's gay.

(Both those are paraphrased, but the kid who wrote the second one actually used the verb "friendzone." I don't know where the kids pick this stuff up...)

In my second lesson of the day, I just helped a bit with pronunciation. One of the Pratikanten was there...so he probably thinks that I'm getting paid to sit there and do nothing. The class listened to that Fox news story where the white lady said Santa and Jesus are white...so that's fun.

I saw a protest last week! They filled up the Strassenbahnhaltestelle area under the main train station, so my tram into town stopped a stop and a half away from there and we all had to get out and walk. They were chanting "Bildung braucht Zukunft" which means "education needs a future!" It's a cause I could get behind (I think they were mostly university students), but I promised not to do anything crazy & political in my contract.

I saw these weird escalators in a mall in Jena, although I've seen them in Erfurt as well. They're like ramp escalators...the point is that you can take a stroller on them. Strollers are a very big deal here.

Yesterday most of the English teachers at my school went to the Weihnachtsmarkt together. It was really fun! The teachers all hugged me when I left and it was weird because Germans aren't really all that huggy...

I think I'm going to try to visit Leipzig on Friday, then I'm heading to Holzkirchen on Saturday!!! I'm so excited to be visiting my old host family for Christmas. When I was there as an exchange student, my host mom told me about Christmas in Holzkirchen - I never imagined that I'd get to see it for myself one day!