fulbright blog.: Mid-February: The Olympics, Work, and Zwickau

It's 2014, which means the
Catholic houses all say
"20*C+M+B*14"

It's been a calm couple of weeks here in Erfurt. Everyone's mostly just been looking forward to Winter Break, which starts technically tomorrow, but I don't work on Fridays so it's happening right now for me!!

The day after the Super Bowl, I went to Jena with some people I met at the class I took at the university to watch a recording of the game and eat a lot of food. It was a good time! Someone made American-style cheesecake, which was nice because German-style cheesecake just tastes like cheese. It isn't very good. German are great at some stuff, but they need to leave the cake to other countries. (They don't like moist, sugary cakes, and I prefer my cakes both moist and sweet.) I made salsa, but through a mix-up, we didn't end up actually eating it! (The host also had salsa, so we ate hers instead!) So I've been eating a lot of salsa over the past two weeks, and I'm going to have to throw the end of it out before I leave for Ireland tomorrow!

Teacher's room. My table used to be totally full, but the
interns left so now it's sad & only has 3 people.

Teacher's room: bulletin board with the substitute teacher
plan (far left) and the Abitur (German school leaving test)
schedule (far right). I haven't read the stuff in the middle.

The Olympics have started - so I'm getting a super German-skewed view of the games. They'll replay the medal ceremonies for Germans 10x (unfortunately, I am being literal), but they'll only show 3 of the pairs figure skating! And everything has to be over by 20:15 because that's when soccer comes on!! I've seen the German pairs figure skating at least three times, but I didn't get to see the Americans at all. (But I really enjoyed the Russian pair that won.) Since we kinda watch the Olympics live here (although things like figure skating are cut down and not shown live), it's all over pretty early in the evening. (Sochi's 3 hours ahead of us.) The other day the Germans had a story on their Olympic coverage accusing NBC of being over-patriotic and paying too much attention to American athletes. I laughed a bit because Germany's coverage does the exact same thing!!

Zwickau train station!

I went to my Hauskreis (Bible study) again this week. I don't talk much there - the main topic of conversation is finals, which I'm not really concerned about. It's still a nice time, and I do speak a bit!

Last weekend I went to Zwickau, where 2 American teaching assistants live, to have dinner and watch a movie with some of my TA friends. (Because Zwickau's in Western Saxony, it only costs 4.40 for me to get there with my semester ticket! It still takes a bit over 2 hours, but I like train rides.) It was really fun - we watched most of Les Mis, but we took a break in the middle to make and eat dinner, and then we talked for a while, then everyone had to leave to catch their trains home! My last train home was really early, so I stayed the night there. Melody was a really good hostess - she made pancakes for breakfast & we went to church together. The church we went to sang one song in English, which was cool! We stayed for coffee time afterwards, which was also nice.

A stormy evening in Erfurt.

It gave way to an ominous morning.

Today is the last day of the first semester at my school. The first semester seems to last forever here - almost six months! The 12th graders were taking exams this week, so the bells were turned off and everyone kept on forgetting that the bells were turned off (including me!). The 9th graders were doing some sort of special bilingual education this week, so they didn't have normal classes & I didn't get to see my 9th grade English class. Yesterday, I was with a teacher who was subbing (Germany doesn't get outside subs - it's all teachers who have a free hour), and we couldn't find our class! We went to the classroom, and they weren't there, then we went to another classroom, then back to double-check the substitute teacher plan, then the kids finally came in at 10:49. (It was weird because they get 10 minutes between all their classes and the class started at 10:50. I think their teacher had forgotten that the bell wasn't ringing and kept them late!)

Tomorrow I'm going to Ireland for a week with Hannah, another ETA! I'm really excited, although Ireland's supposed to be having quite stormy weather right now. Hopefully it'll be nice for my visit!