Second to Last Week at BBS

So for this second to last week, I took over just about everything. The students have finally become used to me teaching, though they still sometimes think they can get away with things (yeah right). I've been finishing up a unit on rivers, and (finally) a unit on explanatory texts. On Tuesday in Fashion Design Club, the students have begun to cut out thier patterns! They are so excited about feinally being able to cut and sew thier fabric. On Thursday the head of middle school came to observe one of my lessons. (One on World Rivers). The students were actaually very good for me while he was in there, but they did get a little too excited when I pulled up google maps on the SmartBoard. (They loved zooming in on the different rivers.) One of the boys in the class is from Russia and when we talked about the Volga River he went absolutely nuts. He had so many different facts that he wanted to share that there was no way we could have gotten through them all. Overall, that went well. On Friday, the kids were actually pretty calm seeing as it was the day before half-term break. We finally mad it to the end of the day (It seemed to stretch on forever) and we sent the children off and got ready for our different trips. My cooperating teacher is going to Marakesh (no clue if I spelled that correctly). Some of the students were actaully headed to intersting places. Two to America (one to New York and the other to Miami. One was going to Turkey, a few to England and a whole bunch had family coming to visit from different places.

Still Catching Up.

So that Friday night I went with Soren, Fleur and Elisabeth to Soren's fraternity house. Going to a frat house in Germany is a lot different then going to one in America. Their house is amazing, first. They have two built in bars with taps, a huge dance floor (they swing dance) and everyone drinks out of real glasses (not a solo cup to be seen). I have actually been there before on a Thursday night a few weeks ago, but I could only stay a while becasue I had to be at school in the morning. Well this night, we stayed at the house for a while before heading off to a bar (one of the ones we'd been to before). At the bar we danced for a bit (though the usic was aweful, in my opinion.) By this time it was early (like 5am) so we headed home. We grabbed a doner on our way and I chatted with some guys who told me they worked for the Somalian embassy (they may have been making that up). We got home at 6am and I immediatly fell asleep. Apparently evyone else stayed awake for another hour and cranked up the music, but I heard nothing.

Saturday I slept in till like 3pm and all I did all day was go out and buy a winter coat. (I needed it). After that I came back home and fell asleep. I woke up on Sunday planning to do all my lesson plans for the upcoming week only to realize that the wireless was down. So I headed over to a nearby starbucks and realized that it wasn't an issue with the internet, it was an issue with my computer. Fabulous.

Got a lot of catching up to do......

Anyway so after my Dresden trip I came back to school. That Monday we took all of year 4 on a field trip.

We started up by breaking all the kids up into groups of 6 and placeing each group with an adult. My group was six little boys, oh goodness. We all walked from the school to the S-bahn station and shoved all the kids on the same train. They were really excited about being on the train, but we managed to keep them contained. We then got off the train and walked to the the side of the Rvier Spree that runs thorugh Berlin. My boys decided ti would be fun to pick up all the bottle caps they found. I confiscated the ones they had and then they thought is was an even more fun games to pick them up and present them to me so I could throw them away. We got them all on the boat, which unfortunatley had other people on it. (Forty nine year olds on a boat are not quiet and there is no way that those other poeple could hear the tour. The tour lasted an hour and a half and by the end the kids were stir-crazy with sitting still. We got them off the boat and walked down to the Lustgarten in front of the berliner Dom. We had them eat their luncha nd then let them run free for about half and hour. After that we broke off into our different groups and were told that we could walk around Berlin and have the kids draw different things in their sketchbook, we just had to meet back at Hauptbahnhof in an hour and some. Of course all the other groups made in back in time, but my pokey boys and my confused self were late and my cooperating teacher had to come and egg us along. We shoved them all back on the S-bahn and made it back to school just in time.

That night I helped out with another girls football (soccer) game at Senior School. THe girls didn't win this time but they put up a good fight.

By the end of that night I was completely and utterly frozen. I only had my little purple coat all day and no gloves and I felt like a popsicle. I then decided that I had to buy an actual winter coat.

Tuesday I taught some more. THis week I began taking over all of the subjects, so it was pretty intense.

Then on Wednesday I taught in the morning and then in the afternoon Fashion Design Club went on a feild trip to the fabric store. We once again took the S-bahn, but it was so much easier because it wwas only 10 older girls and one older boy. (Much better than the 40 children from Monday)The fabric store was awesome. The kids had so much fun picking out their fabric for their skirts and in the boys case trousers. They picked out some crazy stuff and I'm really sad I won't be there to see the finished product.

On Thursday and Friday I did more teaching..

Dresden!!

Saturday morning bright and early (at around 5am) I headed to the bus station to catch my bus to Dresden. I was kinda expecting nobody to be out but since it was a Saturday all if the flea market people were out setting up their tents. So even though it was still pitch black outside, the walk wasn't lonely at all.

I got to the bus early and managed to convince the grumpy bus driver to let me on(I don't blame him for being grumpy it was very early.....and he didn't speak English so I had to resort to hand motions to get my point across) The bus ride was roughly two hours but I slept most of the way. I did wake up and watch the sunrise which was very pretty.

The bus dropped me off around 8:30am at the main train station on the new side of town. This was only a 10 minute walk to my hostel. (Which I accidentally made a 25 minute walk by going the wrong way down a vital street.)I checked in to the hostel, though I couldn't get into the room just yet. They gave me a map so I was able to go exploring. I first took a tram down to a flea market nearby. It was really more of a large yard sale and I didn't see anything I absolutely needed.

Then I walked a bit along the side of the river Elbe. The water is apparently so clean that in the summer the locals just go swimming in it where ever. From the side of the river I got a pretty good view of the old part of the city (Altstadt). This has an old Palace of the Kings of Saxony, an older church, an opera house among other buildings. I headed over one of the many bridges and went to take a look, but first I stopped for some lunch. I had the usual vendor bratwurst and tried 'a local Saxony specialty' called Ballchen, which are basically fried pieces of dough covered in sugar.

I walked around a bit and looked at the outside of many of the historical areas. Most of these old buildings have been turned into museums that show off porcelain works or various artifacts from the Kings of Saxony. I didn't really feel like going in any of them as I really have no interest in porcelain or armory and the one that might have been interesting (showing off the Saxony treasury) was entirely overpriced and teeming with tourists.

Porcelain is very big in Dresden, because a couple hundred years ago one of the more violent Saxony Kings threw an alchemist in a dungeon and told him that he wasn't going to be let out unitl he found the recipe to create gold. The poor guy never created gold but he did find the recipe to create the only European porcelain. (They never tell you what happened to the alchemist, but I certainly hope the King let him out..) Porcelain made Dresden rich and is all over the place. There are porcelian shops everywhere and right on the side of one of the buildings is the largest tiled wall or porcelain. It's thousands of feet long and depicts all the Saxony Princes on one great procession.

I debated going over to the Hygiene Museum (which is not what it seems). It's shows exhibitions all about the human body and is actually supposed to be extremely interesting and interactive. The exhibition while I was there was on 'What is beautiful?' Unfortunately by the time I found where it was and got over there, it was too close to closing time for me to get in. So, I grabbed another bite to eat as I wandered back over to Neustadt where my hostel was. I headed up to my room, which was decorated most interestingly. (Ken dolls from the lamps and line drawings all over the walls).

I took what was supposed to be a quick nap, but what ended up being all night. So I didn't get to go out that night. (I guess that's what happens when you get up at 4:45am)

The next day I really wanted to take the hostel trip to Saxony-Switzerland. Saxony-Switzerland is not actually in Switzerland, instead it is a huge forest and mountainous region right near the Czech border. Unfortunately, there was only two of us that had signed up to go, and the tour needed four people. I REALLY wanted to go, so I chatted with the hostel staff and borrowed a map. (which I forgot to give back, whoops) And headed out by myself.

I had to take a train about 45 minutes to get there. Buying my ticket was a slight ordeal because the stupid ticket machine was not cooperating. I had to go to one of the counters to buy it. (One of the things I really liked about Dresden was that not everyone spoke English. I had to try out my German skills because otherwise nobody understood me. Not like in Berlin, most everyone here is practically fluent)

Took my train and got off at the small town of Rathen. In order to get to the foresty bit I had to first cross the Elbe River. And the only way across was by way of (very slow) ferry. You had to pay 70 tsents and wait in a fairly long line to get across. (The ferry guy had a nice monopoly going). We landed on the side of this very picturesque town. There were two little food vendors and a whole bunch of cute townspeople out doing things like raking leaves in their yards and hanging up washing to dry.

I had no clue where to go, so I just ended up following some people that looked like the type to climb a mountain (boots and big backpacks and such. And it worked! I started up a trail but then my camera batteries died. SO I trucked back down and was forced to pay 2 EUROS A BATTERY! good lord. So I headed back up. There were some really good outcroppings and views. I came to a huge stone bridge built right at the top of this mountain. It was crazy scary to look over. I also walked through the ruins of a medieval castle. All was left was a few cannonballs and the water cistern and the places where the rock had been bored away for ceiling beams and door frames, but it was still really interesting. I headed back down and took a bit of a side route to look at a small mountain lake created by a dam. I hiked around it. I was so happy to be in some real wilderness. I love Berlin, but I'm not really a city person and after I while I just need to get out and be near some trees and such.

So then I headed back on the train to Dresden, checked out of my hostel (this one was ehhhhhh, nobody really talked to each other. I tried being friendly at breakfast but was basically ignored). Then I went back to the bus station; the stupid bus was late and kinda packed, but we made it back to Berlin on time.

My brain is fried......

SO I've been sitting here the past ten minutes trying my hardest to figure out what in the world I did in school last week. I know I taught a whole bunch of lessons but can't for the life of me remember any (and my file and timetable are all at school right now)...... I think that means I've been working too hard. haha.

Monday was a teacher work day so the kids didn't come in. We still had one confused little boy show up; but we quickly sent him back home to his Mum. We attended a few meetings and then got on with planning for the rest of the week.

On Tuesday, I basically taught cooking all day. My cooperating teacher dislikes cooking even more than I do (unbelievable I know). So all day I took out groups to make either flapjacks or chocolate fridge cake. That was an incredibly interesting experience for me because I had never cooked the European way. (They don't measure in cups instead we used scales and measure all the ingredients in grams.) After school, the fashion design club teacher and myself planned out our field trip to the fabric store. We will be taking the club to the fabric store one afternoon to purchase some fabrics. Since we were going to be using the S-bahn system to get the kids there, we had to ride it routs and see how long it would take. It ended up being only a few minutes so we explored the fabric store (It's a wonderful fabric store. I've had to really resist buying anything.)After the fabric store we sat in a little bar and had a few drinks and a chat.

On Wednesday I taught something, but can't remember haha. (I think I introduced the topic of rivers, actually) After school I sat in on a focus group meeting. The one I observed was going over how to make the school curriculum booklets more cohesive and informative. It was actually pretty interesting.

On Thursday I taught a lesson on Explanatory texts. If you have no clue what those are, no worries I had no clue before I started planning the lesson. (basically non-fiction texts that tell you how or why something works) I signed up for the staff samba club on Wednesday afternoons so after school a bunch of the staff herd into the music room and the samba guy has us all bang away on these big drums. I am absolutely hopeless and can barely follow a simple one-two beat without confusing myself, but we actually sound pretty good at points. And its incredibly good stress relief!

On Friday I taught something or other, but I can't remember right now. And then I headed home and packed for my trip to Dresden!!

The weekend!

On Friday I had a nice quiet night in. Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to head over to Senior School to help out with the Cross Country Race. Every Fall BBS hosts other international schools from all over Germany. Everybody comes and all of the students participate in a 2k. Schools had come from places as far away as Frankfurt! There are awards given to the fastest girls and boys in each grade.

My job was to collect the 12 Year 4s who would be participating from BBS. I was supposed to keep them contained and get them to the starting line at the appropriate time. (easier said then done as they were all excited out of their minds and running around everywhere). I got them to the line and they took off... It was great except for the little girl who did a nose dive into the pavement. (but she picked herself up and ended up finishing the race!)These kids are crazy fast and it was only a few minutes later that they were huffing and puffing their way through the finish line.

This was a really cool way to spent my Saturday morning. The kids were all really excited and all of the parents and teachers were really involved. There was a bake sale and (of course) bratwurst on the grill.

Saturday night, myself and a few teachers went to the tacky little Oktoberfest set up at Alexanderplatz. The little bar stand had this sign above the window that read "Ficken 3euros" (If you don't know what ficken means google it. Heaven forbid I say bad words on the blog....) We were really curious as to what you received if you paid the three euros but we were all too chicken to ask. I didn't stay out too late and ended up heading home around 12:30.

On Sunday it was the 20th anniversary of the German Reunification Day and there was a big festival right by the Brandenburg Gate. I went and saw some street performers (a juggler, a crazy drummer lady, and strangely enough, some American Indians) There were food and craft vendors everywhere. The whole of Strasse des 17. Juni was blocked off and there was even a huge ferris wheel. A stage was set up with various bands and performances going on throughout the day. I walked around and listened to a few bands for a couple of hours and then decided to pop by Mauer Park on my way home.

Mauer Park is where the huge flea market and karaoke goes on every Sunday. I had a bratwurst and a Becks mit Lemon and listened to some really awful singing, before heading home to work on lesson plans.

I didn't have any pics for this post anyway....

So last week (September27th through October 3rd) was a very busy school week for me. By now I have been taking over many of the daily lessons. I've been teaching lessons in maths (the English put the s on the end), literacy, science, art, and topic.

On Wednesday my supervisor came for an informal visit. He sat in on one of my lessons and of course that lesson happened to be the one where the students went absolutely wild. Fabulous. Oh well at least when he comes next time and the students are behaving normally, it'll look like I've improved or something. After he left, I had to take a few minutes to unwind myself. I was so stressed and so tense, that I had to take a break for a minute.

My supervisor always buys dinner for the student teachers when he visits, so later that day I met up with him and we had dinner at a Indian place near his hotel. The food was wonderful despite the lame restaurant name: The Taj Mahal.

Thursday was back to teaching. Thursday after school I helped out with the 9 to 12 year old girls soccer (or as the call it football) team. Me, the teams coach (the middle school gym teacher, and all the girls hopped on a bus and drove over to BBIS (Berlin Brandenburg International School) which is like 15 minutes away. They have a fabulous soccer field there. It was the girls' first game and despite their inexperience, they actually won! 2-1.

Then we skated through Friday. I'll talk about that net post. (When hopefully I can upload pics)

Unfortunately......

Well, my computer spazzed out last night annnnnnndddd it would appear that I can no longer get on skype, drag and drop or copy and paste anything OR upload any pictures. And as I told my cooperating teacher "NOBODY wants to look at a blog with no pictures" I'm going to see if one of the teachers at the school can look at it on Monday.....

OKTOBERFEST!!!!!!!

I had an incredibly busy weekend.....

Saturday morning I got up at roughly 5am to shower and dress and get together everything needed to I could catch my 8:30am flight to Munich. So I make the train and then catch the bus to the airport. I get there a good 45 minutes early and hand my boarding pass to the lady at the gate. She smiles and at me and goes, "Oh that's the flight that was cancelled. You'll have to go right over there and get a new flight. Have a nice day."

Fabulous, just fabulous. I wait in the stupid line for half and hour and then have a chat with the lady at the ticket counter. Apparently if I catch a flight to Zurich at 9:30am and then take another flight from Zurich to Munich I can be there by 2pm. Just peachy. That's a lot later than the 10:30am I was supposed to be arriving....

Anyway, I got on my plane, was bounced all the way to Zurich (Thanks Lufthansa). And got on an Air Swiss plane to Munich. (I like the Swiss, you get free chocolate when you fly with them). I then arrived in Munich, took the 45 minute train ride to the center of town and checked into my hostel. The Wombats Hostel in Munich is a lot better than the one in Berlin. The atmosphere is cooler. I was staying in the pink room (Which oddly enough was coed. One of the guys checked in the same time I did and was not pleased at all with the pink.)

After dropping off all my stuff, I headed to Oktoberfest!! It was only a few blocks from the hostel and I basically just followed the crowd there. First, I wandered a bit looking at all of the tents and rides. Everybody wears dirndls and lederhosen to Oktoberfest, but I think it's a smidge tacky; I wore normal clothes.I bumped into a guy and a girl from Minnesota and chatted with them for a while, but I wanted a beer and I was starting to get hungry so I moved on.

The beer tents were nearly impossible to get into. (If you want to get in you have to show up early. Which was my original plan until the plane broke...)I ended up getting into one of the restaurants. I was waiting in the line outside the restaurant and was basically adopted by three old Italian men. They decided that I was eating dinner with them and ushered me along in. The restaurant just seats you wherever they have room, so we ended up sitting with a family of three from Munich. They all spoke English (which was a good thing because the old Italian men did not. It coulda been a really awkward dinner...)The daughter, Hannah, was roughly my age and we chatted for a while. The family was really funny and I ended up having a really good time. The old Italian men bought me my beer and we all shared french fries, but they weren't that creepy so I figured it was ok. Throughout the dinner the drunk people around us would suddenly jump up on the benches and tables and break into German drinking songs.

After dinner I wandered around some more and tried to get into a beer tent. (Didn't happen. Boo) but I was able to get into a biergarten where I had another beer and made friends with some Australian girls. At this point it was dark and cold and had begun to rain. I decided to head home to the hostel; I grabbed a ochsensemmel (Ox sandwich)to go. (It tasted a lot like pork bbq, yummm)

I was a little grumpy that I was getting wet so I was basically booking it out of Oktoberfest, when all of a sudden an arm hooks about my waist and some random guy joins me under my umbrella. Turns out he was an Italian (of course) and him and his friend were trying to get out of the rain. They persuaded me to grab a beer with them so we headed over to some little hole in wall bar area right outside of the Oktoberfest. All they had were credit cards and so we walked past about three or four bars that only accepted cash before i got tired of walking in the rain and told them I would pay for the round. We sat and chatted for a while. They're from Rome and drove a camper 12 and some hours with a few friends to get to Munich. They were surprised that I drank beer (apparently that's not considered ladylike in Italy) but as I explained, It's Germany, everyone drinks beer! I bought another round and they weren't too happy about that, but to make up for it they told me that when (when, not if)I go to Rome they will pay for everything.

After that a real drunk, old Englishman with the funniest cockney accent I have ever heard came to sit next us. He said he was a professor from Oxford but whenever I asked his topic he always came up with a new one (biology, everything, breastology)We ended up getting into a conversation about American politics which then led into me explaining the American Civil War. The Italians (Aureliano and I forget the other guys name) then headed off to their camper and soon after I decided to make my way back to the hostel.

I got a little lost but found my way back in the end, dropped off my jacket and purse and headed to the Wombats bar. I spent a long while talking with Jon the Australian. We decided that if you were to use a kangaroo as a mode of transportation, a saddle would be a much better choice than riding in the pouch. We also decided to play a fake game of baseball in the hostel lobby. The security guards probably found it a bit irritating, but they didn't tell us to stop. After a while I got bored with talking and decided to get up and dance. I met a whole group of absolutely fabulous gay guys and ended up dancing with them for a couple hours.

At around 2am I decided it was time for bed. I headed to my room and fell asleep almost instantly. My alarm woke me up at 5:30am and I stumbled about (still a little drunk), packing up my stuff. (I'm sure I was about as loud as an elephant and the other people sleeping in the room probably wanted to kill me.)I checked out of my room and met some girls from Georgia who were also heading to the airport. I showed them how to use the ticket machine and got them on the right train, and we rode to the airport together.

Let me just tell you, being at the airport/on an airplane is not the most fun when you're hungover. I was about to kill the man sitting behind me on the plane, he kept yanking on my seat and moving about. I felt awful and when I finally got back to my flat in Berlin I immediately laid down and took a five hour nap. I woke up from the nap with a stuffy nose and scratchy throat, aka a cold. That was rough considering I had school the next morning, but I'll get to that later....

More School!!

Once again, I have a lot to catch up on....

So last week I really started teaching a whole bunch.

On Monday I taught a double lesson on mixtures in science. I had the students create and then try to separate things like flour and water, dirt and water, and sand and water. I let them choose their tools; colander, sieve, and filter paper. They managed to work their way through this lesson fairly well. The hardest part for them was trying to figure out what in the world "decanting" is. (If you don't know what it means look it up. I'm not explaining it again.)

On Tuesday I taught spelling (which I'm rather fond of) and Maths. (The English, for some reason, add that s on the end of math. I have no clue why)The maths lesson went fairly well, though we were a little short on time and did not get to the fun math game I had planned. This lesson was on number line addition, which is something I am not too familiar with, so planning for it was a bit of a challenge.

Wednesday I helped out with the art lesson (at BBS art is taught by the classroom teacher), and taught a guided reading and maths lesson. The art is really cool. My teacher is having the students dress up in early 1900's outfits and then taking pictures of each other. Later we will blow the pictures up and have the kids trace their outlines onto plain paper. They will then water color in their drawings. So far the drawings are coming along beautifully and the pictures are hilarious!! Guided reading is another lesson I really enjoy. I take out only two students at a time for this, so its very low stress and enjoyable. Maths was another lesson on number lines.

On Thursday I taught another maths lesson and just ramped up the difficulty with number lines. I'm having a hard time with assessments in the maths lessons. Malane and I spoke about it and we're going to look into it next week...

Friday annnnnnnnddddd then, THE WEEKEND!!

Odd Europeans..

I meant to mention this in my last post because I found it so weird, but I completely forgot. Every Friday a few of the teachers walk up to a nearby bratwurst and pommes frites (french fry) place and eat lunch away from the school. While there we talked about what our plans were for the week break we have off school in October. My cooperating teacher (CT) is going to Jordan and one of the other teachers is headed to somewhere like Africa. I shared that I would be going to Scotland and Ireland and suddenly everyone was staring at me incredulously. "Why would you want to go THERE?!?" I wasn't quite sure how to answer that question. "Why wouldn't I want to go there?" Apparently the Brits have issues with the Irish and the Scots.

THEN, while on the alternative tour, I was chatting with some Scottish exchange students. (They seemed inordinately distressed that I was travelling by myself, for some reason) I told them that I had been hanging out with people but most of them went back to London. At the word London one of the girls suddenly snorted disdainfully. I then relayed the story above to her and asked what the issue was. The Scottish guy broke in with, "The English are retarded!" and then she explained further with, "Have you ever seen Braveheart? It's basically that." They seemed genuinely upset so I laughed nervously and then quickly changed the subject.

Whoops didn't mean to stumble into any cultural grudges....

Graffiti and Berlin History

On Saturday morning I finally got up and went on that Alternative tour of Berlin I've been trying to goo on for the past three weeks. I'm really glad I did because it was absolutely fascinating!! We basically walked all over Berlin and looked at the more notable graffiti and street art. Berlin is famous for its graffiti, mainly because it's everywhere...

We looked at the works of a few artists in particular.

Little Luci is a character originally from some Russian comic strip or something. In the comic she is a little girl who has adventures with her pet cat. In the graffiti, she kills the cat in various imaginative ways. I have a few examples....(go to facebook for some more)

Then there's the graffiti artist that does pictures of Knut the naughty polar bear. Knut, who was famous a few years back for being the first polar bear born in captivity is apparently not very good at socializing with other bears and thus must be kept in an enclosure by himself. This artist makes fun of this by painting Knut doing bad things all over Berlin.

We then visited this building which is inhabited by a bunch of artists. (Coincidentally, its right next to Zapata's, one of the bars we went to on our first bar crawl)Out back they have a bunch of sculptures made from trash. We wandered around there for a while. At one point I walked into what looked like a large portapotty, it turned out to be one of the artists shops where he sold paintings and his CDs. I could only stay in there for a few seconds though, because he had obviously been smoking pot for hours and the place had giant black smoke clouds floating about inside it.

We then walked inside this building, under a caution tape, around the piles of broken beer bottles and up a stairwell. Everything, absolutely everything was covered in graffiti and I refused to touch anything because it was quite blatant to my nose that the stairwell also served as a bathroom. We went up three or four flights and made it to their little shop area. The artists who lived there sold paintings, jewelry, and other odds and ends.

We also looked at a graffiti exhibit called 50 faces and a whole block that used to be a secret, underground bar.

On Sunday I decided to hit up a few museums on Berlin I had been wanting to see. I first went to the Story of Berlin. It is a museum that focuses on the history of Berlin. As part of the admission price you get to tour a nuclear bunker built in during the Cold War. It is underneath a parking garage next to a shopping mall. The bunker has enough beds for 3 thousand people and is actually still on standby. So if there were to be some kind of nuclear threat, people would still be able to use it. It would not be fun though. The bunker has enough beds for over 3 thousand people but only 28 toilets and 28 urinals. It has a sick bay with enough room to accommodate something like 30 people and only 2 four by four foot square kitchens. Also, there is no one in charge of the bunker so if there were to be a crisis, the people in it would be in charge of managing and running it for he 14 days that it could be in use. At the end of the bunker tour, the tour guide turned on an alarm and a simulation of bombs falling on the bunker. It was really cool because the whole floor shook with the 'impact' of the bombs.

The rest of the museum is made up of themed rooms. I wandered into one room that showed old movies from the 1920's. I also walked through simulations of the Berlin streets after the bombing during WWII. There were rooms on Prussian fashions, 1930's cars and the Berlin Wall. My favorite part of the tour was definitely the bunker, though.

That afternoon (after I had three squashed pennies made for Adam. Those penny machines are literally on every other corner.) I headed over the DDR Museum. This museum focuses solely on life in Berlin on the Eastern side of the wall. It was fascinating! I didn't really know much about Eastern Berlin before this...

I first sat inside a Trabant (or Trabi), which was the car of Eastern Berlin. The government told everyone that if they saved so and so percentage of their wages every month, they could save for two years and get this car. It wasn't exactly true and not many people received their car... I sat inside it and decided that it was a good thing I did't live in Eastern Berlin in the 80's because I absolutely did not fit in the Trabi.

I also pretended to be a spy at the Stasi station. Apparently the Stasi monitored everyone! According to my tour guide form a few weeks ago, out of every eight people living in Eastern Berlin, 1 was a Stasi officer or informer. After the wall fell and the the Western government checked out the Stasi headquarters, they found oodles and oodles of files on practically everybody.

Inside the museum was set up a mock DDR living room, kitchen and bathroom. You could rummage trough the drawers, sit on the couch, change the channels on the TV and even listen to someone on the phone.

I watched s few DDR propaganda films which were campy and quite funny in their seriousness. In one of them, they interviewed children on what they though housing in Berlin would look like in the year 2000.

I also learned that nudism was really big in Eastern Berlin in the 80's. Apparently it was a way to rebel against the strict government without actually rebelling. I turned a corner in the museum and was totally not expecting to come face to face with a display showing people swimming, BBQing, and sunbathing all in the nude.

I then headed home to write up some lesson plans for Monday...

School Week.

So sorry to not have posted in a while, but I've had a very busy week and a half!

Last week was the first week that I really began to teach in my Year 4 classroom. My class is made up of 22 eight and nine year olds. As class sizes go, this number is pretty manageable; except that the classroom we're in is the small classroom I have EVER taught in. There's hardly enough room for Malane and myself to walk around the desks. The reason for this is that the-powers-that-be decided to move a grade from Senior School (think high school) into the Middle School. As a result the smaller middle rooms, which used to be shared space inbetween classes, were walled off and became actual classrooms.

We have a SmartBoard (or for those less tech minded- an interactive whiteboard, think big board that basically acts like a touchscreen computer. We can project any material you can pull up onto the computer and then use smartboard pens or even our hands to write on or move things around the screen) See picture, but excuse my messy math writing. I was in a hurry. This is our only board space and I never really thought about how much I used a regular whiteboard, but now that it's gone I really miss it!

I taught my first lesson on Tuesday morning. It was just a small group spelling lesson with four students so it was nothing too strenuous. I still wasn't real familiar with how Malane generally sets up lessons and looking back I would have changed a few things. (We were working with words that end in -ness. And ness is a really hard suffix to explain. How do you tell an 8 year old that ness means "the state of being"? (Happyness means the state of being happy) Try writing a few sentences with -ness words and you'll see what I mean...

Later that day I taught a two hour science lesson. I had them working in groups of four to sort 6 or 7 mystery substances into groups of solids, liquids, or inbetween. (The inbetween was a cornstarch/water mix which is considered a gelatinous solid since it displays properties of liquids and properties of solids.) They had no problem sorting the cornstarch mix but surprisingly (to me at least) they had a really hard time sorting flour. The fact that the particles are so tiny really confuses them. I had microscopes set up so the students could see the flour particles but we still ended up having a long chat at the end of the lesson about how flour is DEFINITELY a solid. The students were a bit crazy for this lesson, partly because they were excited about the substances, party because they had absolutely no clue about how to work in groups, and partly because I needed to explain the directions in a more coherent way.

I signed up to assist with the fashion design club every Tuesday during lunch/recess time. Lynne, the teacher I am working with on the club, brought out the schools six sewing machines. (They are Singers and relatively new) When the students arrived we had them pick out their patterns (Everyone is making either a skirt or trousers)and measured them. They also designed what they want their outfit to look like. Lynne and were talking an in a few weeks we will be taking an afternoon field trip to a fabric store to pick out fabric. We might also be watching a few clips from Project Runway for inspiration.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday I taught a very small guided reading group, just two students. I loved this lesson because the book was absolutely wonderful and because I was only teaching two students I could really tailor the conversations to their specific questions and wonderings.

Also on Friday I taught a math lesson. It went pretty well, but the students still felt they could goof off while I was teaching.....that will be fixed, trust me.

And then it was the weekend!!

Mauerpark!!

I wanted to go on an alternative tour of Berlin Sunday morning at 11am, but since I didn't get in the bed until 7am, I decided to try that tour next weekend. Once I got up ad dressed it was about 1pm. I decided to go the the Mauerpark flea market. Every Sunday this huge flea market is set up in a Berlin park. It's also famous for its karaoke. I was planning on taking the U-bahn there, but there was construction halfway there so I had to take an alternative route using the bus system. I had no clue where it dropped me off, but I decided the best course of action was to follow the rest of the crowd. That method worked quite well and I was soon at the park.

Funny story, as I was riding the S-bahn to the park I started chatting with some American soldiers who were sitting near me. They were in Berlin on a day trip from their base somewhere more southernly. The girl they were with actually went to Patrick Henry High School right in Richmond. Crazy...

Anyway, once I got there The first thing I saw was a band consisting of a drummer and a didgeridoo player. I also walked past fire jugglers and magicians and all kinds of musicians. For about 3 hours I wandered through row after row of jumbled junk and jewelry and anything else you could imagine. I found a stall selling pashmina scarves for 3 euros! After looking at everything, I wandered over to where the karaoke was going on. Thousands of people sat on a hill amphitheater and cheered on some truly awful singers. I had a bratwurst and beer for lunch while listening. All this walking around in the dirl had my feel looking gross. So I took a picture, haha.

I then headed back home, washed off my feet, and got to work writing up my lesson plans for the next week.

Street Markets and Gardens

On Saturday I shoved myself out of bed around 11am. Sleeping in felt good cause during the week I get up at 5:45 every morning. I first wandered over to a little tiny pizza place for lunch. I LOVE this place; its super good and super cheap. I bought two pieces; one with tuna and peppers and the other with fresh greens. Yum.....

Then I visited a few different Saturday markets. All over Berlin little markets pop up on the weekends. I like to look through them at all the fruits, veggies, arts and crafts, and food.

After that I decided to head to the Gärten der Welt. It's basically a huge park full of differently themed gardens. It has the biggest Chinese Gardens in Europe. (For the Richmonders out there, it's a lot like Maymont without the animals) It was absolutely beautiful! The whole garden smells like flowers. (I paid for this the next day. All the pollen had me sneezing every five minutes.) I first visited the labyrinth and hedge maze. The maze was a lot of fun, I got lost a few times. I then headed to the Chinese gardens. Unfortunately, most of it was roped off, because there was a wedding going on. (I actually saw the bride as I was leaving the gardens, for some reason they were taking wedding pictures next to the bus stop I was waiting at.) I also visited the Korean Gardens, Japanese Gardens, Italian Gardens, Balinese Gardens, and the Oriental Gardens. I trekked all over and took some gorgeous pictures.

I got back to the apartment and my roommate Sören and his girlfriend Elisabeth had cooked dinner. Elisabeth had made a traditional German dinner of red cabbage and potato dumplings. It was absolutely delicious! After dinner we sat around, drank wine, and they introduced me to popular German music.

Later that night we met up with Elisabeth's friend Nicole and Sören's friend Nils and went out. We went to two different bars before me and the two girls decided to go to a dancing club. We walked down this little side street and up to this big iron gated courtyard. It didn't look like a club at all. The bouncer let us in and we headed up some stairs into this room with a huge domed ceiling. It seriously looked like some kind of cathedral. The music was good but the alcohol was expensive! We danced for an hour or two and then headed to a different bar to meet back up with the boys. We stayed that this bar for a while and before I knew it, it was four in the morning!! That bar was closing so we went to a different bar that apparently was open until 8 in the morning. I was ready to head to bed, but no one else was so I ended up dozing on a couch, in a bar, at 6 in the morning. We didn't start to head home until 6:30am, we grabbed a döner for breakfast and headed home. By this time I was a walking zombie and Elisabeth had practically passed out. We got back to the apartment at 7am and I practically fell into my bed.

First Real Days of School!

This past week was the first week the students came into school. We have 21 students all between 8 and 9 years old. They were excited to see each other and when they came in they were all chattering in German. We had a pretty good first day. None of them misbehave, but they ALL love to talk... I'm sure that once they get the routine down they won't be as rambunctious.

That afternoon I traveled to the lower school to watch the Schultute ceremony. This is a German tradition in which students who are entering their first year of school receive candy and gifts in the cone shaped schultute. (Think really big party hat full of goodies) The ceremony was really cute. Moms and Dad were wandering around crying while 5 year olds dig through schuletute's as big as they are. (Not kidding, some of these schultutes were three to four feet tall.

I went to the grocery store on Monday afternoon. That was quite an adventure as all of the food labels are in German; I ended up guessing on a few things. I found what I hoped was yogurt and bought a few of them. (They, thankfully, turned out to be yogurt and very good). I also purchased what I thought was shredded mozzarella cheese for my pizza and ended up with some kind of shredded swiss. (Very odd tasting on a pizza). The other issue was that whatever I bought, I had to carry the three blocks home. This meant I couldn't buy heavy things like milk or any bulkier items. The other different thing about grocery stores here is that they generally don't provide you with bags or bag your groceries. You are expected to bring your own bags.


So on my walk to and from school I take a short cut through a small neighborhood. Around the neighborhood is a little green gate with very stern signs on it. (See pictures) At first I didn't take the signs seriously. I'm in the middle of a huge city, why would there be wild boars? I was thinking that maybe there had been a sighting once and it was a rare occurrence and they had put the gate up to scare the kids into closing it. Something along the lines of, "Shut the gate or the wild boar will get you!" Apparently not. One of the other teachers at the school was telling me that the wild boars wander around the area and will charge at you if you get too close. (This has been an issue on the lower school playground since lower school is in a wooded area and they have no fence)

The rest of the week went by quickly. I helped the students paint a bench to go on the playground and worked with the students on their math exercises. Malane and I worked on our plans for the next week. I'll be teaching a lesson on solids and liquids in science, a spelling lesson, and a guided reading lesson. By the end of the week the students all know my name (I love how they say it with their little British accents!) and I'm pretty sure I know all of their names.

Potsdam!

I had to wake up bright and early to meet Ramsey, Sarah, Marc and Sheri at Alexanderplatz so we could grab a train to Potsdam. This city is best known for the palace of Sanssouci which used to be the home of Frederick the Great and other Prussian monarchy. The weather was absolutely beautiful all day long and I got some beautiful pictures.

Marc was leading our adventure, as he had been to Potsdam before and was something of an expert on the history of the area. We first visited the old Dutch Quarter, naturally first because Marc is Dutch. We looked at the Nicholaikirche (old church basically)Then a short walk up the road was the smaller Brandenburg Tor. This one was much much smaller then the gate in Berlin and was built a long time before. We then headed over to Sanssouci.

We entered the grounds and walked down a long avenue of trees. At the end of the avenue we make a turn and suddenly there was Sanssouci! The palace is placed at the top of a hill with terraces and steps leading up to it. At the bottom of the stairs is a great fountain. I tried to get a few good pictures of the fountain and the front of the palace but the durn tourists kept cluttering up my pictures...

We climbed up the steps and walked around the back of the palace. We debated going in for the tour, but the line was long and the tour guides grumpy so we decided against it. We then headed over to the Orangerie Palace and then what I think was the observatory before stopping for a drink. I tried the Berliner Weiße which is a beer that is then mixed with raspberry syrup. Very good. We grabbed a quick lunch of currywurst and continued exploring. We visited the New Palace and wandered the grounds until we came across the Chinese House, which was quite hideous in my opinion.

Before we left, we stopped to have another beer and I had some ice cream. (One of the flavors, Amadeus, was REALLY good but I have no clue what was in it)Marc walked us through an area that Potsdam is fixing up (getting rid of some old communist buildings and reconstructing a parliamentary building of sorts) Then we hopped on our train and headed back to Berlin.

Still Catching Up....

So on Saturday the goal was to go out shopping and get a few things, including a towel, travel mug, and school supplies, as well as looking out for a warmer winter coat.

I traveled on the S-Bahn to Wilmersdorfer Str. (I think that was the street name, anyway) which had a ton of stores. I went into Woolworths first, not realizing there was a discount store right next to it...

I got what I needed other than the travel mug (the only ones I found were tiny and expensive. Imma keep looking.) and a winter coat.

I also went on an excursion to find the used bookshop which specializes in English books; This place is called Fair Exchange. Thankfully I found it with only a few minutes of being lost and was able to purchase a few books that looked good. (I didn't bring any reading books with me to Germany, and it was killing me to have nothing to read)

I came back to the flat and later that night met up with Ramsey to have a few drinks with one of his Berlin friends. Mark, the friend, is an airline pilot and has basically been all over the world. He was very interesting to chat with. We ended up going to this fabulous Thai place called Lemongrass and filling up on Thai food and beer. While there we decided to make a day trip to Potsdam, a city about half an hour's train ride to the Southwest of Berlin, on Sunday.

Apology.

Hey, so its midnight now, and I know I haven't written about Saturday, Sunday, or today (Monday) yet, buuuuuuuut I have to be up at 6am. So I'll finish all this tomorrow after school.

AND REMEMBER: If you want to see more pics, go to my facebook!

Animals and Ancient Art.

I decided to make good use of my Friday off. I was originally planning to head over the the Neues Museum first, but it was an absolutely gorgeous day! The weather wasn't frigid and the sun was shining so I decided to go to the zoo instead. Its actually really close to my flat. (Maybe a 15 minute walk) I paid my 12 euros to get in and the first thing that struck me, was that this was no American zoo. Hardly any of the animals were in cages. Most of them were only separated from the people by hand rails and a ditch (Even animals like bears, rhinos and elephants.) Had any of those animals reallllly wanted to get out or had I been a stupid American and tried to climb in, it would have been quite easy. I have some picture evidence. (that would be a rhinoceros you see in the pic)

This zoo was wonderful. They had lots and lots of animals and the lack of cages made it feel very free. Hardly any of the animals seemed bored or distressed (there were only a few doing the neurotic pacing, which you see in the not-so-good-zoos)

I made some new friends while there. My new second favorite animal (right after the great white shark, which will always be no. 1) is the kookaburra, an Australian bird. I was looking into their bird cage and didn't see anything for a few minutes until five of them come darting out of the inside part of their enclosure. One of then perched on an eye level branch and stared right at me. We stood there for a few minutes while I took pictures and they ruffled their feathers and stared. I'm not sure whether they decided they liked me or hated me but all of a sudden they all break into this kookaburra shrieking which a REALLY loud staccato noise. The best part is near the end of their call, it really sounds like they are laughing. And its such an infectious sound that me, and the old German mane next to me, both start giggling. I love the pictures, I took of them. They all look so indignant.

I also loved the mongooses (mongeese?? haha) I had never seen them before. They look slightly squirrel-ish (like maybe a cross between a squirrel and a meerkat) They are so quick and cute and they can scale straight up walls.

I think I spent almost 3 hours in the zoo, and I know I missed a few animals including the aquarium (which cost extra, boo). By this time my feet were starting to hurt so I found my way back to the S-bahn and headed to the Neues Museum.

This museum was another fascinating one. The majority of their exhibits are Ancient Egyptian but there are a few medieval, Assyrian, Ancient European and other stuff around. The building itself is also a work of art. It was a museum before WWII but only parts of it were left standing after the bombing. Instead of knocking the rest down, they decided to fill in bits and work around the old building. As a result there are modern touches like glass ceilings and beautiful concrete walls mixed in with old brick and marble staircases. It's lovely.

The Ancient Egyptian exhibits were wonderful and I saw a few of the pieces that I had studied in my art history classes. Including the bust of Nefertiti. There is a whole room devoted to her bust and unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures of her. (which is irritating in my opinion. I can take pictures of everything else as long as I don't use my flash. The click of my camera is not going to hurt it.)

The very top floor of the museum is devoted to the the ancient history of Berlin. I looked at stone and bronze age weapons and implements. There was this wax life size figure of a cave man guy, that scared the crap out of me. I wandered over, not sure if he was a fake, or one of those exhibits that you think are fake and then you realize its a real person. It was definitely fake but he was totally staring at me with one really angry eye and it kinda freaked me out...

By the time I left the Museum it was starting to get dark so I scrounged up some dinner and headed back to the flat.

Still more...

Thursday was another teacher day, and a long one. Usually during teacher week no one comes in on Friday so it was a mad rush to make sure that everything was set up for the arrival of the students. I spent hours labeling, copying, taping, organizing and the like.

After school, I had plans to go on another pub crawl with my friend Ramsey. I went over to meet him at his hostel, The Circus Hostel. It seems really nice. While there, we had a drink with some interesting guys from Dublin, Ireland and Cleveland, Ohio. We then met up with the group (The Thursday group was much bigger than the Sunday group had been, I didn't like it as much) but we still had a great time. We met some girls from Canada, some more Australians (they're everywhere in Berlin), some more English people and one very creepy Israeli. This pub crawl was ok. We went to a few of the same bars but ended the night at a different club and the DJ wasn't very good. Womp womp...

I headed home at around 2am and thank goodness was able to get the flat door open. For some reason I hadn't been able to unlock it the few times that I'd tried before. Sören always ended up hearing me scrabbling at the lock and getting up to unlock it. But not this time! I OPENED THE DOOR ALL BY MYSELF!! Which is a good thing, because I don't think he would have liked getting up at 2:30am to let me in.

Catching up...

Shame on me for not posting sooner! I apologize to my adoring fans...

Anyway, on Wednesday I went to The Berlin British School for another teacher day. While there, I asked Malane what kind of teaching supplies I would need. I figured I would need a binder, notebook and all that kind of stuff. I asked if the binders were different over here and Malane said, "No of course not! All binders are the same!" And then she showed me a binder. NOT THE SAME. See the picture. First off there is this metal do-hicky that slides on the rings and clamps down the papers when your'e not flipping through them. And then there is this big lever that opens and closes the rings. The holes in the front of the binder are for the rings to lock into when its closed. Very different.

After school, I was able to move into my flat!! Yay! I packed up most of my things and took the S-bahn to Tiergarten. Sören, one of my new flatmates, came and walked me back to the flat. I was absolutely shocked when him and Fleur showed me my room. First off, it is huge! (much bigger than my room at home or at school) And second, the ceilings are like 15 feet high with really nice, thick crown molding. The funny thing is it's decorated in a way that's very me. I showed my little sister (Courtney) the room through Skype and she actually asked me if I had painted the circles on the wall. Sören and Fleur made me dinner once I had unpacked and we had a wonderful time chatting.

So, later that night I headed back to Wombats, my hostel, to collect the rest of my things. (I just realized you guys haven't seen any pics of Wombats. Posting!) Was waylayed for about half an hour by an Argentinian roommate who wanted to have a philosophical discussion on the cultural freedoms of Berlin. (That was interesting...)Finally was able to make it back to the Tiergarten S-bahn stop.

Mother and all others who will be scandalized, skip this next paragraph.
So the road right in front of the Tiergarten stop ALWAYS has prostitutes out on it once it gets dark. I don't know why, It really IS a nice area. This thing is, I have yet to figure out if they are transvestite prostitutes. I looks kinda like they are, but I don't want to be caught staring and I certainly don't want to walk closer to find out. haha