Why are high school students so hard to deal with?

Argh, it is so frustrating to have classes that just don't want to do anything. These classes are really hard for me because I was an enthusasitic student in high school. If I had to spend my day in school, I should get something out of it, right? And of all the classes I took, German was one of my favorites, so I just don't understand when students don't really care about English.

On a brighter note, I did have one class today that went so well. Over the past months, I have noticed that I don't really need to prepare all that much for some of my classes, I end up doing a lot of things off the cuff, and unfortunately, they end up working. I say unfortunately because if they didn't work, I would spend more time prepping. Over the past few weeks, one of my 10th grade classes has been discussing violence, guns and school. We read some articles on the Columbine shooting that happened in 1999, and also read from a fiction book about the same kind of thing. Unfortunately, recent events at Northern Illinois University became a relevant topic. Since it happened, it seemed like a good idea to talk with the students about it. I gave them just what was on NIU's website about the shooting, and they had to turn it into a newspaper article. After discussing their articles, we started discussing the pattern of people who committed these acts. So I started generalizing, all of these people are male, why is that. And that is where they really started discussing. We talked about the generalizations, about how society has changed in the past 60 years, and how that might lead a person to become who they are. Even though the topic was grim, managing to get 16 and 17 year olds to actively discuss is encouraging to me.

And also this week, my mentor teacher and I were talking about one of the 7th grade classes. Apparently, once or twice a week, university students come in and teach the class (obviously when I am not there). These are students who are almost done with their studies, so they have taken about five years of school and plenty of education classes. While we were talking about them, she mentioned that I do a better job teaching than they do. Carsta said that these students (the university ones) come in with their lesson plan and have pretty much every minute planned out, they have no wiggle room. And in teaching, you need to have that room, because sometimes the students just take much longer to understand something I think is simple, but then the next time, they will rush through other things I thought would be hard for them. And often, we have to change lesson plans at that moment, because something I might think is great, the students will not respond to it at all. But it was good receiving praise, because I often feel like I am doing a terrible job.

just a few things I have done

It has been about two weeks now since I last posted, sorry! Over the past few weeks some stuff has happened. After I got back from Berlin, I went down to Schwerin. It isn't that big of a city, in fact, it is the smallest German capital, woo! Gotta love the state I am living in. I visited another language assistant there. We took a walk, went out to see Keinohrhasen, which is a German romantic comedy. It was cute, but not nearly as cute as American romantic comedies, and had that strange German thing to it. We also watched an absurd amount of Family Ties, which was wonderful to revisit.

After all of my traveling, I just stayed around here for the weekend, and had a pretty boring weekend. Although, a new Frisbee player has been found in town! So I met in town with Steffi and new found player, Dan. He is Australian and shares lots of stories about life in Australia, there are so many deadly animals who live there, don't go swimming on the north coast if you are American, apparently.

The week was full of Frisbee goodness. I went to the beach on Tuesday night, because we are starting to have some practice there. And yes, the weather really is that good, I mean, it isn't like we can go swimming in the sea, but we can at least play outside on the beach without gloves, so that is something. The biggest problem is then that I get sand all over everything, oh well, it is good training.

And over the weekend I went back to Berlin, yeah, I just can't stay away. Although it is really easy to get down there and back pretty cheaply. We went to Poland, but there isn't any border control anymore, so I don't get the cool stamp in my passport. I knew it was open borders, but it is still probably a good idea to bring my passport, right? Well, I realized I had forgotten it as I was halfway to Berlin. Like I said, there was absolutely no problem. The day was bright and sunny, we ate really wonderful pirogies and then took a walk down the river. There was a small house party that night, and I got to meet some new people, but there were plenty of people there who I didn't really care to meet, but only because I knew exactly how the conversation would go. "Oh, where are you from?"
"The states"
"Yeah, where exactly?"
"Chicago area"
"And what are you doing here"
And then I answer, and then I ask about them, and then it seems like we run out of things to say. One on one is so much better than in a group setting. I was in charge of the dancing at the party, and there ended up not being any, mainly because it didn't turn into that kind of party, just sitting and chatting and laughing, then watchig music videos from the early 90s, and not just American, but German, Danish, Finnish and Russian, awesome.

The good weather continued into Sunday, so we went to play some sand ultimate. We got there at 2pm, and there was only one other frisbee player there, but by 3pm, there were probably about fifteen, and by the time we left, there were at least 20 people throwing, playing, or just being social.

This weekend I am in town, and then I am going to be out of town for about the next four weeks, but I love being busy.

Sunny and Warm on a February Sunday afternoon

Today was perfect: perfect weather and a perfect way to spend a Sunday. After I went to church, I met up with Dan, Andrea, and Rob for brunch at the wonderful brunch place. We did the typical Berlin brunch thing, ate a lot, then talked, then ate some more. We stayed a little over two hours, and even ate outside! It was a little chilly, but for being February, we will take that. Then we took a walk to the flea market, another typical Berlin Sunday thing. It is fun to look through other people's garbage, and of course some new things as well (like some T-shirts with German on them, a rarity here in Germany). There were also people hanging out on the lawns, even some grilling today. I was the only person who bought something, but it was a great find! Goodbye, Lenin! for 4euros! We then meandered back to the apartment and packed up, then relaxed until we all had to leave. The train ride back was really restful as well, and am almost done reading The Time Traveler's Wife. If you haven't read it yet, read it!

Not my fault

Yesterday we went out for dinner at the wonderful Vietnamese restaurant followed up by drinks at the Brazilian bar. I decided to get a non-alchoholic drink. We ordered our drinks, well, Russ and Rob put the order in, came back down the basement, and we waited about fifteen minutes. The bartenender apparently forgot our order, but still had them written down. When they came, there were four drinks with red straws and one drink with a white straw. We just assumed that the drink without alchohol was the white strawed one. I took a drink of my drink, and I thought it tasted a bit strange. Then we all tried everyone's drink, and everyon agreed that mine tasted like kool-aid and was way too sweet, and everyone loved Andrea's drink. After a while, I started to feel a bit light-headed, and I just thought it was a mental thing, since everyone else was drinking alchohol. A few minutes later I looked at what my drink had it in again, since I was still unsure if we had gotten the order correct. My drink was supposed to have milk in it, and Andrea's was not, but her drink was creamy and the drink in front of me was not.

Andrea orded a Mai Thai, which has quite a bit of alchohol in it, so it made sense that it had an effect on me, because Andrea also felt it after she started drinking it. Really, I was trying to be good!

Remember the time when...

• Katy and I were pirates?
• another pirate at the party bought our drinks for us because I showed Katy my $10 bill?
• we had to wait until 4am to go home?
• Katy made shepard's pie?
• we got our throats blest?
• Wayne and April were awesome? (oh wait, that should be present tense)
• we went to a local sports bar and stayed up until 4am watching a football game?
• got heckled by Germans at said sports bar?
• we got to Mainz way too early and stood out in the cold for about two hours for nothing?
• Ben and Adam's phone seemed to run out of credit simulatniously?
• and then they were really only 50feet away from us the whole time?
• we went to a parade that was four hours long?
• danced in the streets with garbage all around us?
• saw the Marc Chagall windows?
• had an old man lecture us on the Theater steps?

Yeah, those were good times in Rüsselsheim, Frankfurt, and Mainz

Don't hurt the parrot!

One reason I enjoy spending time with Katy is because we usually eat pretty healthy (well, except for the large brownie sundaes we made yesterday). Today we are making quiche with spinach and feta cheese. On friday we made Shepard's pie, which we also ate yesterday. I got here on Friday around noon. We didn't do too much, I napped because I hadn't gotten much sleep the few nights before. At night we headed over to Mainz and helped celebrate Faschings (the German Mardi Gras). Her teacher got us tickets to a costume party, so we were pirates, somewhat. We had a few extra decorations, like a hat, a hook, a bird with an eye patch, but other than that, we just wore our own clothes. But most people came all decked out in their costumes, which is always really fun to see.

We got back really late (or early on Saturday), so we slept until 2pm on Saturday and spent the rest of the day hanging out at her place and checked out where the local Catholic Church was. This morning we went to church and like I said, we are now making quiche for lunch. Tonight we are hopefully heading to Frankfurt to visit with some of my favorite people and also to watch the super bowl. I am not sure who to cheer for. Thoughts?