Conversation Partner

Since I last wrote preparations for the Christmas season here in Germany have begun. Stores and shops have put up Christmas decorations and put out their Christmas items. I forgot how early Germany puts out Christmas decorations...I thought the U.S. was bad, but here in Germany they don't have Thanksgiving to celebrate, so Christmas decorations are seen in early November and are at full force by mid-November. But next week the Christmas markets begin, so I'm getting ready for Christmas :)

Anyway, on to the main topic of this post: my new conversation partner. I have been in contact with the German-American Institute (Deutsch-amerikanisches Institut, DAI) in Nuremberg. This institute is for people who are interested in the English language and American culture. They focus on bringing Americans and Germans together. Here is a link to the DAI website, if you want more information.

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from a woman from the DAI. She asked if I would be interested in having a partnership with a young German woman who was interested in improving her English. She said this would also be an opportunity for me to improve my German. I instantly responded positively and was soon in contact with my conversation partner!

My conversation partner and I have met three times so far. We have decided to meet once a week. We usually speak German half the time and English the other half. I've really enjoyed it so far, and I think she enjoys it as well. She is really nice, friendly, and honest. I'm not only learning and practicing my German but I'm learning about how the German culture really is and I'm helping someone else practice her English and become aware of what American culture is really like. I think this kind of experience is definitely a reason for why I'm here: to meet Germans and help them understand who Americans really are and, at the same time, to become more aware of who Germans really are. I'm not here just to teach English to German students a dozen hours a week. Grant it, I do this exchange of culture and language often with other Germans at my school and in the community, but this weekly conversation partnership (and I think the beginning of a friendship) started from scratch. We had no other reason to come in contact with each other, except for the fact that we both wanted to learn more about each other's language and culture and share our own. I think this is great because it shows how willing and interested people are in meeting complete strangers and sharing their life with them for no other reason besides that. It's a good feeling.

In terms of school experiences, I went to a presentation this week with the other teachers on violence in video games and their effects on kids who play them. It was quite interesting. The woman who did the presentation showed us actual clips of some of the video games. I recognized some of the games, and I remembered some of my friends from high school playing one of them and how disgusted I was then at how violent and mindless it was. The presentation was also presented to the students' parents. Hopefully it opened their eyes to some of the things some of their kids may be viewing, especially if they were previously unaware of the games' contents.

I also wanted to mention a lesson that I did this past Friday. I talked with a group of 12th graders about American culture. I asked them to tell me what came to their minds when they thought about American culture. Here are some of their answers: big cars, the war in Iraq, mobile homes, fast food, basketball, American football, movies, music, guns. I was surprised by some of these but most of them I wasn't. One answer that really stuck out in my mind was big cars. I explained to the students that yes, many people do have big cars in the U.S. but not everyone, including myself. It was interesting to hear the students' perspectives of America, and I was glad that I was able to give them some of the truths about American culture.

Hiking, castles, and cathedrals

I want to give an update about some of the places I have been recently and share some photos. I realized that I have mostly just been writing and not sharing photos. So enjoy!

First, about three weeks ago I went to visit my former host family in Regensburg. I love this city because it has a university, so it has lots of young people and things for young people to do, but it also has many historical places to visit. After having lunch and visiting a bit with my host family, my host mom and brother took me to the town of Kallmünz. This town has a large castle ("Burg", in German). It is at the top of a large hill, so we climbed the hill and walked inside what is left of this old castle. The two photos above are some of the castle's remnants. It was a beautiful day!

Over our fall break, I had the opportunity to go with another teacher to the Fränkische Schweiz, which is an area near Nuremberg that has very beautiful countryside, places to hike, old castles to visit, etc. We went there by car, so we saw quite a bit of colorful landscape-- green, browns, yellows, and oranges. We were lucky that the weather was nice too. We went hiking up a large hill to an old castle, well what was left of it, and we took a tour in a cave! Click here if you want to know more about the Fränkische Schweiz. Unfortunately, I left my camera at home, so I have no photos to share...But I really enjoyed doing a little bit of hiking and being in the sunshine!

Then yesterday, I went to the city of Bamberg. I went with a few other Fulbright teaching assistants and another friend from the U.S. We met a TA that lives in Bamberg, and he showed us around. Bamberg is a very Catholic city, so we saw three of it's well-known Catholic churches. It was a pretty city with many colorful buildings with wood framing. Unfortunately, the weather was quite terrible-- lots of rain and gray skies. And because it's November, it isn't very pretty outside to begin with. But we made the best of our time by walking around the city, despite the rain, and eating and drinking at a few restaurants including lunch at a cheap, but tasty, Mexican restaurant with tap water that was free!

Pretty houses along the Regnitz River.

The cathedral in Bamberg

American Holidays

So I know it's been a few weeks since I last wrote....I failed again to keep this blog regularly updated. But I won't waste time with excuses.

I'll go directly to this blog's main subject: Holidays. I offered to give presentations on Halloween and Thanksgiving at my school. Being the week before the Halloween weekend and Bavaria's fall break, many teachers asked me to give my presentations on Halloween and Thanksgiving. I spent quite a bit of time on deciding how to present these holidays in a way that was fun and interesting to the students. Naturally, in order to get the students' attention for Halloween, we did a little bit of trick or treating in the classrooms. I also let them have a little fun with deciding what they wanted to dress up as for Halloween and draw a picture of their costume. Most students had fun with this. I had a lot of witches, gangsters, devils, zombies, and one Wurst (sausage)! It was also interesting to see how I had to often adapt each presentation to each class according to their interest in and knowledge of Halloween, their English proficiencies, and how they reacted to everything. I'm learning more and more how to quickly adapt my prepared lesson to the students, which can be difficult for me sometimes. I am the kind of person who wants everything to go as planned, but this often doesn't occur in teaching, and I'm learning to deal with that more and more. I'm finding that adaptation can often be fun too!

For example, for my Thanksgiving presentation/lesson, I prepared a lesson that was mostly just informational. For one of the teachers, I did this Thanksgiving lesson for three of her classes. After seeing my presentation in her two 10th year classes, she wanted to know if we could adapt it a bit for her 9th year class because they were more talkative and energetic. So we decided to have the students do a role-play. The situation for the role-play was a group of Pilgrims deciding what to do after they lost many of their community members and had little food. Should they go back to Europe or stay in America? I think the students overall reacted to this role-play positively. They came up with some good ideas beyond what we had provided them. There was laughter and energy in the classroom, and it was good to see the students use their English while having a little bit of fun.

Well, that's all I have time for tonight. Since I'm on fall break this week, I should have more time to write about some of my recent travels and post some photos.