Off Hiatus

The only thing more boring that my daily routine might very well be my exam period and school break. The normal schedule includes such exciting elements as going to class, doing my homework, eating, sleeping, and joining in the odd activity outside my hermitage of an apartment. I often go to bed by 10:30. Clearly I live an interesting life.

Exam period looked much the same, except everything except eating and sleeping was replaced with research and writing, and more research and more writing. And break? Just eating and sleeping, more or less. I hope your holiday period looked much the same. Rest is such an important part of our rhythm - the prescription (common to many religions) of a holy day to spend not doing normal things is really a wonderful invention.

As of the first week of January I'm back in classes, and my days are taking on the patterns of grad school again. One difference: I adopted a dog! Her name is Peaches, and she's a nine-year-old terrier mix. Her ears stand up and she's endlessly curious about everything. My mom calls her Nosy Rosy. Somewhere in her previous life she learned to stand on her hind legs for long periods of time, the better to peer over barriers or look to see if I'm on the bed, one presumes. She's curled up next to me as a write, snoring a little bit. I'm grateful to have her around - she gets me out of the apartment and reminds me to maintain a normal meal schedule, for her sake if not for my own. I've really missed having a fuzzy companion the past five years. All colleges should allow fuzzy pets, not just fish. It's very difficult to snuggle with a fish. (They usually die if you attempt it).

My department's requirements for graduation include proving competence in a second language, even if that language has little to do with your area of research or interest. In my case, I go the boring route of 17th-19th-century Britain, where English serves me pretty well. I still need to have a second language, in my case for the purposes of expanding my worldview and looking outside the Anglo-American box. This is a good thing, if ending up somewhat frightening. My graduate-level German class is a steep learning curve, but the 400-level undergrad courses wouldn't fit with my schedule. Our first class was cancelled due to the polar vortex (!!) that swept through a vast portion of the States a couple weeks ago, but last week's discussion of citizenship and national identity in pre-EU Germany and Europe really stretched my ability to participate in a conversation. About the time that I would figure out the gist of the current conversation and formulate a vaguely related comment, the class would have already moved far beyond that point. The professor assures us that our first reading was the hardest one, and this week's reading seems to confirm that point. Rede des toten Kolumbus am Tag des Jüngsten Gerichts (The speech of the deceased Columbus on doomsday) is not an easy read, to be sure, but I can follow the narrative, such as there is. The novel might be called experimental for its lack of a clear storyline and time jumps. It might also just be called confusing. And as is typical of German art of a certain generation, it is highly political.

Thankfully the class, while interested in German as a language and German scholarship and writing, is a bit more flexible. Our discussions flipped between German and English, as do our readings. Other than the occasional inability to think of a certain word in whatever language we're currently using, this seems a good way to go. My colleagues back in Germany would be horrified at our use of a non-monolingual language classroom.My students would likely cheer.

This particular class requires that we cultivate an online presence as people and scholars, though I confess mixing the two leaves me feeling a little nervous. I've been assured that personal blogs are acceptable for this kind of presence-creation; I may be spending a bit more time on theory, philosophy, and reflection this semester instead of just stories about wiggly elementary schoolchildren on a field trip. Do bear with me. I'll try to be entertaining.

Back in time

I'm traveling to Colorado for a friend's wedding this weekend, followed by two weeks volunteering at a national park that is also an old fort. Apparently I'm to be allowed to dress up and historically re-enact, something I haven't been able to do since the days of playing a Puritan in Salem, Massachusetts.

Goody Bishop, Faith Clark, Sarah Shattuck - how I miss you!

So I look forward to introducing you all to this world of the mid-1800s Wild Wild West. It'll be a world of trappers, traders, Native Americans, soldiers, and me. The presence of a white woman at the fort is period inaccurate, but I don't mind. I really want to learn to blacksmith, and I also don't mind the period inaccuracy of that. The park employees don't seem to share my lassiez-faire attitude towards accuracy. We'll just have to see how this goes.

I'm pretty sure there are everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

Spring break!

Nightly thirty degree temperatures nonwithstanding, it is now my spring break. The hardy crocuses (must be a special German variety) even popped back after a surprise snowfall and are busily heralding the return of the sun and warmth and happiness. There's a little path of them right along the Rhine that never fails to make me smile.

Germans really like taking walking vacations on their long breaks, where they pick a place and do lots of physical activity, especially day hikes on trails. I won't be quite so hardcore.

Instead, I'll be visiting around Germany, especially in Bavaria. Munich, Augsburg (site of a famous treaty and birthplace of a good friend), and the Black Forest are all destinations on my horizon, though I suspect I'll be doing far more munching of Black Forest Cake then hiking in the woods. Blame it on being American. Nevertheless, I expect a number of pictures and mishaps to share in a couple weeks.

Until then, happy first day of spring (March 21), happy Easter (March 31), and I'll join you on the other side of Germany's daylight savings time (March 31).

Ready to learn?

I'm at a possible impasse with my Lord of the Flies twelfth grade class.

Side note: When I have three different twelfth grade classes, it can be a little complicated to differentiate them in talking to people who don't work with me. Thus far they are called "my guns twelfth grade class," "my Macbeth/religion twelfth grade class," and "my Lord of the Flies twelfth grade class" but that does get a little unwieldy. Trouble is, calling them "12a" or some other logical denotation doesn't mean anything to anyone but me and I would always have to follow it up with "the ones who are reading Lord of the Flies" or similar, which kind of defeats the purpose. So unwieldy it is! At least for now.

This isn't a real impasse. They're a good group of kids with the normal spread of good, bad, and middling students. When I ask questions someone always answers me, but on Wednesday it was the same three very good students who kept raising their hands and no one else. Occasionally I would get a half-hearted shrug of a raised hand from five or six other students, and the rest of the class mostly stayed silent. We got through the lesson, it was generally good, etc. After I left the teacher asked them why so many were quiet and relayed to me that a number of them didn't understand me because I was talking too fast.

Sigh.

Anyone who knows me is well aware that I talk too fast, always. Native English speakers often don't understand me. My family has a code word they say every time I've blurted out a sentence too quickly for them to follow. (Seriously. Plus they always laugh. Every time.) And while I do my best to slow down for my students, my idea of speaking slowly is anyone else's idea of a little faster than normal. You can imagine how frustrating this is for non-native speakers.

The impasse is that my students won't tell me they don't understand. For some, they're embarrassed to admit they can't follow my English. For some, they don't care. For most, I think, school is something you passively complete rather than actively engage in, and it's not worth the bother.

I chatted with my family this weekend and we brainstormed ideas. So far my strategies are: beginning the class in German so they can hear that I struggle with a second language as well, asking them to come up with a code word that means I've talked too quickly, and reminding them that even native English speakers have trouble understanding me sometime. I'm open to any further suggestions.

We'll see how this goes.

How to Build a Bed

Imagine the "How to Train Your Dragon" soundtrack playing in the background of this whole post, because a) it was on for the whole bed-building process and b) everything is more epic with the proper music choices. You may also substitute the "Lord of the Rings" or "Pirates of the Caribbean" soundtracks if you prefer.

Last week my Mom came for a visit. It was really fun to show someone else around the places I've gotten to know and try new things with her - for example, we discovered a new part of the old city and ate at a simply fabulous Italian restaurant. She flew in Saturday morning, slept most of Sunday, and went with me to IKEA on Monday morning. Why IKEA, you ask? Because I really need furniture. See, I arrived in Germany in early September and spent the first two weeks living in my contact teacher's guest room. My attempts to find a nice shared apartment close to the main train station ran up against the propensity of every German under the age of thirty to smoke like a trucker, and so I temporarily moved into a one-room apartment in one of the city's "suburbs" while continuing to look for a permanent place to stay.

A dozen apartment-viewing appointments later, I was ready to move in to any non-smoking apartment that would take me. Some prospective apartmentmates lit up in the living room while we were chatting. Seriously. I don't breathe well around cigarette smoke, so the lack of it was quickly becoming my only criteria for an apartment. By the time we got to early November, the settler in me gave the rest of me an ultimatum: find a place within a week, or decide to stay where I was. I chose the latter. Up until now I'd been sleeping on a camping mattress borrowed from my landlady, with the expectation that I would move out in a few weeks and didn't care to carry a bed from one living space to another. With the decision to stay, it was time to find something slightly more elevated than my foam pad. And while I've struggled to find some things here in the past, I knew that IKEA was the place to go for furniture.

Mom and I caught the appropriate bus out to a gigantic warehouse of a store, typical in the States but very unusual in Germany. Once there we weighed the merits of a bed versus a couch-convertible-bed and estimated the size of the furniture versus the size of my room. In the end, we left with a single bed frame, a mattress tightly rolled up into a compressed cylinder, a bunch of 2x4s to use as a foundation for the mattress, and a "clothes valet" meant to hold the next day's outfit. I meant to use the last one as a bitty closet, since I don't have enough space for a normal wardrobe setup.

I had presumed that, lacking a car to carry off these purchases, we'd take advantage of IKEA's shipping services. Mom's "old bones" protested the idea of waiting for a comfortable bed and we wrestled all the components on to the bus instead. Regrettably I only had my cell phone to take a picture of that spectacle. One box was seven or eight feet tall, while my mattress roll was too thick to carry under one arm. We'd briefly considered the idea of buying an IKEA rolling dolly for ten euros, before remembering that I had nowhere to put a dolly for the next seven months. So with frequent stops and some huffing and puffing, we got the furniture components on to Bus #1. Bus #2 was a little more complicated, as it runs on the normal commuting route between the center of the city and my area of "suburb," but several nice people helped us to hold the pieces for the short ride. Home at last, we took out the instructions and discovered that IKEA is fabulous. Their furniture is designed to have all components in the package, including the tools necessary to put them together. No need for extra screw drivers, nails, hammers, or pliers. It's a beautiful thing for a temporary guest like me.

The boxes, minus the mattress

See, for a rolled-up mattress, you gotta unroll it first.

 Maximum fluffiness is apparently achieved after three days. Mattresses, you can't rush them. I can report that mine feels no different now than it did last week Monday.

The mattress waiting to fluff. With instructions.

Frame, built.

Slats, laid down.

Not-quite-fluffed mattress, placed.

Sheets, put on.

Look, a it's a real bed! I call it Pinocchio.

Except seriously, Pinocchio is a really creepy film. The cat is cute and I do love Jiminy Cricket, but the island of boys turning into donkeys was the stuff of my nightmares. Along with Ursula. Ursula is scary.

That whole setup took maybe a half-hour or forty minutes, which I found pretty good for first-time IKEA furniture assemblers. Within another ten minutes we had my closet all set up too.

We're so good at this game.

And yes, I have a Hawaiian-print skirt. It was, in fact, my first skirt since about age seven that was shorter than my ankles. Ah, youth. Now I am happy to report that I live within the realm of "somewhere around the knee" for all my skirts and dresses, though I've never tried a miniskirt before. I think my thighs might get stage fright. They're rather shy that way.

With the addition of a toaster oven provided by one of my colleagues and a monthlong bus/train ticket, it's like I really live here! Such a nice feeling. I also bought a rug for the bathroom.

Ready or Not!

Tomorrow morning I fly to Toronto then to Munich then to Cologne, where I find the main bus terminal and look for all the other sleep-deprived Americans. We'll all try to stay up until a normal bedtime in Germany because that's majorly helpful with jet-lag. (No joke) It'll be fun.

Cologne Cathedral. Very gothic.

 
Of course, I don't have to wait until Germany to start making stupid cultural mistakes. Oh no. I have those mistakes covered right here at home. See, I went to the bank to get some Euros, because trial-and-error has taught me that the only thing worse than exhaustion when you first land in a foreign county is exhaustion and no local currency. Being the seasoned traveler that I am, I asked for some of the money to be in small bills so I don't hand a cafe worker a fifty when I'm trying to buy a cup of tea. (Fun story: in Trinidad, I handed an ice-cream vendor a hundred Trini dollar bill to buy my 2.50 Trini dollar ice cream. She wasn't happy. I got a lecture) So I say "can I have part of that be tens, fives, and ones? And some twenties too?" and the nice bank teller says "sure" and I go on my merry way. When the money comes in, there's a note that apologizes for no one-dollar bills, because every country in Europe has dollar coins. Which I knew, of course, being in England for a year...

No one-euro bills. Unfortunately this is not my money.

I'll be hanging out in Cologne for a while after my orientation is finished on Wednesday while my teacher-contact gets home from school. So, anyone who has been to/heard of Cologne, what should I see? My luggage will be in a locker in the train station. I will be footloose and fancy free. Also tired. (Please use small words)

Countdown

I fly to Germany in less than a month.

Yikes.

I've been to Europe before, but I was coddled and cared-for during that trip. I arrived to a house already set up for me, I was over-oriented to everything you could imagine about a new city, and I was there with a bunch of other Americans. Plus, it was England. The only difficult part about the language in England was fighting to keep the dreamy expression off my face every time someone spoke. When I visited my great-grandmother's family in Germany I went to bed at eight every night, worn out by the constant mental translation. I don't want to be a ninety-year-old woman this time around.

I'm training to avoid the fatigue by watching Disney(ish) movies dubbed in German. The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Emperor's New Groove, and Beauty and the Beast are fabulous. Pocahontas is a little bit of a historical mind-game and Aladdin isn't funny at all. Robin Williams makes that movie. Dialogue tends to be a direct translation, but the songs are very different to fit the meter and rhyme of Disney tunes. Armed with a childhood knowledge of the music in English, I muddle through and understand the whole thing far better on the fourth repeat.

Some song differences:
"I'll fight this into order, straw into gold" instead of "we're gonna turn this sow's ear into a silk purse" (Mulan)
"I'd like to mention, I'm not just talking lion-Latin" instead of "but thick as you are pay attention, my words are a matter of pride" (The Lion King)
"In my world" instead of "a whole new world" (Aladdin)
"Time writes the myth" instead of "tale as old as time" (Beauty and the Beast)

And possibly my favorite translation: The Emperor's New Groove is called A Kingship for a Llama

Ah-hah! Oh...

I figured out a possible answer to the mystery of no returned emails from prospective apartments. Most people plan to be in one place for a least a few years, whether for work or school. I'll be in Germany for ten months. It's not worth the stress of getting used to me and then having to play the roommate-finding game all over again in a year (I'm looking at you, college dorms). One of the people I emailed told me as much when he apologized for having to refuse me a place in his apartment.

Hopefully his excuse is the real answer. It would be nice to know that my current lack of housing is the Fulbright program's problem, not mine. Fingers crossed on that one.

Picky picky picky

Exciting July 4th news - this morning I found an email containing a reply from one of the apartments in a non-sketchy area! To be fair, I've received seven emails from non-sketchy apartments thus far, but all the rest said "sorry, the room has already been rented". I don't think that counts. It is entirely possible that I can celebrate my country's independence and my own lack of future homelessness on the same day. Plus, this place has a puppy named Fox.

Of course there's a catch. The room I asked about has already been rented, but there's another room that will be free starting September 1. This one is "a little smaller" but still very livable, according to the email. Pictures attached show a tiny (11 square meters) room that barely fits a bed and has three hooks on the wall for all clothing. Four years of dorm life have ensured my acceptance of any size living quarters, so this shouldn't be a problem, right? But then the email included pictures of the rest of the house, and I'm not sure I can do it.

The hallway looks like someone lives in it (park bench, dresser, and assorted chairs all along it). The kitchen is tiny and dirty. The bathroom looks nice, but the email mentioned that the shower doesn't always work. Where many postings note that the apartment will often cook together and relax together in the evenings, the email noted that the most important thing for this one is that we all accept one another and give one another space. As an introvert, this expectation is fabulous and ensures that I will not make any friends while in Germany. I'm not sure what the "accepting one another" refers to: does someone refuse to shower? Will everyone shun me if I don't eat sausage?

So I can't decide. Apartments seem to go fast (I email one day and am told the next day that the room is taken: truth or convenient lie), but this doesn't seem like a match. Then again, no one else has emailed me. It's a quandary. My generous teacher-contact at the school has offered to let me stay with her for a little while and search for an apartment once I've arrived. That may have to become my default instead of my last resort.

Hello!

Hi, I’m Jessica. I’ll be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Germany next year, which is quite possibly the most exciting and most frightening thing I’ve ever done. Somehow my native language has become my ticket to spend ten months living in another country. I’m still in the preparation stages of finding housing and returning paperwork, but my plane flight has been booked and there’s no going back.

I studied English literature in college, with a German minor. Notably missing from both those fields is any formal training in education. Unlike several of my former apartment-mates, I’ve never been a student teacher or worked in a high-school classroom. I’ve done English tutoring and I’ve helped in adult ESL classes, but I feel woefully unprepared for my new job. Thankfully the Fulbright Commission knows they’re not getting education majors and offers a three-day orientation and practice time, where I’m told we split up into groups of four or so and give a mini lesson. I’ve warned the butterflies in my stomach to watch out for that and maybe pack up before they’re kicked out, but they’ve been blithely ignoring me.

My current project is sending a bunch of emails out to prospective landlords and apartment-mates, in the hopes that one of them will want me to live in their apartment. As is true everywhere, the city I’ll be living in has some good places and some bad places. Prior to a warning from a (very helpful) former Fulbright ETA, I was looking for housing in the bad part of town. Now I’m not anymore, which is unfortunate because most of the cheap housing is there. I imagine not getting mugged is worth fifty euro or so, but no one from the nice neighborhoods is returning my emails.

Maybe I seem shady.