Berlin and Center Stage

Well, I have just returned from Berlin, which was a really great experience for several reasons. I was one of the chaperones sent with the first half of the 11th grade class, though I was not assigned my own particular "P group," or my own group of students to look after. Instead I sort of floated with different groups as needed, helping out whichever teacher was in charge, and going to whichever exhibits or museums they did. I had some choice in the matter, which was nice, though not always, of course. It was a really fun trip, though also busy, and a little stressful at times. it's difficult to be a good chaperone (or a good teacher/supervisor, etc) when your language skills are not up to par. Making very basic language mistakes while attempting to tell a student to be quiet, or to stay with the rest of the group, etc, tends to detract some from the weight of your authority.

Anyway, the trip was good, and I saw and heard a lot of interesting things. Berlin is a fascinating city; you can see evidence of its history, conflict, and change on almost every corner. I would love to go back there some day and just wander around for a while. I'm not a big fan of structured trips, so the schedule of the Klassenfahrt got a little irritating to me, in some ways, but we ended up having a bit more free time than I expected. Of course, that also meant that I hadn't really planned or looked into what I would like to do during that free time, so I mostly bummed along with other teachers. I did go see Blue Man Group, which was really neat, but I would not pay that ticket price to see them again. I would see them again, for a lower price, but I bought the tickets regardless of the price, in this case, because I figured I probably won't get a chance to see them again. They put on a really unique show. Music, comedy, general strangeness. I would have LOVED to have been the audience member they pulled onstage. They're a very funny group.

I came back to some bad news, as well, though. One of the students from Center Stage I had charged with finding out whether or not another student was planning on continuing to come or not emailed me and said that Julia would not, in fact, be continuing with the group. With the three members that came to me the week before Berlin (the day I had printed the scripts for The Importance of Being Earnest, a show which requires at least 8 people) and said that they would not be continuing with us, and a student who was on the Berlin trip with me as well has said she probably won't, either. So now I've gone from having a cast of 9 and a show picked out to having a cast of 4, and no show. So guess what I'll be looking for this week? -_-

Herbst Ferien und Klausuren

So, I just returned from Herbst Ferien (Fall holidays, for the English-speaking crowd), a week of which I spent hanging out in the area of Munich, spending time with a friend I met in Brazil. She and I met on a bus tour around the Northeast of Brazil five years ago, and this is the first time we've seen each other since. It was a blast, though. She plays on a Regional League volleyball team, one step under the Bundesliga, or national level. Her team hopes to move up to the Bundesliga, and I went and watched one of their games an one of their practices. They have some hardcore drills. For example, there is a player on the team who is a specified defensive player; she doesn't have to serve, and she can come into the rotation at different times. One exercise involved her standing on a narrow beam while the other players took turns spiking balls at her, which she then tried to return. Her balance and coordination under the circumstances were very impressive. I'd have been falling all over the place.

We also went hiking in the mountains, and then went to see Schloss Linderhof, which in this case would most accurately be translated as Manor House Linderhof, since it is rather small, and shares very little with castles like Neuschwanstein. It's a beautiful area, though, and I learned some rather interesting things about Ludwig II, such as the fact that he preferred to sleep during the day and work during the night, and that on the rare occurrences where he gave audiences, he made them come to see him in the evening hours, rather than getting up for them. I'd been there once before, actually, seven years ago, but it was neat to go again, especially at a point where I appreciate such things a little more.

I also caught up with a fellow Ole in Munich, Chenoa Albertson. She's a dancer, and is working as an au pair here for a year. Another highlight was meeting my friend Franziska and her boyfriend for dinner. Franziska and I met only once, seven years ago, on almost the very last night I was in Germany. I went out to a bar with my friend Chrissy Hiller, whose family I was staying with, and Franziska was one of her friends, and we've kept in touch on and off since then. It's always wonderful to me that we can make and keep such connections, despite long absences, or not seeing each other often.

The only other major thing that has been occupying my time is correcting Klausuren, which has taken me significantly longer than I expected. Partially because of the work itself, but partially also because I'm dragging my feet a little at doing them. Some of the scores are rather lower than I'd hoped, and I feel bad giving back such grades; I like my students, and I'm anticipating some poor reactions to their grades, for some of them. :-/ But such is the role of a teacher, I suppose. I hope it will motivate them to work a little harder. Some of the mistakes I'm seeing are things they should really be past, though we have been doing some grammar and language review, of course. And most of the grades aren't bad, else I would need to seriously reexamine my test, etc. That's one thing for which I will always be grateful to my experience at Explo: the simple lesson that my teaching and my curriculum is not always good, and even when it is, it is always open for reflection and improvement.

Next week is the Berlin trip, which I'm looking forward to. You can probably expect another blog right after it, telling you all about it.

I also had my first bike-related injury in Munich. Well, in Iffeldorf, actually. I fell and scraped my up hand pretty good, though nothing to cause a fuss over. I'm lucky I didn't do anything worse, since I also hit my cheekbone on the pavement and bent my glasses a bit. They bent back easily and don't look any the worse for wear, and thankfully my cheekbone also shows no marks. It wouldn't be fun to come back and teach with a scraped up face. :-P

All the best to you all.

Bikexperiment, Day 2

(For those wondering, that should be pronounced "bike-speriment," with "bike" being pronounced normally.)

So, day two of riding. I rode for approximately an hour-ish today, though I don't know exactly how much. I braved the embarrassment of riding in front of others and rode around my neighborhood a bit (there's very little traffic there, so it's not a big deal), though one across the train tracks definitely pointed and evidently got a kick out of my obviously novice bike riding. Oh well. I've never minded making a fool of myself in public, so long as I knew I was doing it, and did it on purpose. I'll deal with it.

It went pretty well. I can get started/stay upright the vast majority of the time, though I'm still rather unskilled with things like turning and going uphill (though I managed uphill a couple of times, on a relatively low-incline hill), but I'm getting better all the time, that I can tell. I'm also rather sore right now, because I tense up way too much, and only start to relax when I'm going downhill, or something like that. Keeping my fingers on the brakes keeps me from squeezing the handlebars too tightly, which is also a good thing.

Hope all is well with all of you!

I'm on a Bike

Props to you if you recognize the reference, but don't worry about it if you don't, because it's not a very good song anyway.

If I wanted to reference a good song, I'd have put something along the lines of "I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my biiike..." (Thank you, Queen, for writing so many songs that involve bicycles. Even if they are rather bizarre lyrics to include.)

So, it's Herbst Ferien, which means I have two weeks of no school to get through. I say "get through" because the first week of that is a little tough. My social circle is not very large in Rimbach, right now, so I'm, well, a little bored. I went out to dinner and then watched a thoroughly bizarre Danish film called "Adam's Apples" with some other teachers on Friday night (a film I'm still not sure if I actually liked. Some parts were funny, but on a whole, I'm not certain that I'd bother watching it again.), but other than that I don't have much by way of plans. Hanging out with a friend tomorrow, which should be fun, and I was potentially going to go to some kind of ski-aerobics class with another friend tonight, but I may not go to that, because my tennis shoes are soaked, and I'm a little sore.

Which brings me to the title of this post (it's official, I'm needlessly verbose. It took me....what, twenty lines of text to get to the point?), which is that I have officially begun to teach myself how to ride a bike. Before you all go crazy and ask "You can't ride a bike? Can you swim?" (If I am asked that question one more time, I swear, I might explode.), yes, I can't ride a bike. I got to training wheels as a child, and refused to learn how to ride properly. Mostly it was because the continued failure to actually learn it made me furious (yes, I know that falling down a bunch is normal; didn't make me any less mad), and I was a very stubborn child. I'm pretty much just happy that I didn't break the bike in the moments I was angry enough to really want to break something.

See, I used to have a really bad temper. An irrationally bad temper. Yes, anger is usually irrational, but I would get angry at the smallest, stupidest things. For the most part it was a childhood thing, and I grew out of it. I was pretty sure in Brazil, for example, that I had nothing to worry about as far as my temper went anymore. I have discovered over time that certain things will still set me off pretty easily. One of those things is feeling incompetent or failing repeatedly at something, which usually leads to the feeling incompetent. This doesn't happen too horribly often, since I usually also tend to try not to take anything too seriously, since whatever it is I'm doing probably isn't exactly life-changing. But every once in a while, something really gets me going. Attempting to ride a bike today was one of those things.

Anyone who has spent the majority of their life unable to do something that 90% of the population does without actively thinking about, and has tried to learn said thing, knows what I'm talking about. It's even a cliche. "It's just like riding a bike." I loved when people would say that to me, so that I could calmly turn to them and say, "I can't ride a bike." And then watch their face contort as they tried to think of what to say to that. But seriously, it is ridiculously frustrating and embarrassing to have so much difficulty learning something that is essentially the poster-child of "easy."

Which is why I took my bike to an abandoned patch of grass, out of view, and practiced for two hours.

I can stay upright, at least for a while, though I probably could have chosen a better spot to practice, since the ground was uneven and the grass ridiculously long. But I'm getting it. I need a lot of practice, but the simple fact that I actually TRIED today is pretty huge. So I thought I'd share.

And no, I'm not riding on the street much yet. I don't feel like getting hit by a car anytime soon, so I'd rather have much better control before I actually try to go anywhere.

Bitchfresse

So, I went to the Mannheim National Theater fest, and saw a number of neat previews of the season's shows, as well as a couple snippets of "Avenue Q," which will be performed at the theater sometime next year, I believe. I'm not sure exactly when. It's translated into German, which I find a little unfortunate - some of the syllabation was a bit forced in the translation - but all in all I think they did a great job of it. It'll be a good show. I also got to see a preview of former guest teacher Linda's show, Bitchfresse, which is about hip hop and the like in Germany. I went and saw that this past Sunday, and that was quite a good time. I couldn't understand everything, but I got most of it, and it was hilarious. The two actors/singers who performed it played off each other very well, and were great both musically and physically. One of them seemed a bit nervous, as I saw him visibly shaking at one point, but I've certainly been there. My intermediate acting final I was shaking like a leaf during my last monologue. Thankfully it looked at least semi-intentional.

Things are going well otherwise. My English students had to take their first Klausur (one of the two major tests during their term, for the Americans reading), and I received a few unkind glances in regards to it, but I think most teachers get that when giving a test. All in all they look pretty good, though now of course I have the joyous task of correcting them. It's a little more complex than grading homework. But I'll survive, since after this week it's fall break, during which I'll be spending a week in Munich. I can't wait; the friend I'll be staying with is a girl I met in the Amazon while in Brazil, and I haven't seen her for five years. I'll also probably stop by and see a friend I made last time I was in Germany, seven years ago, and catch up a little with her. It should be a great break.

I have decided (almost 100% certainly) that Center Stage will be performing "The Importance of Being Earnest," by Oscar Wilde. I think it's a good show, and relatively simple in meaning, though of course not all of Wilde's puns and innuendo will carry to a German audience. I think we can make it work well, though, and it should be a good experience for both me and the actors in the group. I'm excited.

That's all for now. Hope all is well with all of you.

An Incredibly Small World

So last night I'm out Blues dancing, and after a group of us leave the bar where we dance, we're walking down the streets of Heidelberg, and suddenly someone calls my name from behind me. At first, I'm confused, so I turn to see if I was maybe just hearing things, but then someone calls it again. I see a tall fellow with blonde hair walking toward me, a younger guy with a beard, who doesn't really look familiar. He says, "Is your name Ian? Ian Hathway?" I say yes. "From Janesville?" I say yes, wondering who the hell this random person is who knows where I come from, and he says "I went to Craig high school. Eric; we were in Band together. I played sax."

WHAT.

That's right. I come to Germany, go Blues dancing in Heidelberg (admittedly a very international city), and by chance run into a person who went to high school with me. I saw him AGAIN by chance early this afternoon at the train station, and we talked a little bit more. He graduated in 2009, and after seeing him again, I clearly remember him being in Jazz Band with me my junior year, when I was in Jazz II. He's studying at the university in Heidelberg for a semester.

The world is a far smaller place than we ever realize.

Well That Was Fun

Things are collectively going well, which is the good news. I cooked dinner for five other teachers tonight, and it went pretty well, though somehow some of the rice didn't cook properly, but it was all right in any case. It's interesting trying to host anything in this apartment, though, since there really isn't a table made for more than four people, nor seating for even that many, so it's kind of an adventure. It all worked out though, and we had fun, as usual.

I'm also going Blues dancing again tomorrow, which should be great. I will have to be careful, though, which brings us to the bad news: I have somehow managed to rather heavily bruise my ribs on my left side. There is no outward sign of it, no swelling or discoloration, but the pain is definitely reminiscent of a bruise, as opposed to having pulled a muscle or something similar. I say somehow because I'm not quite sure how I did it. I did collide with another player while playing soccer on Tuesday last week, but my ribs didn't start hurting till the following Sunday, so I'm not sure if that's the sole cause. So I'm taking it easy and not moving too fast for the most part, since anything that jars my upper body hurts. Unfortunately, laughing also hurts, so I spend a fair amount of time in pain when I hang out with some of my friends here. One compassionately suggested that she could punch me whenever she made a joke, so that I wouldn't laugh, but I kindly refused her generous offer.

Things are picking up in school. I'm now singing with the a capella group, the Voice Boys (kind of an amusing name, in my opinion), as well as playing with the big band, playing soccer (though not right now), and tomorrow is the first meeting of Center Stage, the English theater group, which I am now the head of. The teacher who normally leads it is pretty swamped, and although she'll be helping me at all stages of the group, I'm the one actually in charge of it this year, so that should be fun. I'm looking forward to it, though (Dona, thank you for so many good theater exercises! I will put them to good use!), and to picking a show for us to do. I also have to write the first Klausur, or major test, for my English class. They'll take that on Wednesday.

The other note of bad news, which is something I find thoroughly infuriating, is that a student turned in homework that was quite literally a paragraph copied straight out of a National Geographic article. I cannot stand intentional plagiarism like that. When a student forgets to quote something, okay, that's an honest mistake, but cribbing a whole paragraph and turning it in as your own is lazy and insulting to your teacher, besides being illegal. Not to mention how ridiculously obvious it is. Suddenly perfect grammar and an expansive vocabulary? Hmm, whatever could this mean?
I spoke with my class about the issue of plagiarism at some length, and I believe I made enough of an impression as to not have to deal with it too much in the future, but only time will tell. I of course also spoke directly to the student in question after class was finished, and said student seemed genuinely repentant, so here's hoping the lesson sticks.

I think that's all for now. I hope life is treating everyone well.