First Week of School

I've now completed my third official day at the Schuldorf Bergstrasse. I'm also officially moved into my apartment in Eberstadt. Pictures forthcoming. Of many things, not just my apartment.

But on to the first (half) week of school! I went Monday morning and joined in on the English Department meeting for the month. It was basically about me, which was a little weird. I'm apparently kind of a big deal? :) There are two Annette's in charge of me at the school, one teaches English full time from grades 8-13 (they have more grades here than in the US) and the other teaches part time in the high school and part time in the English-language international elementary school on the same huge school campus. The first Annette with whom I've had contact all summer via email introduced me to the crowd and handed me over to the second Annette. This second Annette did some training on how to best utilize teaching assistants in foreign language so she is in charge of helping me sort out a schedule. She asked around the room who would be interested in utilizing me in their classes, and just about everyone said "me, me, me" which was nice. So she created a sign up sheet for those who wanted time from me. After that I followed the first Annette off to sit in on her two afternoon classes. They were both younger kids, what we would call middle school-aged, but they were very enthusiastic and thought I was super cool :) As an exercise Annette had them break into groups and write down questions to ask me about where I'm from and what kinds of things I like to do. Then they did a large class interview with me, writing my answers down as I spoke. It was pretty fun.

On my second day I showed up for a tour of the school campus and to find out more about the State International School which is one of the two elementary schools on the campus. Unfortunately - and most embarrassingly! - I was late. This is a big no-no in Germany. But I discovered that morning that the street car that stops in front of my building does not run all the way to Seeheim-Jugenheim each time it passes. Apparently every other car in the mornings stops halfway to Seeheim. Funnily enough, that stop was called Frankenstein. There's actually an old Fort Frankenstein which is part of the forthcoming picture montage of my time thus far in Germany. Anyway, I was listening to my ipod just jamming along in the morning on what I thought was my way to school when all of a sudden the street car stopped and everyone got out. It took me a moment to look around and realize what was going on, so I had to hurriedly jump out. Then I had to wait another 15 minute on the next street car to come through that was headed in the direction of my school. :( My first major faux-paux of this German expedition, but fortunately it wasn't too bad. I got to school about 10 min late, and apologized profusely to the second Annette. She was extremely understanding and took me on my tour regardless.

The tour itself was really helpful. The whole school campus has over 40 buildings that belong to 6 different schools. I may have gone over this briefly before, but there's a kindergarten, a German elementary school, the state international elementary school (where the language of instruction is English), then the three German high schools: hauptschule, realschule, gymnasium. Because the gymnasium offers a curriculum that incorporates a significant amount of European issues (economics, government, etc), the gymnasium has the status "Europaschule" which means they get more money from the state and it also looks good for those students who take such courses. This is mildly equivalent to the IB program in the US, but not quite. At any rate, I was able to look at a map as the second Annette pointed out all the important buildings to me. There's quite a bit of construction going on there at the moment since the school is ever-expanding, which means some walkways are closed off and there's a lot of mud. However, overall I found it relatively easy to get around. Once I was able to look at a map and visualize in my head where things should be, it made it a lot easier.

After the tour, I walked through the international school with the second Annette and met some of the teachers there. Many of them are British or American since the language of instruction in this school is English. I went along to two of the classes for an hour each to see what it was like. Since it was elementary school I was completely unfamiliar with the kinds of things they generally learn. I was also out of my element in terms of trying to identify ages of small children. I thought they were all 7 when in fact the class I sat in on was mostly 11 and 12 year olds...go figure. I'm sure they would have all been offended had they known. But they're just so little! While it was interesting to see, I'm not sure how much of my time I want to spend there. With so many teachers whose native language is English, I'm not exactly as hot a commodity.

Today I worked with some of the older kids, which was so far the most enjoyable. In a couple of the 8th grade classes the theme of the moment is Florida. Today's classes did exercises related to Space Camp - and I proudly told them all my sister had attended for a number of years. I also described what it was like to see the shuttle launches, in addition to describing things I did that were specific to Florida or that kind of environment. They thought I was super cool after I described wakeboarding :)

So other than getting an inflated ego here, I've also been navigating German bureaucracy. I had to go register with the city this afternoon - on the one afternoon a week they are open later than noon. Now that I've completed this step, I need to go to the city's department for alien residents or something to that effect to obtain a residency permit to live and work here for the next year. Since I already have a contract with my school, I don't have an open-ended work visa of any kind, but I show my contract and am then allowed to live here and work this specific job for the dates specified in my work contract. Unfortunately this office has even more limited hours than most. They, too, have "extended" afternoon hours on Wednesday, however they apparently don't answer the phone during these hours since a recording told me I'd have to call back between their regular open hours (7:30-12:30). Man I want to work in bureaucracy some day. Seems sweet.

Alright well I'm off to bed for now. Another day at school tomorrow, and I'm not used to waking up this early! (6:30am...ugh)