Massive Update

Alright so I'm already bad at updating again... A lot has been going on the past couple of weeks. I'll try to recap all of it without writing a novel here.

School:
School has been going really well. I've been working with the same handful of teachers each week in grades 6-13. I'm working 2-3x a week with an 8th, 9th, and 10th grade class, and then I go once a week to a 6th, 11th, and 13th.

In the 8th grade the students have been working on a textbook unit about Florida, so I've given a number of presentations on things like Kennedy Space Center, Space Camp, and Cocoa Beach. That's been a lot of fun since I've brought in pictures of my friends and me doing all sorts of typical Florida things, such as hanging out at the beach, going out on boats on the river, surfing, and wakeboarding. Surprisingly a number of them actually knew what wakeboarding was!

In the 9th grade class I've been holding a number of writing workshops. This year of 9th graders (all across the state of Hessen) has to skip a grade next year, so they will be beginning the 11th grade next year. This is due to the fact that Hessen is decreasing their schooling from 13 grades to 12 in order to better match up internationally with other schools. Unfortunately, this means the 9th grade needs a lot of work, and there's just not a lot of resources available. What they really need is some kind of mass tutoring effort, but I don't think parents, teachers, or students are capable of it. However, this has been one area where my experience teaching composition has come in handy. I've been able to develop some more interesting activities with the students to get them practicing writing and thinking critically.

In the 10th grade we've been working on writing as well. Their vocabulary is a bit better and they have a better sense of the structure of an essay, so we're working on the argumentative part of their writing, i.e. constructing better arguments and providing effective evidence for those arguments. Again, it's great that I've spent the last two years developing assignments for this kind of thing. It takes some adaption to adjust assignments for foreign language instruction and lower grade levels, but it's not as difficult as I had feared.

In the 11th grade the English class I'm working with is examining how influential language is (or isn't), and if language can really incite change. We've been reading a number of commencement speeches from Obama to Jon Stewart and discussing the kinds of advice they give, and how idealistic versus realistic they are. I'm finding it totally fascinating, but the students are talking as much as the teacher (and I) had hoped. So we're still working on that one...

In the 12th grade I've been discussing slavery and the Civil War. The students have been reading an excerpt from Frederick Douglass's slave narrative, which has been somewhat difficult for them, but usually once we discuss what's going on, they do quite well with it. They just got done talking about the idea of the American Dream, so now we're talking about the ways that dream is sometimes limited or twisted to conform to the changing ideal of who is "American." Again, I'm totally into this kind of thing, and at the very least I think my enthusiasm has rubbed off (a very tiny bit) onto the students.

In the 13th grade they've been covering Australia and issues of division/racism/etc there. We watched a film called Rabbit Proof Fence about the "lost generation" of aboriginal kids who were taken from their homes and raised as "whites" in British camps. This has kind of stemmed into a larger discussion of how societies define rights and citizenship, as well as what is 'wrong' and 'right' or 'good' and bad' for society.

There's one more week of school before Fall Break, and I think after break I'll be switching up some of my classes, though not sure how many. There are still teachers who I haven't had the chance to visit their classes, so I need to find a way to visit some new ones.

Exploring:
I've also been traveling/exploring quite a bit in the past couple of weeks. Here's a brief recap of some of the places I've been going.

Last weekend I spent in Luxembourg, which by far has been one of my favorite European cities. It's definitely a rich place. I saw more than one Aston Martin on the street. I think those are issued with your Luxembourg passport. I was there Friday night for a Researcher's Night, a European-wide festival celebrating the scientific research going on in universities across the continent. The University of Luxembourg had a number of tents set up in one of the city's main squares and the various departments had booths displaying the kinds of research they were doing. Many of the booths were interactive, so you got to play around with programming robots, microwaving CD's to see them crackle, balancing bowling balls on robots, and mixing liquids like red cabbage juice, baking powder, and olive oil. In the right combination, it's mildly combustible! There was also a hue after party with lots of free champagne! Saturday I was able to see most of the downtown area of Luxembourg proper (it's both the name of the country and the capital city). The duke's palace is right downtown and quite cool looking. There's also a ton of ruins of the old forts and monasteries, as well as the ramparts and walls built by the various ruling kingdoms. Luxembourg had a period of rule by just about every major European power, and each one built it's own fortifications, but when Lux became it's own country, it was required to take down a number of them. Otherwise it would have been essentially impenetrable. Which is pretty cool. Also, there's free champagne just about every where.

I also spent this past weekend in Frankfurt. Friday evening I met up with a fellow Fulbrighter, my roommate from the orientation in Koeln. We cooked dinner and hung out, and then met up with another Fulbrighter from Ireland for drinks. It was nice to compare schools and living situations and make sure we were all on the same page. We also talked plans for the 2 week fall break coming up. Then Saturday Liz (my Frankfurt Fulbrighter friend) and I checked out some of the museums downtown. The Museum fuer Moderne Kunst (modern art museum), had an exhibit of photography taken by a number of famous fashion photographers. It wasn't their printed work, rather a lot of backstage or "off-camera" kinds of shots. There were photos of lives of models and photographers throughout the 90's (one showcase was about a photographer's circle of friends and their struggle with HIV). So that was kind of cool, for the most part, although I'm not totally a modern art kind of girl. Some of it I didn't quite get... But overall it was cool. Saturday evening we stumbled across a Federweisser festival where we ate dinner and sampled Federweisser, which is a kind of young wine made from grapes that aren't good enough to be really good wines. All of the wine festivals were this past month, and now there's basically the left over wine festival...? Anyway, it was pretty fun since there was live music and people dancing. There was also a ton of festival food like Flammkuchen (really thin pizza), Reibekuchen (potato pancakes with applesauce), and crepes!

Travel Plans:
So Fall Break starts at the end of this coming week, and we have just over 2 whole weeks off from school. Unfortunately Fulbright is being skimpy on paying us our whole paychecks, which has limited my traveling options. However, I've collaborated with Liz in Frankfurt and I think we're going to head to Belgium for a couple of days this upcoming weekend. After that I may go visit friends around Germany for a bit. Then the following weekend Liz and I are going to head to Freiburg potentially so that we can do some exploring on the border. I was sorely tempted to do some extreme traveling to Italy or southern France, but I figure I'll probably enjoy that more after I've had a couple paychecks and been doing some tutoring on the side to earn some spending money.

Other Misc.:
Overall life is going pretty well. I'm connecting with teachers at my school and with other Fulbrighters in the area, so I have something mildly resembling a social life! :) I'm feeling more settled into my town of Eberstadt, and have gotten more familiar with Darmstadt as well. I hope to have a way to post pictures to you all soon!!!

Lots of love to all of you!