bureaucracy sucks

Apparently a lot of people want to live in Hamburg, because it took me FOUR HOURS to get my visa today.

My mind has been rendered feeble

breaking news!

YES!

Somehow, my camera works again!

Fancy that.

Blah

Phillies won!  Werder Bremen won!  Looks like my kind of weekend, pal.

But WAHHHH I am sad that we don't have Paul Newman anymore.  For my coffee maker at Dickinson I always used to get Newman's Own coffee and I thought to myself, "Man, Paul Newman has been around for forever."  He was a pretty much the definition of a class act.

I bought a copy of Der Kleine Prinz (The Little Prince) at the flea market for fifty cents.  I thought it was about time I read it.  I am kind of brain dead this morning, so I'll just make some lists:

Stuff I miss other than the obvious family, friends, and puppies:

-Having a food processor so I can make delicious hummus.  Oh man, I miss hummus.  The Germans need to catch on to that stuff.

-Having a camera that works

-Working at the bookstore this summer.  It really was kind of fun.

-College.  Enough said.

-Drinkable tap water.  I don't really know how safe the water in Hamburg is, but I guess that since my well water at home in PA is deliciously extra-hard water, I could probably drink the water here and not feel sick.  Sometimes I get sick of the bubbly water everyone drinks in Europe...

-Local PA stuff like Martin's BBQ potato chips.  So unhealthy, so delicious.

Stuff I am thinking about:

-telling my bank that I'm in Europe so they don't put a hold on my account and prevent me from having money

-figuring out how to pay my last cell phone bill since they got rid of my online payments and I suspect a bill was sent to my home in PA

-figuring out that insufferable crap regarding getting a master's degree

-other boring crap that doesn't belong in my blog for it will severely impede its pursuit of awesomeness

Song of the day:  "Lapland" by Ratatat.  Maybe today I'll be extra nerdy and make some fun playlists.  They might be: Skandinavien (weird Scandinavian stuff), Doppelgängers (songs with the same title...this happens a lot, surprisingly enough), and Turbo-Nostalgia Saga with songs from my kid days up until now (that's gonna be an epic one). 

GAHH I am really, REALLY boring today.  Blah.

Lohmühlen

Today was finally sunny and warmer than it has been recently.  I managed to get to school on time for once.    I got my EC bank card so I can get paid cash dollas.

Here's a brief list of the classes I help out:

LK 12 with Conny.  LK=Leistungskurs, sort of similar to an honors course in an American high school.  I like this class more every day.  Yesterday we had a mock press conference and they asked me all kinds of questions about what it's like to live in the US and that seemed to encourage them to talk to me more and not be intimidated (for some reason, I'm intimidating.  Cool!)  These kids are really nice overall.

GK 12 with Lothar.  GK=Grundkurs, or a regular, required course that isn't as intense as the LK.  I have a hard time remembering the people in this course because it's at 8 in the morning and my mind is fuzzy.  They're probably nice, though.  I forget.

V 11 with Sandra.  This is one of my favorites.  It's a bunch of kids from a Realschule, which is like a school inferior to a Gymnasium, or college-prep high school (the school I'm at is called Lohmühlen Gymnasium). Here's the deal:  these kids aren't doing great in English.  They are not stupid and they do try hard, but at the Realschule they simply didn't get much quality English education.  My colleague James from the UK runs a Förderungskurs, or remedial course/extra training course, for kids who need more help learning English.  Now, James' course only has room for maybe 25 kids out of the 100 who probably need it.  The kids had to take a test to get in.  They could score a possible 23 points.  Most of the kids in my V class scored less than 14 and therefore didn't get in.  

I think this is really unfair.  It's not their fault that they got transplanted to a more rigorous Gymnasium, and they need to catch up a bit so they can do well on their Abitur (everyone takes the Abitur test in order to graduate from high school).  And I like these kids a lot.  So today I talked to Sandra about creating my own Förderungskurs for the V class, so that they can get the help they need and improve their grades in English.  She was ecstatic about the idea and we immediately started planning it.  I'm pretty excited about it and I don't mind putting a lot of work into it because I really want to see these kids do well in Gymnasium.  They can give me topics they need help with, like grammar problems or how to form certain sentences, so that they have a say in what we work on.  I'm also going to bring stuff like American music and base lessons off of the lyrics, or use American tv or clips from movies to make the class interesting, because who the hell wants to have to sit through another lecture.  Basically...this class is pretty much my baby.  

Also, Sandra is only 29 or so, and really cool.  She has only been in Hamburg for a year, so we exchanged numbers and stuff so that we can hang out and be friends.  And she even offered to help me get a futon from Ikea for my new room, because she has a car with fold-y seats.  I feel warm and fuzzy.

GK 12 with Beate (pronounced bay-AH-tuh).  I like these kids too...Beate has me correct and grade some of their work. I like her because she's very direct and doesn't bullshit around.  She liked my grading style too, which was reassuring.

7/e with Frau Bauer.  This class is pretty much adorable.  They are well-behaved and use microphones to talk because there is a hearing-impaired kid in the class.  Frau Bauer is also UNBELIEVABLY good-natured and patient.  She disciplines them in such a great way, it's gentle but they actually listen to her.  I gotta observe this one a lot.

8b with Tanja.  THIS CLASS IS FREAKING CRAZY.  It's like, the 8th class of the day and they have RIDICULOUS amounts of energy.  I don't know how Tanja does it.  It took us half an hour to establish that yes, I am American and not German despite my last name. Yes, I can speak German.  Yes, I am a teacher, etc.   They thought it was a prank or something.  One kid is always singing 80s songs in response to the teacher's comments.  They were just out of their minds.  It was the most mind-draining class ever.  Except for one boy who did not speak at all.  Bless him.

9/e with Lothar.  I'm starting to get to know these kids better.  I graded a bunch of homework and today Lothar had me spend ten minutes or so reviewing the difference between "then" and "than," subject-verb agreement, and the difference between "perverted" and "perverse."  They behaved pretty well, which gets them a thumbs-up from me.

My camera still isn't working. :(

To Shannon:  BANANA JUICE IS DELICIOUS.  You be trippin'.

crappy mornings

Every morning this week has been craptastic, it's been raining and I got lost the first time I rode my bike to school and then this morning my water bottle in my pack opened before I got to my bike and I had to run home and change bags and my camera got all wet and won't turn on anymore and I had to run to the subway to get to school in time.  BLAHHH

That said, I lost my motivation to type now, so I think I will have some banana juice and go to bed.  I am wholesome.

My freeloading days have an expiration date!

I HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE!  YAY

After being rejected from my first attempt at finding a WG, I am finally successful.  I'll be living about five minutes away from my school, in the Lange Reihe street (translates as "long row").  My flatmates are Vicky, a German girl of African descent (I can't remember where her parents are from, but she has a fun accent) and some other chick  (she wasn't there, so I don't know her name).  Vicky said I was super swell and called me up and offered me the room half an hour after I left the apartment.  And my room has furniture!  I get a bed and a desk and a closet and a TV AND a mirror.  I can't wait to put stuff on my walls.  Oh man.  My room is going to rule.  Plus, there is a washing machine.

In other news, Dan and Amy and I went clubbing last night.  And we were the best dancers in that joint, because most people here just can't dance.  At home I usually dance stupid on purpose, because it's more embarrassing to bust some good moves than it is to purposely look like an idiot.  Especially in front of all your family...unlike my sister Shannon would tell you, I do NOT look like Ellen DeGeneres when I dance at a club.   

Oh, and I named my bike Sprite, because it's lemon and lime colored.  And it's a she.  Duh. 

POW!

I own a bike!!  I bought it at the flea market today all by myself.  It is lime green and small enough so I don't fall off.  Now I don't have to spend dolla bills on all these insufferable subway tickets!

Yesterday I went with Lothar and some of his friends to the St. Pauli game.  But I should probably explain some stuff.  The two biggest soccer (Fußball

) leagues in Germany are the 1. (erste, first) Bundesliga and the 2. (zweite, second) Bundesliga.  Hamburg has two major teams: HSV (1. Bundesliga) and St. Pauli (2. Bundesliga).  A lot of people, however, dislike HSV because the fans tend to be right-wing and aggressive, and the team sometimes plays dirty Fußball.  So St. Pauli is very beloved by many Hamburgers because the games are peaceful and positive and the team is, well, just a nice team.    Also, many people who dislike HSV support Werder Bremen, HSV's rival and my favorite team.  This is probably really biased, so hopefully no HSV-lovers are reading this entry or I might have to carry a taser or something.  SOOOO I get to go to St. Pauli games and STILL love my beloved Werder without being harassed about it!  Can it get better?

Yes.  Yes, it can.  Check out St. Pauli's badass logo:

Who wants to mess with that?  Yeah, I thought so.

Anyway, the game was a lot of fun.  The fans have like a million songs they sing, but my personal favorite moments were when they sang "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again," substituting most of the lyrics with "la" and "St. Pauli." Or, their rendition of "Hey Jude," again substituting words with "la" and and a syllabicly awkward "St. Pauli." And when St. Pauli scores, everyone rocks out to Blur's "Song 2," composed predominately of loud guitar and "WOO-HOO"s.  And take note: St. Pauli is pronounced "sahnkt POW-lee," with "POW" rhyming with plow.

To make things even more interesting, many St. Pauli fans have, historically, been pretty left-wing.  So amongst the big flags that fans waved were flags bearing the St. Pauli colors and an assortment of symbols:  Che Guevara's face, the hammer and sickle, a marijuana plant, and the Jamaican flag.  I was pretty entertained just looking around.

Anyway, St. Pauli won the game, 1-0.  Booya.

Add another beer to the list:  Holsten, a beer brewed in Hamburg and one that actually comes in a can.  It was okay.  I didn't actually feel like having a beer, but everyone laughed at me when I said I wanted banana juice.  You might laugh too...but I LOVE banana juice.  Hmph.