Weekend Three: Neustadt

Friday, September 15, 2006

Grüße aus dem schönen Neustadt an der Weinstraße! Man, this week has just flown by. We arrived on Sunday, and my host teacher, Frau Griesemer, picked us up from the train station, took us to lunch, and afterward, took us on a little walking tour of the city. Whoa! This place is GORGEOUS! Its Innenstadt (city center) is entirely cobblestoned, and many of the houses/buildings are constructed out of original 16^th-century Fachwerk. It doesn’t look real… I keep expecting everything to be made out of gingerbread or something! Shauna and I have spent this last week pretty much just running around from office to office and battling beaurocracy in order to try to get me settled in and squared away, and it’s been like playing whack-a-mole!

But something we discovered in all this running around from office to office, is not only that we can actually handle all this official business in German (!!), but the people here are all just impossibly nice & helpful. Seriously, it's like they trip over themselves to be friendly and to work with me. For example, I had to leave my passport at the Ausländeramt (Foreign Resident Office) yesterday morning, and can go pick it up again along with my finished visa no earlier than next Wednesday; but then after that I discovered that I still needed it as ID to open a bank account! Oops! I asked if I could bring in a photocopy, but the lady at the bank said that it had to be the original -- of which she would then make a photocopy herself. Just as I began to despair, she suggested that we could just call the Foreign resident office and see if they could fax over a copy of my passport. Then she went out of her way to find the number, call them, figure out who I'd been speaking to while I was there, and then put me on the phone with him to verify that it was indeed me who was requesting it. The guy on the other end laughed, said he totally understood, and had a fax of my passport over in less than two minutes. And everyone is like this! And not only helpful, but also smiley and jokey the whole time, too; oftentimes, they're also not only patient with my limited vocabulary, they offer linguistic assistance, explaining things a number of times in various simple ways so that they can be sure I understand.

I think I'm gonna like it here. :)

Today, I had my first "real" day of school (since before, it was all following Frau Griesemer around and filling out paperwork). I visited Frau Griesemer's 5th grade English class in the morning, and when she introduced me as being from America, they all looked at each other and went, "Whoa! Coooool!" Hee hee, cute! I didn't realize the younger ones would be so easy to please. They were adorable. The extent of their English was limited to three questions: What is your name? Where are you from? and How are you? Then they got to ask me questions in German about myself and America, so that they could satisfy their curiosity instead of just practicing their English. They were so cute, and later when I saw them in the hall they'd wave enthusiastically and yell across the hall, "Hello, Nikki!!"

Then I spent an hour in the Teachers' Room, getting to know other teachers and planning the next lesson with an eleventh-grade English teacher. And wouldn't you know it, just like everybody else in this city, the faculty is so nice! And a lot of them are young; my age, in fact. One asked me if I liked to play badminton, since they place every Tuesday night. Yay! I'll have to be careful of my shoulder, but I definitely want to make friends, and love badminton! :)

For Imke's 11th graders, I discussed an article with them that they had read on American foreign policy. It went really well! Their English is good enough to hold a (somewhat simplified) political discussion. They were very engaged, and asked lots of questions.

I can’t wait to start planning actual lessons!