Like walking into a dream...

Right, well I haven't written anything for a while, so here's a brief summary of the last couple of weeks;

Munich was good. It's an amazing city, as I'm sure anyone else who has been there will confirm. Unfortunately, the gig I went there to see was canceled. What with that being the only real reason for me going to Munich, it put a bit of a dampener on things.

London was amazing. I've been to London on several occasions before, and even lived there for a brief period, so it certainly wasn't the city itself that impressed me. I went to London to see Arsenal v. West Ham and a friend from the States I hadn't seen for too long. It was great fun and there are very early stage plans to go visit him again in Minnesota next year. I also went to London to see Avenged Sevenfold (the band who canceled their gig in Munich the previous weekend) and Stone Sour. It was amazing. I don't think another word could do it justice. I ended the evening with a very sore throat and it was totally worth it.

On the university front, I've had my YA project approved by Peter Thompson, so I'm gonna get cracking with that. I also got asked to speak on Radio 5 about the student protests the other week after I left a comment on their Facebook page. I panicked and politely declined citing (not entirely made up) phone issues. This is actually an important point I wish to raise with the second years; don't buy cheap Nokia phones when you come out here. Just don't. They are rubbish. Every six or so hours, it decides I need to insert a SIM card. Turning it on and off again works wonders but it doesn't detract from the phone being utterly useless.

Other than that, not an awful lot interesting has happened, hence my lack of blogging. I know it didn't stop me before, but writing stuff down helps when you're feeling down. When you're feeling better and enjoying yourself a bit more, you don't feel the need to write stuff down. Or at least I don't.

Don't get me wrong, I still don't like half of the kids or the classes. But that means I do like the other half. Which is probably accurate. I'm enjoying the teaching a bit more, too. I still don't want to be a teacher, and I think it's fair to say I'm not a natural teacher, but I'm doing the best I can. The kids seem to respond well enough. I say 'seem to' because I still can't understand half of what they say. I don't know what part of 'English' makes them believe I can understand them when they speak at the speed of light in what I can only assume is German, but they do it anyway.

Ooh, and I made a Stollen the other day! It's a kind of Christmas cake type... erm... thing. I have no idea if it will be edible, but it was fun to make.

So yeah, that's pretty much that. I'm going to see Dynamo play on Saturday. I don't think I have any other plans for the near future. So I shall finish with news that I am now on Twitter. Well, I have been for a while, but I realised I haven't actually told anyone about it. Perhaps it is pointless to use Twitter when I have Facebook, but it's another form of procrastination so I'm gonna keep doing it. So yeah, fell free to stalk follow me @DresdenGooner. I think that's pretty much self explanatory.

Much love

"Mrs Evans?" "MISTER Evans." "D'oh!"

Greetings from München! ☺

Before I start this post properly, I’d like to say trains are nice but they really stop being nice around the 4-hour mark. Then they become tedious, cramped, uncomfortably warm and full of smelly people. Having said that, Deutsche Bahn is much nicer than National Rail; there’s a lot more room in general, and my return ticket for a 6-hour journey was actually pretty reasonably priced.

As mentioned several blogs back, I’m going to see Avenged Sevenfold this weekend. It will be awesome. I have Fridays off, so I decided to head out to Bavaria on Thursday. The original plan was to head to Salzburg as well, based on a friend’s recommendation. However, when it came to booking my stay in Munich, I got a bit excited and booked two days instead of one. Massive fail. Never mind. There’s a possibility of seeing Bullet for My Valentine in Munich in November, so a trip to Austria is not yet completely out of the equation. Of course, that’s assuming none of the other Saxony-based FSAen/-innen fancy a trip to Österreich at some point. Anyway, I have a camera and I have a memory card adaptor, so there will be photos of Munich.

So, back to Dresden. Several things have happened that I feel I should update you on. Firstly, I am now a fully registered citizen of Dresden. I got a welcome bag and everything! I also have a bank account. This is important because it means I can now get paid. Finally, you may recall me mentioning my unmitigated joy at finally getting somewhere to live in DD. You may also remember me mentioning that this accommodation was only until the end of December, but that there may be a possibility to extend that. Well, I enquired as to the possibility, and I now have somewhere to live until the end of February. ☺ This is utterly awesome. Now I can focus on attempting to enjoy my time in Dresden.

It seems the novelty of having a walking, talking English dictionary has worn off for the children. The classes are now divided into those who can be bothered to do the work and those who can’t. It’s painfully obvious who is in which category. It’s a good thing I have no ambitions to become a teacher because I just don’t have the patience for it. Earlier today, I essentially took a class on my own. The English teacher took her form out to the library. She offered me the choice of going with her or doing the English lesson with another teacher, who, she said, can’t speak a word of English. Remembering how foul a mood the walk around Löbtau left me in, I chose the latter. I am, after all, here to help in English lessons. It did not go well. Well, it didn’t go badly either. Most of the kids were fine with it, and helped me out by actually trying. The less well-behaved ones misbehaved, but even they seemed to tone it down for me. Still, it could’ve gone better. Highlights include several kids attempting to pronounce ‘Jack-o’-lantern’ as ‘yak-o-lant-errrn’ and ‘leaf’ as ‘life’. Anyway, it could’ve gone a lot better. It definitely could’ve gone a lot worse, too, and there are definitely worse classes to have your first pretty much independent lesson with.

All in all, it’s been a pretty good week. Which is nice, because the only real positive to come out of my first four weeks in Dresden was the revelation that I definitely don’t want to be a teacher.

So, on the agenda for the next week;
- Munich! ☺
- Another week at the school, during which we will be learning;
- More about Halloween
- About English food, or at least the English names for food
- Bits and pieces about the contents of a flat
- A trip back home to see Arsenal v. West Ham with a friend from the States (who, rather unfortunately, is on my side of the pond during the one year I’m not in England), and then Avenged Sevenfold (again ☺) and Stone Sour at the Apollo. ☺
It looks like it should be a pretty good week, to be honest.

Bis bald! x

PS. In case you’re wondering about the smiley faces, I’m writing this on MS Word on the train, and it seems to be converting them automatically. I’m not sure whether this is cool or annoying. ☺ ☹ :| Definitely cool!

PPS. Macintossers; a screw in the bottom right of my MacBook has come out, and now the casing is coming away. I don’t know where the screw is. It isn’t loose, but I’d rather deal with it before it becomes a problem. What sort of screw do I need? Can I get it from a hardware store, or do I need to go to a Mac shop to get it fixed?

Good news everyone!

I have somewhere to live!! I'm refusing to let the fact that it's only until the end of December ruin my good mood. In any case, the woman who corresponded with me says we can discuss an extension until the end of February when I get there.

In other news, I've been in Sheffield for the last few days. Actually, I'm writing this in the IC. Yesterday, I did two things I've never done before. Firstly, I went to the matrix, the climbing wall at Goodwin. I've always preferred the solid ground, but when presented with the choice of climbing up a wall or researching Bundesrat election figures, I chose the former. It was a lot of fun. I can't believe I hadn't let myself be talked into it before. Secondly, I did agape (or applegay as one person chose to pronounce it). It was so much fun. This was the first real opportunity I'd had to do agape and I'm so glad I did. I'll definitely do it again when I return to Sheffield.

The last couple of days and this morning's news have put me in a fantastic mood. Even Arsenal couldn't affect my mood right now. :)

Tschüßi!

Wer wartet mit Besonnenheit, der wird belohnt zur rechten Zeit

Last night I had a dream about reading the Bible. Is that a bit weird? I don't think it is.

I'm not a particularly confident speaker of German. This is a rather inconvenient trait for a linguist to have, and it's one that I've concluded is partially down to the English school system. Those of you who have been in seminars with me will note that I am hardly the most talkative or active person within a learning environment anyway, but I know I've gotten more active since I started at Sheffield, and I've been forced to speak more. One thing Mariana always says is 'say something. It doesn't matter if it's wrong, just say something'. Or words to that effect. It's only since I've been here and been forced to speak German on a daily basis that I've become any form of confident.

The kids I work with are always being encouraged to speak. They don't necessarily know, but they'll give it a go anyway. All of the kids put their hands (plural, usually accompanied by an increasingly annoying 'ooh!') up at some point in the lesson, and I try to make sure all of the kids say something in the lesson. There's a very heavy emphasis on speaking. The kids learn to recognise spoken words and images, then they learn how to write them. We test their ability to answer questions and recite songs. Most of it seems fairly useless, but it's getting them speaking the language. And they'll all know what to do if I ever tell them to stamp their feet. That was an exhausting lesson. Perhaps those of you at Gymnasien, Real- and Hochschule around the country could tell me what the situation is like higher up the school system with the students' ability to read/write in English. Having met Gymnasium students before, I know their spoken English is excellent. When I started learning German, we weren't encouraged to speak anywhere near as much as these kids. I'm much more confident reading and writing in German than I am conversing in it. I'm convinced if we had been encouraged to speak as much as these kids, I'd be much more confident speaking the language. Of course, a lot of the other language students I know are naturally confident speakers, something I'm not. That's because they don't care if they get it wrong, they'll go for it anyway. That's down to individual personality. The more naturally withdrawn kids volunteer answers less frequently, but they still do it.

In other news, I still haven't got a WG. A guy's calling me back on Fridya, but I'm not confident. I've got other places getting in touch with me/to get in touch with. The longer this goes on, the more I'm thinking I'm just not meant to be here. It's all really rather depressing. Mother Nature has clearly seen how I'm feeling about stuff, so has decided to make me feel better by making the weather as British as possible. So basically it's cloudy, it's chilly and it keeps raining. Yay.

Due to my lack of accommodation, I'm still in a hostel. The hostel doesn't have WLAN, WiFi to you and I, but it does have a T-Mobile hotspot. That means I'm essentially sat in the corridor. Unfortunately, the hostel is currently playing host to a load of young Germans. A load of screaming Germans who insist on running up and down the corridor, knocking on doors. Currently, one of them is treating us to his repertoire of Nirvana songs. Unfortunately, his repertoire consists solely of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and 'Lithium'. His playing isn't bad. His singing is awful. I wish they would all just sei the f**k still!

Bis bald!

P.S. Please feed my fish.

You know Critical Acclaim? Well that 'somebody' is me, and there's no 'might' about it.

The last week has confirmed my disliking of 6-year-olds. Yesterday (Thursday) featured a short walk around a part of our corner of Dresden for the 1. Klasse. This little excursion started at 7.30. The kids were full of energy and the teachers were full of caffeine. I was full of neither, so it didn’t take long for the little dears to start getting on my nerves. Less than five minutes after leaving the school, I hear “Heeerrrrr Evaaaaaans? When’s breakfast break going to beeeeee?” The reply I wanted to give would have been entirely inappropriate, so the kid got a not-untrue “I don’t know” instead. In the following four hours, the kids’ voices along with the individual unwillingness to exceed the speed of moss of more than a few of them became a near constant source of irritation for me. The whole thing was mentally exhausting.

Kids in the Erste Klasse don’t study English, so my weekly contact with them is blissfully short. The kids I do see regularly are great. The novelty of having me around has yet to wear off, and they seem very keen to prove to me they can speak English. I’ve been very involved in lessons, so that’s nice. I’m still getting to grips with certain techniques, but I think I’m getting there.

The only thing is, I’d be lying if I said I’m enjoying the job. I get in and within minutes I’m looking forward to going home. When I say ‘home’, I do of course mean the hostel I’m currently being forced to hole myself up in. Therein lies what I hope is the problem. I love Germany and the Germans. I really like Dresden. But I’m still currently homeless, as it were. As a result, I haven’t registered myself as a citizen of Dresden yet, I haven’t registered myself at the Aliens’ registry office, and I have therefore yet to open a bank account. I’m not settled yet. I think (hope) that once I’m all settled in with a room, neighbours, a bank account and all those other good things, I’ll start enjoying myself a bit more in my job. We’ll have to see. Until then, there’s still that voice in the back of my head saying “it’s not too late to back out, you know”, and it’s getting more and more tempting to do just that.

I’m really trying to keep positive, and I’m succeeding for the most part. I’ve got a lot of music to keep me upbeat. I spent most of the last week listening to either We Shall Not Be Shaken or Nightmare on repeat. I need to find somewhere to live soon. I don’t know if this post is downcast. I felt I should write something, and all this came out. I could review it and rewrite the whole thing, but this is how I'm feeling and I think it’ll make good reading for myself in a few months’ time. Publishing it means I WILL look at it again.

I can’t promise my next post will be more positive, but I’ll try my best.

In other news, I’m returning to England next Thursday. YAAAAY! (See, more positive already!) Thursday because I have Fridays off, and I’ll save money on hostel fees by not staying any longer than necessary. I will be going to Sheffield. I’m not sure if I’ve told anyone yet.

I’m determined to end this post on a high note, so I’ll leave you with Klaus and Ula. “Who?!” I hear you cry. Klaus and Ula are an elderly German couple I encountered in the hostel bar on Tuesday night. We had a great chat. I’m sure my German was awful, but we understood each other, so that’s the main thing.

Bis bald!

It's not the end of the world now, darlin', but I can see it from here

Blog #2 has come around a lot quicker than I was expecting. It's ridiculously difficult to find the hash key on a MacBook keyboard (alt+3 for the record). Someone have a word. Anyway...

Today's topic is housing. Second years planning to sort it out themselves, if you value your sanity, get something sorted before you leave Britain. Get in contact with people over the net as soon as you find out where you'll be spending your year. Head out over the summer, spend a week or so there and find a place to live.

I say this because it's the exact opposite of what I did. Instead of finding somewhere to live, I spent the summer in denial; "I'm not going until the end of August, I've got loads of time. I'll get on wg-gesucht next week." The end of my third week in Germany is approaching rapidly and I still have yet to take up permanent residence anywhere. There have been numerous occasions in these past weeks where I've seriously considered jacking it all in and returning home with my tail between my legs. I can take the year out and pick third year back up again next year. The fact that I'm still out here shows I managed to talk some sense into myself, but no doubt those feelings will surface again. All this uncertainty isn't good for me.

You'll get told you should probably expect to spend the first few nights in a hostel. I suppose the purpose of this post is to tell you to do some leg work before hand, and not rely on being able to get to whichever country you're going to and find accommodation straight away. I expect most of you have more common sense than that anyway.

Thankfully, my accommodation in Russia is being sorted for me! :D

So anyway, school has been interesting this week. I've discovered I don't really like children. I said that the last time I worked with kids, too. I assumed it was just because I was working with year 9s. Year 9s and year 10s are the worst kind of school children. I'm sure you all remember being in years 9 and 10, and will understand why I dislike them. This time, the children aren't in years 9 and 10, rather they are 9 and 10 years old. Actually, that's unfair. I quite like the 9 and 10 year olds. They have a genuine enthusiasm for school, and seem to enjoy hunting me down so they can practice their new English phrases and questions on me. The ones I don't like are the 6 year olds. The little sh!ts. Luckily, 6 year olds don't study English, so I only have to deal with them once a week.

I've been a lot more involved in English lessons this week. I basically took a lesson on my own yesterday; other than giving the homework at the end and instructions to sit in a circle at the back of the class, the teacher only intervened a couple of times, and that was mostly just to translate an instruction into German. There was only one incident where the teacher had to intervene because the kids had no idea what was going on and I was just confused as to why they weren't getting it. I was trying to get them to write something down, but they had no idea that's what I wanted them to do because I hadn't told them to take their pencils out.

I'm pretty sure that's all I wanted to say. So I'll leave you with a video discovered through my sister's current obsession with Doctor Who and John Simm, and my nostalgic YouTube video searching.



Tschüss!

Madness is the gift that has been given to me

My Year Abroad started just under two weeks ago, so I feel now would be a good time to update you all.

For those of you who don't know, I'm spending the first six months of my year abroad working in a primary school in Dresden. All of the foreign language assistants going to Germany were required to spend four days (30/8 - 2/9) on a training course in Altenberg, a small place near Cologne and Bonn.

Due to my complete lack of organisation, it got to a week before I was due to be in Germany and I still had no idea how I was getting out there. Some quick research made it apparent a flight was out of the question, so I went for a train. I took the Eurostar to Brussels Midi, waited there for about 90 minutes and went on to Cologne from there.

I stayed in Cologne overnight, and met up with some of my fellow language assistants at the main train station the next day. As I've already said, the training course was held in a place called Altenberg, not far from Cologne. It took us about 45 minutes by coach to get there. Literally seconds before the coaches pulled in, the sky opened. "Wilkommen in Deutschland!" said one of the women in charge. We were forced to stand outside trying not to get too wet while our luggage was taken off the coach. Not long after we made our way into the building, the rain stopped. Typical. We then had our introductory meeting, and were divided off into rooms. Dinner that night was vegetarian friendly and actually not bad. It also introduced us to the cook's apparent obsession with drowning salad in dressing. After dinner we were split off into groups based on the state we were going to. Each of the groups was headed by an experienced English teacher from each state.

The building itself is attached to a cathedral. The place is pretty impressive looking. The architecture is amazing. It's mainly used for Catholic youth group meetings and whatnot. Due to this, the place isn't allowed to have alcohol for the students. However, if the PAD (the people behind the course) were to provide and sell alcohol themselves, this would be perfectly acceptable. So there was a bar!

For anyone who hasn't gone on the course yet, I have a brief warning for you; 6 am bells. Yes, that's right. Bells. Not just a brief 6 rings to alert us to the time. Five minutes of the stuff. NOT impressed. Regardless, I went back to sleep, and was rudely awoken for the second time at ten to seven when the bells went off again. This fantastic start to the day was compounded when Jonny (my room mate) and I turned up (5 minutes) late to our second Saxony meeting. The miserable teacher in charge then alerted us to the fact that one of the most important things to remember is 'be punctual'.

We were then split off into work groups. In these groups, we discussed the content of some videos we'd seen earlier and were then split into groups of three. In these groups, we worked on an age-appropriate lesson we were to give to the rest of the group the next day. My group had to come up with something to give to 8 to 10-year-olds. This was probably the hardest task, as there are things you would do with a class of kids but not a group of mates pretending to be kids. Like dance. Or pretend to be a cow.

The lessons the next day were all good. Until it came to ours. Our lesson was a bit short, and I messed up in a few places. The assessor said his piece. Everyone else said he'd been a bit harsh, but I think he did make some good points. No one expected the lesson to be perfect. I felt it was a good experience, overall.

The next day, I had to make my way to Dresden. Seven hours on a train with a change over at Frankfurt Airport is not a pleasant way to spend a dank Thursday. My teacher contact, Frau Teichert, met me at the train station, took me to the youth hostel and then took me back to her place to have supper with her and her husband.

Friday was my first day at the school. I met some of the staff and the kids and generally enjoyed it. Over the weekend, Frau Teichert and her husband took me on a mini tour of Dresden and gave me a brief history of the city.

So that was last week. This week was first week at the school. There's not much to say about it really. The teachers are nice. The kids are nice and seem genuinely interested in learning. My ability to speak English impressed a few of them. My lack of ability to understand them when they speak at warp three with their bizarre accent has amused more than a few of them. So that's that. My week wasn't particularly interesting, it has to be said. One thing I did notice, which won't interest most, but is kinda cool, is that some of the teachers write letters like in Cyrillic. The letters P and B in lowercase and the letters A and M in capitals all look like written Cyrillic.

One exciting thing has happened this week, and that is that I have bought a ticket to go see Avenged Sevenfold in Munich, precisely a week before I go to see them in London. Those of you who have never heard of this band clearly haven't spent enough time around me. So yes, that's exciting.

My aims for the next week are to get somewhere to live, register and open up a bank account.

You can expect another post within the next month. I think that's realistic.