Love You To
ILP and its assorted experiences have fashioned me into the most bipolar version of myself I've ever encountered.
Its Thursday afternoon and I do not have class tomorrow PRAISE THE LORD, though I do have to meet in front of our classroom on Waldweg (Street) at 8am tomorrow. From there we are taking a bus the 2-3 hours to Weimar, Germany. For those of you who aren't in the know (which is probably most anybody reading this... save perhaps my dad), Weimar is a big deal as far as German culture goes. Goethe and Schiller both set up residence there, as well as Bach, Franz Liszt (of whom we have the absolute scariest picture in our reader for class, talk about Ungeheuer), and Nietzsche. The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) got its name from the city (because the Constitution was signed there), Bauhaus spent its formative years here (the architectural style/movement... not the band), and about 20 km outside the city was the site of Buchenwald. So all in all Weimar is a pretty interesting place. I know we are seeing both Goethe and Schiller's homes tomorrow... I don't know what else, but as long as I am able to hold up it should be a good time. Its gotta be better than sitting in the ninth floor of our classroom unit, straining to hear my soft-spoken German teacher's voice over the howling wind (seriously, its like I spent 3 hours in a haunted house every morning).
After class this afternoon I had my first Sprechstunde (literally, speaking hour... but more like a short meeting) with my teacher. I always get nervous talking to language teachers one on one, and I have barely been participating in class, and the papers I've been writing for homework the past few nights have been completed when I've been way too tired... but it turned out being fine. I don't know yet what I got on my placement test (he had misplaced my grade, but there were some jerks who were flaunting their scores), but everything we talked about made me feel a lot better. I walked away feeling that familiar frustration, like someone has placed a knife between your teeth and you've got to try to emit some coherent sounds without the blade slicing your throat open, but thats starting to feel normal. I talked to him about my worries about not finding any sources for my Referat, and he told me he'd look and either email me or try to bring something in for me next week. Then he mentioned I need to talk more in class, and I nodded with the "yeah, I know" look, but everything he said was just so nice to hear. I have been hesitant to sing this mans praises, just because I am waiting for something to happen and crush the few things that I hold in fondness here, but it looks like here we are good. He sort of reminds me of the professor I had for five of the six quarters of German I took at UCSC. Its not that Walter Campbell and I had a better than average teacher-student relationship, but I was just so charmed by his ways and sense of humor that I loved him (as do all of the UCSC kids here who had him). Its harder this time around with Matthias Beilein, probably because he is actually German, but in other ways that makes him better.
There are three teachers for the ILP course this summer, a woman teaching the lowest class, and two men for the Mittelstufe and Oberstufe. Herr Beilein, Lehrer of the Oberstufe, rides his bike in his good-for-every-day-of-the-week black suit. Each day he stands around smoking with the other teachers during the Pause, always sporting a different colored shirt. He wears the type of glasses that I've come to think of as German, just because I don't really recall seeing them in such abundance anywhere else. These "German" glasses are the round lensed kind, the sort one would assume would detract from ones appearance. My teacher always has a sort of rumpled look about him, but even through that he manages to seem intimidating until you actually sit down and talk with him. But as he was talking to me in our meeting this afternoon I was surprised once again by how nice he is. I have gotten out of the habit of assuming that people will be nice to you (German kids don't smile back at you like American ones automatically do... out of all the Kinder I've encountered here, only one baby smiled back at me, and I think it was just because it wasn't old enough to know better), so it sort of surprises me when someone seems to be going out of their way to make you feel better. He wasn't throwing rose petals at my feet or anything, but he was (very rapidly) talking about how I had come to him after the first day of class and said I wasn't sure if I had been placed in the right class blah blah blah, and he was refuting those early claims with evidence from the past two weeks. I think he might have been going a bit out of his way because I know I am not that much up to speed, but he did say some nice things about my writing that were unexpected. But all in all him saying "Keine Sorgen" just made me feel so much better. Thats all I need to hear. It'd also be nice to wake up and realize that my two Referaete are over, but I think that feeling is still a good way off.
In that vein, I should go get to some work. Before that, though, I have to comment about how much I love this weather, even though that might be a passing feeling if it stays like this for another 5 months (apparently this is weather akin to what is supposed to happen in October). I also love the amount of coats and jackets one can purchase over here. Of all the money I have dropped in the past few weeks (but really, I have been trying to be cheap... I have just had to pay for a lot of things this month only because I've just moved here), I have only purchased three articles of clothing- a tan courderoy blazer (very academic), a Uni Goettingen sweatshirt (very American- no one wears hoodies here), and then today, a teal zip up jacket. I am still in the market for a good Regenmantel (rain coat), but I want to look around a bit more before I take the plunge. Every time I go shopping here I have the desire to return to America with a closet full of jackets and coats.
And a on a passing note- the next time a group of Germans invite you to play cards with them, decline unless you have a good hour to spend feeling really confused about some more-complex-than-should-be-allowed version of Go Fish. Heed my words, people, because you'll come out of there feeling more confused about the world than when you went in.
Its Thursday afternoon and I do not have class tomorrow PRAISE THE LORD, though I do have to meet in front of our classroom on Waldweg (Street) at 8am tomorrow. From there we are taking a bus the 2-3 hours to Weimar, Germany. For those of you who aren't in the know (which is probably most anybody reading this... save perhaps my dad), Weimar is a big deal as far as German culture goes. Goethe and Schiller both set up residence there, as well as Bach, Franz Liszt (of whom we have the absolute scariest picture in our reader for class, talk about Ungeheuer), and Nietzsche. The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) got its name from the city (because the Constitution was signed there), Bauhaus spent its formative years here (the architectural style/movement... not the band), and about 20 km outside the city was the site of Buchenwald. So all in all Weimar is a pretty interesting place. I know we are seeing both Goethe and Schiller's homes tomorrow... I don't know what else, but as long as I am able to hold up it should be a good time. Its gotta be better than sitting in the ninth floor of our classroom unit, straining to hear my soft-spoken German teacher's voice over the howling wind (seriously, its like I spent 3 hours in a haunted house every morning).
After class this afternoon I had my first Sprechstunde (literally, speaking hour... but more like a short meeting) with my teacher. I always get nervous talking to language teachers one on one, and I have barely been participating in class, and the papers I've been writing for homework the past few nights have been completed when I've been way too tired... but it turned out being fine. I don't know yet what I got on my placement test (he had misplaced my grade, but there were some jerks who were flaunting their scores), but everything we talked about made me feel a lot better. I walked away feeling that familiar frustration, like someone has placed a knife between your teeth and you've got to try to emit some coherent sounds without the blade slicing your throat open, but thats starting to feel normal. I talked to him about my worries about not finding any sources for my Referat, and he told me he'd look and either email me or try to bring something in for me next week. Then he mentioned I need to talk more in class, and I nodded with the "yeah, I know" look, but everything he said was just so nice to hear. I have been hesitant to sing this mans praises, just because I am waiting for something to happen and crush the few things that I hold in fondness here, but it looks like here we are good. He sort of reminds me of the professor I had for five of the six quarters of German I took at UCSC. Its not that Walter Campbell and I had a better than average teacher-student relationship, but I was just so charmed by his ways and sense of humor that I loved him (as do all of the UCSC kids here who had him). Its harder this time around with Matthias Beilein, probably because he is actually German, but in other ways that makes him better.
There are three teachers for the ILP course this summer, a woman teaching the lowest class, and two men for the Mittelstufe and Oberstufe. Herr Beilein, Lehrer of the Oberstufe, rides his bike in his good-for-every-day-of-the-week black suit. Each day he stands around smoking with the other teachers during the Pause, always sporting a different colored shirt. He wears the type of glasses that I've come to think of as German, just because I don't really recall seeing them in such abundance anywhere else. These "German" glasses are the round lensed kind, the sort one would assume would detract from ones appearance. My teacher always has a sort of rumpled look about him, but even through that he manages to seem intimidating until you actually sit down and talk with him. But as he was talking to me in our meeting this afternoon I was surprised once again by how nice he is. I have gotten out of the habit of assuming that people will be nice to you (German kids don't smile back at you like American ones automatically do... out of all the Kinder I've encountered here, only one baby smiled back at me, and I think it was just because it wasn't old enough to know better), so it sort of surprises me when someone seems to be going out of their way to make you feel better. He wasn't throwing rose petals at my feet or anything, but he was (very rapidly) talking about how I had come to him after the first day of class and said I wasn't sure if I had been placed in the right class blah blah blah, and he was refuting those early claims with evidence from the past two weeks. I think he might have been going a bit out of his way because I know I am not that much up to speed, but he did say some nice things about my writing that were unexpected. But all in all him saying "Keine Sorgen" just made me feel so much better. Thats all I need to hear. It'd also be nice to wake up and realize that my two Referaete are over, but I think that feeling is still a good way off.
In that vein, I should go get to some work. Before that, though, I have to comment about how much I love this weather, even though that might be a passing feeling if it stays like this for another 5 months (apparently this is weather akin to what is supposed to happen in October). I also love the amount of coats and jackets one can purchase over here. Of all the money I have dropped in the past few weeks (but really, I have been trying to be cheap... I have just had to pay for a lot of things this month only because I've just moved here), I have only purchased three articles of clothing- a tan courderoy blazer (very academic), a Uni Goettingen sweatshirt (very American- no one wears hoodies here), and then today, a teal zip up jacket. I am still in the market for a good Regenmantel (rain coat), but I want to look around a bit more before I take the plunge. Every time I go shopping here I have the desire to return to America with a closet full of jackets and coats.
And a on a passing note- the next time a group of Germans invite you to play cards with them, decline unless you have a good hour to spend feeling really confused about some more-complex-than-should-be-allowed version of Go Fish. Heed my words, people, because you'll come out of there feeling more confused about the world than when you went in.
posted by Meredesu at 2:47 AM
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