Week 2 19/09/05

Hello to everybody out there who cares.
Everything is starting to settle down over here. I moved into my Studentenwohnheim on Friday, which is a seven storey sharehouse with about 180 people living there. There are people from all over the world on my level, with the majority coming from syria and bulgaria. There really is not much difference between these people, as the syrians smoke apple tobacco through their crazy arabic water pipe, and the bulgarians smoke apricot tobacco through their crazy arab water pipe. Following this, they sit around and have animated conversations in their native tongues, to which all I can do is nod and smile..Anyway, this building is in a very cool part of Dortmund, where loads of young people live. It is close to various shops, and a short walk from some very groovy pubs. Every tuesday they have a party in the cellar, where there is a fully stocked bar. They charge 1 euro for a half litre beer, which I think could be quite dangerous... Good thing my free day looks like it will be wednesday.

I made quite a lot of friends at my orientation course, most of whom are english people doing the same job as me as part of their language degrees. This weekend we are all meeting up in Düsseldorf for a a bit of a pub crawl. There are so many cities in the Ruhr valley that are so close to one another, it's like a giant metropolis of about 10 million people, but with each city having it's own unique character and breweries. The teachers at the school are also very nice, one of them has organised to take me to the soccer tonight to watch Borussia Dortmund play. This team is absolutely masssive and is the heart and soul of the city. Every single homegame they pack over 80 000 people into their Westfalenstadion, even when the team is not doing too well like they are this year. It should be a blast, they pack even more people into the German league games, because unlike for European and International games, where stadiums must be all seaters, terraces are still allowed to be used at Bundesliga games. I'm hoping that I'll be in the seething mass of drunken Germans for tonight's game...

My first week at school has been going quite well. I basically spend most of my time standing in front of english classes talking about Australia, and answering questions from the kids. Most of the questions so far have been the predictable shark/kangaroo/poisonous reptile ones. By the end of the week I think I'll be able to draw a map of Australia with all of the towns and inlets with my eyes closed. Every now and then, however, you get a curve ball like 'what is the situation regarding the relationship and integration of the Aborigines?', which generally is the sort of question that you could devote hours to, and it is quite hard to give a simple 2 sentance answer in simple english so that the students can understand.