Greetings from the man who loves rain so much he follows the winter around the world. I trust everybody is doing well, I am also doing well, but do not have nearly as many tall tales and humorous anecdotes to regale you with as in previous emails. Basically I have got my timetable set in concrete, with every monday being free. This is particulaly useful, as it means that I can travel on the weekends and not have to worry about getting beck to school by monday morning. Speaking of which, this coming weekend I will be going up to Kiel with one of my German housemates, to see the northern part of the country. Kiel is a port on the baltic sea, which also happens to be one of the only places in Germany where I hear the waves are big enough to surf. While I am looking forward to seeing the ocean again, I'm not sure if I will be brave enough to get in the water up there, with the water being about 8 degrees and all... Basically our plan is to drive up to Kiel, and catch up with a few of his mates, before heading down to Hamburg, which is only a few hours away. From all accounts Hamburg is a pretty cool place to go, with heaps of groovy clubs on offer along the Reeperbahn. This strip is actually the place where the beatles played some of their first gigs before they got big.
As far as my job is concerned, it seems that I have got a pretty sweet deal. Most of my time is spent taking small conversation courses in a seminar room, with about 4 or 5 students in years 12 and 13. Since these students are all 18 or 19, most of these sessions are spent talking in English about the merits of the various clubs and discos in Dortmund. So I find out where to spend my German tax payers' money on the weekend, and they practice their conversational english. It's a win-win situation, really. Having spoken to other people in my situation, I know of one person who is being forced to take an entire year 5 class for the rest of the year, because their teacher is sick. This is a person with no teaching experience, and only 2 years of an arts degree in the UK.. Oh well, at least it's not me...
The thing that's starting to get to me is the fact that I come home from school at about lunch time and have absolutely nothing to do. German TV is shocking, there's only so much time you can spend watching Steve Urkel talking in German before you start going insane. Since most of the people in my WG are at uni during the day, it's sort of like cabin fever until nightfall. However, once the sun goes down, the bulgarians start drinking, and all sorts of hilarity ensues. You can often have a pretty good night without even having to venture outside the building. This snap was taken on a random sunday evening.
The good thing about being in the Ruhr Valley, however, is that there are heaps of cities, all within about 20 minutes by train. In each of these cities there are about 5 or 6 english assistant teachers, so it is very easy to organise messy pub crawls on the weekend. So this is what we do every weekend. We pick a city then endeavor to drink it dry and eat all of the döner kebabs within a 5 mile radius, before getting the red eye train home. That is my life in Germany.... Anyway, I must conclude this untidy ramble, and wander around the streets aimlessly for a while until the bulgarians are ready to crack open their first bottle of vodka.
All the best Ed
No comments:
Post a Comment