I'm aware it's been a while since I last posted. So much for the "twice a week" goal I had when I started this thing up. In my defence, I've been a very busy bee recently. Since starting to actually teach, my evenings have been taken up with researching Cambridge Language Certificates, planning lessons and making handouts. Meanwhile, though I am now sitting in less lessons at school I'm spending vast amounts of time acquainting myself with the photocopier. I've done so much photocopying this week I could rival John Bellamy (joke for the Sheffies there).
Because, yes, I am now doing the exact thing that the powers at be in Altenberg told us not to do: I am planning and teaching lessons entirely on my own. I think the only reason this is sort of allowed is that I am tutoring pupils for a voluntary exam, and am not actually in charge of anything that may affect their curriculum-based education. However, it's still pretty damn nerve-wracking, and I can't help feel that it's a pretty large responsibility for entirely untrained newbie such as myself. My first lesson was for the higher level exam and was frankly a disaster; due to various sporting commitments, only two pupils out of sixteen could actually make the class and I spent most of the time chatting to two said pupils about how I had little idea about how to go about teaching them the stuff I'm pretty sure they already know anyway. Fortunately, the two lower level classes I have since taken went much more swimmingly, mostly because it's easier to teach people from basics because there's no threat of patronising them. The Wedneday class of twenty or so students was a bit more raucous than Thursday's fourteen (and Thursday's class are already by far my favourites as one of the girls gave me half a bag of gummy bears) but I plodded resiliently through and hopefully didn't make too much a pig's ear of the whole thing. I now have two weeks of Herbstferien to panic about how to teach them the next bit.
That's the work update. Now for the social side. I have, since I last posted, experienced my first proper German night out. It was one of the most bizarre nights out I've ever had. Deprived of our binge drinking student lifestyle for so long, we all went a bit bonkers, downing Lidl's bargain wine and beers with gusto, shotting neat vodka and sampling large quantities of Satan's hell-water itself, Obstwasser.* The result was brutal: we were all ridiculously smashed, and I can't speak for anyone else but I remember next to nothing of how we got to into the club (other than managing to muscle our way in without apparently having to pay or give proof of ID) and even less of what happened inside it. I know I liked it, even though I have since discovered from a Referendarin at my school that "it's the place you go when everything else is closed". I know we accidentally split up into two groups, reunited only when the club closed at the stupidly early (for Germany) time of around 3am**. I know I moshed to Papa Roach, and acquired two beers that I'm fairly sure I didn't pay for. I know, too, that I somehow managed to lock myself in the toilets, and stood there panicking for a while before I realised I just hadn't pushed the door handle down properly. The walk back to Matt's is even more blurred, save for Sarah taking a detour through the fountain, and to this day I don't know how we managed to make it back there - Amelia apparently has a superhero like sense of direction when sozzled. We eventually crashed out at about 6am (some of us with our head on our arms at the table) and awoke early the following afternoon nursing horrendous hangovers and trying to piece our memories back together. Absolute insanity. I can't wait to do it again.
That was Saturday. Fast forward to Wednesday and a German BBQ. I still don't really know why I was there, because it was for the Klasse 9 and 10 mentors to swap stories and advice and nothing to do with the English department at all. But, as ya'll know, I'm never one to turn down a social invitation particularly when there's the promise of free sausage, so I trundled happily along and had a nice time. Thursday promised yet more opportunities for social buttiflication in the form of Stammtisch (for you non-German types that essentially an excuse to meet up and drink beer under the pretext of speaking German). I went along with some other lovely English Fremdsprachassistenen from the Ruhrgebiet area, and though due to a late arrival we unfortunately failed to locate the actual Stammtisch with all the other nationalities, we had our own we Stammtisch auf English which proved to be just as much fun. I unfortunately had to leave just as the party was getting started (not before getting me a proper German Erdinger Weisbier though) but I hope we have a repeat at some point where I can stay longer.
And now, unbelievably, I'm back in England. I know it seems like I've hardly been in Germany five minutes, but it's the Herbstferien for two weeks, so I thought it's be an idea to come back and have a catch up with my homies. To be perfectly honest, I think I needed this break - Germany has been excellent so far, far surpassing my expectations (which were, let's face it, pretty damn low), but it's been both a difficult and hectic month and I just needed some good ol' comforts of England. I've already had a cheese sandwich, drank a million cups of tea (or so it seems after my stringent rationing) and given both my parents several bone crushing hugs a-piece. Over the next couple of weeks I'm staying on several different floors and in several different beds, all the while in the company of those I've been a-missin'. I'm very, very, very excited about it, and I'll be sure to give you a low down on my antics once I'm back D-side. For now, stay cool, amigos and enjoy your Autumn as much as I'm going to.
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*Think tequila but mixed with armpit and that smell you get when too many different dinners are cooking at once in a busy block of flats. Vile beyond belief, it burned my throat all he way down and I could still sense the foul aroma on my tongue days later.
** Direct and melodramatic quote from me to Lyndsay: "I thought I'd never see you again!" I'm such a drama drunk.
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