Das alles ist Deutschland

I know it has been a long time since the last update. Things have been a little crazy around here I guess. I will try to update you on some of the things I have been doing lately.

For my birthday I went to school and then after school was picked up by one of the English teachers and driven to another English teacher's house. We had coffee and cake and they gave me some chocolate and flowers as presents. Then I, along with their kids (they each have 2) and one of their husbands, we went for a walk in the woods. People around here are currently obsessed with gathering mushrooms. We looked for some, but since that was a frequently traveled path, there were only poisonous ones left. Apparently they are going to take me mushroom picking if we have a weekend with appropriate mushroom weather. No idea what this is all about, but it is a daily topic of conversation in the teachers' room it seems.

Then Friday was a day off since it was Tag der Deutschen Einheit (German Unity Day that celebrates E and W Germany becoming one country again). I met some friends in Berlin and we went to this big concert and festival at Brandenburg Gate. There were a ton of people there, and it wasn't really quite as exciting as the ads had made it out to be. We got to see some very very bad German bands play 2 songs each along with several thousand not particularly hygenic Germans packed in around us. For those of you on the Winter Term trip '08, I saw Scooter live in concert, but sadly there was no jump dancing. I guess the whole thing was an experience anyway. However, between bands the Dj's played a techno version of the West Virginia, mountain Mama song. Which everyone knew the words to. How weird is that??

I recommend the watching of these videos for some idea of what we saw.
Scooter Jumping All Over the World He didn't sing this song, but it is my favorite to make fun of.
Die Prinzen "Deutschland" This was sung, and it is all about how Germany is the best country in the world. It is quite funny. "Everything is Germany. We are all Germany. There is no where else, but here, but here. Everything is Germany. We are all Germany. We live and we die here."
Stefanie Heinzmann No idea what this is about. Most of the people sang in English, weirdly enough.
Befour A German abomination of music. I will post more as I come across them.

AND for all of you who thought the Numa Numa song was funny with the weird guy in the dorm room, you should check out the actual music video. The song is popular in its own right here and the video was on German MTv.

Enough about weird German music videos.

Then Friday night 2 of my friends came back with me to Brandenburg and spent the night. It was a little weird in my tiny apartment to fit 3 people, but we made it work. Saturday we went shopping around Brandenburg and I showed them the sights. We attempted to make Mexican food for dinner--taco salad. It kinda worked, but cheddar cheese is not available here. No idea why. So we subsititued some other weird yellow cheese. Also haven't been able to find vanilla extract to make chocolate chip cookies. Ah German grocery shopping. However, I can buy at least 6 different kinds of meat made out of liver, but no cheddar cheese.

Sunday we went to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin--super cool museum known for Babylonian and Greek and Roman objects. There was a huge special exhibit about Babylon there so we wanted to see it.

Yesterday I went to IKEA with my friend Erica to buy some fun things like a bigger pillow, a cookie sheet, and some other fun IKEA-y things. It is definitely a favorite store. Too bad there are none in KY. Also went to the 'Story of Berlin' museum with tht 9th graders on a field trip. It was really interesting and had the history of Berlin since its founding as a fishing village.

Now I am back at school life. It's not so easy. Today I was chastised for not correcting the kids enough when they speak English. I am not sure if it is because of the exchange students that lived with my family or travelling or what, but I don't hear mistakes as often as the teachers do. However, I WAS correcting students. The teacher was not in the classroom with me. I was not correcting every single mistake, but this is a kind of remedial English class for 11th graders. They are terrified to talk anyway, and if I stop them every other word to correct them, they will stop talking completely. German classes also grade really hard. I feel kinda bad for the students sometimes. They are corrected in front of the whole class and then the grade is announced to the whole class as well. That would never fly in the US. The kids are demons and don't listen when the teacher is talking and ESPECIALLY do not listen when I am talking. No idea how to solve that problem. The teachers are also frustrated. I think it would begin with some discipline, but I don't think that exists here and it's hard to break 15 year olds of habits like that. Well, it is kinda hard to get 15 year olds to do ANYTHING as I have discovered. They are just a pain.

I should be getting internet in my apartment on Friday. That will be a welcome contact to the outside world. I will be able to post pictures and talk on Skype and not have to haunt the local library and battle students for dinosaur computers.