Briefly

Yay for Obama winning today! I believe there is a brighter future for the US and for the world now. Hopefully the change he speaks of will actually happen. It was nice to be able to present about President-elect Obama to my classes today. I even had a student tell me she was proud of the US today. That's something coming from a German 16 year old. A lot of them had a "mir egal" opinion which is "I don't care". They are Germans, they live in Germany, and they don't really care what happens in the US. That was the remedial English 11th graders though. It's really hard to get them interested in anything! The 12th and 13th graders were far more receptive and we watched Obama's speech in the 13th grade. The teacher and I tag-team taught the classes. The students were pretty caught up in it, which impressed me. I think they were also intrigued to hear Obama mentioned the Berlin Wall in his speech. There was kind of a noise and rustling when that happened, but I was also a little too focused on the speech at that point to see what they were doing. I get to talk about the elections again tomorrow. Should be interesting. Most people here seem pretty pleased with the outcome. There is an article on CNN that you can read here

I would also like to point out, that checking the weather forecast for Brandenburg for the next 10 days shows cold drizzle every day. Temperatures ranging between 36 and 56 Fahrenheit. That's just not even possible. Fall is always my favorite season because of those perfect, crisp, clear fall days. The days where you need a sweater and that's about it. Going to the apple and pumpkin orchard and getting fresh ones. Wandering outside and hiking. Playing in the leaves in front of Old Centre with friends. This is what I love about fall in KY. In Germany, I love very little about fall. It is always cold and wet and usually foggy. My school is across the river from me and I can usually see part of it from out my kitchen window--but lately it has been so foggy I can't even see across the river! I don't recall the last time I saw the sun here. I am fairly certain it still exists somewhere. But cold and wet make it very hard to be motivated to go outside places.

All of you who have nice weather, please send some to northern Germany. It could use it!