The Festival of Lights and a Catch-up Post

For the most part, Berlin is not a pretty or romantic city. As I think I've mentioned before, it lives up to Klaus Woworeit's quotation: "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy" (Berlin is poor, but sexy). However, the Festival of Lights makes Berlin sparkle, shine, and glow-- quite literally.

Brandenburger Tor

I walked around downtown with S and T on Saturday night. We started at Alexanderplatz, took pictures of the Fernsehturm, took pictures of the Berliner Dom, walked down Unter den Linden, walked a mile to Brandenburger Tor, saw the American Embassy building, saw a few random hotels, and called it a night after walking to the Bundestag and realizing that it didn't have a light show. (We also ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant that is about a gazillion times better than Chipotle. I got a vegetarian burrito with mole tofu! It was the first dish that I've had in Berlin that was actually spicy!) Then, H Skyped me on Sunday afternoon and asked if I wanted to take pictures downtown... and off we went again! It turns out that some of the attractions had already turned off their lights, but we went to Brandenburger Tor and ended up at Gendarmenmarkt to take pictures of the gorgeous square.

Monday was my first day of classes. I signed up for a German C1 class to refresh my grammar and to meet other international students, and I think it will be really helpful. Even on the first day, the teacher was giving us lists of verbs and synonyms, and pointing out which words are more or less formal. My word of the day is "aufpolieren" (to dust off). For example: Ich habe diesen Kurs belegt, weil ich auf meinem geroesteten Deutsch aufpolieren wollte (I took this class because I wanted to brush up on my rusty German). (I think it's a dative preposition in this case.) I also signed up for a Korean class, which meets on Fridays. Yay for working on my fourth language! (Not that you can really call my command of French a third language... but hey, I'm doing a little French aufpolieren on the side. Give me some credit; I'm an American!) (Wow, I'm using and abusing parentheses today.)

Today was the first day where I felt like my teaching was subpar. Usually, I'm pretty good at controlling classes, introducing terms and concepts in an interactive manner, and all of that fun stuff, but it just did not click today. I made a handout for a Leistungskurs with a fake schedule from an American high school and a list of school rules; I thought that would get them talking. The problem is that I never pushed the discussion beyond the most superficial level, and I really should have emphasized that my high school is not representative of many American high schools. For example, most schools have not banned hoodies due to the possibility of students hiding weapons in hoods. I may have gone to Miami, but I did not attend one of the nicer school districts. In fact, Teach For America places in my school district.

On top of that, the 7th graders were loud and crazy, and only half of them accomplished anything during the period... and then I had to give an introduction to the Great Depression in a Grundkurs. Here's the problem: I really don't know that much about the Great Depression. The sad fact is that we covered it in one day in 11th grade. I was 15 years old. That was seven years ago (oh my gosh, I feel old), and I don't remember anything from that lesson. So, yeah, I knew it wasn't going to be a pretty lesson going into class, and then I learned in the first 10 seconds that the students didn't know the word for "stock market" (Boerse). As I said, it wasn't a good lesson.

Another student konnichiwa-ed at me today. I gave him my teacher glare and said, "I'm not Japanese." Apparently, I'm getting scarier, because he slunk over to me later and apologized.