Teaching and Historical Integrity

One of the highlights of my week is planning my lesson for the Leistungskurse-- I have free rein to whatever the heck I want for one Unterrichtsstunde each week, as long as it's educational and related to the US. I also placed certain requirements on myself: I do NOT want to try to trivialize, embellish, or blatantly ignore unfortunate moments in the US's history. No Texas-ized or Arizona-ized versions of history for me, thanks.

I recently finished a 3-week unit on the civil rights movement. Even though I do think that calling February "Black History Month" is a problematic, especially when you don't talk about Black (or Chicano, or Latino/a, or Asian-American) history for the rest of the year, it did fit in perfectly with the bigger unit that I've been doing on contemporary civil rights (Westboro Baptist Church, the Dream Act). They've heard of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., of course, but I think this was the first time that they focused on specific events or topics.

At the same time, I sometimes wonder if I'm going too far in the other direction; I hope the students don't think I'm being Debbie Downer and ruining their romanticized idea of the US (although this may not be a bad thing). However, I think it's a good thing for the students to see an American being critical of the US's history and being honest about ongoing societal injustice. I've gotten unsolicited positive feedback from one of the teachers, so I guess that means that they enjoy my topics. (I'm still working on the content delivery part of my lessons; I have a hard time shutting up.)

I'm often jealous of the ETAs who get to do cultural lessons, sing songs, and make hand turkeys for Thanksgiving, but I heart planning these lessons. :)


And, as always, here's a random story: one of the teachers keeps telling me that I need to stop by her Leistungskurs. (I had asked her if she'd rather have me in the 8th grade class or in the LK; she wanted me in the 8th grade class.) I had a free hour earlier this week, so I decided to drop in for an hour. As I was sitting in class, I thought to myself, You know, all of the teachers have distinct voices and accents, but this teacher has a really adorable accent. And then I wondered, Why am I thinking about her voice in the middle of class? ... It's because I've never heard her speak English! I pointed that out to her at the end of class, and she laughed and said, "I guess we should do that more often." I still can't believe that I've only spoken German with her for six months!

Friends in High Places

One of my gifts is my ability to network without putting in any effort. It has been wonderful for getting recommendation letters and even jobs, but it can also be a bit uncomfortable and awkward. The strangest thing is that it happens again and again and again, whether it's meeting a Berlin family who had been looking for an English native speaker to talk to their kids at dinner during my family vacation in the Harz Mountains (which reminds me, they never called me), knowing administrators who happen to be looking for another student to help out in the office, or knowing just the right combination of professors and administrators who were willing to fight for my ability to use my scholarship abroad. (Thanks again! It was a great semester!)

Several weeks ago, I babysat Dumpling and one of his friends while their mothers went to a film premier party. The mother and kid came back to visit the following week, which happened to be the first week of the Berlinale. I casually mentioned that I had tickets to The Guard and wanted to see another documentary film, and she said, "Oh, I recommended The Guard on my show! I don't know why you want to see (the other film), though..."

Long story short, the mother is a film critic, and she is invited regularly to film premieres and film festivals. My friends and I ended up watching the documentary for free, and she invited me to the Berlin premiere of "Mein Kampf" last night.

I got to see the red carpet, the "paparazzi" (almost non-existent, which should have been a clue about the quality of the film), and literally bumped into the actor who played young Hitler. Another bonus to being a press person is the free drinks! I snagged a free Bionade before the movie, and Redakteurin (as I will now call her) handed me prosecco after the film, possibly to wash away the memories of the film. You could also grab free soup and rolls.

Let me stop here and say that all of these perks made the evening somewhat enjoyable. Unfortunately, the movie itself was less than enjoyable, and not just because the characters spoke in Austrian dialect. To put it nicely, German-speaking Europe does not have a Mangel an Hitler films, and the world is not a better or more enlightened place after the production of this film. As Redakteurin ranted, the film couldn't decide whether it was going to treat the subject (Hitler's adolescence and "acquaintanceship" with some Jewish men) seriously or comedically. It ended up failing on both parts. It might have helped if the film had explicitly said that it mixes incredibly fictionalized scenarios (e.g. Hitler falling asleep on a patterned pillow and waking up with a swastika on his face? Hitler trying to hang himself but tying a crappy knot and getting it stuck around his stomach?) with a few actual events, but even that is doubtful.

A moment of hilarity from after the film: Redakteurin was talking with a German author about the age (and, therefore, cultural) gap between the three of us. Somehow, they got on the topic of Woody N., a very famous American director. They were flabbergasted when I admitted that I had never heard of this Woody N. guy; apparently, he's really well-known in Germany. Redakteurin stepped in and said that a lot of Woody N.'s films never made it to the theaters in the US, but they were picked up in Germany, so maybe that's why I had never heard of him. On the U-Bahn home, I finally realized that they were saying Woody Allen and mispronouncing his last name. Probably should have thought of that earlier; there aren't many people named Woody running around...

Betriebsstörungen, Death Threats, and a Trip to My New BL

New BL and I have been talking about meeting up one weekend for about two months, and we finally decided to meet on Saturday at 2:30 PM. It takes about 47 minutes with the U- and S-Bahn to get to her stop. Not a big deal, right?

Yeah, well, I wasn't paying attention, so I went the wrong direction on the U-Bahn. I figured out my mistake pretty quickly, but then I had to wait another five minutes for the other U-Bahn. Then, when I got in the S-Bahn, I realized that we were moving slowly. Very slowly. We waited at one stop for about three minutes for no apparent reason (no crowds), and then we chugged along at, oh, 10 miles per hour. And then we stopped. And waited. And waited. And waited. About ten minutes later, there was an announcement that told all of us to get off, no explanation. The train left, and another S-Bahn rolled in about 5 minutes later. We boarded. And then we waited, waited, waited... and another announcement told us that there were Betriebsstörungen at Friedrichstrasse. The S-Bahn was not running in either direction.

I still don't have a functional cell phone because I can't find a place to buy minutes for my plan, so I started to look for a pay phone. During my trip up and down the platform, a woman stepped into my path and started screeching.

I think her exact (translated) quote was: "I hate you Chinese! Go away, Chinese girl! If you come closer, I'm going to knock you dead!" In most cases, this would be slightly terrifying. However, even at that exact moment, I did not feel particularly threatened. Why? Because the platform was pretty crowded, and because she was running backwards, making shooing away gestures. To put it into mass market fiction terms, it was like she was one of Dracula's minions and I was a vampire slayer with garlic, crosses, and a squirt gun full of holy water. My first reaction was to be upset at the racism, but within five minutes, my line of thought was closer to, "Hey, is the Tea Party in Germany? This is going to make a great blog post! Oh. These thoughts make me a terrible person."

(Yes, I considered yelling back, "I'm not Chinese! I'm Korean! And American!" (with a number of inappropriate words mixed in there) or shouting, "BOO!"-- but I am classy, so I smiled sweetly, turned, and walked in the other direction.)

(I realize that making fun of an obviously mentally ill person is disrespectful and full of able-bodied privilege, which is very much not classy, but, given that I was on the receiving end of a death threat, I think I earned the right to a little black humor here.)

Anyway, after walking away from Dracula Woman, I determined that there were no pay phones anywhere at the Brandenburger Tor station. (Yes, that makes this story even more random: I wasn't exactly in Marzahn. Brandenburger Tor? I wonder how many Asian tourists she had scared off that day.) So I tried the next best thing: I asked strangers if I could use their cell phones. I'd pay them, of course.

Fortunately, I chose well, and not only did a very nice family let me use their phone, but they also asked if I wanted to join them. They were riding up to the end station, and they could tell me how to get from that station to New BL's stop. Sweet.

About 45 minutes later, I arrived at New BL's Haltestelle. When I spoke with her on the stranger's cell phone, I told her that I had email access, and I had emailed her from my Kindle on the bus. I waited for about twenty minutes before checking my email and realizing that she wanted me to go directly to her apartment.

I found the correct intersection, but then I was supposed to find a specific color building. I looked to the left and to the right, and all of the buildings looked pretty darn similar to me. I ended up walking up to every door and looking at the names on the bell. Eventually, I found her name, rang her bell, and was buzzed in. And then I didn't remember which floor she lived on, so I just took the elevator halfway and checked every door until I found her name. (I knew she lived semi-close to the top, so that helped.)

I had baked some cookies before the visit, so I brought a few for New BL and her sons. New BL's younger son asked, "What are the cookies called?" "Sie heissen... chocolate chip pudding Kekse." "Wie heissen sie?" "Auf Englisch heissen sie chocolate chip pudding Kekse." Then, New BL entered the room. "Mama, wie heissen diese Kekse?" "Amerikanische Schokolade Kekse, oder? Du kannst K fragen." "Sie heissen immer noch chocolate chip pudding Kekse..."

After we finished eating cookies, her chocolate marzipan brownies (which were AMAZING), and homemade cappuccino, New BL and I went on a 90-minute tour of her Stadtteil. It's a very green and family-friendly area with a lot of parks. We also saw the Stadtteil Rathaus and two churches, and she told me the history behind the names of two sections of the Stadtteil.

When we got back, New BL started dinner (a Tunisian dish-- eggs soft boiled in tomatoes, herb potatoes, and Kiba, also known as cherry-banana juice), and she thought it would be a good idea for me to play a game with the boys. "Sie spielen gerne V. Hast du von V gehört?" ('V' was pronounced like the English letter 'V.') I claimed that I had never heard of a game called 'V' and asked how you played, just as the boys broke out their Wii system. Ha! I won the first game of bowling (beginner's luck), but they demolished me in the second round.

After dinner, we played two rounds of "Zocken," which is a dice/gambling game that was actually a lot of fun. (I lost twice.)

Fortunately, the way back to my apartment was much less eventful than the way there. The most excitement was when a drunk guy fell and dropped champagne in the U-Bahn. Of course, the champagne exploded, and everyone jumped. Fortunately, no one was close enough to get sprayed by the champagne or by the shards of broken glass.

And so ended my day.