First impressions of Forchheim

I hate to disappoint, but if I don't give you the abridged version of my first weekend in Forchheim, you would all probably hate yourselves by the end... nobody wants to read that much and I don't really want to type that much.

I'll just let you know that, although she was almost 45 minutes late picking me up, my land lady got me from train station on Thursday (yes, the main train station that only has 4 tracks!) and brought me back to the apartment....

Ahh, the apartment.

It's actually pretty big. Unfortunately it looks like the 1970's threw up on it. I've already been to Ikea, so my room looks like it might actually come out of this century, but the rest still needs work! (Hey, have you seen the pictures?! Check them out to get the full experience: PICTURES!) Here are some highlights from the apartment (you can find PICTURES! of all these):

1. American flag bed sheets! I actually slept in that bed for 3 nights. I've never felt more patriotic.
2. the world's tiniest shower. But THANK GOD there's a bath tub... right... don't you always take baths???
3. Slanted ceilings in every room. You can't actually walk all the way to both ends of any room standing straight unless you're about 2 feet tall.
4. the fact that the oven is kaputt (that's German for broken.)
5. (My personal favorite:) The barbed-wire toilet seat. There are no words, you just have to see the pictures.

When I got there, my land lady told me I pick from one of two rooms and said the middle room would just be empty. Well... my choices were

• room with big bed, horrible desk, no way to rearrange, door to the patio, but no real way to decorate
• giant room with 2 twin beds, the world's ugliest couch (seriously), pretty nice desk, but just too big to work with.

So I peak in the middle "empty" room to find a cozy room fully furnished with a nice desk, great storage space and a sky-light type window on the slanted ceiling. I wanted that room! So after 3 nights of crashing in the super giant room I finally just ask my land lady "is it ok if I take the middle smaller room?" You would have thought I asked if I could trade her soul for chocolate. She could not understand at all why I would possibly want the smallest room. I tried to explain that it was just more comfortable for me and I didn't like living in a giant room. I feel like she doesn't trust me anymore because I like small rooms.

But I do love my little ikea'ed middle room! It's working out pretty nicely!

Today I had my first day at school. School actually starts tomorrow, but today was the welcome back teachers meeting. Yeah, one day before students come back, the teachers decide they should show up too. The meeting was in teacher lounge and I was quickly reminded of the German's need for order - my mentor teacher had to help me find a seat because everyone had "their" seat and you can't just sit there (mind you none of these seats are actually assigned, they just always sit in the same place). We got there almost 30 minutes early so there was a lot of meeting people, shaking hands and saying "yes, I do actually know German." I ended up sitting near and talking to a couple new teachers/referendar[in]

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HEY! what's a Referendar? Well, in Germany, to become a teacher, instead of 1 semester of student teaching, you have to go through 2 years as a "probationary teacher" or a "referendar" (and if you're a female - "referendarin"). Meaning these people are usually younger and right out of Uni (that's basically a Europe-wide way of saying "university")... hey, like me!

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I wasn't following the meeting completely because 1. it was hard to follow without being familiar with their educational system and 2. my teachers gave me their text book to look through. I think the text book deserves a post of it's own. I'll give you just this one example:

WHAT TO SAY AND WHAT NOT TO SAY

if you're traveling to the UK or the USA, you'll meet lots of people in many different situations. Both countries and their people are considered very polite. This means they are often less direct that the Germans.

The English are famous for 'understatement'. here is an example: (there's a picture of a wooden bench)

Accurate description: A very hard, uncomfortable bed.

English understatement: the bed is a little on the hard side

the section goes on to explain small talk, which is a completely foreign concept to Germans.

At some point in the meeting, I noticed they started announcing students names then going through their grades "English: 3, Math: 4, Latin: 4 - they passed" (oh, btw, in Germany 1 is the best grade you can get and 6 is the worst, 4 is passing) I missed the whole who and why part, but I thought it was an interesting technique. They went on to announce students by name who did not pass on to the next level, students who left the school, and students that would probably need extra attention...

at 5 there was a short break, so they let me leave. I don't have to go to school tomorrow, because it will probably just be a lot of meetings, rule readings, etc. So my first real day will be Wednesday, then I just observe for the first week or so before diving. At least I'm pretty confident in my abilities to speak English, if nothing else.