School and Family

As already stated, the Kremhart family is the Butter to my Brot, the Bier to my Mund, and all in all just one of the coolest families around.  My parents here are extremely loving and spiritual.  They spend an hour each day in meditation (oooohms not prayer), often spend the evening drinking a glass of wine or a cappuccino by candlelight, and are always talking about the interconnectdness of all of our spirits.  I've especially enjoyed talking about political and world issues with my host dad, because he always has a unique way of looking at things.  He thinks that often as a society we fight too hard to preserve the present, because it is comfortable and we are afraid of the unknown.  He believes that in many situations, change is inevitable, and it is only once we accept this change that a new path can be born.  He also is pacifistic and doesn't agree with most of the first world nations' actions to attempt to modify other countries and societies.


                             My house

Sophie, one of my best friends from Mexico, is studying Spanish and Portuguese at a university in Hamburg.  She is always up for an adventure, laughs at my jokes about 70% of the time (a much higher percentage than most people hehe), and she snorts when she giggles.  If those three descriptors don't tell you that she is sweet, I don't know what will.  Julian, is my host brother here, and he is studying to be an early childhood educator.  He does a lot of work with chldren and teenagers with developmental disabilities, likes photography, and is my beer drinking partner at La Habana (our favorite bar here in Schneverdinen)

Family life here in Germany seems so much different than in the U.S.  Zum bei spiel (for example), we eat almost every meal together as a family and the meals are looked at as an integral part of the day.  For breakfast, we have a cup of coffee (yes, I've been drinking coffee here) and bread with one of many different jam, cream cheese, or nutella toppings.  However, when I say bread, I don't mean that cheap Wonderbread stuff we eat in the States.  This is real, straight from the grain fields of heaven, Brot.  As far as I'm concerned, the only wonder about Wonderbread, is it's a wonder why we still eat it (again, sorry for the bad jokes haha).  Then, we don't eat lunch, usually the biggest meal of the day, until 4 when Julian gets home from school.  Finally, for dinner, we eat at about 8 or 9 and after we finish our meal, we often have a cup of homemade cappuccino and sit around and visit.  My host dad used to work as a chef in a hotel, so the food is always lecker (delicious in both Dutch and German) and everything we eat is organic and made fresh.  Perhaps the most shocking thing about my family here, is that the only refrigerator in the entire house is a mini fridge!  We go to the grocery store several times times a week and have yet to eat anything that was once frozen or comes out of a box or a can.

Funny side story:  We were eating some leftover soup and my host dad said that he thinks soup often tastes better as it gets older.  So, I told him the English rhyme:  "Some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it in the pot 9 days old."  Well, after I said this, he looked at me kind of funny and said, "I don't think that's very funny," and started to talk about pedafiles.  Well, being as my German still stinks, I was very confused.  Turns out he thought I said, "Some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it in the part 9 years old." haha.

My teaching experience in the school is also going very well.  My cooperating teacher's name is Herr Wollenheit, and he is in his early 30's and is a really cool guy.  He works with seniors, all the way down to fifth graders, and the classes have been very fun and interactive.  For the junior level class, they are studying the Amerian South and the Civil Rights Movement.  As one of their assignments they had to make a talk show that included Rosa Parks, the white bus driver, a black spectator, and a white spectator among its guests.  Well, my job for the day was to listen to their talk shows and correct the grammar and things that they said.  The kids did extremely well and I'm very impressed by their English abilities, but the highlight was during the talk show Rosa Parks started yelling at the bus driver and she (although it was a boy portraying her) screamed,  "You smelly bus driver.  You stood me up!"  I about died laughing and then explained to the class how getting stood up is when your date doesn't show up and they thought it was pretty funny.  Another awkward teaching moment, was in the fifth grade class they were looking at a page of objects and saying, "I see a movie."  "I see a pen."  "I see a video game," etc.  Well, the English they learn here is British English (why, I don't know....haha).  But I wasn't really paying attention, and one kid said, "I see a ruber."  Now I'm all for sex education, but my immediate thought was, what kind of things are they showing on this page for "I spy?!"  Well, turns out, in Britain, a rubber is an eraser and I had no idea....so don't worry, their texts are still age appropriate.

Well I feel like if any of you are actually still reading this post, sorry it's a mile long...are pobably thinking that I should wrap it up.  This week I think I'm going to go to Berlin to visit my friend Johanna and explore some of Eastern Germany!  So I'll keep you poste on how that goes.  If you have any questions, please let me know.  In addition, shoot me an e-mail or a facebook post to let me know how you are doing.  I love reading English, because even the book "The Little Tiger and the Little Bear" makes me feel stupid in German. haha.