Six Weeks in....

Just to preface, we still don‘t have internet at home.  Everything here takes about twice as long as in the States.  I guess that’s a fair trade for living in such a beautiful country.  We expect to have phone and internet in our flat on October 9^th.  In the meantime, we did get German cell phones and can use the data there as our Wi-Fi (a little costly though). 

Teaching in Germany

For all those who have inquired about the school here and what it’s like, I will respond that it has surpassed my expectations in many areas and has been a challenge in others.  Overall, I still cannot believe how fortunate I am to be a part of this school and this community.  The school is located 4 miles north of Augsburg and our flat.  Using public transportation, it takes about 45 minutes to get to school.  I leave the flat at 8am and walk around the corner to the tram stop, which then takes me to the Hauptbahnof, the main train station in Augsburg.  There, I meet the “school bus”, or rather a small city bus which the parents pay extra for the purposes of transporting their children to the school.   As a teacher, I can ride for free, provided that I do not take any seats from the children.  Some days I stand, some days, I sit.  At least I’m not sitting on 75 Southbound in traffic. Back to the bus… I prefer the school bus over the other public transportation because it drops me off directly at the school.  For the first few weeks, I took random buses from the nearest tram station, and ended up on a tour through Gersthofen, a little town about a mile or so north of the school. 

When I arrive at school, I have Homeroom, which runs from 8:45am to 9am.  I take attendance online and send the kids to their classes at 9am.  My homeroom is 7^th grade and only has 17 kids in it.  They are all very polite, but a bit more talkative than I expected.  Again, they are very sweet, but they are definitely 7^th graders!

As for my schedule, I’ll give you a little math problem.  If there are nineteen 80-minute class periods in a week, how much free time do I have if I teach the following?

1-      8^th Grade English – 3.5 periods

1-      7^th Grade English – 3.5 periods

1-      Humanities – 2 periods

1-      6^th Grade Reading – 1 period

1-      Study Hall – 2 periods

If you answered “a ton”, you are CORRECT!  For example, on Mondays, my first class doesn’t start until 12:10pm.  Tuesdays and Wednesdays, my first class is at 10:20, followed by several breaks during the day.  My favorite day is Thursday – I start with two 40-minute English classes back to back and then a study hall at the very end of the day.  This means that I am free from 10:20 until 2:10pm EVERY Thursday!   And did I mention that the students get 2 breaks (in addition to lunch) every day? The first break is a 15-minute snack break for the whole school.  Ninety minutes later, the whole school gets a 15-minute recess outside.  Then, the whole school eats lunch from 1:30-2:10, which includes another ample recess. 

As for my students, I teach a total of 40 different students. My largest class is 18 students, and my smallest is 10.  I have a few who have limited English, but for the most part, they speak fluent English.  I do have to be careful of the vocabulary I choose, because most of them have only been speaking English for the past 3-4 years.  Regardless, their English is MUCH better than my German!

As for the challenges, supplies and resources are limited.  I don't have a Teachers Edition of ANYTHING, and am still trying to order some supplies.   The students have textbooks in a few of the subjects, but I find it difficult to plan from them when I can't see a copy of what they are using.  As for English, they don't have a textbook and most likely will not get one.   This hasn't stopped me from coming up with great lessons, but again, its a challenge.  I guess I shouldn't complain when I have so much free time to create outstanding lessons ;))

Inside atrium of school.  My classroom is at the very top right of this picture, on the third floor. 



Looking down at the atrium from my classroom.  Kevin and two new friends are waiting for me.



Another view looking down towards the 2nd floor.



My Classroom.  Wall on the right is ALL windows. 



View of the brickyard next door from my window



View of the Upper School building and yard from my desk



Orientation Week BBQ, before the first week of school.  Yes, that is beer...



Another view of the ISA BBQ.  Great night!

 

Our Flat

Sorry for the delay - we are back online - sort of.  We finally purchased cell phones in Germany, which gives us data connection.  We are able to log onto the Internet through our phones.  We should get internet connection in our apartment in the next 3-4 weeks, or maybe sooner.  Its ordered, but we were told there is a "technical delay".  Not sure what that means though.

To update, we are in our apartment now after signing the lease on Wednesday the 28th. Our landlord owns all the apartments in the building and is very reasonable.  He has no problem with the cats, and even did a great job cleaning the place before we moved in.  He even speaks English, which will make communicating any issues with him much easier.

The apartment is a perfect location.  We are located directly across from the Fuggerei.  As I type this, I can see the Fuggerei out our big living room windows, and hear the street sounds below.  Living in the city is much different than living in quiet Kennesaw with the occasional siren and far-away train rumbles.  Here, the tram passes directly in front of the apartment about every 10-20 minutes, depending on the time of day and day of the week.  The rumbling was a bit loud at first, but now we don't even notice it.  At any given time, we hear muted, foreign conversations, the clippety-cloppety of shoes going up the avenue, passing cars, and music from the cafe below.  My favorite sound though has to be the rhythm of the church bells. St. Jakobs is two doors away, and the clock tower is my time keeper in the mornings.  The bells chime once for every fifteen minutes, and ring out the hours regularly. Ten minutes before mass starts, the bells chime straight for five minutes to remind the neighborhood that mass is about to start.  The bells continue to chime through the night, often competing with the noises from below.

The bells at Rathausplatz, the city hall, ring out a beautiful tune at 5pm every day.  A few times, while waiting for my connecting tram home, I've been fortunate enough to be standing near the tower as it plays out this three minute medley. One of these days, I'm going to record the sound with my phone and share it on the blog.

Stairs to our flat

Floor plan of apartment.
Terrace is off the room at the top left

Enough of the sounds... more about the apartment.  We are on the third floor, or second floor in Europe-speak.  We access the apartment through a side door next to the Italian cafe below.  From there we go up a fairly wide staircase and turn right to our even steeper staircase.  The building was built in the 1500's, and the stairs don't seem much younger.  Once inside, its very spacious, especially without any furniture.  A long hallway connects the living room with the kitchen, with the bedrooms and bathroom in between.  We have windows on three sides, the front, the bedrooms, and the kitchen.  Its very bright and sunny and filled with character.  The floors are very old, polished wood, and each room is either slightly higher or slightly lower than the one next to it.  The window are large, and either tilt in or completely open in.  Because of the kitties, we have not opened them because Ellie has the belief that she is immortal with superpowers.  I am trying to convince Kevin that we can somehow fit screens in them.

Purchasing furniture here has become quite a process as most stores do not accept credit cards.  The method of payment here is the local bank card or cash.  To get a bank card, obviously one needs to set up an account with the bank.  Ironically, when opening an account, the bank does not accept money until all the necessary pins and cards and paperwork has been mailed to the home address, all separately and on differing days.  To give a time frame of this lengthy process, we opened the account immediately after signing the lease, and only just received the pin numbers, passwords, and cards this Thursday.  Now, we have to figure out how to transfer our money from the US to the German bank.  Even after that is all said and done, we will have to wait another 3 weeks for any delivery of furniture.  We hope to be more settled around the 1st of October.  Our 22 boxes of stuff should arrive from the UK about the same time.  Keep your fingers crossed.

As for the "furniture" that we do have, its more like camping than comfort.  We purchased the last air bed in Augsburg the day we signed the lease.  Lo and behold, the mattress had a pea-sized hole in the side when we opened it up.   Because it was late and the stores were closed, we tried to patch it up MacGyver-style with about ten Band-Aids, some clear tape, and some epoxy from the neighbor downstairs.  This seemed to work at first, until we tried to sleep on it.  Every three hours, we were staring at our feet with our bottoms on the hard floor.  Kevin would hit the button to re-inflate it, and then we would sleep for another three hours before repeating the process

Bob napping on the deflated airbed

all over again.  Needless to say, it wasn't the restful sleep I was hoping for before my first day of school.   While I started school, Kevin continued repairing the air bed, using different methods.  Nothing worked.  Nothing.  After about 3 days, we bought two twin-size rollaway mattresses for the floor.  This seemed like a great solution.  Only downside is that the mattresses are as hard as the floor.   The upside is that we don't have to re-inflate them every 3 hours ;)  Finally, yesterday, we ordered a bed, a really SOFT bed, from a store called Momax.  We expect delivery on the bed sometime in late October.  Only six more weeks on the hard mattress....

Our new bed, in a smaller size.  Doesn't it look comfy??

IKEA Poang chair

Kevin also purchased two wicker chairs from the Egyptian woman at the second-hand shop across the street.  These offered about as much comfort as the rock-hard mattresses, so we broke down and purchased two Poang chairs in red from IKEA.  I have to admit - these are incredibly comfortable, especially after sitting on the hard floor, hard mattress, and hard wicker chairs for a week.    

Kevin has also been very resourceful and purchased a used washer and used refrigerator for only 400 Euros from a man down the street.  Although our kitchen was "fitted", meaning that it came with cabinets, countertops, sink, faucet, oven, AND a dishwasher, it did not have a fridge.  Our landlord's reasoning is that tenants often leave it dirty and so he would rather not deal with cleaning it.  The appliances were delivered Thursday morning, and as of yesterday, we finally had a reason to go grocery shopping :)  

 I love this picture of Kevin and the refrigerator - it reminds me of images of Robert Wadlow from the Guiness Book of World Records. 

We also have a great terrace right off our kitchen.  Although we share the terrace with the neighbor behind us, we still have plenty of space, about 15' by 15'.  I hope that we will be able to get a table and chairs out there by next Spring.   Its in the back of the flat, and the view reminds me of images of New York tenement buildings from the early 1900's.  We overlook the backs of the buildings next to us and the clock tower of St. Jakob in the not-so-far distant.

View from our terrace - backs of buildings and the clock tower of St. Jakob in the back. 

Our terrace.  Door into kitchen is only about 5-1/2 feet tall, with a step down into the kitchen.

backside of our terrace.
Windows are from neighboring apartments.

back corner of terrace.
Chimney is from the downstairs

Lulu and Ellie begging us to come out onto the terrace

Door into kitchen from terrace

That's it for now.  Will update more about the school and life in Augsburg later.  We love the emails and comments and will try to answer any questions.  

Love to all - 

Amy & Kevin