February 2012 Articles

Archives by Months

Notes from Germany

After a great Christmas at home with family and friends, I traveled back to Germany at the beginning of January, leaving from the Monroe airport to Houston and then flying the 5,000 miles from there to Frankfurt. Upon arrival in Germany, I took a two hour train ride south to Freiburg, and then another train from there through the mountains of the Black Forest to the small town where I live in Neustadt. Finally, all I had left to do was climb the mountainside up from the train station to my house, but in the falling snow, that was easier said than done. Behind me, I was pulling a large rolling luggage bag, and I soon discovered that the bag’s wheels barely turned in the snow. For about half an hour, I struggled up the mountain, kicking snow out of the way of the bag’s wheels and pulling it along a few feet, before being forced to stop, kick more snow out of its way, and then try to move on a little bit farther. From time to time, I even picked the bag up and tried carrying it up the path, but it was so heavy, I couldn’t do that for very long. In all, the trip had taken a little more than 24 hours, and when I finally reached my doorstep, I don’t think I’ve ever been as glad in my life to get to the place where I was going. I was exhausted.
Since returning to Neustadt, my work at the school has gotten even more interesting and rewarding. I’m teaching a sixth grade math class, where I translate math terms into English and write them on the board for the German children, who then must solve the problems and tell me the answer in English. I cannot even imagine having been able in sixth grade to solve math problems in another language, but these children can! Of course, they’ve been learning English since kindergarten, so they know a great deal already. I’m also teaching English phonetic sounds to several German classes, helping them with their pronunciation of words like “thief” and “vase” which are very hard for German-speakers to articulate correctly. Finally, I’m also getting to discuss American culture and politics with some of the German high school students, which is fascinating both for them and for me. Because of America’s power and influence in the world, I’ve found that Germans are always reading and hearing things about the U. S., and they know much more about us than we know about them. But of course, much of what they’ve heard and read they do not fully understand, and so it helps to have an American willing to discuss with them and answer their questions about America and its people. I find I learn a great deal myself, when talking with them in this way.
In the last few weeks, it has snowed so much, that other than going to the school and occasionally to Freiburg, I have mostly stayed home. Every day, new snowfall comes and lingers in the fir trees, and from my window, all I can see is a great whiteness covering the mountains and a drizzling wind that blows from daybreak until dusk. I hope in the next month to take a few trips—to the tiny country of Luxembourg, to Krakow in Poland, to Cologne to watch the Germans celebrate Fastnacht (the German Mardi Gras). Other than these trips, I’m looking forward to an interview project that I’ve started with my seventh grade class. The seventh graders are going to video call my sister Dana on Skype and interview her in English. Dana enthusiastically agreed to wake up at 5:00 in the morning (noon in Germany) to talk with these children, answer their questions, and to ask some questions of them herself. I’m excited for the conversation that will come out of this interview and will be preparing for it this week. Other than these things, then, I am mostly just waiting for Spring, for when the snow will disappear and the birds will start singing again and the flowers will come back up. Of course, I know I still have more than a month, and yet, I can’t help but look out my window every day, hoping to see the sun shining down over the mountainside and on out across the valley. On the day when I do, when I open the curtains and see the sun again, well, maybe I won’t be quite as happy as I was when I finally made it with my luggage out of the snow and up to my doorstep, but it’ll be pretty close. And so, I wait, knowing that it won’t be much longer until Spring is here at last.