October

Hi all,

So, October seems to have come and (almost) gone. I actually had a lot to do this month and I am happy because of it. I am really happy about the way my Dutch group course is going and according to the account manager they are very happy with me too. I wish there were more people wanting to learn Dutch because I am really getting into it!!

I spent two weeks with the Japanese-Korean couple and had a great time with them. After my initial reservation and doubt whether I would be able to teach them well for 5 hours a day, it all worked out fine. The good thing when you are teaching someone on a daily basis, is that you get to know them really well really fast. I not only gained their trust this way but I was also soon able to ask them the right questions to start talking and to figure out to what kind of prompts they reacted best. The fact they we were all about the same age also made it a lot easier.

The Korean girl had initially told me she did not know any English and was not interested in learning it. I am proud to say I convinced her to do something any and she learnt a lot. She was not a beginner, as she had previously stated, but actually already had some vocabulary and turned out to have a knack for English grammar. In the end, he got over his apprehension of speaking English too and kept chattering away with her correcting his grammatical mistakes. It was very funny! The unfortunately decided not to continue after two weeks, because she did not want to anymore. He did but found our school to expensive and started an intensive group course at another school. So no more Japanese students for me, though I must say I would not have minded continuing with them in the end. We made a good start and I hope he will be able to build on what he has learnt with me in his new course.

Over the weekends, we got to play hotel again. Olaf's friends Ellen and Kim from Groningen came over for a weekend and we had a blast. It was the first time we had seen them in over two years but things were great. We went to the Tag der Deutsche Einheit parade where two gigantic marionettes walked through the city centre and met at Brandenburger Tor to celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany twenty years ago. It was really cool, except for the fact that we nearly got squished by the mob that was being pushed out of the way by one the giants. I guess there was a little security error there. Oh well, at least it gave us a nice view of the giant!!
One of the giants (a little girl, just before meeting her uncle, the big giant) actually decided to relieve herself in front of Brandenburger Tor!!! For pictures see Olaf's weblog.

The week after Stephi came over from Duesseldorf and rocked our world. Stephi and Nicole (Dutch friend who moved to Berlin 2 weeks after Olaf did) knew each other as well from Groningen and so the four of us spent a lovely weekend together. It included sights, food, clubbing, booze, Sunday brunch, a visit to the Pergamom museum, more booze and food and Shoes, Shoes, Shoes!

The last day, I had my Japanese students, they did not feel like sitting in a classroom and studying. I guess they had sort of fallen out with Lingua Franca's management team over the price of the course and did not feel comfortable being there anymore. Anyway, I did not want to get into that and was happy to take them sightseeing for the day. We actually did two museums that morning. The first one was the very informative Haus am Checkpoint Charlie documenting the rise and fall of the Berlin wall and the often desperate escape attempts made to cross it or to get through Checkpoint Charlie unnoticed. I did not know people could be folded into such small spaces... The second one was the renowned Juedisches Museum (Jewish Museum). It was very interesting but I had already seen it before (when I first visited Berlin with Wouter in 2006) and my back was killing by then and I was happy to bring them back to school and say my goodbyes. I obviously did not pay a dime for these museums because I let the Japanese guy pay for me. It was, after all, only a job for me (and boy, does getting paid to go to museums rule!!).

That afernoon I finally managed to go to the Carl Gustav Carus exhibit at the Alte Nationalgalerie. I did not know this painter but had seen giant posters of his paintings all over Berlin and they appealed to me immensely. Carus was a gynaecologist and physicist from the Romanticist period who had a great fascination for the workings of nature. He regarded art as the epitome of science and painted landscapes exactly the way he perceived them in great detail. He paid a lot of attention to for instance eroding mountain slopes, dying trees, waves crashing onto cliffs or meadows covered with fallen autumn leaves. He also loved painting ruins and often included neglected castles on hilltops or decaying remnants of abbeys. I especially liked his use of colours, they are very warm and full and give off a cozy, trusted and warming sensation. All in all, a very interesting exhibit! And it was great to be able to go to three museums in one day and not even having to pay for a single one of them!

Olaf is in DC this week for a presentation, a workshop and a lot of networking. Now that my Japanese students have interrupted their course, this means I have a lot of time on my hands. I had a couple of courses but have mainly had a lot of time to myself. I relaxed, practised a lot of yoga (which I had been neglecting a bit), went swimming and watch loads of films. That, and trying to figure out the healthcare system in this country. As I am self-employed, I am entitled to private health insurance (thank heaven, as it is much cheaper than public health insurance - Olaf is paying 500 euros a month just for him) but it is still rather expensive and the cheapest quote I have got so far is around 175 euros a month, which is a substantial part of my monthly income and makes me wonder whether it is still worth it to work. I might as well remain unemployed and get free health insurance and 600 euros of unemployment benefits to live on. Germany really has to rethink its incentives for people who want to start up their own companies!! Anyway, I am now looking outside of Germany and may have found a cheaper, international healthcare insurance provider.

And now I am waiting for my brother Ward and his girlfriend Anne to arrive. They called me two weeks ago to see if they could come over (as it is autumn break) and fortunately for them another friend of mine had just cancelled for this weekend. I am really looking forward to their visit and cannot wait to show them around Berlin. Olaf will be back tomorrow as well, which means things are only getting better!!

Funny students

Well, here I am again. I guess you had not expected to hear from me again so soon, now had you? Well, don't worry I don't have that much to tell you. There are, however, some things I just have to share with you!

I forgot to tell you about my trip to Glasgow to visit my college friend Femke. She is on an exchange to do some in-depth study of Ancient Greek drama and has chosen the misty city of Glasgow, Scotland. I had been to Scotland before but never made it to Glasgow and having a friend there provided me with a second reason for a visit. And it was worth it. Besides the fact that it was obviously great to see Femke again and to have time to catch up and gossip about our old studymates, I found out that Glasgow is actually a lovely city. And it has got a great museum, St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Art, where the different religions being adhered to in the Glasgow region are presented without bias or presumption. It then goes on to explain how different themes such as birth, coming of age, marriage and death and dealt with by these religions. It does not represent the artifacts in its collection as art (though some may rightly be called art by their sheer beauty - and are probably worth a lot of pounds) and they do not propagate any single religion but the whole purpose of the museum is to promote understanding and acceptance of one's neighbours. In one word, awesome. For pictures, click here.

When I came back, I was in for a nice surprise. The school that had hired me as a Dutch teacher but had been hesitant to give me English courses as well offered me an intensive English course. It is 5 days a week (of which I do 4), 6 hours a day and the students are a Japanese-Korean couple on their honeymoon. They actually decided to spend their two-month honeymoon in Berlin to learn English! They learn English every morning and are then too tired to do anything else, who would opt for that? Though they are lovely, compliant and very grateful every time, I do struggle a bit. I obviously do not speak Japanese or Korean and their level is quite low. It sometimes takes us up to 10 minutes to figure out what we are talking about and I often have trouble understanding what they are saying at all. I believe they are making progress but I keep thinking it must be hard on them. After all, it is very hard to stay focused for that long and I simply do not have the energy or the imagination to keep our lessons fun and interesting for 6 hours straight.

I also laughed my head off today! I discovered that I have been spied on. One of my students admitted to having googled me and read this blog and suddenly turned out to know lots of things about me. I don't mind this at all but I never thought that would happen and it caught me off guard. Well, she is a communication specialist after all and I guess I should have been prepared for it. I never thought my blog could be a teaching tool but Kirstin, if you're reading this, just look at it as exercise. And I will just have to start being really careful not to make any spelling errors or grammatical mistakes!!!!