The abundance of May public holidays aren’t all that I’ll miss in Germany; it’s odd having built a life here and having to leave it. My (now daily now there’s one at the end of my road) trips to Rewe, Backwerk (bakery) and the Kiosks (especially on Sundays when everything except the Kiosks are closed!) shall be sorely missed, not to mention all the German acquaintances I’ve made, from my housemates, to the teachers to the students at school. I’ll truly miss Team Fabelhaft – a group of people who so often reduce me to tears of laughter – so they can all expect visits when we return to the U.K.

So much has changed since I set off to Cologne at the end of August ‘09 – some changes have been beneficial, others have been regretful, but I wouldn’t change this year abroad for the world. In fact, I’d love to do it all over again.  There’s a scheme in Nordrhein Westfalen which involves native speakers being on payroll as teachers in schools here for contracts lasting a year. So you never know, after I finish my degree I could be back in good old NRW again…

Before I go on to explain what they get up to in their last week of school, there’s one thing you should know. Germans, as a rule, don’t really do fancy dress as often us Brits do. While you do have your ‘Motto Parties’ in Uni (normally ‘Fetisch’ theme in my experience!), fancy dress club nights are a rarity. For example, when  I went to a Lady Gaga themed night last weekend in Augsburg, where free drinks were promised for those dressed up as Gaga, there were still no German Gagas running about, except for those employed by the club. Whereas you know that theme in a British club would have everyone donning a blonde wig and a leotard! The only time I’ve seen German fancy dress in force is at Karneval… So, in essence, Germans dress up rarely, but when they do, they do it well.

So after having thought that Karneval was the only time that Germans dress up, I found out that Abi-Feier Woche is another. The students choose a different theme each day, and then unleash chaos on the school in the form of pranks, refusing to go to lessons, interrupting other students’ lessons and basically getting their revenge on the teachers! I asked some of my Klasse 9 students about it, and they told me that it’s pretty much the highlight of your school years, this one week where you can pretty much do what you want and cause havoc for the teachers. The week culminates in ‘Khaos Tag’ on the Friday, where everything is just mental. Three years ago, according to the students, someone managed to get a cow in front of the staff room on Khaos Tag. Now I’m gutted my day off is on a Friday! Fancy dress themes ranged from ‘Azi Tag’ (basically German Chavs) to Superheroes, but my favourite came from another school in the area, which involved each student wearing white overalls, painting themselves and spraying their hair white while donning a pair of sunglasses with those silly noses and moustaches stuck on so that none of the teachers knew who was who.

Of course, I was completely out of the loop and had no idea this was happening. So cue my Klasse 6 lesson on Tuesday, I notice the door was wedged open with a t-shirt. All the doors in my school have to be opened with a master key, but this is a bit of a German thing too so I thought nothing of it. Turns out, one of the kids had wedged the door open so that the Abi-students could come in and go a bit mental in my lesson! It was a bit of an… oh dear moment, mostly because the task I had for them was written, and there’s no way you’re going to motivate 15 12 year olds to write about their pretend holiday in Wales when they have all these Abi-students sitting next to them in costume… so I just got them all to count in Welsh, which seemed to go down well!

I’m annoyed I didn’t think to get more photos, but I did get one from when they stormed my classroom at least :

Really jealous I never got to do anything like this in school!

My school is really nice, but it seems HUGE. I keep saying that it’s a lot bigger than my school in Wales, but I don’t think that’s true. My school was expanded over the time I was there, so I suppose it seems HUGE to the kids who start there now,  but it never seemed that big to me because it was added to building by building from the one corridor it was when I started. There are a LOT of teachers at this school though. I think there are ten English teachers? I think I’ve met them all…The staff room is massive and I’ve been introduced to so many different teachers, so I can’t remember! The kids seem really nice as well. As it’s a Gymnasium, I expected the kids to be quite bright, and they do seem to be from what I’ve seen so far.

I hope I can help the kids in some capacity. I’m still nervous about it all, I haven’t had to prep anything, while a lot of my friends have been asked to, but I think that my Betreuungslehrerin (the teacher in charge of me basically) is really sticking to the letter and giving me two weeks of observation – for which I’m thankful, I’m not sure I could deal with being chucked straight into it without getting a small idea of how the kids are. Also she has cleared up another worry I had – about teachers asking me to cover lessons for them. At Altenberg they warned us that sometimes teachers will ask, and we’re not allowed to do it so we have to say no and I worried about how I would say no without seeming rude. Thankfully, she told me that I was under no circumstances to do it, so she’ll have told the other teachers that.

Another thing I love about my school is that the teachers speak German to me all the time, I’m only allowed to speak English to the students! I think my German will improve a lot because of it.

Friday was interesting, because the kids from Klasse 11 had prepared questions for me. They ranged from ‘Do you find it difficult to speak German’ to ‘What do you think about the British Empire?’

…mmm fair play this entry’s a bit boring

Over a week actually, since I flew to Germany with one kg too many… Right now I’m meant to be going to the Buergersamt to register, but I’ve just made plans to go a bit later!

The induction course at Altenberg was ridiculous amounts of fun, despite early mornings, loads of lesson things and a limited supply of beer at the bar… Not that that mattered, because as much as I have tried to like beer, I don’t, ew. I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in three days!

I’m not sure I’ve actually said what Altenberg is – the assistants going to Germany have to do an induction course before they go to their respective destinations, and that course is held in Altenberg. It’s basically a course to help you out with teaching, learning how to plan lessons and also to meet assistants in your area so you’re not totally alone! It’s a monastery apparently, but there weren’t any monks, sad times.

Despite having two of my good friends with me going to Altenberg, I felt kinda apprehensive about going. I knew that we had to do some teaching practice in groups, and I worried that I wouldn’t click with anyone etc. etc.

Turns out there was no bloody need to worry – you know that group of people at an event who just can’t seem to stop laughing at the littlest things? Yeaaah, that was us! I won’t go into all the in-jokes here, because no one else bar us will find them funny

As for the course itself… the lessons were tiring mostly because there were so many of them. They could have saved some time with certain things – we had two and a half hours to prep our lessons, which seemed like a really long time in hindsight. On the other hand though, some of the stuff was really helpful, for example having previous assistants (a.k.a Ehemaligen) to tell us about their experiences, even though all bar one were American so certain things concerning Visas wasn’t really applicable to the majority of the U.K based group. If anyone’s reading this and thinking of not going to the course… well, I’d definitely rethink. This is really the best way for you to get to know people in your area. I know the main aim of this year is for me to learn as much German as possible, but it can see it being a really lonely experience if you don’t have people to share it with, and the best people to do that with are those who are going through the same things. The language barrier can often be a difficult hurdle when forming friendships. Not to mention that there are loads of tidbits I know now that I wouldn’t have known had I not gone to Altenberg.

I’m now all moved in in Dortmund! But I’ll save that for another blog post. For now, here’s a picture of me doing something you shouldn’t do in Germany – dance/walk in the cyclist lane.

Pedestrian in the Cyclist lane = fair game.

Bis bald!