i was told they didn't do squash in germany.

This beast suggests otherwise:

(next to my laptop for scale)


All for €1.20, I imagine 'Mr. Max' is left over from the old East Germany.

i doubt i'll get any snow days.

One of my Kollegen happily informed today that the last time the school was closed due to snow was in the harsh winter of 1979... I had better get used to the slippy walk to work.

the last few weeks.

Not much has happened really. Most of my lessons were cancelled for some reason or another, be it the kids having exams or work experience and the first two weeks back after the hols I was actually earning €66 an hour, not bad really. In the lessons I have actually been in I feel I have been used better than I was before the holidays, I have been taking small groups of kids aside and doing speaking practice with them, much better than sitting around doing nothing. Also I was entrusted to teach the year 7s the 'present perfect progressive', needless to say they are probably still none the wiser. Also in my Y13 class they were discussing the difference between science fiction and utopia/dystopia literature, I kept very quiet in that lesson.

I also held my first AG (after school club). I was told that I had to teach them poems and a song in 45 minutes to a good enough standard to perform at the open day next saturday. I was told 26 kids were coming. I was slightly stressed about it. Monday came around, I was in my classroom shitting myself about how the next three quarters of an hour would go, the bell rang for 2pm and I opened to door to.... 4 children. The other 22 clearly decided they had something better to do with their Monday afternoon. I was then told by one of the other teachers that we wouldn't be doing any performances at the open day.

Pressure off I proceeded to introduce the song to them (I wanna be like youuuuu, from the Jungle Book). I asked (out of politeness, everybody knows this song which is why I chose it) if they knew how the tune went. I was met with four blank stares. So, in the absence of a set of speakers (the height of technology I had at my disposal at this stage was an overhead projector), I decided to sing them the song. As I finished and looked up, two of them (Year 6s) were in silent fits of laughter and the other two (slightly more mature Y7s) were struggling to keep a straight face. How peinlich. I won't be singing again. The rest of the session passed without event and we even learned the song in time to do a poem as well. One of the girls cheered when I said we were moving on to a poem, either she is the German version of Matilda or was taking the piss. I'm hoping for the former.

On the not-in-school-front, I had a lovely brief sojourn back to Leeds for Rebecca Wallace's birthday and last weekend I went to Köln for the start of Karneval. Yes, when we have a minutes silence on 11/11. the Germans begin carneval, slightly worrying or quite funny? I'll leave that one up to you. Karneval proper seems to be in Feb/March but the first day was last thursday. However, we couldn't get to Köln on time for the parade and just arrived late and had a night out, how typically British. I have also been to Bochum and Essen for nights out in the last three weeks, both good nights. I have finally started to build up my consumption of Döner, something which was severely lacking in the first month or so here. Off topic but it just came to me, my refusal to buy a toaster (and my lack of oven) resulted in me returning to the phenomenon which is microwavable naan bread, It's still shit.

Also I have discovered an Irish pub which shows live football, not quite hitting the cultural heights which are possible here but still invaluable! The only downside is that it takes an hour and a half to get there, could do with a local to be honest.

The German effiency myth has once again reared its ugly head... why would you make a debit card without a security code?! How can you buy things on the internet under these circumstances?! They really aren't that efficient at all.

My performances at football with the teachers have reached the stage where they want to pick me first for their teams. What can I say? Eat your heart out Marc Albrighton.

Sorry this wasn't very well structured, but I haven't written for a while and just wrote things in the order I thought of them.

in other news...

...I just made my first boredom related trip to a bakery. Very impressive given there are so many here and the food always looks so tasty! In case you care I had a creamy custardy berliner which was in the shape of a tube rather than round.

please do your bit.

As you will know, I am in Germany thanks to the British Council Language Assistantship scheme. I have had a fantastic opportunity and am having a brilliant year. However, our lovely new coalition government have told the British Council not to open recruitment to the scheme for the students in the year below me. This is disastrous for so many students who, like me, just didn't want to study in a foreign uni or work in industry. This decision is a massive backwards step for language learning in England, something which already seems to be a dying art.

The scheme reportedly costs a mere £750,000 to administer (sod all in comparison to much other spending) and is so important. Please take ten minutes to write to your local MP and complain about this, it is such a silly cut to make. Even better, if you're in Hallam then mention to Clegg his background in Europe and languages etc.

http://www.writetothem.com/

Here is some info on the cut:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414186&c=1

That is all x

would this be an inappropriate purchase?

http://www.redbubble.com/people/hipsterhitler/t-shirts/5825002-1-slogan-three-reichs-and-youre-out

I love it, the germans may not see the funny side though.

Oh also the lack of updates recently are due to it being Herbstferien and me spending a week in England generally eating and drinking far too many nice things for my own good and also, not being in Germany there wasn't much point writing about what I was up to. Last week however I learned a few things including that being drunk here has a different meaning to being drunk in England (particularly to bouncers); that it's really really sodding cold (this is October, I dread to think what it will be like by Christmas); that Irish pubs are a godsend when you want to watch football and eat a roast dinner slash proper fry up; and that Germans don't appreciate drunken English renditions of Beyonce and Jay-z in their karaoke clubs. Also I scammed the self-serve machine at the supermarket by scanning a leek as a (much cheaper) cucumber. I'm such a loutish Brit Abroad.

Finally I signed up to MyExpat today, guten tag 4od and Iplayer! This is all for now as I'm drowning under a mountain of work for Leeds Uni which I should have started sooner and also trying to prepare for my AG (which is the after school drama club I was somehow talked into running, god knows why I agreed).

Ps. I've only got 3 hours at work this week, bang tidy.

a weekend with the teachers.

So, on Friday I went on a teacher team building kind of weekend thing with some of the teachers from my school. It was based at a Schullandheim in the beautiful Rheinland-Pfalz countryside (god, I sound like Simon Reeve). Unfortunately, being out in the sticks means there isn't much to do in the day time except go walking. And boy do the Germans love walking. Being an English moron who a) didn't have a change of shoes and b) forgot to pack a change of socks, this wasn't ever going to go down well with me. Oh yeah, and c) I hate walking. Well that's not true really, I don't mind a nice stroll when you have somewhere to go, but around a murky forest and down the steepest muddiest slippiest hill in Germany at 10am on a Saturday morning with a hangover... no thanks.

Which brings me on to the other activity which we bonded over, and I'm much more into my drinking than I am my walking. On the evenings we had a few (several) beers and played games like Charades and Taboo (both very difficult when you don't understand what the word means you are trying to act out/describe!). On Friday, they were all talking animatedly about drinking Schnapps later on. I thought yeah some peach schnapps would be alright so when they divvied out the shots and we had said Prost I necked mine (as you would with a shot) only to put my glass down and see everybody else sipping theirs. Then the taste hit me. And it wasn't peachy. Apparently "Schnapps" in German doesn't mean your standard Archers. No no, it means spirits. So in fact we were doing shots of 42% Aquavit and not wanting to lose face (having already proudly told them all "Ich komme aus England, Ich trinke alles") I had a few more every time they offered me. So yes, the walk in the forest the next morning wasn't too well received.

All in all, I had a great weekend and it was really nice to spend time with the teachers outside of school and get to know them a bit more. Even if there was a lot of time where I sat there with the conversation passing me by as I just about understood what had been said several minutes previously. Possibly the best thing about the weekend (as well as the cheap beer) was the food. Despite trying to match Altenberg in the odd food mixtures department (A'berg had scrambled eggs, spinach and potato; here we had chunks of hard boiled egg in a soup) it put the food at Altenberg to shame. Only two words are necessary really: Breakfast Buffet. Maybe four more: ate like a king. They even put on a fried breakfast on the last morning alongside the regular cheese/ham/bread fest that is a German breakfast. It was here that I was tucking into a very nice substance which I had never tried before, when one of the teachers asked me how I was liking the Leberkäse. The literal translation which happened in my head wasn't pretty... Liver Cheese?! However, thankfully it has nothing to do with cheesy livers or livery cheese and actually shows the French how a Pâté should taste.

Sadly, I forgot my camera so there are no photos to accompany this post as of yet (I took a couple of my phone so will upload them when I can find my bluetooth dongle), but there are a couple of crackers which show the lovely surroundings. Just re-read this, it's very rambly my apologies but it's late (ten to 11 is late when you get up in time for German schools!) and I'm tired. Bis Bald.