Every year the Fremdsprachassitenten (foreign language assistants) have a couple of days training in a convent just outside Köln in order to prepare them for being plonked in front of a class of german children. We all met up outside the Hauptbahnhof and were taken to the small town of Altenberg on coaches. The training is at a convent type place out in the countryside, which locks you in at 8pm and is the kind of place that you would imagine is why films like The Human Centipede are set in Germany. However, the actual place itself was lovely and shortly after arriving (desperate for the toilet... the can on the coach had been a bad idea) we were introduced to the course by a lovely German man called Günter Jacob. He is exactly what German men should be like, a new hero of mine.
Our first evening meal was one of the more bizarre that I'm sure I will eat throughout the year but I have been assured that Germans like it. We were given scrambled eggs, spinach and potatoes. Not the best of combinations when you are starving to be honest! But we can let them off the food because they gave us special dispensation to open a bar on the nights, selling big bottles of beer for €1.50 which was brilliant.
Over the course of the training the students from Leeds obtained a rather bad reputation as the loutish drinkers, with one girl even saying that whilst there was "a time and a place for getting pissed", that "this wasn't it". Anyway... we had a great time! In between the drinking games and shaving foam parties we learned a few tips about teaching in Germany and the educational side of the course, whilst not being as good as I had hoped, was still pretty useful. If only because I learned the words 'ziehen' and 'drücken', from all the bloody doors in the place! Also the getting up early routine began in Altenberg, not nice. We all returned to our towns around Germany on the thursday ready (in some cases) to start at our schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment