April 18, 2006 HI, and Happy belated Easter! I was surprised that the Germans, generally not very religious (at least in the North/East), made such a big deal out of Easter. They all seemed to go on holiday somewhere (too bad I didn’t know to plan our trip around it) and decorate the trees/bushes with hanging eggs (just like we do with Christmas tree decorations.) Joel and I got onto the Easter wave a bit late, so our eggs have yet to be hung, but I did colour them when we took a short trip out of Berlin (to Brandenburg) this weekend. We stayed at an American guy’s house in a typical East German town; Neu Stad Dosse. His German girlfriend’s family got the house back after the Russians left; it has been in their family for 150 years. It was a maze of small, cold, brick rooms built in another era. He showed us the extra room the family had built to hide the women in. It was totally like the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Apparently the Russian army was notorious for raping any women they came across, so the family tried in vain to hide their women. Luckily for this family the Russian commander decided to stay in this house and thus pardoned the women of this family (and only this family) from being raped, although they did of course have to do anything else the Russians wanted (e.g. wake-up in the middle of the night to play piano for the commander if that’s what he desired). After the government gave the land back to the original owners, the current government had the audacity to try and charge them for a poorly built garage that the Russians built during the time that they had taken the house/farm from the rightful owners. The American guy wrote them back saying they could come and take back the garage because they would not be receiving their yearly check. At this exact moment I am sitting in a sunny office on the 5th floor of a school near Akazienstrasse, which is a really nice ´Multi Culti´ collage of cheap places to eat, new age centers and shops, eclectic trendy Asian stores, and every type of cuisine you can think of (that all have cheap lunch specials). My new student did not show up. He is apparently a Japanese guy who lives in Germany to race cars and must learn English immediately. (This one should prove to have an interesting story I´m sure.) Last year (during my only real illness here in Berlin, yeah for being healthy!) I wrote the below update on how random some my ever changing combination of classes is. I can´t say it´s the most interesting thing I´ve ever written, but if you are interested, it will give you an idea of with whom I´ve spent so many cold winter hours. Update # 10 - Random Windows Into a Berlinian Reality 19.11.2005 18:40 Berlin Tonight I write to you from my living room. I’m at home with Laryngitis and have had to cancel a couple of days of classes already. (That was a pity as I had my best day of classes in terms of them all 9 hours being in one place!) Anyway, I am feeling better than before, and have most of my voice back. I tried to keep going last week through an exhausting schedule, but my voice gave way and my students literally could not hear me, so I finally had to stop. Obviously I have not really found balance in terms of work, a couple years with barely any…and than this. Life as a free lance teacher is interesting in terms of the unique and bizarre windows into obscure realities. One never knows who their new student may be, and due to the fast turn over of new clients, there is smilingly no end to the random situations that I encounter. By the way, there is a fast turn over because here in Berlin a lot of classes are sold by a duration, such as 3 months, or as intensive courses that run for only 2 weeks. I thought that tonight I would offer a quick glance into the peepholes of some of my clients: Mid-day intensive course of Divorcées: Now, I am assuming that it was purely coincidence that brought together this group of divorcées (4 out of the class of 5). As far as I know marketing for singles or divorcées is yet to hit the Berlin marketing network. This class is a group of very stiff Germans who all somehow managed to take 2 weeks off of work to focus on English. It´s a bit like a comedian show trying to get this group to crack a smile, so I ham it up. I can go in and talk about anything I want, since it’s a discussion group, so recently I have been entertaining myself by talking about subjects such as ‘ American Politics, travelling in San Diego, and what their opinions of the U.S. are’ . Can of worms…it was kind of funny to watch them find the word to politely express to me what they thought. Their general consensus seemed to be that they could not understand why Americans played such a large role in International World Policy when they were not even interested enough in most of the countries in the world to go visit them. Private Students: I have an interesting array of private students. First there’s a man I teach Spanish to, Claus. He’s a middle aged divorced guy who lives alone in his fifth story flat in Prezlaurberg that he uses for his travel agency’s office. He´s the only client who´s house I still go to, and he if always so welcoming. He makes me tea, serves pastries and is very German. He loves it when my example/practices sentences make logical sense, and has to be patient when they are not Germanically linear and logical. There´s the woman from Katachstan (before it was Russia) who just found me, she is in the university and wants to practice writing before her exams in Febuary. My schedule is too full, so I’ll give this client to Joel. Next would be Ramona, a bored German woman who wanted to learn English in 2 weeks for an interview with Ebay. I think we must have practiced a fake version of that interview 30 times. In the end we were hysterically making up ridiculous answers the to same questions we´d been reviewing for 20 hours. Simone is a shy mother and wife who runs some department at some office. I´m sure I´d remember what if I didn´t have so many people constantly telling me their jobs…anyway… she was so nervous before our first class that she stayed up all night. The office says she’s always stressed and worried. Sina is a 19 year old girl who is practicing for the Arbetur. That is a really famous test here in Germany that the Germans take in their 5th year of high school. The kids pick 2 areas of major focus, 2 of minor focuses, and then they have to take really, really hard tests and do well, else they will not get a good place in a uni (university). Being placed well here in Germany is important, and starts at an early age. Those who are not inclined to study much are placed into more technical schools, and largely play a different roll in society than the highly educated people. If you decide at such a tender age to do your Arbitur, you´re pretty well destined for a blue collar lifestyle that includes manual labor and a totally different class with whom you will associate. Sina is sweet, and a total flake about meeting for her classes. Mostly she just want to go shopping or drink hot chocolate and practice speaking. Beginning English These classes are becoming more of an opportunity for me to practice German than I would have guessed, depending on the group. Sometimes I am given a ‘beginners group’ and they come in bored off their butts with the first pages of the beginning English book. Then there are groups like I meet with one Monday and Wednesday nights. These two middle aged guys, with all due respect, are the slowest group I have ever had. Don´t get me wrong, I totally like them, and really am not judging them. I just smile when after like 12 hours of class we are still learning how to say ‘What´s his name?’ for a man and ‘What´s her name?’ for a woman. Even after telling this to them multiple times, and correcting them dozens and dozens of times, they still don´t mind going over the same thing in like 10 varieties on never ending angles to practice the same thing. Over and over … They´ve no clue to what a verb or noun is, in any language…and sometimes in my vain attempts to explain the difference between a conjugated and non-conjugated verb, I will just hear them utter under their breath ‘His for man’ ‘Her for woman’. Then they just smile at me innocently, with this cute expression of being pleased with themselves that they finally remember. They are so eager and patient to teach me words in German, so that I can simply just tell them the important things in German. They are very sweet guys.