"I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest."

I forgot to mention that last Friday night 4 of us went to the English Theatre. It was my first time going there, and I really enjoyed it. It is a very nice theatre, though not that large. And it is completely underground. We went to see "The Importance of Being Earnest." I absolutely love that play, and it was just what was needed after a long week. It is so hilarious and not serious at all. There are so many great one liners too. My favourite is: "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

We went out for dinner beforehand at an American style restaurant. It was nice to spend some time chatting with some colleagues and enjoy a hamburger. They also had a train track above the seats that went all through the room. They turned on the train shortly before we left.

School Library

Last Thursday Cara and I finally finished getting the library at our school set up and ready for the open house on Saturday!! It has taken us a while, and been a lot of work but it looks great! Unfortunately we still have lots more work to do. The school has a ton of Oxford Reading Tree books, which are for the teachers to use for guided reading or leveled books. They are not part of the library collection and will be on the opposite end of the room from the library books. For the open house though we moved them around and used some to fill up shelves. This was all so that it looked nice, and now we will have to move things back. Then we get to start cataloging books so that the students can take them out. For now classes can come and use the library but no books can be taken out. Here is how the room looked when we were done, before any kids came in and messed the books up!

As you can see we have a large room and not that many books. Some of the books are actually borrowed from a teacher in order to fill the shelves! At the open house we had people commenting on the lack of books in such a large room... But as the library grows I think the space will not be enough. The school will someday be from reception to grade 12, and we will want to keep space for tables, room for kids to read and hopefully even classes to be in the library to work or listen to stories. For now though, I am excited to start having classes use the library (as long as they put the books back in the right places!). 

The open house was yesterday. Yes we had to work on a Saturday. For me it wasn't too big a deal. I was in the library the whole time and didn't get too many parents asking questions. Most of the questions were if the library was open yet (no), if the kids could take out books (not yet) and when they would get to come to the library (with their class).

After the open house 9 of us headed over to the little park for a game of football (ie. soccer). I joined in this time and had a great time. I was super tired after though - almost 2 hours of running around! I am not great at football, partly due to a lack of experience, but that didn't really matter. A lot of the other teachers are super good, so hopefully that will rub off on me :) It would be useful, because (a) football is so popular here, there are always kids playing at break and in hort, and (b) I happen to be a sports teacher...

As we were heading to the park two of the admin/head people said they would pick us up some pizzas and meet us there. This was great because the open house was 11-2 (well more like 2:30...) and we hadn't eaten lunch. By about 4 we decided they must have been joking as they hadn't shown up. At about 5 we finished playing and some of the people driving back to the city headed off. And then returned... with the two people bringing pizza! Apparently they had gotten lost in the corn fields and had been walking around for about an hour with 5 pizzas. They must have looked pretty funny. They were dressed up as if going to a wedding, she was carrying 5 pizzas and walking in heels and he was wearing a suit and pulling a briefcase... through corn fields! So we stayed and ate an early pizza dinner :)

Later in the evening I dragged myself out of the house and into Frankfurt. I met up with 3 other teachers for some drinks and to watch some karaoke. Yesterday was a beautiful day - sunny and warm as if we've gone back to summer! The evening was also nice and we sat outside. We did go watch some karaoke, but it was late by that time and the first couple songs were German so I ended up heading home. I was super tired after a long week and a long day. 

This morning, feeling a lot less tired, I decided to take my bike out. I have explored the forest on foot, but not much on my bike. So I rode around for a couple hours trying to get a sense of where the different paths went. I went one way, along the edge of the forest and discovered:

Cows! I actually had to go back to take the picture at the end, because I had expected to go and come back on that path, but ended up doing a loop. Well actually a couple of them. Right after this I headed back into the forest to the right, and up a hill... I had never been this way so I was just randomly deciding where to go. But then I found myself out by the highway I walked to (a different way) a few weekends ago. I decided then to follow a loop that had posted signs. After going down a large hill I found myself at the top of the path near my house, where I'd turned off to the cows. Instead of going home though I kept following the signs. After a while of riding along the fields I lost the signs, and ended up in Oberursal:

 I followed some other signs, and again randomly ended up back where I had been, on the path back to my house. So I headed back, with one detour to the cows, for some lunch. Maybe another time I will try to follow the signs, starting in the other direction, and actually make it around the loop!

For now I am going to relax for the rest of the afternoon. Do some house cleaning, laundry, baking and hopefully book some tickets for Christie and I to go to Italy at Christmas. 

Errands and Unexpected Fairs

After school today I took the bus into Frankfurt. I had some errands I had to run, and wanted to enjoy a Hort-less afternoon. It was a nice early-Autumn day, prefect for being out for a walk. I took some books and DVDs back to the library, went to the bank, got some groceries... Bought myself some chocolate and a butter croissant as a snack! Yum, so good and healthy :)

As I was wandering around looking in shops I discovered that at Hauptwache there was some sort of fair going on. What a surprise - I swear there is always something going on there! This one looked like a kind of fall fair. The first set of stalls I wandered through were mostly food related. Since it was about 6:30 there were lots of people eating and drinking. I found a neat stall where someone had bee hives that they were showing how they make honey from. They had something that was spinning the hives, that looked like a board. Honey was dripping off of the spinning hives. He then took them and scraped them off. I tried what he was scraping off. It wasn't nearly as sweet as I had expected. The hive part was actually kind of chewy and not sweet.

Making honey

I then tried to go home, but realized I had just missed a train and had another 25 minutes to wait. So I strolled back through the fair and to the Roßmarkt. There was a lot more of the fair there, including all kinds of farm vehicles and what I believe is an old milk machine of some sort. They also had some farm animals. 

The possible milk machine is the large silver thing on the left of the picture. There were lots more small tractors to the right that I didn't manage to get in the photo. 

There were cows, pigs and other farm animals

The sky as I was heading home

2 Months

Today I have been in Frankfurt for 2 months!!! It has gone so quickly, yet feels like forever. Thinking back to being picked up from the airport, and the first evening in the city seems like a life time ago. So much has happened since. I have met so many new people, learned so much and had so much fun! We have had 6 weeks of school, only 3 more until October break. There is still so much I would like to do in Frankfurt, but I have lots of time for that.

Up the Dom, with a view of the Main

Teaching

This week I am getting some great opportunities to teach. On Tuesday was my first time teaching my class by myself. As I am a teaching assistant I am usually just helping in the class: working with individual students, helping with classroom management and often taking the class to and from different classes or being in charge of them as the teachers switch. So while I am often with them for short periods of time where I get to be the "lead teacher" this was the first full 45 minute period where I got to plan and teach something. The reason behind this was the English teacher was on a field trip with his class.

So for English we are following Jolly Phonics, learning the letters and their sounds. So far we have learned 16 letters, but thanks to way too much listening to the little letter songs I think the kids actually know most of them. And can sing the songs, which they often do completely unprompted. So I did some review with them. We first read a story - Mind Your Manners BB Wolf. Quite a fun story and good for talking about manners. After I taught them a new song for practicing sounds before playing a matching game. I may regret this as it is very repetitive - fee fie fiddley ie oh, repeat repeat repreat. And then you do it with other sounds. Eg. it becomes dee die diddley ie oh. The last line is "and this time with the ___" and you say another sound. The way I did it with the class is I said a kids name and they picked a new letter. Today during snack the class started singing it and two of the girls played "teacher." So after each round they picked a quiet student to choose the next letter, just as I do. However, when one girl wasn't picking the letter they want they ended up making her change her mind.... but then again they did appoint themselves the leaders.

The lesson went really well, but at the end I was tired. It just showed how much effort it takes to keep my class on task and not running wild. Especially if they are on the carpet, it only takes a few seconds and there is mayhem. I have been trying to teach them how to respond when I clap (stop look listen and clap back) yet some of them still think they can ignore me and talk through. I swear they seem to think that they can speak German through anything we do in English...

Tomorrow I get to be teacher again - twice. The gr 5 teacher is away in the afternoon so I am teaching English for her last period. I am most likely going to camp with that class after Christmas, so have started going in Monday mornings and Friday afternoons to do some guided reading with them. This will give me another opportunity to get to know them. It was really nice of her to plan something and then go through it all with me after school today.

I also get to teach my class again. The English teacher is on a field trip, again (oh, this is the 2nd of 4 times over the next couple weeks). My teacher will also be around that period, but she asked me to go over the school mission with the class. This is going to be a challenge, because the mission is really written for the teachers. And I have to go through this complex language with my grade 1s who don't speak English that well... I added lots of pictures, hopefully that will help!

Gute Nacht!

Amsterdam!!

Just a quick update to tell you I just bought tickets to go to Amsterdam!! I am going with a couple friends and their friends for 4 nights for our October break. I am so excited!! I can't wait to see Amsterdam, and have a holiday with my friends. Right after that Haydn is hopefully coming to visit me, and then I am working a week of holiday camps before school starts up again. Can't wait - only 4 more weeks :)

Had a good day at school today. We made fruit sticks (ie. fruit salad on toothpicks) today as part of our healthy food unit in science. That was quite the experience. I came in just as the kids had got out their fruit and were starting to try cutting in up. So that was a bunch of gr 1s with sharp knives and no clue how to use them. I yelled at a couple kids to get them to stop as they tried cutting with the knife upside down and were going to put their hand on the blade... In the end no one cut themselves, and it was a great activity. The kids seemed really happy to have made the fruit sticks themselves. And they certainly ate enough! We made about 100 of them I swear, and barely had any left at the end. 

Walk in the Woods

Yesterday I went for a walk in the woods north of me. The forest goes all the way up the Taunus hills, but I didn't go that far. I walked for about an hour until I got to a bridge across the 455 highway. Then I turned around and walked home again. Here are some photos I took:

These beetles were everywhere. It was kind of disgusting because many of them were squashed 

This is where I saw a deer crossing the path! I couldn't get my camera out fast enough, but apparently there are many deer in the forest. You just have to wait quietly - and have your camera out and ready!

Heading back

Baking

I am sitting in my kitchen right now waiting for my zucchini muffins to finish baking. I only have a toaster oven and they are taking longer than the 12 minutes the recipe said. I am excited to try them, as I have no clue if they will turn out ok. Apparently baking in Germany (and maybe Europe in general) is very different than in Canada. It has taken me until today to find and buy all the ingredients I need, and still I had to improvise.

Here are some differences I have found so far:

- measuring. Here they weigh many ingredients like flour and sugar. I got slightly confused as to why my plastic measuring cup had different lines for flour and sugar until I realized that the measurements were for weight, and not milliliters.

- baking soda and powder. First, baking soda is not really used here. Luckily, one of my German friends helped me find it. Both baking soda and baking powder come in little packages, and then recipes call for 1 package of "backpulver" (baking powder). A package of baking powder is 15 g or 3 tsp.

- vanilla. Vanilla here also comes in little packages. It comes as vanilla sugar. This was an easy adjustment as well, because I just added the vanilla sugar with the sugar in my muffins.

- eggs. When you buy eggs in the grocery store they aren't in the fridge. I guess they don't wash them before you get them, but then they say to put them in the fridge when you get home. Also, I swear there are 3 different dates on them, and I don't know what they each mean. Finally, they come in 10s, not in dozens.

- milk. Coming from Canada, where in a grocery store you have a choice of different brands, different sizes and different types of milk, here it feels like you barely get a choice. Milk is bought in 1 L tetrapacks, and you can get full fat, 1.5 % and I think one in between. The one option here that is not at home is whether you get fresh milk or H-milk. Fresh milk is what we get at home, and is always in the fridge and has a short expiry date. H-milk is ultra high temperature milk and doesn't have to be in the fridge until it's opened. It also can be kept (before opening) for a few months. Nice for me, when I went grocery shopping with a friend I bought a 12 L case since she had a car :)

- packaging. Here the largest package of flour I have seen is 1 kg. Any brown flour or specialty flour comes in smaller bags. It's the same thing for sugar and even milk.

- brown sugar. Doesn't seem to exist here. Finally today I bought some raw sugar called "brauner zucker" and used that.

- things I can't find. So far on top of brown sugar I can't find vinegar, bran, wheat germ or chocolate chips (I had to buy a bar of chocolate and cut it up). Funny because this place seems to be crazy about chocolate, and there is a huge section devoted to chocolate in the stores. Yet not in the form of chips.

OK, muffins are done, and are very yummy! 

Heidelberg

On Saturday a group of us headed to Heidelberg for the day. First trip out of Frankfurt since I got here! We met up at the hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt and took the train to Heidelberg, which took about an hour. We celebrated Cara's birthday by spending the early afternoon wandering around Heidelberg, enjoying the centre of town. It was pretty hot and humid, so we went into some of the shops and stopped for some delicious frozen yogurt. We didn't go up to the castle, I will have to do that another visit.

View along the main shopping street

Heiliggeistkirche (Church of the Holy Spirit)

Karl-Theodor-Brücke

Me with a view of the castle behind

Another view of Heidelberg Castle, which was later lit up for the fireworks

After the afternoon of enjoying the city, we met up with some more colleagues and headed just out of Heidelberg. We went to one of the teacher's parents' house for a barbecue. It was such a nice dinner. Sitting on the deck, enjoying the garden and nice weather and great food. We even had a cake for Cara's birthday. Since she has a bunch of dietary restrictions, the cake was chocolate covered rice cakes with candles stuck in them :) 

We then headed back into the city for the fireworks. They were lit from one of the bridges, and we were right by the bridge. They were definitely worth the wait, because I think they were the best fireworks I have ever seen! They were pretty much on top of us. Here is a bit of the symbolism of the fireworks: "The show starts with the Heidelberg castle being lit up as though it is on fire. This is to remember the times in 1689, 1693 and 1764, when the castle went up in flames! After a few minutes of the castle 'burning', the fireworks begin. The fireworks are launched from the old bridge." The castle is lit up red, and the first few minutes of the fireworks are made to symbolize the gun fire between the bridge and castle. 

We were lucky, after the fireworks two of the teachers with cars drove us all back to Frankfurt. My first experience of driving on the autobahn. While we weren't driving extremely fast I definitely saw people who were! 

I had a more relaxed day on Sunday. I went into the city in the morning. I met up with a few of the other teachers for a leisurely all-you-can eat brunch near the zoo. Then I wandered along the park the circles the main centre of town. I walked all the way around and then caught the S-Bahn home. 

After some housework I decided to go for a walk. I went up past the school to the forest. For the first time I went north of the road dividing two parts of the forest. I discovered that the forest area there is much larger, and also has many paths. It was not a great day to discover this, because just when I got about 30-40 minutes from home it started to rain. There had been some light rain earlier so I had my umbrella and kept walking. This time though it started to absolutely pour! By the time I turned around I had about an hour walk home in very heavy rain. By the last part of the walk the path had turned into a river! That being said, I actually sort of enjoyed walking in the rain with my umbrella. Only my shoes got soaking wet, and my legs were rather muddy by the time I returned. 

And back to school on Monday! We spent the day on a field trip to a local bakery, where we got to help make buns. Many of the kids were absolutely covered in flour :) Each person (kid and teacher) got to make 10 buns, being as creative as we wanted. They supplied different toppings, like poppy seeds, chocolate chips, sugar and salt. I made some pretzels, a person, a hedgehog, and others. It was lots of fun for all of us. And lots of good bread to eat! 

Photo of the Day

Frankfurt mix: new and old architecture

Parents Night

Last night my class had its Parents Night. We had one or both parents come from all but two of our students. It was funny seeing the parents sitting in the children's little seats. We had made "Me Books" with the class, and had those out for the parents to look through. In then the kids had drawn their house, family, favourite friend, favourite toy, etc.

The evening was a chance for each teacher to talk a bit about their plans for the term, and for the parents to ask any questions. Since the class has a class teacher, English teacher, German teacher and a Sports teacher (plus me!), it was a very structured night. 7-7:15 was welcoming them, 7:15-7:30 was English, etc. etc. Also in there was 15 minutes to hold the elections for another parent representative for the class. Finally at 8:15 my teacher got time to talk about all the subjects she teaches. It all went very well, or at least I think. It all sounded nice - I do love the sound of German. The only English was the 15 minutes of the English teacher. So I sat through 2 and a half hours of German....

The parents all seem nice. I chatted with a couple of them afterwards. They did ask a lot of questions, but I didn't get the sense that any were demanding things. More just asking questions because they want the best for their kid, though what parent doesn't. These parents just happen to be paying to get the best.

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Ah Friday. So nice to have the weekend :) Sometimes I find I don't want to go home though, I miss having people around. That is definitely the one way I have been a bit home sick, I miss having my family around all the time. (Well, some of the time...)

This weekend we are going to Heidelberg tomorrow and then on Sunday I think we are meeting for brunch somewhere. We are going to spend the day in Heidelberg site seeing, then in the evening there are fireworks! It is one of my friends birthdays, so it will be a great way to celebrate!