Orientation, or, How It All Began

Originally written September 8th

So here we go. After many drafts of essays, an unhealthy dose of stressful waiting, and a long summer spent traveling that was over far too soon, I find myself finally at the Fulbright orientation in Cologne. It seems just a tiny bit ridiculous to be here, both because I can't believe it's arrived so quickly and because I can't wait for it to be over. As a general rule, I don't like orientations.

This one, though, could be a lot worse. We met up at the Cologne train station on Monday and took a couple of buses out to the much smaller village of Altenberg, which has a big conference center that can hold all 200-odd orientees. After dinner, we had a brief introductory session and were then set free to mingle and drink beer at the temporary bar. (Ah, I must be in Germany...)

Yesterday morning began early, and varied from interesting and relevant talks about life in a German school to the boring and necessary stuff about housing and insurance. The rest of the day was devoted to working on a 45-minute lesson plan, which will be presented tomorrow. Just after dinner, we all reconvened for a Q&A with some of last year's participants.

Today was excruciatingly long, consisting almost entirely of the presentation of the lesson plan project. The level of experience of the assistants with preparing and teaching a lesson is, as expected, quite varied, although there were definitely no unqualified disasters. The tutors, German teachers who had come to help prepare us for teaching, observed and commented on our work, which was simultaneously helpful and frustrating--the latter because different tutors sometimes gave us conflicting advice. After all that, we then had two hours straight of lectures about Fulbright-related stuff--how to get reimbursed, who to call if there's trouble (Ghostbusters!), official channels of communication, etc.

I've been trying to interact and pay attention, but I've felt drowsy and odd for the last few days. It's an odd combination of feeling lethargic and being desperately excited to get going. At this point, I'm so close to the place that I've been looking forward to for months that the couple days that stand between me and Stadtroda don't seem to be much more than inconsequential formalities.

I've met several nice people here, many whom I'm sure I'll never see again for the most part. Socializing is all well and good, but I'd rather spend my time getting to know my students, my teacher, and my town than other Americans who will be living a hundred miles away.

Now at the end of it, I found the orientation session, at least for me, not so helpful. The most important parts were the sessions of genuinely helpful information, such as about insurance, the school schedule in our areas, and getting money refunded, and meeting other people who will actually be living in the same area. I didn't feel like the lesson plan practice was that helpful, although I've been working in ESL classes for a while, so it was very similar to what I've been hearing in my TESOL classes for years.

Now, though--now it gets real. Now, off to Stadtroda, to finally, after such a long and winding journey, get started.