Last Thursday was my first mensiversary in Stadtroda. It's been four weeks since I arrived, a bit lost and lugging my bags, on the train platform and met my mentor teacher for the first time; four weeks since I met Bethany; four weeks of trying to get apathetic students to laugh and stumbling through lesson plans. Four weeks in the same town.
You know what this means: Time for a vacation! Hey, how about Spain?!
Ryanair flies three routes out of the small airport in Altenburg, which is within reach of my all-Thüringen ticket: one to London (Stansted), one to Alicante, and one to Barcelona. Hey, I've heard of Barcelona! Let's go there!
Tomorrow we (Bethany's coming too, poor girl) will take a flight to Barcelona and begin our Iberian adventure. (Has a nice ring, doesn't it?) We'll stay three nights in Barcelona, then move on to Madrid for two nights, then to Lisbon for two more. After that, it gets a bit fuzzy (maybe I should plan this, eh?)--I think we may stay a day and a half in Sevilla, then go to Tarifa for the night, and spend our last full day in Morocco. On the 22nd, we fly out of Malaga in south Spain to Wroclaw, Poland. Why Poland, you ask? Well, it's cheaper to fly into Poland and take the train back to Stadtroda than it is to fly into, say, Berlin or Frankfurt. Plus, I have wanted to go to Poland for at least two years, and although we'll only have a day to see a bit of one town, I'm looking forward to it. Plus, it's not that far away, so we can always go back for a weekend or something. :)
As we're preparing for this trip, I find myself getting a little apprehensive, as well as very excited. It's hard to believe that I'm actually going to go to Spain. Spanish was the first foreign language I studied, and although I've never really had the passion for it that it deserves--perhaps because I did begin so long ago, so it doesn't seem so special to me--it played a big role, along with Latin, in getting me into linguistics, so I owe the language, as an entity, at least some respect and gratitude. It's a little frustrating to realize that despite the seven-odd years I spent in Spanish classes, I can't speak more two words in sequence, although I'm hoping that I'll be able to read and understand at a baseline-functional level. Who knows--maybe this trip will inspire me to take up the language again! Finally going to Spain feels like the culmination of all of that--for so long, it's just been a mystical, gold-and-red place full of sunshine and bullfighters, and now I'm actually going there.
The apprehension is because Spain feels like, well, a foreign country. No, don't laugh--actually, go ahead if you like, it does sound daft, but let me explain. All of the countries I visited this summer I'd been to before, so I was returning instead of striking out into the unknown. We did visit a lot of places that I'd never been before, but the country, the culture, the languages in most cases, were familiar to me. I spent most of my time in Britain, which is hardly a foreign country at all! No, I kid, Britain is definitely European and, well, quite British, but the shared language gives at least an illusion of familiarity. So, although I was traveling in foreign countries, hearing foreign dialects, eating foreign food (haggis, remember?), it didn't feel quite so...foreign.
Spain, at least in my head, is a very foreign country. The language is "familiar", but I doubt, realistically, I'll be able to say or understand much. I've never even been close before; I don't know much of anything about their history, and my cultural knowledge is all mixed up with what I know about Latin America. Like I said, Spain in my head is a magical land where people get charged by bulls on a regular basis, people play flamenco music in the streets, and everything is washed in golden light. I really feel like I'm going somewhere new, and it's a bit terrifying.
Speaking of terrifying: did I mention that we'll probably day-trip to Morocco? Morocco, if you don't know, is just nine miles across the Straight of Gibraltar from Spain, but it's...Africa. And Muslim. These are two words that put me a bit on edge. Yes, yes, cultural understanding, people are different everywhere, open-mindedness, I know, but I can't help being a bit nervous. I've never been to Africa or a Muslim country before. This is most definitely something new.
On the other hand, I'm the one pushing to go to Morocco at all, for the simple reason that we can, and when will we ever have an opportunity like this again? Maybe never. Unlike some very open-hearted and courageous people I know, I've never had any particular interest in going to Africa, but being that close and not seeing at least a tiny piece of the Mediterranean bit seems a shame.
So, the lesson in all this is: don't stick Jennifer in a small town in the middle of nowhere for too long, or she'll fly off to Africa first chance she gets. Or maybe it's Don't let Jennifer choose her own mensiversary presents. Or maybe You can never travel too much.
I'll keep you updated. Wish me luck!
Monday, October 11, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Happy Birthday, Deutschland!
The Fourth of July is kind of a big deal in America. In keeping with the millennia-old tradition of celebrating by imbibing copious amounts of alcohol and blowing stuff up, the Fourth is (at least where I come from) a jovial occasion of outdoor barbecues, beer, guests, bunting, fluttering flags, and fireworks. For weeks running up to it, all the stores are packed with gaudy, flag-oriented paraphernalia, and families make their annual trek to the Indian reservations to buy, usually, enough explosives to reduce their garages to shrapnel. It's a chance to enjoy the hot weather (at least you hope for hot weather in Washington), have a good time with your friends, make some craters in your driveway, and reflect with satisfaction on how some upstarts and rebels took on an empire and stuck it to 'em. Watching the fireworks blaze the darkness makes you feel just a bit shivery thinking of all our country's been through, and just a bit warm and fuzzy, feeling like you're a part of it.
Today was Germany's birthday--the Germany in the shape and form that we now know is two years younger than me. Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit ("The Day of German Unity") is an official government holiday celebrating the day that Germany was official reunited from East and West into one nation. As usual for a Sunday in Stadtroda, the streets were mostly deserted, and despite the surprising gift of a warm, sunny day, all was quiet and empty.
I took the train to nearby Jena, looking for some sign of patriotism, and found only two things that could even begin to qualify. First, the only sign of the German black, red, and gold was on the poster for some sort of anti-nationalism rally in a small square outside Jena's movie theater. The protesters--or rallyers, or attendees, or whatever they were--sat rather peaceably listening to a calm, measured voice reading some kind of political speech over a loudspeaker. The proceedings were conducted under the half-wary, half-exasperated gaze of a rather sizable contingent of black-uniformed, no-nonsense Polizei. I moved on from this quickly.
I proceeded past all of the blank, dark, unadorned shop fronts with the amplified voice echoing after me until I came to the market square, where at last I found the second and more welcoming-looking celebration of the Tag der Deutschen Einheit: a small stage, a beer stall, and a sausage cart. The cafes facing the square were open with tables in the sun, and I looked around for a bit before running into an English acquaintance--another ETA--and settling at a table to sip a strawberry juice and listen to the music. Some speeches were made that we neither understood nor listened to; there were no cheers, no clapping, no enthusiasm at all. I eventually just headed home again.
On the one hand, this seems odd to me--perhaps not that this particular German holiday is not enthusiastically celebrated, just that it is barely (or, in Stadtroda, not) celebrated at all. I speculated at first that this lack of interest and enthusiasm might be an East German thing, but was then reminded of my first full weekend in Marburg two years ago, which had similarly shuttered shops, deserted streets, and no signs of life or participation on the same holiday.
Nevertheless, I am inclined to suspect that at least part of this is because of the East/West divide. I asked my mentor teacher about the local attitude to this particular holiday, and her answer was that it depended a lot on how each person fared after reunification. Some, especially those for whom intellectual and artistic freedom was of paramount importance, embraced and desired it; others, who were content to follow the rules and be taken care of by the government, suffered from and resented the governmental switch. I'm reminded of buttons that we saw in an "Ost-Shop" ("East-Shop") in Weimar depicting silhouettes of either West or East Germany before the reunification, emblazoned with "Schön war die Zeit..." (literally "Nice was the time..." but more like "Those were the times" or "The good old days.")
Also, I'm reminded of something I've heard before, but in Japan, upon noticing that there are almost no Japanese flags: that the Japanese associate the Japanese flags with the government in World War II and are ashamed to fly it. I wonder if the same thing is true in Germany. And does a similar premise explain, perhaps in part, why British and English flags are so rare (going back to British Imperialism)?
In any case, the whole holiday felt somewhat surreal--I knew it was supposed to be happening, but Stadtroda seemed to have collectively shrugged, rolled over, and gone back to sleep, while Jena saw it as an excuse to do the proper German thing, i.e. eat sausages, drink beer, and have some nice music. It seems to me that considering the horrors of the recent past, the trauma of separation, and the awkward and mismatched reunification, Germany has a lot to be proud of in terms of progress made. During my years as a German student, I've been struck by (and occasionally fed up with) the near-obsession with rehashing and re-examining, in detail again and again, all of the horror and agony that the 20th century brought to Germany. Rarely, it seems, is much attention paid to Germany's long and illustrious history before the world wars; living down the Nazis seems to consume the German national psyche.
Despite the huge load of guilt the entire country seems to carry, the nation has pressed on: just today, Germany's finally paid off the last of the loans they took out to pay the reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles. And here I am, sitting in my room in an old GDR-era building, freely sharing my thoughts, with posters from Britain on the walls and American music on the stereo. When talking to a new German friend, I sometimes am swept away by a sheer sense of gratefulness and awe: only two decades ago, we would've never been able to meet, and there are times in recent memory that we would have been hated enemies. Yet here we are, talking, laughing, correcting each others' pronunciation, learning and sharing freely. It is an absolutely wonderful thing.
So, although the people here don't celebrate with the openness and enthusiasm I might've expected, I'm happy with the progress Germany's made. I'm grateful to be here, and still sometimes a little stunned by it. This country has a way to go yet...but so does any 20-year-old. For goodness' sake, she's barely out of her teens!
Happy birthday, Germany, and many happy returns.
Today was Germany's birthday--the Germany in the shape and form that we now know is two years younger than me. Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit ("The Day of German Unity") is an official government holiday celebrating the day that Germany was official reunited from East and West into one nation. As usual for a Sunday in Stadtroda, the streets were mostly deserted, and despite the surprising gift of a warm, sunny day, all was quiet and empty.
I took the train to nearby Jena, looking for some sign of patriotism, and found only two things that could even begin to qualify. First, the only sign of the German black, red, and gold was on the poster for some sort of anti-nationalism rally in a small square outside Jena's movie theater. The protesters--or rallyers, or attendees, or whatever they were--sat rather peaceably listening to a calm, measured voice reading some kind of political speech over a loudspeaker. The proceedings were conducted under the half-wary, half-exasperated gaze of a rather sizable contingent of black-uniformed, no-nonsense Polizei. I moved on from this quickly.
I proceeded past all of the blank, dark, unadorned shop fronts with the amplified voice echoing after me until I came to the market square, where at last I found the second and more welcoming-looking celebration of the Tag der Deutschen Einheit: a small stage, a beer stall, and a sausage cart. The cafes facing the square were open with tables in the sun, and I looked around for a bit before running into an English acquaintance--another ETA--and settling at a table to sip a strawberry juice and listen to the music. Some speeches were made that we neither understood nor listened to; there were no cheers, no clapping, no enthusiasm at all. I eventually just headed home again.
On the one hand, this seems odd to me--perhaps not that this particular German holiday is not enthusiastically celebrated, just that it is barely (or, in Stadtroda, not) celebrated at all. I speculated at first that this lack of interest and enthusiasm might be an East German thing, but was then reminded of my first full weekend in Marburg two years ago, which had similarly shuttered shops, deserted streets, and no signs of life or participation on the same holiday.
Nevertheless, I am inclined to suspect that at least part of this is because of the East/West divide. I asked my mentor teacher about the local attitude to this particular holiday, and her answer was that it depended a lot on how each person fared after reunification. Some, especially those for whom intellectual and artistic freedom was of paramount importance, embraced and desired it; others, who were content to follow the rules and be taken care of by the government, suffered from and resented the governmental switch. I'm reminded of buttons that we saw in an "Ost-Shop" ("East-Shop") in Weimar depicting silhouettes of either West or East Germany before the reunification, emblazoned with "Schön war die Zeit..." (literally "Nice was the time..." but more like "Those were the times" or "The good old days.")
Also, I'm reminded of something I've heard before, but in Japan, upon noticing that there are almost no Japanese flags: that the Japanese associate the Japanese flags with the government in World War II and are ashamed to fly it. I wonder if the same thing is true in Germany. And does a similar premise explain, perhaps in part, why British and English flags are so rare (going back to British Imperialism)?
In any case, the whole holiday felt somewhat surreal--I knew it was supposed to be happening, but Stadtroda seemed to have collectively shrugged, rolled over, and gone back to sleep, while Jena saw it as an excuse to do the proper German thing, i.e. eat sausages, drink beer, and have some nice music. It seems to me that considering the horrors of the recent past, the trauma of separation, and the awkward and mismatched reunification, Germany has a lot to be proud of in terms of progress made. During my years as a German student, I've been struck by (and occasionally fed up with) the near-obsession with rehashing and re-examining, in detail again and again, all of the horror and agony that the 20th century brought to Germany. Rarely, it seems, is much attention paid to Germany's long and illustrious history before the world wars; living down the Nazis seems to consume the German national psyche.
Despite the huge load of guilt the entire country seems to carry, the nation has pressed on: just today, Germany's finally paid off the last of the loans they took out to pay the reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles. And here I am, sitting in my room in an old GDR-era building, freely sharing my thoughts, with posters from Britain on the walls and American music on the stereo. When talking to a new German friend, I sometimes am swept away by a sheer sense of gratefulness and awe: only two decades ago, we would've never been able to meet, and there are times in recent memory that we would have been hated enemies. Yet here we are, talking, laughing, correcting each others' pronunciation, learning and sharing freely. It is an absolutely wonderful thing.
So, although the people here don't celebrate with the openness and enthusiasm I might've expected, I'm happy with the progress Germany's made. I'm grateful to be here, and still sometimes a little stunned by it. This country has a way to go yet...but so does any 20-year-old. For goodness' sake, she's barely out of her teens!
Happy birthday, Germany, and many happy returns.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Book: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
First Published: 1817
Original Language: English
Themes: the opinions of others, etiquette, selfishness vs sacrifice, patience
In A Nutshell: Poor Anne Elliot is mostly ignored by her family, being the gentlest and plainest of the three daughters of Sir Walter Elliot, a careless and vain baronet. Due to Sir Walter's extravagances, it becomes necessary for the family to remove to Bath and let their house, Kellynch Hall, to Admiral Croft and his wife. Unbeknownst to almost anyone else, Mrs. Croft is the relative of one Captain Wentworth; although now a successful and rich sailor, his prospects were less certain when he was engaged to Anne eight years before. Lady Russel, Anne's friend and adviser, persuaded her to break the engagement off for the sake of duty, and the two were sundered in anger and regret.
Now Anne is forced to renew her acquaintance with Captain Wentworth, who is still dashing and charming but seems to have no interest in her. Anne spends much time with the Musgroves, her brother-in-law's family, where the captain is very popular, and seems to be developing an attraction to one of the Miss Musgroves. During an excursion at Lyme, this Miss Musgrove injures her head accidentally and Captain Wentworth withdraws, allowing another captain to win her heart. Although encouraged by this news, Anne finally goes to Bath to be with her family but finds the rank-obsessed parties of Bath stagnant and uninteresting. A cousin of hers, Mr. Elliot, shows great interest in her and means to marry her, but an old friend, Mrs Smith, warns Anne that he's false and self-serving. Finally, Captain Wentworth can contain himself no more and professes his enduring love for Anne, and after those eight long years of regret and pain, they can finally be joyously married.
Thinking Makes It So: I should say from the outset that I am disinclined to like Anne Elliot. She's one of those sweet, gentle, obliging creatures who take no notice of themselves, who let other people command and override them with no apparent inclination to stand up for their own thoughts, feelings, or desires. She's so perfectly, submissively, wonderfully, angelically gentle that you just want to scream...if you're me, I guess. I can't help thinking that the whole silly painful awkward situation could've been avoided if Anne had stood up for herself and asserted her own wishes in the first place.
That said, Anne is surrounded by a lot of obnoxious, self-obsessed, overbearing people. Her father is so absorbed in himself and his gentility that he's gotten their family into debt, and he treats less fortunate people with disdain and scorn, as does his arrogant daughter, Elizabeth. The youngest daughter, Mary, is even more insufferable; she constantly wheedles, guilt-trips, and manipulates people's emotions by professing herself ill or very ill-used whenever something doesn't suit her fancy or she feels too neglected. Somehow, out of all of this, Anne emerged as a gentle soul, primarily concerned with maintaining the peace and comfort of others.
The selfishness of others is less obvious. Mr Elliot had formerly scorned an acquaintance with his relatives, but when he suspects that Sir Walter may remarry and thereby jeopardize Mr Elliot's position as heir of the Elliot title, he insinuates himself into their family with flattery and good manners to make sure it doesn't happen. In fact, there are very few major players in the whole story that are at all worthy of a positive opinion, since everyone seems to be operating out of purely selfish motives--even Captain Wentworth, who admits that everything he does through the whole book is motivated by his love for Anne. The only one apparently totally free of this vice is, again, Anne herself, whose first concern is always to make sure that everyone around her is happy at the sacrifice of her own happiness, contentment, solitude, or companionship.
I knew how this book would end when I started it--I knew that Anne would eventually reconcile with Captain Wentworth--so all I really needed to know was how they got there. Although I didn't dislike it, I didn't like it much, either; there was far too much of Anne being confused and upset but sacrificially hiding it so that no one might have any idea that, I don't know, something important might be going on in her life. Although granted, since almost all the people around her are self-absorbed snobs, they probably either wouldn't care or treat her as a nuisance, so maybe she has a point.
Although I assume Persuasion is, indeed, about persuasion, it seems to me that it's also a good close look at the different types of selfishness and pride in this particular rank and style of life at the time, and how the character of Anne defies what was, I imagine, rather typical of the time. Anne is humble, charitable, and giving; she visits a poor friend in need; she does chores and volunteers for work that other people don't want to do so that they can enjoy themselves, and she gets little thanks for any of it. I guess the problem for me is that she's so perfect as to be a bit irritating, compounded by her apparent inability to assert herself. Really, I prefer Emma.
That You Must Teach Me: I think, given that I'm now sure that I won't be teaching any of these books in the foreseeable future, I'm going to discontinue this section, since I can do research later if I have to. I would say, though, that if I were to pick one of Austen's books to teach, it wouldn't be Persuasion; there simply isn't enough happening, clever social commentary or no.
First Published: 1817
Original Language: English
Themes: the opinions of others, etiquette, selfishness vs sacrifice, patience
In A Nutshell: Poor Anne Elliot is mostly ignored by her family, being the gentlest and plainest of the three daughters of Sir Walter Elliot, a careless and vain baronet. Due to Sir Walter's extravagances, it becomes necessary for the family to remove to Bath and let their house, Kellynch Hall, to Admiral Croft and his wife. Unbeknownst to almost anyone else, Mrs. Croft is the relative of one Captain Wentworth; although now a successful and rich sailor, his prospects were less certain when he was engaged to Anne eight years before. Lady Russel, Anne's friend and adviser, persuaded her to break the engagement off for the sake of duty, and the two were sundered in anger and regret.
Now Anne is forced to renew her acquaintance with Captain Wentworth, who is still dashing and charming but seems to have no interest in her. Anne spends much time with the Musgroves, her brother-in-law's family, where the captain is very popular, and seems to be developing an attraction to one of the Miss Musgroves. During an excursion at Lyme, this Miss Musgrove injures her head accidentally and Captain Wentworth withdraws, allowing another captain to win her heart. Although encouraged by this news, Anne finally goes to Bath to be with her family but finds the rank-obsessed parties of Bath stagnant and uninteresting. A cousin of hers, Mr. Elliot, shows great interest in her and means to marry her, but an old friend, Mrs Smith, warns Anne that he's false and self-serving. Finally, Captain Wentworth can contain himself no more and professes his enduring love for Anne, and after those eight long years of regret and pain, they can finally be joyously married.
Thinking Makes It So: I should say from the outset that I am disinclined to like Anne Elliot. She's one of those sweet, gentle, obliging creatures who take no notice of themselves, who let other people command and override them with no apparent inclination to stand up for their own thoughts, feelings, or desires. She's so perfectly, submissively, wonderfully, angelically gentle that you just want to scream...if you're me, I guess. I can't help thinking that the whole silly painful awkward situation could've been avoided if Anne had stood up for herself and asserted her own wishes in the first place.
That said, Anne is surrounded by a lot of obnoxious, self-obsessed, overbearing people. Her father is so absorbed in himself and his gentility that he's gotten their family into debt, and he treats less fortunate people with disdain and scorn, as does his arrogant daughter, Elizabeth. The youngest daughter, Mary, is even more insufferable; she constantly wheedles, guilt-trips, and manipulates people's emotions by professing herself ill or very ill-used whenever something doesn't suit her fancy or she feels too neglected. Somehow, out of all of this, Anne emerged as a gentle soul, primarily concerned with maintaining the peace and comfort of others.
The selfishness of others is less obvious. Mr Elliot had formerly scorned an acquaintance with his relatives, but when he suspects that Sir Walter may remarry and thereby jeopardize Mr Elliot's position as heir of the Elliot title, he insinuates himself into their family with flattery and good manners to make sure it doesn't happen. In fact, there are very few major players in the whole story that are at all worthy of a positive opinion, since everyone seems to be operating out of purely selfish motives--even Captain Wentworth, who admits that everything he does through the whole book is motivated by his love for Anne. The only one apparently totally free of this vice is, again, Anne herself, whose first concern is always to make sure that everyone around her is happy at the sacrifice of her own happiness, contentment, solitude, or companionship.
I knew how this book would end when I started it--I knew that Anne would eventually reconcile with Captain Wentworth--so all I really needed to know was how they got there. Although I didn't dislike it, I didn't like it much, either; there was far too much of Anne being confused and upset but sacrificially hiding it so that no one might have any idea that, I don't know, something important might be going on in her life. Although granted, since almost all the people around her are self-absorbed snobs, they probably either wouldn't care or treat her as a nuisance, so maybe she has a point.
Although I assume Persuasion is, indeed, about persuasion, it seems to me that it's also a good close look at the different types of selfishness and pride in this particular rank and style of life at the time, and how the character of Anne defies what was, I imagine, rather typical of the time. Anne is humble, charitable, and giving; she visits a poor friend in need; she does chores and volunteers for work that other people don't want to do so that they can enjoy themselves, and she gets little thanks for any of it. I guess the problem for me is that she's so perfect as to be a bit irritating, compounded by her apparent inability to assert herself. Really, I prefer Emma.
That You Must Teach Me: I think, given that I'm now sure that I won't be teaching any of these books in the foreseeable future, I'm going to discontinue this section, since I can do research later if I have to. I would say, though, that if I were to pick one of Austen's books to teach, it wouldn't be Persuasion; there simply isn't enough happening, clever social commentary or no.
Kürzlich
September 23rd
While working at my computer by my open window, I heard over my music a voice shouting, but it took a good few seconds for it to register consciously. Someone out of the view of my window was announcing something important about the Realschule in a megaphone, something that I couldn't quite catch. Bethany and I both poked our heads out in curiosity, but as nothing seemed to be on fire and there were no screams of panic, we shrugged and went back to work. This only lasted until strains of music began drifting in some minutes later. Leaning out the window, we found that a marching band was coming down the street, playing brightly, accompanied by brigades of fireman in their black-and-reflective-yellow gear and followed by a long parade of people of all ages. Most of them, from adults down to young kids, were carrying lanterns or, more often, lit firebrands. I'd seen enough; I grabbed a coat and my keys and dashed from the room to check it out.
Bethany and I stepped out of our dorm and joined the firelight flow of people, which must have comprised the entire population of Stadtroda by the size of it, in a circuit through the apartment complexes around the Wohnheim. We tried to ask what the parade was about, but all I could gather was that it was for the "Feuerwerk" (firework), which made some degree of sense, given the torches, but still wasn't entirely clear. We strode along anyway; I was burning with curiosity, and was just starting to contemplate the most subtle way that I could steal a torch from an unsuspecting child when a bright light flashed somewhere nearby. I looked around for the camera, but that mystery was solved a few seconds later by an ominous rumble from the darkening sky. And sure enough, soon fat raindrops were plonking us on the head, and within minutes it was an outright downpour, complete with atmospheric lightening and thunder. I couldn't help feeling a rush of deja vu and wondering: for Heaven's sake, what does God have against lantern parades?
We trotted on after the rest of the parade through the rain, and shortly we turned into a small field near the Wohnheim, where sausage and beer stands had been set up (anyone surprised?) and the arriving paraders tossed their torches into an enormous pile of brush and firewood piled at least 12 feet high. Party, anyone?
Bethany and I dashed back to the Wohnheim to get proper rainjackets and cameras, although the heavy rain had quit before we stepped through the door and settled instead on a drizzle. It seems God knew what He was about, though: by the time we returned to the field, the pile of brush and torches was an enormous raging bonfire, like a miniature volcano with a baby dragon at its heart, blowing clouds of sparks defiantly up at the unfriendly skies--so all told, it was probably a good idea to douse everything thoroughly first.
Having not yet eaten dinner, I got in line for a bratwurst while Bethany (a vegetarian) went to find some popcorn. I finally worked up the courage to ask some nice ladies in the line behind me and found out that the party was for the Feuerwehr (fire department), which seems both beautifully appropriate and wonderfully ironic, and explains either way the surplus of tough-looking guys stumping around in neon-lined boots and jackets and casting baleful, watchful glares over the bonfire. I got my bratwurst, Bethany got her popcorn, then we shared a perfectly ginormous cotton candy that was melting in the rain as we ate it. Finally, we both bought some Gluehwein and stood back to watch the fire burn spectacularly.
The entire thing was completely surreal in its suddenness and sheer randomness. It was like everyone in Stadtroda, having not a whole lot better to do on a cloudy afternoon in late September, looked at each other and said, "You know what would make this so much better? An humongous raging bonfire. We can have little kids carry the lit torches! To, y'know, celebrate the Feuerwehr and drink some beer or whatever." And the concensus was: "That sounds brilliant. I'll go get the grill and some kerosene!"
I love Germany.
September 25th
I slept in late today (11 at least) and finally managed to drag myself through the cold drizzle to the train station just in time to miss the train to Jena entirely. Luckily, I always come prepared, so I just pulled out my copy of Emma and waited for the train going the other way instead. This was how I ended up in Gera, a big-ish town about 20 minutes from Stadtroda, wandering in circles trying to figure out which street the signs to "Zentrum/Tourist Infos" were pointing up. I never did find either the city center or the TI, as far as I know. I just set off in the right general direction and wandered into any open shop doorway that looked interesting.
There were a lot less of these than you would think to find on a Saturday afternoon, and not for lack of interestingness but rather for lack of openness. While Saturday is I'm-not-working-today-so-let's-go-shopping-or-do-something-interesting-for-Pete's-sake day where I come from, apparently it's I'm-going-home-at-2-today-because-I-feel-like-it-so-if-you-wanted-to-buy-something-you-should've-come-during-the-week day in Germany. Many of the shops were dark and locked, although in their defense, the wide streets were almost deserted, and the whole center had a ghost-town vibe about it, especially on the rare occasions when I did pass another pedestrian, almost inevitably with their eyes fixed on the pavement and in total silence. It was somewhat creepy.
Nevertheless, I've been on a mission for the last few weeks: to find and buy a Sheepworld pencilcase. You see (those are the opening words of a story you most likely won't care two socks about, so feel free to skip the next couple sentences), I bought one last time I was in Germany and loved it dearly right up until it unceremoniously disappeared sometime between winter and spring quarters this year. Although I found one in Cologne, I foolishly assumed that I'd be able to find them everywhere, and have been searching for them in vain ever since. To my joy, I found just the one I'd been looking for, and bought it with a minimal amount of the prerequisite dithering that accompanies every purchase over 4 euro.
To suppliment the somewhat unreal feeling of the deserted streets of the rain-drenched city, I emerged from a shopping center to find that Milka (the chocolate company) had a little...booth/exhibit thing set up, where they were letting passersby play Milka-related computer games, sample their chocolate, and pet a stuffed purple cow. The best bit was the giant inflatable cow atop the main trailer, which looked a bit odd to me, mostly because it wasn't upside down.
September 27th
Mm, my fingers smell like beeswax. Yum.
Today was Bienenkunde day, but ever since the Feuerwehr Day downpour, the weather's gone from sunny, warm, and gorgeous to cold, wet, and miserable. In fact, it feels almost entirely exactly like Washington--fancy that. Anyway, apparently the bees really don't like it if, after all the trouble they go to keep their hive warm and dry, you go about pulling it apart and letting the water in, so we weren't allowed to peek in the hives today.
It seems I've simply been adopted as the new apprentice beekeeper. That's fine with me, although I regret that I can't understand nearly as much as I would like, since it's all explained to me in German. At this rate, I'll have elevated nodding and smiling strategically to an art form. This also means I don't actually know the English names of half the things I learned about today, but I'll do my best.
My main task today was sorting the Waben, which are easily removable and replaceable wooden frames in which the bees build the wax cells for storing food or raising young. Because the honey is extracted from the Waben without destroying them, they can be reused when the bees become more active again next spring. I learned to identify the difference between Futterwaben (Waben with, uh, Futter in them, which is, I think, like nectar) and Pollenwaben (Waben with pollen and honey in them...the distinction is harder than you'd think). I started to learn to tell apart cells built by workers (Arbeiterinnen) and drones (Drohnen)--the drones' cells are bigger, and ofter have specially-shaped cells for a new queen--and I had to keep a lookout for the larvae of the Wachsmutte (wax moth?), which lays its eggs in the Waben, and when the eggs hatch, the larvae eat through the wax and destroy them. The Wachsmutte has to be killed wherever it's found, although apparently, the earwigs that I found in several combs are good, because they eat the Wachsmutte larvae. Eurgh--spiders and bees and such I can handle, but I really don't like earwigs. They're worse in German: Ohrkriecher (ear-crawler).
Jürgen, the head bee man, seemed to be apologetic that today's tasks weren't nearly as exciting as last week's, but the way I figure it, whenever you get a new pet, you get to name it and play with it and coo and take pictures, but you also have to learn how to take care of it properly. I guess he just doesn't want me to give up on the oh-so-glamorous world of beekeeping because of the boredom of sorting through boxes of wax looking for larvae and brushing away earwigs. I thought it was interesting, I got to practice my German, and the smell of those Waben is absolutely lovely.
If I ever do build that dream house that I'm designing in my head, which already has a red Dublin-style Gregorian front door, a Japanese tatami room with sliding rice-paper doors, and German windows, I may have to have a little styrofoam tower of bees in the backyard, too.
September 28th
Oh, have I mentioned that I joined the church choir?
This is the best opportunity so far to actually speak some German and meet other people in the community, although the first session, two weeks ago, was unportentious: I'm totally out of practice with minor skills like, say, reading music and singing in tune/harmony, and the first practice was a whirlwind of German music terms and songs I don't know. Bethany and I kept exchanging overwhelmed glances as we tried to catch the rhythm, sing in tune, read the notes, and pronounce the German lyrics simultaneously. I didn't go last week partly because I was feeling sick, and partly because I didn't want to go through the frustration.
Bethany convinced me to go again tonight, though. I felt like I could hear my harmony part more clearly (I am really miserable at singing in harmony) and the other girls in the choir were very kind and helped me keep track of where we were. After an hour, we took a break for a small potluck dinner, and as we were eating, more people arrived, almost all significantly older. Apparently there's a second choir (?), and we were all going to practice together. This was just as confusing, but after a good hour and a half of fighting with music I'd never seen before, we adjourned and were warmly greeted by all the sweet ladies, who had also brought cake for someone's birthday that they eagerly encouraged us to try. One lady in particular struck up a conversation with me, and she invited Bethany and me over to house for coffee repeatedly, saying that she was all alone now that all three of her kids are grown.
Being treated with friendliness, interest, and warmth is certainly a welcome change. I've decided that I officially dislike German dorms on principle, but really, it isn't the building's fault (entirely; it is in part). The students are either too shy, too lazy, or too disinterested to actually come seek Bethany or me out, or even really talk to us when we meet by accident. I'd almost started to think that we were doing something wrong, but from the choir's friendly welcome, I must conclude that the students are just self-conscious and busy young adults. That's rather sensible, isn't it?
Also in music news, I was accepted to the music school for guitar lessons (YAAAAAAY!). The only downside at this point is that the lessons are one-on-one, so I won't be able to meet other Germans interested in learning the guitar. My own beloved instrument is still in WA, but Katrin's son has kindly agreed to let me use his, so soon I'll be recklessly annoying anyone who dares to come within hearing distance with my painstaking twanging noises. I start on Friday!
Tomorrow I'll take the train to Jena to meet my university Tutorin, who's been corresponding with me about starting uni and how to matriculate. She's been kind enough to agree to come and meet me and go to the office with me. I'me excited to meet her, although I was a bit embarrassed to find out today that although she addresses me as "du", I should be addressing her as "Sie", and I haven't been. Oops. Curse you, L2 politeness distinctions, for being so confusing!
While I'm here, I wanted to mention the students again. As anyone who's ever been in more than one class session in their life knows, every class group has a different personality, made up of not only the students' individual personalities but also their attitudes, past experiences, willingness to talk, willingness to act, and their interactions with each other and the teacher. Some classes simply click, others simply don't, and the teacher can only improve a curdled classroom to a certain degree.
I have one class that I particularly love that is especially effervescent. There are two students in the class who don't care much, but four of the students are reasonably competent in English and willing to talk, one is shy but willing to participate, and two are low-level beginners. The disparity in ability makes this class tough, but they're all such fun that it doesn't matter as much. I definitely look forward to working with them, and I hope to get to know some of them outside class as well.
Unfortunately, they're pretty much the exception. The attitudinal temperature of the other classes ranges from lukewarm to downright subzero. I haven't encountered any outright hostility yet, but there seems to be an American/German culture gap over the acceptability of talking while the teacher's talking that had me really pissed off today. I'm determined, though, to try to think of more engaging activities so the students won't be as likely to look for amusement elsewhere.
September 29th
The reason this is taking me so long to post is that my Internet is still down, and the tech guy for the Fachschule seems to have no interest in fixing it. There's a monthly 1 GB limit which I unknowingly overstepped, but a few days after he fixed it, it stopped working again, and although I've sent him an e-mail, it's still kaput. Luckily, the end of the month is only two days away now, so I should be able to survive until then. The upside is that I get to bed much earlier, since I don't have the temptation of wandering down the Internet's many twisting alleyways until the wee hours of the night. Also, I can't check my Facebook every half hour.
On the topic of frustrating delays, ARGH German universities are so silly! I understand the need for health insurance certificates and other such guarantees, but whereas American universities (well, mine, at least) seem to be able to condense all the registration and information exchange processes, the German ones seems to delight in making them as complicated as possbile.
I met my tutor, Kati, at the train station, and had a delightful time talking with her the whole day (in German, too! Go me!). She took me to the immatriculation office, where the lady explained to me in clear, simple German that I still had to send in more paperwork and pay the semester fee before they'd give me the student card I could already see lying tauntingly in my folder. Having not accomplished much except having recieved a whole lot of new info-papers, we set off again. To pick up my free planner, we had to take a voucher to a small office tucked away in a different building; to sign up for my e-mail address and log on to the university system, we had to visit a completely anonymous office in yet a different office building; the library was on the other side of the town center, where we discovered that not only would I have to sign up for yet another account, I couldn't do so until the official start of the semester on the first of October. Does this seem needlessly complicated and vaguely sadistic to you, too?
Take, for example, the library. Like I said, I can't register for an account at the library until Friday, so I can't even go in yet. (What?) Also, the library doesn't let you bring any food or drink or anything, and I guess they're afraid you'll try to (somehow) smuggle books out or something, so they provide lockers where you have to leave all the stuff that you aren't going to actually use in the library--your backpack, coat, wallet, etc. This seems to me like a completely pointless precaution; I know that I've ordered pizza for a group project in the library at least once, and somehow nothing caught on fire or was wantonly destroyed. You may think that this was to protect the clearly new library, but the university library in Marburg was as new and as aesthetically pleasing as a warthog carcass, and they had a similar system. They have those scanner things that you have to walk through, too, so stealing books'd be tough. So, seriously, WTF?
I can only conclude that American universities feel like they have to treat their students well (ish) and make things convenient for them (ish) because we have to pay so blasted much. The uni fee in Jena is like 500-600 Euro, Kati told me--whether that's per year or per semester, it's still facepalmingly small compared to American tuition. I didn't even mention that I have to sign up for this thing called Onleila, which is the interface that allows me to register for classes, but my tutor can't tell me how to use it because it's different from the one she uses. The motivation behind these inane complications must be spite, fueled by having to give away an education practically for free. It's the only logical explanation.
Alright, enough with the griping. I may or may not have mentioned before (and I can't check, because my Internet doesn't work) that Bethany and I attend an English Stammtisch (discussion group) on Wednesday nights. The group gets along well; they're all adults wanting to practice and improve their English. Tonight we talked about the word "Fackel" (say it out loud and you might see why it's so funny), whether or not to pronounce the "h" in "herb", and the American words "nuke" and "floored" and their British counterparts. Tonight the group even considerately offered to make one night a month a German night so that Bethany and I can be sure to get some practice in.
Also, tomorrow I'll go to my mentor teacher's house to start teaching her daughter Japanese and pick up my guitar. Hooray!
While working at my computer by my open window, I heard over my music a voice shouting, but it took a good few seconds for it to register consciously. Someone out of the view of my window was announcing something important about the Realschule in a megaphone, something that I couldn't quite catch. Bethany and I both poked our heads out in curiosity, but as nothing seemed to be on fire and there were no screams of panic, we shrugged and went back to work. This only lasted until strains of music began drifting in some minutes later. Leaning out the window, we found that a marching band was coming down the street, playing brightly, accompanied by brigades of fireman in their black-and-reflective-yellow gear and followed by a long parade of people of all ages. Most of them, from adults down to young kids, were carrying lanterns or, more often, lit firebrands. I'd seen enough; I grabbed a coat and my keys and dashed from the room to check it out.
Bethany and I stepped out of our dorm and joined the firelight flow of people, which must have comprised the entire population of Stadtroda by the size of it, in a circuit through the apartment complexes around the Wohnheim. We tried to ask what the parade was about, but all I could gather was that it was for the "Feuerwerk" (firework), which made some degree of sense, given the torches, but still wasn't entirely clear. We strode along anyway; I was burning with curiosity, and was just starting to contemplate the most subtle way that I could steal a torch from an unsuspecting child when a bright light flashed somewhere nearby. I looked around for the camera, but that mystery was solved a few seconds later by an ominous rumble from the darkening sky. And sure enough, soon fat raindrops were plonking us on the head, and within minutes it was an outright downpour, complete with atmospheric lightening and thunder. I couldn't help feeling a rush of deja vu and wondering: for Heaven's sake, what does God have against lantern parades?
We trotted on after the rest of the parade through the rain, and shortly we turned into a small field near the Wohnheim, where sausage and beer stands had been set up (anyone surprised?) and the arriving paraders tossed their torches into an enormous pile of brush and firewood piled at least 12 feet high. Party, anyone?
Bethany and I dashed back to the Wohnheim to get proper rainjackets and cameras, although the heavy rain had quit before we stepped through the door and settled instead on a drizzle. It seems God knew what He was about, though: by the time we returned to the field, the pile of brush and torches was an enormous raging bonfire, like a miniature volcano with a baby dragon at its heart, blowing clouds of sparks defiantly up at the unfriendly skies--so all told, it was probably a good idea to douse everything thoroughly first.
Having not yet eaten dinner, I got in line for a bratwurst while Bethany (a vegetarian) went to find some popcorn. I finally worked up the courage to ask some nice ladies in the line behind me and found out that the party was for the Feuerwehr (fire department), which seems both beautifully appropriate and wonderfully ironic, and explains either way the surplus of tough-looking guys stumping around in neon-lined boots and jackets and casting baleful, watchful glares over the bonfire. I got my bratwurst, Bethany got her popcorn, then we shared a perfectly ginormous cotton candy that was melting in the rain as we ate it. Finally, we both bought some Gluehwein and stood back to watch the fire burn spectacularly.
The entire thing was completely surreal in its suddenness and sheer randomness. It was like everyone in Stadtroda, having not a whole lot better to do on a cloudy afternoon in late September, looked at each other and said, "You know what would make this so much better? An humongous raging bonfire. We can have little kids carry the lit torches! To, y'know, celebrate the Feuerwehr and drink some beer or whatever." And the concensus was: "That sounds brilliant. I'll go get the grill and some kerosene!"
I love Germany.
September 25th
I slept in late today (11 at least) and finally managed to drag myself through the cold drizzle to the train station just in time to miss the train to Jena entirely. Luckily, I always come prepared, so I just pulled out my copy of Emma and waited for the train going the other way instead. This was how I ended up in Gera, a big-ish town about 20 minutes from Stadtroda, wandering in circles trying to figure out which street the signs to "Zentrum/Tourist Infos" were pointing up. I never did find either the city center or the TI, as far as I know. I just set off in the right general direction and wandered into any open shop doorway that looked interesting.
There were a lot less of these than you would think to find on a Saturday afternoon, and not for lack of interestingness but rather for lack of openness. While Saturday is I'm-not-working-today-so-let's-go-shopping-or-do-something-interesting-for-Pete's-sake day where I come from, apparently it's I'm-going-home-at-2-today-because-I-feel-like-it-so-if-you-wanted-to-buy-something-you-should've-come-during-the-week day in Germany. Many of the shops were dark and locked, although in their defense, the wide streets were almost deserted, and the whole center had a ghost-town vibe about it, especially on the rare occasions when I did pass another pedestrian, almost inevitably with their eyes fixed on the pavement and in total silence. It was somewhat creepy.
Nevertheless, I've been on a mission for the last few weeks: to find and buy a Sheepworld pencilcase. You see (those are the opening words of a story you most likely won't care two socks about, so feel free to skip the next couple sentences), I bought one last time I was in Germany and loved it dearly right up until it unceremoniously disappeared sometime between winter and spring quarters this year. Although I found one in Cologne, I foolishly assumed that I'd be able to find them everywhere, and have been searching for them in vain ever since. To my joy, I found just the one I'd been looking for, and bought it with a minimal amount of the prerequisite dithering that accompanies every purchase over 4 euro.
To suppliment the somewhat unreal feeling of the deserted streets of the rain-drenched city, I emerged from a shopping center to find that Milka (the chocolate company) had a little...booth/exhibit thing set up, where they were letting passersby play Milka-related computer games, sample their chocolate, and pet a stuffed purple cow. The best bit was the giant inflatable cow atop the main trailer, which looked a bit odd to me, mostly because it wasn't upside down.
September 27th
Mm, my fingers smell like beeswax. Yum.
Today was Bienenkunde day, but ever since the Feuerwehr Day downpour, the weather's gone from sunny, warm, and gorgeous to cold, wet, and miserable. In fact, it feels almost entirely exactly like Washington--fancy that. Anyway, apparently the bees really don't like it if, after all the trouble they go to keep their hive warm and dry, you go about pulling it apart and letting the water in, so we weren't allowed to peek in the hives today.
It seems I've simply been adopted as the new apprentice beekeeper. That's fine with me, although I regret that I can't understand nearly as much as I would like, since it's all explained to me in German. At this rate, I'll have elevated nodding and smiling strategically to an art form. This also means I don't actually know the English names of half the things I learned about today, but I'll do my best.
My main task today was sorting the Waben, which are easily removable and replaceable wooden frames in which the bees build the wax cells for storing food or raising young. Because the honey is extracted from the Waben without destroying them, they can be reused when the bees become more active again next spring. I learned to identify the difference between Futterwaben (Waben with, uh, Futter in them, which is, I think, like nectar) and Pollenwaben (Waben with pollen and honey in them...the distinction is harder than you'd think). I started to learn to tell apart cells built by workers (Arbeiterinnen) and drones (Drohnen)--the drones' cells are bigger, and ofter have specially-shaped cells for a new queen--and I had to keep a lookout for the larvae of the Wachsmutte (wax moth?), which lays its eggs in the Waben, and when the eggs hatch, the larvae eat through the wax and destroy them. The Wachsmutte has to be killed wherever it's found, although apparently, the earwigs that I found in several combs are good, because they eat the Wachsmutte larvae. Eurgh--spiders and bees and such I can handle, but I really don't like earwigs. They're worse in German: Ohrkriecher (ear-crawler).
Jürgen, the head bee man, seemed to be apologetic that today's tasks weren't nearly as exciting as last week's, but the way I figure it, whenever you get a new pet, you get to name it and play with it and coo and take pictures, but you also have to learn how to take care of it properly. I guess he just doesn't want me to give up on the oh-so-glamorous world of beekeeping because of the boredom of sorting through boxes of wax looking for larvae and brushing away earwigs. I thought it was interesting, I got to practice my German, and the smell of those Waben is absolutely lovely.
If I ever do build that dream house that I'm designing in my head, which already has a red Dublin-style Gregorian front door, a Japanese tatami room with sliding rice-paper doors, and German windows, I may have to have a little styrofoam tower of bees in the backyard, too.
September 28th
Oh, have I mentioned that I joined the church choir?
This is the best opportunity so far to actually speak some German and meet other people in the community, although the first session, two weeks ago, was unportentious: I'm totally out of practice with minor skills like, say, reading music and singing in tune/harmony, and the first practice was a whirlwind of German music terms and songs I don't know. Bethany and I kept exchanging overwhelmed glances as we tried to catch the rhythm, sing in tune, read the notes, and pronounce the German lyrics simultaneously. I didn't go last week partly because I was feeling sick, and partly because I didn't want to go through the frustration.
Bethany convinced me to go again tonight, though. I felt like I could hear my harmony part more clearly (I am really miserable at singing in harmony) and the other girls in the choir were very kind and helped me keep track of where we were. After an hour, we took a break for a small potluck dinner, and as we were eating, more people arrived, almost all significantly older. Apparently there's a second choir (?), and we were all going to practice together. This was just as confusing, but after a good hour and a half of fighting with music I'd never seen before, we adjourned and were warmly greeted by all the sweet ladies, who had also brought cake for someone's birthday that they eagerly encouraged us to try. One lady in particular struck up a conversation with me, and she invited Bethany and me over to house for coffee repeatedly, saying that she was all alone now that all three of her kids are grown.
Being treated with friendliness, interest, and warmth is certainly a welcome change. I've decided that I officially dislike German dorms on principle, but really, it isn't the building's fault (entirely; it is in part). The students are either too shy, too lazy, or too disinterested to actually come seek Bethany or me out, or even really talk to us when we meet by accident. I'd almost started to think that we were doing something wrong, but from the choir's friendly welcome, I must conclude that the students are just self-conscious and busy young adults. That's rather sensible, isn't it?
Also in music news, I was accepted to the music school for guitar lessons (YAAAAAAY!). The only downside at this point is that the lessons are one-on-one, so I won't be able to meet other Germans interested in learning the guitar. My own beloved instrument is still in WA, but Katrin's son has kindly agreed to let me use his, so soon I'll be recklessly annoying anyone who dares to come within hearing distance with my painstaking twanging noises. I start on Friday!
Tomorrow I'll take the train to Jena to meet my university Tutorin, who's been corresponding with me about starting uni and how to matriculate. She's been kind enough to agree to come and meet me and go to the office with me. I'me excited to meet her, although I was a bit embarrassed to find out today that although she addresses me as "du", I should be addressing her as "Sie", and I haven't been. Oops. Curse you, L2 politeness distinctions, for being so confusing!
While I'm here, I wanted to mention the students again. As anyone who's ever been in more than one class session in their life knows, every class group has a different personality, made up of not only the students' individual personalities but also their attitudes, past experiences, willingness to talk, willingness to act, and their interactions with each other and the teacher. Some classes simply click, others simply don't, and the teacher can only improve a curdled classroom to a certain degree.
I have one class that I particularly love that is especially effervescent. There are two students in the class who don't care much, but four of the students are reasonably competent in English and willing to talk, one is shy but willing to participate, and two are low-level beginners. The disparity in ability makes this class tough, but they're all such fun that it doesn't matter as much. I definitely look forward to working with them, and I hope to get to know some of them outside class as well.
Unfortunately, they're pretty much the exception. The attitudinal temperature of the other classes ranges from lukewarm to downright subzero. I haven't encountered any outright hostility yet, but there seems to be an American/German culture gap over the acceptability of talking while the teacher's talking that had me really pissed off today. I'm determined, though, to try to think of more engaging activities so the students won't be as likely to look for amusement elsewhere.
September 29th
The reason this is taking me so long to post is that my Internet is still down, and the tech guy for the Fachschule seems to have no interest in fixing it. There's a monthly 1 GB limit which I unknowingly overstepped, but a few days after he fixed it, it stopped working again, and although I've sent him an e-mail, it's still kaput. Luckily, the end of the month is only two days away now, so I should be able to survive until then. The upside is that I get to bed much earlier, since I don't have the temptation of wandering down the Internet's many twisting alleyways until the wee hours of the night. Also, I can't check my Facebook every half hour.
On the topic of frustrating delays, ARGH German universities are so silly! I understand the need for health insurance certificates and other such guarantees, but whereas American universities (well, mine, at least) seem to be able to condense all the registration and information exchange processes, the German ones seems to delight in making them as complicated as possbile.
I met my tutor, Kati, at the train station, and had a delightful time talking with her the whole day (in German, too! Go me!). She took me to the immatriculation office, where the lady explained to me in clear, simple German that I still had to send in more paperwork and pay the semester fee before they'd give me the student card I could already see lying tauntingly in my folder. Having not accomplished much except having recieved a whole lot of new info-papers, we set off again. To pick up my free planner, we had to take a voucher to a small office tucked away in a different building; to sign up for my e-mail address and log on to the university system, we had to visit a completely anonymous office in yet a different office building; the library was on the other side of the town center, where we discovered that not only would I have to sign up for yet another account, I couldn't do so until the official start of the semester on the first of October. Does this seem needlessly complicated and vaguely sadistic to you, too?
Take, for example, the library. Like I said, I can't register for an account at the library until Friday, so I can't even go in yet. (What?) Also, the library doesn't let you bring any food or drink or anything, and I guess they're afraid you'll try to (somehow) smuggle books out or something, so they provide lockers where you have to leave all the stuff that you aren't going to actually use in the library--your backpack, coat, wallet, etc. This seems to me like a completely pointless precaution; I know that I've ordered pizza for a group project in the library at least once, and somehow nothing caught on fire or was wantonly destroyed. You may think that this was to protect the clearly new library, but the university library in Marburg was as new and as aesthetically pleasing as a warthog carcass, and they had a similar system. They have those scanner things that you have to walk through, too, so stealing books'd be tough. So, seriously, WTF?
I can only conclude that American universities feel like they have to treat their students well (ish) and make things convenient for them (ish) because we have to pay so blasted much. The uni fee in Jena is like 500-600 Euro, Kati told me--whether that's per year or per semester, it's still facepalmingly small compared to American tuition. I didn't even mention that I have to sign up for this thing called Onleila, which is the interface that allows me to register for classes, but my tutor can't tell me how to use it because it's different from the one she uses. The motivation behind these inane complications must be spite, fueled by having to give away an education practically for free. It's the only logical explanation.
Alright, enough with the griping. I may or may not have mentioned before (and I can't check, because my Internet doesn't work) that Bethany and I attend an English Stammtisch (discussion group) on Wednesday nights. The group gets along well; they're all adults wanting to practice and improve their English. Tonight we talked about the word "Fackel" (say it out loud and you might see why it's so funny), whether or not to pronounce the "h" in "herb", and the American words "nuke" and "floored" and their British counterparts. Tonight the group even considerately offered to make one night a month a German night so that Bethany and I can be sure to get some practice in.
Also, tomorrow I'll go to my mentor teacher's house to start teaching her daughter Japanese and pick up my guitar. Hooray!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Busy Little Bees
Well, here's something I never thought I'd get to do in my life.
My mentor teacher and I have been talking about beekeeping, since she helps take care of the bees, and she invited me and Bethany to visit and see how beekeeping works. So Bethany and I showed up this afternoon, met Katrin, and soon found ourselves in a long shed, climbing into beekeeping suits (like this except yellow). This was not the first time I was cursing that I hadn't brought my camera.
We traipsed out of the shed and into a small neighboring field, where ten or so green-painted towers of Styrofoam sat benignly in the sunlight. We met Jürgen, who is apparently the bee expert, and then Katrin led us to one of the hives and gave us a tour. This involved taking the roof off to make sure that the bees have enough food (since their honey was harvested, the beekeepers feed them a sugar mixture that they can feed off but won't turn into honey) and then taking off the feed level to expose slats of honeycombs hanging inside.
The amazing thing was being so close to a beehive--looking down inside it, hearing the monotone buzz all around--and not having to be afraid. Only my hands were bare, but the bees were totally uninteresting in attacking us, and mostly ignored us, despite the fact that Katrin proceeded to reach in and pull up the slats of honeycombs one by one, showing us where the bees keep their food and their growing young. The bees just continued about their business as usual, apparently unconcerned that three humans were pulling their hive apart and then putting it back together.
As usual when I find myself learning about a new skill/area of expertise that I know next to nothing about, I found that it is way more complicated than I would've imagined. The beekeeper has to monitor the health of the hive: if the bees are eating enough, if they have enough food, if there are too many blood-sucking mites on the young, if the queen is healthy, and many other things I don't know about yet. If the queen isn't healthy, if she's dead or defective or mean, then steps have to be taken.
The most important bee is, of course, the queen, who is responsible for laying eggs. In this capacity, she also determines the attitude--"genetic disposition"-- of the hive. We didn't go near one of the hives because it was described as "richtig böse" (really mean); Jürgen had to look after those in a full suit with boots and gloves, and they swarmed him furiously. As we were working with another hive, he came over to us with one of the honeycombs and showed us the queen, which simply looked like a bigger version of all the swarming workers. The hive follows the queen, and because the queen was passing on an aggressive attitude, she had to go, and was therefore killed. The hive also can't survive without the queen, so the beekeepers will wait until all the late queen's larvae are sealed up and her "smell" is gone, then they can be safely combined with another hive that has a more benevolent queen.
Another small hive that Katrin, Bethany and I checked didn't appear to have a queen at all, as there were no larvae in the hive to be found. To keep the hive from dying out, Katrin and Jürgen simply put it together with another small hive. They say that without a queen and any young to remind them of her, the queenless hive will simply accept the new queen as their own.
All this new information is certainly fascinating, but the best part for me was the opportunity to see a beehive firsthand and up close. I held, with my bare hands, one of the combs, and watched the determined, fluffy little beige-and-black bodies push and buzz busily by. They really are beautiful, and, as long as you don't piss them off or do anything stupid, mostly tolerant of intrusions. I'm looking forward to going back next week and having another look at them. I'm also looking forward to some honey next summer!
P.S. I'll try to remember to take pictures next time. Sorry!
My mentor teacher and I have been talking about beekeeping, since she helps take care of the bees, and she invited me and Bethany to visit and see how beekeeping works. So Bethany and I showed up this afternoon, met Katrin, and soon found ourselves in a long shed, climbing into beekeeping suits (like this except yellow). This was not the first time I was cursing that I hadn't brought my camera.
We traipsed out of the shed and into a small neighboring field, where ten or so green-painted towers of Styrofoam sat benignly in the sunlight. We met Jürgen, who is apparently the bee expert, and then Katrin led us to one of the hives and gave us a tour. This involved taking the roof off to make sure that the bees have enough food (since their honey was harvested, the beekeepers feed them a sugar mixture that they can feed off but won't turn into honey) and then taking off the feed level to expose slats of honeycombs hanging inside.
The amazing thing was being so close to a beehive--looking down inside it, hearing the monotone buzz all around--and not having to be afraid. Only my hands were bare, but the bees were totally uninteresting in attacking us, and mostly ignored us, despite the fact that Katrin proceeded to reach in and pull up the slats of honeycombs one by one, showing us where the bees keep their food and their growing young. The bees just continued about their business as usual, apparently unconcerned that three humans were pulling their hive apart and then putting it back together.
As usual when I find myself learning about a new skill/area of expertise that I know next to nothing about, I found that it is way more complicated than I would've imagined. The beekeeper has to monitor the health of the hive: if the bees are eating enough, if they have enough food, if there are too many blood-sucking mites on the young, if the queen is healthy, and many other things I don't know about yet. If the queen isn't healthy, if she's dead or defective or mean, then steps have to be taken.
The most important bee is, of course, the queen, who is responsible for laying eggs. In this capacity, she also determines the attitude--"genetic disposition"-- of the hive. We didn't go near one of the hives because it was described as "richtig böse" (really mean); Jürgen had to look after those in a full suit with boots and gloves, and they swarmed him furiously. As we were working with another hive, he came over to us with one of the honeycombs and showed us the queen, which simply looked like a bigger version of all the swarming workers. The hive follows the queen, and because the queen was passing on an aggressive attitude, she had to go, and was therefore killed. The hive also can't survive without the queen, so the beekeepers will wait until all the late queen's larvae are sealed up and her "smell" is gone, then they can be safely combined with another hive that has a more benevolent queen.
Another small hive that Katrin, Bethany and I checked didn't appear to have a queen at all, as there were no larvae in the hive to be found. To keep the hive from dying out, Katrin and Jürgen simply put it together with another small hive. They say that without a queen and any young to remind them of her, the queenless hive will simply accept the new queen as their own.
All this new information is certainly fascinating, but the best part for me was the opportunity to see a beehive firsthand and up close. I held, with my bare hands, one of the combs, and watched the determined, fluffy little beige-and-black bodies push and buzz busily by. They really are beautiful, and, as long as you don't piss them off or do anything stupid, mostly tolerant of intrusions. I'm looking forward to going back next week and having another look at them. I'm also looking forward to some honey next summer!
P.S. I'll try to remember to take pictures next time. Sorry!
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Schöne Stadtroda
Hello again, everyone.
I've been in Stadtroda now for...oh, a bit over a week. I can really hardly believe it; it seems like just a little while ago I was hearing about my placement and sending my first e-mails to my mentor teacher. Now I've moved into the dorm, met my suitemate, taught a few lessons, and had a few adventures, albeit of a very different sort than those that dominated my summer. I was going to try to do a sort of play-by-play introduction, but now 1) over a week has passed and that's just disgraceful and 2) there would be way too much of "then I took a nap" or "then I Internetted for a few hours", so I'm just going to ramble about this place for a bit, if that's okay with everyone.
So, if you weren't paying attention before, I'm in Stadtroda, a small, quiet town just southeast of Jena in the German state of Thuringia ("Thüringen", if you'd like to try for that high front rounded vowel followed by the German "r". No? Didn't think so.) This means I'm in eastern Germany--former GDR territory--and in the countryside. Neither of these things are by any means bad, just...not quite the same as last time, when I was in a good-sized university city just an hour from Frankfurt in Hessen, which is in the West.
I'm living in the Studentenwohnheim (student dormitory) owned by the Fachschule (technical school) where I work. Like the dorm in Marburg, the Fachschule is stark, white, and echo-y, usually oddly quiet and sparsely populated--at least it feels that way, because you rarely actually seen anyone. As I usually do when presented with an empty room with blank white walls, I went a little crazy and stuck posters, postcards, patches and pictures all over the place and dumped stuff everywhere so it now looks lived in. Normally, this Jenniferizing process takes weeks or months, and the collages are added to gradually over the duration of my stay, so I'm rather pleased that I've put all of the major and most of the minor stuff up in a week. It looks pretty awesome, if I may say so. This is, of course, a frantic effort to combat the echo-y starkness of the dorm in general. Living in a place like this would drive anyone mad in short order without getting to know some fellow humans relatively quickly, Batman posters or no, so thankfully I've been blessed with a suitemate.
My room shares a bathroom and a short hallway connecting to the main hallway with another room, wherein dwelleth my new friend Bethany. Bethany comes from England--from north Yorkshire, she would probably like me to say--which of course means we have plenty to talk/laugh/argue about, since she's a fun, friendly, cheerful, optimistic person and I'm a snarky, eternally curious Anglophile. We've spent a lot of time together over the past week, in large part because we quite enjoy each other's company, but also in small part because there isn't really anyone else to hang out with.
That brings me on to my students, with whom I share the dorm. They are mostly between 19 and 24 (with a few older outliers, up to one 51-year-old) and are studying agriculture and household management in order to do stuff like farm management and hospitality services. So far, they've been generally civil and polite but not overly welcoming or friendly. This is not to say they're unfriendly, just...reserved. Many of them go home for the weekends, and during the week, they're shut up in their rooms, out working, or in class. Anyone who may remember my Fulbright application will know what I mean about the closed-door policy, which is common in Germany but signals "I don't want to talk to you" to me and, apparently, to Bethany as well. In response, we've made cookies. I'll let you know how that turns out.
The school is a lot like a specialized community college, and is apparently well-known, at least in Thüringen. The students are separated in different English classes by their area of study and not by English proficiency, which means that in the same class I have a couple upper intermediates, some mid and lower intermediates, a few mid to very low beginners, and maybe even one low advanced. This makes teaching complicated, since on any given task, either the beginners will be bored, the upper intermediates and advanceds will be bored, or both. Whew. Good thing we spent so much time in TESOL class talking about mixed classrooms; now I get to see how it works firsthand. In any case, I won't be using the books I've been reading to teach these students, since they're not nearly that advanced, but I'm still glad I've been reading them, because that's had the unexpected effect of getting me addicted to reading and making me a compulsive book-buyer. My total book count at the end of this summer is somewhere around 20. I started with one.
Anyway, thankfully, in addition to a fun suitemate, I've also been blessed with a great mentor teacher. Katrin met me on the train station on the first day, gave me a tour of the town, and made sure I had everything I needed to survive the first few days. She also set up appointments for me at all the different official offices and went with me to make sure that everything went well. So, with little effort or pain on my part, I'm a registered resident of Stadtroda, I've opened a bank account, and my visa is on its way.
Also, Katrin is very generous with her class time, by which I mean that half of each 90-minute class period belongs to me. This is both great--I don't have to spend (much) time handing back papers or observing when I could be teaching--and intimidating, because I'm expected to plan those 45-minute lessons on my own, making my own materials and worksheets and handling the class with little support from Katrin. Honestly, though, this is wonderful for me, since I feel fairly well-prepared for the responsibility by my training in TESOL and volunteering and working in classrooms for years now.
The first classes were somewhat frightening, though. I had to do an introductory lesson for six different classes--I did a Powerpoint about myself, introducing my state, city, family, and hobbies, then asked them to interview each other and introduce each other to me. For the first couple times, this went well; Katrin started the class, asking them some warm-up questions so I could get a feel for their English level, then she'd introduce me. But for the last few intro classes, there was no chance to hear them speak before I started, so I was going in blind, hoping they'd understand me. However, there's only one class where I've really had trouble getting them to respond--the "lame" class, as Katrin calls them.
Apparently, many of the Fachschule's students are still out working at the end of summer jobs or internships, since it's still the end of the agricultural season. After the break in October, they'll all come back to start classes, and our six-classes-a-week schedule will get a lot more complicated. Eesh. I'm glad at this point that I'm being eased into it gently! At the moment, the class schedule fluctuates each week, so although I had classes ever day but Thursday last week, this week I don't have any on Monday or Tuesday. At this point, I just shrug and show up when Katrin tells me to.
Speaking of October, although it seems a bit odd to me to have a two-week break so early in the year (especially when we get only one week for Christmas!), I'm not going to say no. I've started looking at the options, and it looks like it would be great fun to spend those two weeks exploring Spain, Portugal, and maybe even a bit of Morocco. I've never been to any of those places before. And Ryanair flies to Barcelona for cheap! I really do love living in Europe.
Right. It can't look good that I'm already daydreaming about going elsewhere when I just got here. It's just that adjusting to a new place is always daunting, and Stadtroda is so very quiet. As I mentioned, the students are difficult to get to know--with one very friendly exception, who baked cookies with me and Bethany last week--and even in the middle of the day, the streets feel deserted. The "old town" is all bright pastel buildings that look very pretty except that there is almost never anyone around; the "new town" where I live, up the hill a bit, has a few stores (a Lidl, a bakery, a Sparkasse, a couple flower shops) but, again, rarely very many people. Where is everyone?
Most likely in Jena. Unfortunately, the train station is a good 20-minute walk from the Wohnheim, but from there it's only about 12 minutes to the much bigger city of Jena, that has real shops (hooray!) crowds of people (wow!) and a university, where I shall matriculate come the beginning of October--although, with our accelerated Fachschule schedule, I doubt I'll be able to take many classes. Doesn't matter too much to me, though; my main aims are to get the Semesterticket, which gets me on all public transport in Thüringen for free for the semester, and to meet other students. I also may be able (hopefully) to join a guitar class in Stadtroda, but Jena definitely has more options. Bethany and I spent the afternoon there on Saturday, just shopping and looking around, and I may go back tomorrow or Tuesday to try to get a cell phone finally.
Hmm, I'm not sure what else to add, except my own feelings about all this stuff. Mainly, I'm still waiting to see how it all turns out. I really hope to make more connections with the students at the Fachschule, to spend more time getting to know Katrin with her family, to make friends with the university students, and just really to make a place for myself in this town. This is hard when just finding people to talk to is a challenge. I remain, however, confident that this will improve, and I feel like all the ingredients are here for a really wonderful experience, if I can just make the most of it.
Please feel free to comment if you have more questions. This is, after all, what this blog is supposed to be about!
P.S. I have pictures ready but Blogger isn't letting me insert them. It's late so I'll try again later.
I've been in Stadtroda now for...oh, a bit over a week. I can really hardly believe it; it seems like just a little while ago I was hearing about my placement and sending my first e-mails to my mentor teacher. Now I've moved into the dorm, met my suitemate, taught a few lessons, and had a few adventures, albeit of a very different sort than those that dominated my summer. I was going to try to do a sort of play-by-play introduction, but now 1) over a week has passed and that's just disgraceful and 2) there would be way too much of "then I took a nap" or "then I Internetted for a few hours", so I'm just going to ramble about this place for a bit, if that's okay with everyone.
So, if you weren't paying attention before, I'm in Stadtroda, a small, quiet town just southeast of Jena in the German state of Thuringia ("Thüringen", if you'd like to try for that high front rounded vowel followed by the German "r". No? Didn't think so.) This means I'm in eastern Germany--former GDR territory--and in the countryside. Neither of these things are by any means bad, just...not quite the same as last time, when I was in a good-sized university city just an hour from Frankfurt in Hessen, which is in the West.
I'm living in the Studentenwohnheim (student dormitory) owned by the Fachschule (technical school) where I work. Like the dorm in Marburg, the Fachschule is stark, white, and echo-y, usually oddly quiet and sparsely populated--at least it feels that way, because you rarely actually seen anyone. As I usually do when presented with an empty room with blank white walls, I went a little crazy and stuck posters, postcards, patches and pictures all over the place and dumped stuff everywhere so it now looks lived in. Normally, this Jenniferizing process takes weeks or months, and the collages are added to gradually over the duration of my stay, so I'm rather pleased that I've put all of the major and most of the minor stuff up in a week. It looks pretty awesome, if I may say so. This is, of course, a frantic effort to combat the echo-y starkness of the dorm in general. Living in a place like this would drive anyone mad in short order without getting to know some fellow humans relatively quickly, Batman posters or no, so thankfully I've been blessed with a suitemate.
My room shares a bathroom and a short hallway connecting to the main hallway with another room, wherein dwelleth my new friend Bethany. Bethany comes from England--from north Yorkshire, she would probably like me to say--which of course means we have plenty to talk/laugh/argue about, since she's a fun, friendly, cheerful, optimistic person and I'm a snarky, eternally curious Anglophile. We've spent a lot of time together over the past week, in large part because we quite enjoy each other's company, but also in small part because there isn't really anyone else to hang out with.
That brings me on to my students, with whom I share the dorm. They are mostly between 19 and 24 (with a few older outliers, up to one 51-year-old) and are studying agriculture and household management in order to do stuff like farm management and hospitality services. So far, they've been generally civil and polite but not overly welcoming or friendly. This is not to say they're unfriendly, just...reserved. Many of them go home for the weekends, and during the week, they're shut up in their rooms, out working, or in class. Anyone who may remember my Fulbright application will know what I mean about the closed-door policy, which is common in Germany but signals "I don't want to talk to you" to me and, apparently, to Bethany as well. In response, we've made cookies. I'll let you know how that turns out.
The school is a lot like a specialized community college, and is apparently well-known, at least in Thüringen. The students are separated in different English classes by their area of study and not by English proficiency, which means that in the same class I have a couple upper intermediates, some mid and lower intermediates, a few mid to very low beginners, and maybe even one low advanced. This makes teaching complicated, since on any given task, either the beginners will be bored, the upper intermediates and advanceds will be bored, or both. Whew. Good thing we spent so much time in TESOL class talking about mixed classrooms; now I get to see how it works firsthand. In any case, I won't be using the books I've been reading to teach these students, since they're not nearly that advanced, but I'm still glad I've been reading them, because that's had the unexpected effect of getting me addicted to reading and making me a compulsive book-buyer. My total book count at the end of this summer is somewhere around 20. I started with one.
Anyway, thankfully, in addition to a fun suitemate, I've also been blessed with a great mentor teacher. Katrin met me on the train station on the first day, gave me a tour of the town, and made sure I had everything I needed to survive the first few days. She also set up appointments for me at all the different official offices and went with me to make sure that everything went well. So, with little effort or pain on my part, I'm a registered resident of Stadtroda, I've opened a bank account, and my visa is on its way.
Also, Katrin is very generous with her class time, by which I mean that half of each 90-minute class period belongs to me. This is both great--I don't have to spend (much) time handing back papers or observing when I could be teaching--and intimidating, because I'm expected to plan those 45-minute lessons on my own, making my own materials and worksheets and handling the class with little support from Katrin. Honestly, though, this is wonderful for me, since I feel fairly well-prepared for the responsibility by my training in TESOL and volunteering and working in classrooms for years now.
The first classes were somewhat frightening, though. I had to do an introductory lesson for six different classes--I did a Powerpoint about myself, introducing my state, city, family, and hobbies, then asked them to interview each other and introduce each other to me. For the first couple times, this went well; Katrin started the class, asking them some warm-up questions so I could get a feel for their English level, then she'd introduce me. But for the last few intro classes, there was no chance to hear them speak before I started, so I was going in blind, hoping they'd understand me. However, there's only one class where I've really had trouble getting them to respond--the "lame" class, as Katrin calls them.
Apparently, many of the Fachschule's students are still out working at the end of summer jobs or internships, since it's still the end of the agricultural season. After the break in October, they'll all come back to start classes, and our six-classes-a-week schedule will get a lot more complicated. Eesh. I'm glad at this point that I'm being eased into it gently! At the moment, the class schedule fluctuates each week, so although I had classes ever day but Thursday last week, this week I don't have any on Monday or Tuesday. At this point, I just shrug and show up when Katrin tells me to.
Speaking of October, although it seems a bit odd to me to have a two-week break so early in the year (especially when we get only one week for Christmas!), I'm not going to say no. I've started looking at the options, and it looks like it would be great fun to spend those two weeks exploring Spain, Portugal, and maybe even a bit of Morocco. I've never been to any of those places before. And Ryanair flies to Barcelona for cheap! I really do love living in Europe.
Right. It can't look good that I'm already daydreaming about going elsewhere when I just got here. It's just that adjusting to a new place is always daunting, and Stadtroda is so very quiet. As I mentioned, the students are difficult to get to know--with one very friendly exception, who baked cookies with me and Bethany last week--and even in the middle of the day, the streets feel deserted. The "old town" is all bright pastel buildings that look very pretty except that there is almost never anyone around; the "new town" where I live, up the hill a bit, has a few stores (a Lidl, a bakery, a Sparkasse, a couple flower shops) but, again, rarely very many people. Where is everyone?
Most likely in Jena. Unfortunately, the train station is a good 20-minute walk from the Wohnheim, but from there it's only about 12 minutes to the much bigger city of Jena, that has real shops (hooray!) crowds of people (wow!) and a university, where I shall matriculate come the beginning of October--although, with our accelerated Fachschule schedule, I doubt I'll be able to take many classes. Doesn't matter too much to me, though; my main aims are to get the Semesterticket, which gets me on all public transport in Thüringen for free for the semester, and to meet other students. I also may be able (hopefully) to join a guitar class in Stadtroda, but Jena definitely has more options. Bethany and I spent the afternoon there on Saturday, just shopping and looking around, and I may go back tomorrow or Tuesday to try to get a cell phone finally.
Hmm, I'm not sure what else to add, except my own feelings about all this stuff. Mainly, I'm still waiting to see how it all turns out. I really hope to make more connections with the students at the Fachschule, to spend more time getting to know Katrin with her family, to make friends with the university students, and just really to make a place for myself in this town. This is hard when just finding people to talk to is a challenge. I remain, however, confident that this will improve, and I feel like all the ingredients are here for a really wonderful experience, if I can just make the most of it.
Please feel free to comment if you have more questions. This is, after all, what this blog is supposed to be about!
P.S. I have pictures ready but Blogger isn't letting me insert them. It's late so I'll try again later.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Book: Oliver Twist
Author: Charles Dickens
First Published: 1837-1839, England
Original Language: English
Topics: Childhood, adulthood, poverty, generosity vs greed, indifference vs compassion, crime, murder
In A Nutshell: The book follows the childhood years of one Oliver Twist, an orphan raised in abuse and poverty. Through some absolute miracle--the persistance of innocence and love in the fact of horrible circumstances, I guess--Oliver is sweet, loving, naive, and generally the most perfect and adorable child you could imagine. The weird thing is that against all proof (and reason), almost everyone he meets immediately assumes that he's a deceitful, villianous little demon, and treats him accordingly, despite which Oliver continues to be innocently honest and perfect. At a very young age, he is apprenticed out to an unsympathetic master to learn the trade of undertaker, but when he is accused of attacking an older apprentice, he runs away to London, where he is taken in by a gang of child pickpockets run by a greedy Jew (yay stereotypes) named Fagin. At first grateful for their kindness, Oliver soon learns that they are theives, and on his very first outing with them, gets accused of pickpocketing (of which the Artful Dodger, and not he, is guilty) and is arrested.
During the trial he meets Mr Brownlow, who believes in his innocence and takes Oliver in.
Oliver's domestic bliss in the loving care of Mr Brownlow and his housekeeper is shattered when he is kidnapped by Nancy and Bill Sikes, associates of Fagin's, and dragged back to their lair. They force him to help them with a robbery at a countryside house, which goes horribly awry when Oliver tries to warn the family within and gets shot for his trouble. The baddies leave him to die, and he is found and cared for by the Maylies, with whom he finds great happiness and a return to health. Sikes, Fagin, and a mysterious man named Monk are plotting Oliver's death, but they are overheard by Nancy, who goes to the Maylies to warn them. Sikes finds out and kills Nancy in a rage, but through the actions of Mr Brownlow and the Maylies, Oliver's persecutors are finally confronted.
The twists (lol pun) and turns in the plot are endless, but eventually, they find out who Oliver's parents were, restore his name and inheritance, and the baddies get their comeuppance, so they all live happily ever after the end.
Thinking Makes It So: I very much enjoyed this book, but I was a bit surprised to discover that despite the title, the book is not really about Oliver at all. It follows his story, and the plot revolves around his identity and the events of his young life, but the real focus of the book is the people around him, who act for or against him. Oliver has very little control over anything that happens, and is generally totally at the mercy of these people, and so he acts as a mirror to show their personalities and characters as they interact with and respond to him. In this capacity, Oliver has really little to no personality of his own beyond being, as mentioned above, unfailingly sweet, innocent, and almost irksomely angelic all the time.
On the other hand, there is a wealth of characters in this book with greatly varied personalities, motivations, and conflicting desires, which are thrown into sharp relief by the problem of Oliver's destiny. Of these, my favorite is Nancy, who, although considering herself to be inextricably tangled in the life of abuse and crime she has known all her life, has pity on Oliver and tries to help him as best she can, at terrible cost to herself. While for Oliver, as a mirror at best and plot device at worst, it is difficult to feel anything beyond concerned compassion, Nancy's plight evokes sympathy, frustration, rage, grief, and pity as she struggles between the urges of her compassion for Oliver to do the right thing and the entanglements of her horrible, dysfunctional life that try to keep her where she is.
Dickens' use of language is one of the best parts about the book, being simultaneously wry, satirical, sarcastic, and critical of the callous way that people treat Oliver as a fictional stand-in for orphans and unfortunates everywhere. Dickens is particularly sharp-tongued over the aptly named Mr Bumble, a parish beadle who, far from fulfilling his Christian duty to take care of the poor, tries to give them as little as he can, uncaring of whether they survive or suffer. His punishment comes in the form of his selfish marriage to Mrs Mann, who, true to her name, wears the (metaphorical) pants and browbeats him to her will. Dickens describes Mr Beadle's uncompassionate treatment of the poor with mocking sarcasm, and his subsequent enslavement by his wife with almost gleeful understatement. Dickens' tongue-in-cheek statement of the attitudes of selfish and uncaring people towards the poor evokes both indignation and a little guilt, as if he's muttering between the lines, "You laugh, but I know you've thought this way too." It's simultaneously amusing, frustrating, and unsettling.
Anyway, there are so many characters and convoluted plot resolutions packed into this one book that I'm sure I could study it for ages and still have something to say. The self-serving greed of Fagin, the careless joviality of the Dodger and his friend, the angelic compassion of Miss Maylie, and the brutality of Sikes are all magnified by their proximity to Oliver for the reader's benefit to examine and wonder how, if they were presented with a poor, lost orphan child, they would choose to respond.
That You Must Teach Me: Although amusing and ironic to a native speaker, I can easily imagine that much of Dickens' clever social commentary will be lost on a long-suffering English learner in a tornado of incomprehensible snide remarks and sarcasm. I'd be careful to draw this out by asking students what they think Dickens' opinion of the different characters are, what his views on the poor and charity are, and what the students themselves think of the same things. It would take a long time, though, to get through this book, because of the combination of a fairly convoluted plot and a lot of snarkiness.
First Published: 1837-1839, England
Original Language: English
Topics: Childhood, adulthood, poverty, generosity vs greed, indifference vs compassion, crime, murder
In A Nutshell: The book follows the childhood years of one Oliver Twist, an orphan raised in abuse and poverty. Through some absolute miracle--the persistance of innocence and love in the fact of horrible circumstances, I guess--Oliver is sweet, loving, naive, and generally the most perfect and adorable child you could imagine. The weird thing is that against all proof (and reason), almost everyone he meets immediately assumes that he's a deceitful, villianous little demon, and treats him accordingly, despite which Oliver continues to be innocently honest and perfect. At a very young age, he is apprenticed out to an unsympathetic master to learn the trade of undertaker, but when he is accused of attacking an older apprentice, he runs away to London, where he is taken in by a gang of child pickpockets run by a greedy Jew (yay stereotypes) named Fagin. At first grateful for their kindness, Oliver soon learns that they are theives, and on his very first outing with them, gets accused of pickpocketing (of which the Artful Dodger, and not he, is guilty) and is arrested.
During the trial he meets Mr Brownlow, who believes in his innocence and takes Oliver in.
Oliver's domestic bliss in the loving care of Mr Brownlow and his housekeeper is shattered when he is kidnapped by Nancy and Bill Sikes, associates of Fagin's, and dragged back to their lair. They force him to help them with a robbery at a countryside house, which goes horribly awry when Oliver tries to warn the family within and gets shot for his trouble. The baddies leave him to die, and he is found and cared for by the Maylies, with whom he finds great happiness and a return to health. Sikes, Fagin, and a mysterious man named Monk are plotting Oliver's death, but they are overheard by Nancy, who goes to the Maylies to warn them. Sikes finds out and kills Nancy in a rage, but through the actions of Mr Brownlow and the Maylies, Oliver's persecutors are finally confronted.
The twists (lol pun) and turns in the plot are endless, but eventually, they find out who Oliver's parents were, restore his name and inheritance, and the baddies get their comeuppance, so they all live happily ever after the end.
Thinking Makes It So: I very much enjoyed this book, but I was a bit surprised to discover that despite the title, the book is not really about Oliver at all. It follows his story, and the plot revolves around his identity and the events of his young life, but the real focus of the book is the people around him, who act for or against him. Oliver has very little control over anything that happens, and is generally totally at the mercy of these people, and so he acts as a mirror to show their personalities and characters as they interact with and respond to him. In this capacity, Oliver has really little to no personality of his own beyond being, as mentioned above, unfailingly sweet, innocent, and almost irksomely angelic all the time.
On the other hand, there is a wealth of characters in this book with greatly varied personalities, motivations, and conflicting desires, which are thrown into sharp relief by the problem of Oliver's destiny. Of these, my favorite is Nancy, who, although considering herself to be inextricably tangled in the life of abuse and crime she has known all her life, has pity on Oliver and tries to help him as best she can, at terrible cost to herself. While for Oliver, as a mirror at best and plot device at worst, it is difficult to feel anything beyond concerned compassion, Nancy's plight evokes sympathy, frustration, rage, grief, and pity as she struggles between the urges of her compassion for Oliver to do the right thing and the entanglements of her horrible, dysfunctional life that try to keep her where she is.
Dickens' use of language is one of the best parts about the book, being simultaneously wry, satirical, sarcastic, and critical of the callous way that people treat Oliver as a fictional stand-in for orphans and unfortunates everywhere. Dickens is particularly sharp-tongued over the aptly named Mr Bumble, a parish beadle who, far from fulfilling his Christian duty to take care of the poor, tries to give them as little as he can, uncaring of whether they survive or suffer. His punishment comes in the form of his selfish marriage to Mrs Mann, who, true to her name, wears the (metaphorical) pants and browbeats him to her will. Dickens describes Mr Beadle's uncompassionate treatment of the poor with mocking sarcasm, and his subsequent enslavement by his wife with almost gleeful understatement. Dickens' tongue-in-cheek statement of the attitudes of selfish and uncaring people towards the poor evokes both indignation and a little guilt, as if he's muttering between the lines, "You laugh, but I know you've thought this way too." It's simultaneously amusing, frustrating, and unsettling.
Anyway, there are so many characters and convoluted plot resolutions packed into this one book that I'm sure I could study it for ages and still have something to say. The self-serving greed of Fagin, the careless joviality of the Dodger and his friend, the angelic compassion of Miss Maylie, and the brutality of Sikes are all magnified by their proximity to Oliver for the reader's benefit to examine and wonder how, if they were presented with a poor, lost orphan child, they would choose to respond.
That You Must Teach Me: Although amusing and ironic to a native speaker, I can easily imagine that much of Dickens' clever social commentary will be lost on a long-suffering English learner in a tornado of incomprehensible snide remarks and sarcasm. I'd be careful to draw this out by asking students what they think Dickens' opinion of the different characters are, what his views on the poor and charity are, and what the students themselves think of the same things. It would take a long time, though, to get through this book, because of the combination of a fairly convoluted plot and a lot of snarkiness.
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