Monday, January 31, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Couple of not necessarily related things:
1) I've started going to the cafe des langues in Nancy, where I met the first people to really make me feel welcome/included here. I mean the teachers I work with are nice, of course, but they have their own lives and are generally much older than me, and they tend to do things almost out of obligation I feel. The people at the cafe des langues are much more lively and animated, and for some reason have started including me in their group. I went for the first time last Thursday and was invited to someone's house for her birthday party on Saturday, and now it seems I'm actually becoming friends with them. It's such an incredible thing, and I'm so grateful for it. Plus, where else would you be able to meet people from Malaysia, Colombia, Romania, Brazil, Tunisia, Canada, and China all in the same hour?! Too cool. (Plus you learn interesting things, like the fact that "to make a move" in Malaysia actually means to leave a place, and not to hit on someone.)
2) Chivalry is such a funny thing, but it's certainly not dead. The Colombian guy from the cafe des langues was concerned about how I was planning to get back last night, and when another guy told him he was dropping me off he responded "oui, j'espere!" with a wide-eyed, extremely worried look on his face. Because, you know, I've never taken the tram alone past 10 haha. I'd like to say that I can take care of myself, but it was sweet of him nonetheless.
3) I think I got a pay raise. We're supposed to get exactly 770 euros after all the taxes and whatnot are taken out, but I've gotten around 20 euros more for December and now also January. Last month, I thought maybe it was just a Christmas/holiday thing, but perhaps not... It's such a good feeling! haha. Probably more so because it was unexpected (I did learn something in the evolution of human nature!), but still. So exciting!
4) Paperwork + France = one huge nightmare. You have different policies in different cities, some places need one thing while others don't, some people require you to get things translated officially and others take things you do yourself. There is so much inconsistency here it makes my head spin. I've sent my birth certificate in to the same organization 3 times, both a copy of the original written in English and one that I translated into French, and despite other people in my region having no problem just sending it in in English, they want me to order an original from the office in chicago, have it sent here, then get it officially translated before sending it to them for the fourth time. Ugh, WHY?! It's a freaking birth certificate; it's not really difficult to figure out what everything means even if it's written in English instead of French. I mean, if it was in Korean I would understand, but really, when you have "city" followed by Chicago, I'm fairly confident even a troisieme can figure it out.
5) I got locked out of my room last night. For some reason that I really cannot figure out, whoever's in charge of the keys here thought that it was a good idea to give me the key to my room but not to the building in which it's located. And he/she neglected to tell me that someone goes around and LOCKS THE DOORS at night. This confuses me for a number of reasons, the first of them being how could someone possibly lack that much foresight. But it's also confusing because I got back around midnight yesterday, and I've definitely come back later than that before and never had a problem. Despite the guy who let me in claiming that he locks the doors every night, I have never before seen it locked. Ever. It's also a door that only the people living in the private studios/apts here use (aka NOT students), so it's confusing to me as to why they would feel compelled to lock us in. Really, all I can say at this point is oh, France. Such an unsophisticated place for a country that was once one of the most powerful in the world.
6) France has a great healthcare system. It was one of the things I was looking forward to most before I came here, especially after I managed to fracture my foot during the summer when I didn't have insurance. Sadly, I've heard some not so great things about the doctors here. I'll reserve actual judgment until I personally go see one, but I will say that I'm not really looking forward to it. Good health insurance isn't quite so appealing when the doctor can't figure out what's wrong with you.
7) Having so much free time can be terrible because I get bored easily, but on the other hand I've been able to finally watch a few movies that I've been meaning to see for a long time. I've watched quite a few embarrassing ones that I will not mention, but I've also been able to see Toy Story 3 (so good!), Megamind, The King's Speech, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Sadly, I've also recently realized just how old Colin Firth and Hugh Grant are. That was a very unhappy moment.
8) My computer started dying a few days ago. That was an even unhappier moment. Good thing I know how to do most of the basic things, because I don't even want to think about how long it would have taken to find a competent yet affordable technician and then actually get it fixed. I had to reformat it when downloading drivers failed, which is never fun, but it did fix everything and luckily I had thought ahead and brought the necessary CDs and an external hard drive. So I have a functioning computer once more, thank God.
9) I'm thought to be relatively attractive here, and I really don't know how to respond to that. I'm sure part of it is just how direct people are in letting you know what they think, but it still makes me feel rather awkward to hear someone say "oh, you probably don't have problems with the hs boys because you're a jolie fille." I grew up being constantly reminded of my very unremarkable appearance, and while I understand that the hair and contacts did me a world of good, I'm just not used to hearing positive things about the way I look. (For those of you who don't know any Korean adults, let me just say that when they describe other people's children, they generally use one of two phrases. The first is "oh you're so pretty/handsome!" and the second is "oh, you look like you'd be good at school." Guess which one I heard as a kid? haha.)
And lastly,
10) I'm going to Amsterdam this weekend! I'm pretty sure I'm going to come back completely exhausted, because we're leaving on a bus at 1 am Saturday, then spending all day walking around the city before hopping (highly unlikely best case scenario) or crawling on all fours onto the bus at around midnight to come back to France. But I'm super excited to go!
1) I've started going to the cafe des langues in Nancy, where I met the first people to really make me feel welcome/included here. I mean the teachers I work with are nice, of course, but they have their own lives and are generally much older than me, and they tend to do things almost out of obligation I feel. The people at the cafe des langues are much more lively and animated, and for some reason have started including me in their group. I went for the first time last Thursday and was invited to someone's house for her birthday party on Saturday, and now it seems I'm actually becoming friends with them. It's such an incredible thing, and I'm so grateful for it. Plus, where else would you be able to meet people from Malaysia, Colombia, Romania, Brazil, Tunisia, Canada, and China all in the same hour?! Too cool. (Plus you learn interesting things, like the fact that "to make a move" in Malaysia actually means to leave a place, and not to hit on someone.)
2) Chivalry is such a funny thing, but it's certainly not dead. The Colombian guy from the cafe des langues was concerned about how I was planning to get back last night, and when another guy told him he was dropping me off he responded "oui, j'espere!" with a wide-eyed, extremely worried look on his face. Because, you know, I've never taken the tram alone past 10 haha. I'd like to say that I can take care of myself, but it was sweet of him nonetheless.
3) I think I got a pay raise. We're supposed to get exactly 770 euros after all the taxes and whatnot are taken out, but I've gotten around 20 euros more for December and now also January. Last month, I thought maybe it was just a Christmas/holiday thing, but perhaps not... It's such a good feeling! haha. Probably more so because it was unexpected (I did learn something in the evolution of human nature!), but still. So exciting!
4) Paperwork + France = one huge nightmare. You have different policies in different cities, some places need one thing while others don't, some people require you to get things translated officially and others take things you do yourself. There is so much inconsistency here it makes my head spin. I've sent my birth certificate in to the same organization 3 times, both a copy of the original written in English and one that I translated into French, and despite other people in my region having no problem just sending it in in English, they want me to order an original from the office in chicago, have it sent here, then get it officially translated before sending it to them for the fourth time. Ugh, WHY?! It's a freaking birth certificate; it's not really difficult to figure out what everything means even if it's written in English instead of French. I mean, if it was in Korean I would understand, but really, when you have "city" followed by Chicago, I'm fairly confident even a troisieme can figure it out.
5) I got locked out of my room last night. For some reason that I really cannot figure out, whoever's in charge of the keys here thought that it was a good idea to give me the key to my room but not to the building in which it's located. And he/she neglected to tell me that someone goes around and LOCKS THE DOORS at night. This confuses me for a number of reasons, the first of them being how could someone possibly lack that much foresight. But it's also confusing because I got back around midnight yesterday, and I've definitely come back later than that before and never had a problem. Despite the guy who let me in claiming that he locks the doors every night, I have never before seen it locked. Ever. It's also a door that only the people living in the private studios/apts here use (aka NOT students), so it's confusing to me as to why they would feel compelled to lock us in. Really, all I can say at this point is oh, France. Such an unsophisticated place for a country that was once one of the most powerful in the world.
6) France has a great healthcare system. It was one of the things I was looking forward to most before I came here, especially after I managed to fracture my foot during the summer when I didn't have insurance. Sadly, I've heard some not so great things about the doctors here. I'll reserve actual judgment until I personally go see one, but I will say that I'm not really looking forward to it. Good health insurance isn't quite so appealing when the doctor can't figure out what's wrong with you.
7) Having so much free time can be terrible because I get bored easily, but on the other hand I've been able to finally watch a few movies that I've been meaning to see for a long time. I've watched quite a few embarrassing ones that I will not mention, but I've also been able to see Toy Story 3 (so good!), Megamind, The King's Speech, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Sadly, I've also recently realized just how old Colin Firth and Hugh Grant are. That was a very unhappy moment.
8) My computer started dying a few days ago. That was an even unhappier moment. Good thing I know how to do most of the basic things, because I don't even want to think about how long it would have taken to find a competent yet affordable technician and then actually get it fixed. I had to reformat it when downloading drivers failed, which is never fun, but it did fix everything and luckily I had thought ahead and brought the necessary CDs and an external hard drive. So I have a functioning computer once more, thank God.
9) I'm thought to be relatively attractive here, and I really don't know how to respond to that. I'm sure part of it is just how direct people are in letting you know what they think, but it still makes me feel rather awkward to hear someone say "oh, you probably don't have problems with the hs boys because you're a jolie fille." I grew up being constantly reminded of my very unremarkable appearance, and while I understand that the hair and contacts did me a world of good, I'm just not used to hearing positive things about the way I look. (For those of you who don't know any Korean adults, let me just say that when they describe other people's children, they generally use one of two phrases. The first is "oh you're so pretty/handsome!" and the second is "oh, you look like you'd be good at school." Guess which one I heard as a kid? haha.)
And lastly,
10) I'm going to Amsterdam this weekend! I'm pretty sure I'm going to come back completely exhausted, because we're leaving on a bus at 1 am Saturday, then spending all day walking around the city before hopping (highly unlikely best case scenario) or crawling on all fours onto the bus at around midnight to come back to France. But I'm super excited to go!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
On "Teaching"
First, I'd like to mention that looking young while working at a high school definitely has its disadvantages. Like today for example, I spent half an hour looking for the class I was supposed to be working with because they weren't where they were supposed to be then gave up and started walking back to my room, only to be stopped by a stern old man who asked me "mademoiselle, vous allez ou la?" in a rather rude fashion. And when I told him that I was the English assistant, he just said "oh" and walked away. No apology, just a haughty "oh." Rude, especially considering that it's culturally unacceptable to not say hello before asking for directions.
But anyway, teaching! Or rather, not teaching. Before I came here, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough topics to cover, that I would be terrible at planning lessons and would run out of things to talk about in class, or that students wouldn't be interested in what I had to say. Fortunately that has not been the case. Unfortunately, it is not for reasons that you might expect.
My official job title here is "English language assistant." From that, our orientations, and the job description provided in the application, I gathered that my responsibilities should - and would - include working with small groups of students and helping them improve their accents, getting them motivated and excited about learning a foreign language, sharing a little bit of American culture with them, and teaching them about American society. Basically, teaching them English in small groups of 4-6 while facilitating cross-cultural exchange and speaking about my own experiences in the US. What I do instead is give mock oral exams on one-on-one situations. Lots of mock oral exams. I definitely understand why the teachers ask this of me, since most of my classes are with BTS students (students who have finished high school and are doing vocational training) or with terminales (students in their last year of high school) preparing for their bac. Both groups of students have an oral exam that they need to pass before they graduate, and in theory it's a good opportunity for them to have a "practice session" with a native English speaker. The problem is that most BTS students are not at all interested in learning another language, and from what I've seen, not all that interested in formal education in general. Not all BTS students are like that and I've met quite a few who struggle but make a good effort to talk anyway, but I've also seen far too many students who don't understand the most basic phrases, like "how are you," and who spend almost the entire 15 minutes in painful silence broken only by the occasional "bah, je ne comprends rien" ("uhh, i don't understand anything"). And I'll be the first to admit that it does sometimes get frustrating to work with students who simply refuse to try. At the very least, you could tell me that you don't understand in English! Terminales are generally better, so it's usually a lot more pleasant working with them in these kinds of situations.
But the fact remains that I'm not in France to be a mock examiner for the entire year. We were told explicitly that we should not be working regularly with students on an individual basis, and that we should be talking about cultural and societal differences between the two countries. (Ha. There is obviously a lack of communication between the rectorat and the schools.) But more importantly, I have so much unrecognized skill and potential just going to waste. I can share so much more with the students here, do activities with them that will get them genuinely interested and excited about learning a language that, quite honestly, can be extremely useful. I can do more than hand out documents or images that are selected for this task by the teacher and ask students for their opinions. I can talk about things that literally no one else at this school can. I may not be a licensed teacher, but I do have a lot of experience tutoring and working with students, and understand the challenges involved in learning a foreign language since I myself chose to study one for the past four years. I can and want to do something useful!
Moreover, it makes so little sense for me to do this kind of work and evaluate students (people who, in most cases, I've never seen before) on their performance. I was educated in the States, which means that I don't really understand the standards and expectations for the different levels of students here. I've never taken the bac or even observed one, and have no idea what the criteria for a passing grade are. I don't know what the grades are. I don't know how much I can fairly expect from which students since I do not know them. Yes, I can give them helpful feedback on pronunciation and grammar, but since I'm not familiar with the exam, I don't know which mistakes are actually important and which you can just brush over. So I write down all the mistakes that they make (and the corrections) in my comments, but I'm concerned that this serves to discourage rather than to instruct. I'd certainly be discouraged if I thought that I had done a good job but was given a sheet detailing 20 mistakes I didn't even realize I had made. It would be so much more useful for me to talk about things that I'm interested in and knowledgeable about, no? I can talk about race and gender, class, immigration policies, the education system, healthcare, American politics, hell, pop culture or even football for all I care, so long as I feel qualified or prepared enough to do so. And I can guarantee that it would be more interesting for students than mock exams that they've clearly already done a number of times. (Ever met someone who can't understand/answer "how are you" but can describe a picture? I have, far too many times to count.)
And so I'm left feeling as though I work a lot, but accomplish little to nothing. I have little freedom in deciding what to do, and in most cases am expected to do exactly what the teacher tells me to do. I'm seldom asked for my opinion or for ideas that I have, and if I am asked to do something, it's to look for documents that can be used in the mock exams. In essence, busy work that I really have no interest in doing. I've resigned myself to it for the most part, but what I do here is not at all what I expected. My job is not yet one that I absolutely can't stand, but it's certainly not one that I enjoy either.
If there's anything I've learned this year, it's just how important job satisfaction is to me. I know that I can come off as too serious and not very optimistic at times, but in truth I'm extremely idealistic. My problem is that I have high expectations - both for myself and for others - and expect to make an impact in everything that I do. I need to feel useful, to accomplish something. If I don't, I become unhappy, and if I'm unhappy, I don't do my work well. I think that I expected to somehow "save the world" or at least improve it a little bit by teaching French adolescents English (really not sure how or why anymore), but I don't know if my being here has improved even one student's language abilities. And the possibility that I may have wasted the past four months of my life is not one that I like to think about.
But anyway, teaching! Or rather, not teaching. Before I came here, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough topics to cover, that I would be terrible at planning lessons and would run out of things to talk about in class, or that students wouldn't be interested in what I had to say. Fortunately that has not been the case. Unfortunately, it is not for reasons that you might expect.
My official job title here is "English language assistant." From that, our orientations, and the job description provided in the application, I gathered that my responsibilities should - and would - include working with small groups of students and helping them improve their accents, getting them motivated and excited about learning a foreign language, sharing a little bit of American culture with them, and teaching them about American society. Basically, teaching them English in small groups of 4-6 while facilitating cross-cultural exchange and speaking about my own experiences in the US. What I do instead is give mock oral exams on one-on-one situations. Lots of mock oral exams. I definitely understand why the teachers ask this of me, since most of my classes are with BTS students (students who have finished high school and are doing vocational training) or with terminales (students in their last year of high school) preparing for their bac. Both groups of students have an oral exam that they need to pass before they graduate, and in theory it's a good opportunity for them to have a "practice session" with a native English speaker. The problem is that most BTS students are not at all interested in learning another language, and from what I've seen, not all that interested in formal education in general. Not all BTS students are like that and I've met quite a few who struggle but make a good effort to talk anyway, but I've also seen far too many students who don't understand the most basic phrases, like "how are you," and who spend almost the entire 15 minutes in painful silence broken only by the occasional "bah, je ne comprends rien" ("uhh, i don't understand anything"). And I'll be the first to admit that it does sometimes get frustrating to work with students who simply refuse to try. At the very least, you could tell me that you don't understand in English! Terminales are generally better, so it's usually a lot more pleasant working with them in these kinds of situations.
But the fact remains that I'm not in France to be a mock examiner for the entire year. We were told explicitly that we should not be working regularly with students on an individual basis, and that we should be talking about cultural and societal differences between the two countries. (Ha. There is obviously a lack of communication between the rectorat and the schools.) But more importantly, I have so much unrecognized skill and potential just going to waste. I can share so much more with the students here, do activities with them that will get them genuinely interested and excited about learning a language that, quite honestly, can be extremely useful. I can do more than hand out documents or images that are selected for this task by the teacher and ask students for their opinions. I can talk about things that literally no one else at this school can. I may not be a licensed teacher, but I do have a lot of experience tutoring and working with students, and understand the challenges involved in learning a foreign language since I myself chose to study one for the past four years. I can and want to do something useful!
Moreover, it makes so little sense for me to do this kind of work and evaluate students (people who, in most cases, I've never seen before) on their performance. I was educated in the States, which means that I don't really understand the standards and expectations for the different levels of students here. I've never taken the bac or even observed one, and have no idea what the criteria for a passing grade are. I don't know what the grades are. I don't know how much I can fairly expect from which students since I do not know them. Yes, I can give them helpful feedback on pronunciation and grammar, but since I'm not familiar with the exam, I don't know which mistakes are actually important and which you can just brush over. So I write down all the mistakes that they make (and the corrections) in my comments, but I'm concerned that this serves to discourage rather than to instruct. I'd certainly be discouraged if I thought that I had done a good job but was given a sheet detailing 20 mistakes I didn't even realize I had made. It would be so much more useful for me to talk about things that I'm interested in and knowledgeable about, no? I can talk about race and gender, class, immigration policies, the education system, healthcare, American politics, hell, pop culture or even football for all I care, so long as I feel qualified or prepared enough to do so. And I can guarantee that it would be more interesting for students than mock exams that they've clearly already done a number of times. (Ever met someone who can't understand/answer "how are you" but can describe a picture? I have, far too many times to count.)
And so I'm left feeling as though I work a lot, but accomplish little to nothing. I have little freedom in deciding what to do, and in most cases am expected to do exactly what the teacher tells me to do. I'm seldom asked for my opinion or for ideas that I have, and if I am asked to do something, it's to look for documents that can be used in the mock exams. In essence, busy work that I really have no interest in doing. I've resigned myself to it for the most part, but what I do here is not at all what I expected. My job is not yet one that I absolutely can't stand, but it's certainly not one that I enjoy either.
If there's anything I've learned this year, it's just how important job satisfaction is to me. I know that I can come off as too serious and not very optimistic at times, but in truth I'm extremely idealistic. My problem is that I have high expectations - both for myself and for others - and expect to make an impact in everything that I do. I need to feel useful, to accomplish something. If I don't, I become unhappy, and if I'm unhappy, I don't do my work well. I think that I expected to somehow "save the world" or at least improve it a little bit by teaching French adolescents English (really not sure how or why anymore), but I don't know if my being here has improved even one student's language abilities. And the possibility that I may have wasted the past four months of my life is not one that I like to think about.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
I just got back from buying plane/train/bus tickets for the upcoming break - called winter break even though it goes from late Feb to early March - and am so excited! Lisbon, followed by Granada and Sevilla (I've been to both before but Andalucia is beautiful and I get to see Jeff again!), and hopefully Cadiz for Carnaval, then Marrakech. Which translates to warm weather and a lot of sunlight. Mmm can't wait!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Joyeux Noel & Frohes Neues Jahr
I had to look up the German spelling for Happy New Year, and it is totally not what I was expecting.
Moving on.
I had to spend the holidays away from home this year - another first - but luckily I didn't have to be alone. I met up with Jeff and Megan in Paris for Christmas, where we basically ate our way around the city and watched BBC specials on Chechnya and other places. (In our defense, a lot of things were closed while we were there.) We did walk around the city quite a bit though, and managed to go to the Musee d'Orsay on our last day there. We also went to the Sacre Coeur, Laduree, and the Christmas market on the Champs Elysees, and saw many a drunk SDF shouting vulgarities on the metro. Christmas dinner was a little bit pricey but delicious - there was no turkey or ham involved, but foie gras, kir, tartiflette, profiteroles, and wine aren't a bad alternative.
After our short three day stay, we went to Germany to see friends who used to be German teaching assistants at Amherst. Jeff and I flew out first to Dusseldorf, where Helene picked us up at the airport and gave us a little tour of the city before taking us to a restaurant to eat an insane amount of food (I had a huge ham hock, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut) and try German beers while we waited for Megan to arrive. After a not so successful attempt to go see a pink castle nearby, we picked Megan up from the airport and drove to Gottingen, a cute university town in the center of Germany. Again, we spent most of our time just hanging out and talking or watching movies, but it was easily the best week I've had since I've gotten to Europe. After the frustration I experienced in France, it was refreshing to get away for a bit and see friends in a place where things actually get done. Though I haven't spent too much time in Germany, from what I saw it is generally much cleaner, better organized, friendlier, and cheaper than France. I absolutely adore it, as our German friends heard approximately 10 times a day, and can't wait to head back there. Really, what is there not to love about a place where you can spend 20 minutes looking at all of the different Haribo candies, roads are cleared in a timely manner when it snows, and beer is 2 euros for 2 pints instead of 3 euros for half a pint?! Not to mention the guys, who are super tall and good looking, and somehow all speak English.
New Year's Eve was a little bit more exciting than the rest of our time in Gottingen, though the ice skating and trying out newly learned German phrases on servers in restaurants were also extremely entertaining. We dressed up in typical American fashion then had raclette (potatoes, meat, veggies, and bread with a lot of melted cheese) and sparkling wine before doing the bleigiesen thing, a German NYE tradition. Bleigeisen is where you melt metal shapes - we had a heart, money bag, coin, crown, and some others - over a candle then throw it into a bowl of cold water so that it takes a new form, then interpret the shape to find out your fortune. We had dessert afterward and hung out at the house for a little bit longer before heading out and counting down to the new year outside. We set off fireworks and lit sparklers (and by that I mean other people set off fireworks as I watched and played with sparklers instead) at midnight, when I accidentally texted people with "bonne anniversaire" instead of "bonne annee," then continued to ring in the new year until around 4 am. All in all a good night, though a far cry from what I usually do at home.
Moving on.
I had to spend the holidays away from home this year - another first - but luckily I didn't have to be alone. I met up with Jeff and Megan in Paris for Christmas, where we basically ate our way around the city and watched BBC specials on Chechnya and other places. (In our defense, a lot of things were closed while we were there.) We did walk around the city quite a bit though, and managed to go to the Musee d'Orsay on our last day there. We also went to the Sacre Coeur, Laduree, and the Christmas market on the Champs Elysees, and saw many a drunk SDF shouting vulgarities on the metro. Christmas dinner was a little bit pricey but delicious - there was no turkey or ham involved, but foie gras, kir, tartiflette, profiteroles, and wine aren't a bad alternative.
After our short three day stay, we went to Germany to see friends who used to be German teaching assistants at Amherst. Jeff and I flew out first to Dusseldorf, where Helene picked us up at the airport and gave us a little tour of the city before taking us to a restaurant to eat an insane amount of food (I had a huge ham hock, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut) and try German beers while we waited for Megan to arrive. After a not so successful attempt to go see a pink castle nearby, we picked Megan up from the airport and drove to Gottingen, a cute university town in the center of Germany. Again, we spent most of our time just hanging out and talking or watching movies, but it was easily the best week I've had since I've gotten to Europe. After the frustration I experienced in France, it was refreshing to get away for a bit and see friends in a place where things actually get done. Though I haven't spent too much time in Germany, from what I saw it is generally much cleaner, better organized, friendlier, and cheaper than France. I absolutely adore it, as our German friends heard approximately 10 times a day, and can't wait to head back there. Really, what is there not to love about a place where you can spend 20 minutes looking at all of the different Haribo candies, roads are cleared in a timely manner when it snows, and beer is 2 euros for 2 pints instead of 3 euros for half a pint?! Not to mention the guys, who are super tall and good looking, and somehow all speak English.
New Year's Eve was a little bit more exciting than the rest of our time in Gottingen, though the ice skating and trying out newly learned German phrases on servers in restaurants were also extremely entertaining. We dressed up in typical American fashion then had raclette (potatoes, meat, veggies, and bread with a lot of melted cheese) and sparkling wine before doing the bleigiesen thing, a German NYE tradition. Bleigeisen is where you melt metal shapes - we had a heart, money bag, coin, crown, and some others - over a candle then throw it into a bowl of cold water so that it takes a new form, then interpret the shape to find out your fortune. We had dessert afterward and hung out at the house for a little bit longer before heading out and counting down to the new year outside. We set off fireworks and lit sparklers (and by that I mean other people set off fireworks as I watched and played with sparklers instead) at midnight, when I accidentally texted people with "bonne anniversaire" instead of "bonne annee," then continued to ring in the new year until around 4 am. All in all a good night, though a far cry from what I usually do at home.
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| Christmas in Paris |
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| Dusseldorf and its awesome clock tower |
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| The most kissed girl in the world, Gottingen |
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| Amherst friends! |
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| New Year's Eve |
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| Bleigiesen |
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| Setting off fireworks! |
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| Post-countdown! Frohes Neues Jahr! |
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| Things I bought in Germany. You'd think I live in a third world country, but things are just a lot more expensive (and jalapenos don't exist) here. |
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