(The Sehitlik Moschee in Kreuzberg in Berlin during a Fulbright Conference tour.)
I haven’t blogged as much as I should and for that, I am very very sorry! I know many of you check up on this page once a week and this may sound a bit nerdy, but I do brainstorm what I should blog about every single week. Once I realized that there were at least 3 people who read this thing, I knew I had to take this blogging thing seriously.
This is a post I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. There were other things that I hadn’t blogged about yet for whatever reason: I’ve either forgotten, didn’t have enough time or didn’t find it interesting enough.
1. I did one of the craziest things I’ve ever done. I decided to watch the Superbowl at a bar in Berlin despite the timezone difference. My good friend, K, also wanted to do this so we found a restaurant/bar that was going to stream the game live (they had ESPN, so that meant no crazy Superbowl commercials). What time did the game start here in Germany? Midnight. Yes yes yes…I had class in the morning at 7:50, which meant I had to leave my apartment by 7:00. Despite this, I went to the restaurant with K and we stayed ’til around 4:30 AM. Guess how much sleep I got that night? But the Packers won!!! And my adviser teacher was very impressed with me. She asked me why I even bothered coming to school. I replied that I didn’t think staying up to watch an American football game was reason enough to miss class on Monday. She then thanked me for coming so early in the morning. No, thank you, U, for not thinking that I am a complete idiot for doing that.
It was a full house in the restaurant/bar. Many viewers were actually not American.
2. I’ve been in charge of teaching English to two new Brazilian boys in the 8th grade. They entered the school in March and it’s been absolutely amazing to see how good their German has gotten (they could barely speak a word at the beginning…and it’s only been almost two months!). They’ve already had some English training but my goal is to get them through the 5th grade book by the end of the year. A, their English teacher, doesn’t care what or how I teach them as long as it’s English. I was a bit nervous at the beginning because this is frankly a lot of responsibility. Will I ruin these poor boys’ English education because of my lack of teaching skills? They’ve proven to be star students and very very understanding and patient with me. They learn very quickly, are more than motivated in learning English and have not laughed at or have held any scorn when I mess up. They already have a strong background in the basics and so I haven’t had to explain any grammatical constructions, thank goodness! A asked me if I wanted to become a teacher because she said I was a natural, especially because the students like me so much. I gushed for days about this. Ok…I’m still gushing about it. For A to entirely trust me with the boys and believing that I’ll do a good job regardless of what I teach them has been one of the most meaningful compliments I’ve received this year.