Words That Crack Me Up

There are just some words that my kids can’t say right no matter how hard they try. I try my best not to laugh- but I thought I would write you a list of some of the most common ones from our Native stories unit:

Bee-A-fer- a beaver
BEERS - Bears
Kewill- quill

I know I do the same sort of thing when i speak German. But it does crack me up when they put the emphaaaaasis on the wrong syllaaaaaable. I may have laughed a bit when one of the kids asked me where can you find BEERS in the woods. I may have almost mentioned the Kokanee Sasquatch.

Vocab Excercises

Last Wednesday:

Me: Ok kids, can anyone tell me what “to sniff” means?
Student: (mimes doing a line of crack across his desk) It’s like this teacher.
Me: Ummmm….actually that’s snorting. There is definitely a difference.

Plugging Your Car In

I never thought i would laugh when someone's car wouldn't start because of the cold. i mean, that is just so unfriendly. Also, we've all been there, done that where we didn't plug the stupid thing in and stranded ourselves the next morning. However, that was in Canada where it gets genuinely cold.

Aaron's car (see post below) wouldn't start because it was too cold. I really feel the need to point out it was maybe 0 or -1 the night before. It really just didn't make so much sense to me how it could have been to cold to start. So after an unsucessful attempt to boost the damn thing, we definately ended up pushing it up and down the street a few times for a roll start. it took 6 attempts. yuck.

Later, i asked Aaron why he hadn't just plugged it in. He looked at me like i was nuts. I guess the cars here don't have plug ins on them. it led to a whole bunch of random questions on how plug ins and block heaters worked. i just wish i had known how they worked so i could have explained it better. i think i mostly just confused Aaron :s

An Accidental Roadtrip

On Saturday Megan had a soccer game and needed to back in Butzbach in the early afternoon. We were too slow going in the morning to walk to the train station, so Aaron said he would drive us down there. But his car wouldn’t start- it had gotten too cold the night before (which I will so post about later today). Anyway, we ended up missing Megan’s first train. So we decided we would have time to take her to Remagen (because her ticket had her changing trains there with a layover of 30 min).

My host family helping Aaron boost his car.



Meg looking seriously less than impressed with things.

Well, we missed that train as well. Eventually we got the car started. So we agreed to just take her to Koblenz and have her catch the train there. We were about 10 minutes to late for her to catch her train, so Meg went to talk to the Travel Centre people. Aaron and I were sitting in the parking lot at the Koblenz train station talking about our plans for the rest of the day, when Aaron was like- we should call and see if she can get another train. Alas, again no luck. Meg was going to be late no matter what train she ended up taking. Aaron apparently like driving really lots so he offered to drive her home to Butzbach. So basically, the three of us made the most indirect trip to Megan’s house as humanely possible.

The roadside public bathrooms. They definately looked nicer than they actually were :(

Aaron psyching out the people driving on the right side of the car...



The tapedeck in the car and Aaron's personal mix tapes. This one is just for Evan.

I wanted to post a map with the route on it but i couldn't figure out how to make it work. Basically the route went from Bad Bodendorf to Koblenz, Koblenz to the outskirts of Frankfurt am Main to Butzbach. So very indirect. check it out on google maps. its not so pretty. Also, getting in the car and driving basically the distance from Edmonton to Calgary is kinda frowned on here. The Roadtrip/driving for fun is not so socially acceptable here it seems

Halloween Hocus Pocus

I am starting to get old I think. This weekend almost killed me. Meg and Aaron and I definitely got our party on on Thursday. It was pretty sweet. We took our case of beer and bottle of wine to the playground and we sat in the tower thing where it was dry and just chilled. It was good times.

The result of Aaron's "can I do this with no hands?"

However, that said, we were pretty wiped on Friday morning. So I suggested we just take the train down the Ahr valley. It only took about 45 minutes, but the train we used was the only train going through that part of the valley. So it only came once an hour. Meg was feeling a bit motion sick and she put her foot down, saying no way was she getting back on the train so soon. So we wandered around and finally saw an open restaurant. Meg and I had the most awesome chilli we had had in a while. Aaron managed to wolf down his plate of schnitzel and fries, some of our plate of fries, the leftovers of our chilli and the bread that went with it. It was pretty intense.

The insane amount of food we ordered. There was a lot more to the portions than we had expected.

Aaron making sure none of it (except the beans) went to waste.

It was a nice and relaxing day and when we got back to my place, we decided to watch some sorta scary movies. We ended up watching the old X-Files movie and Constantine. We were in bed before 12.30. lol

The World's Biggest Dust Bunny

No word of a lie. This dust bunny was so big that it almost ate the broom I attacked it with. So I definitely needed to document it for you all. Feel the fear. This was no mortal dust bunny.

The Young Americans

Last week the Young Americans came to our school to do a 3 day workshop with our kids. I'm still not really sure what the Young Americans really do, so here's a link to their website and wikipedia:

http://www.youngamericans.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Americans

They preformed well and the kids did an even better job. I was really impressed. Here are some pics for you:

Bringing Back the Beer Fridge

Meg’s fridge is seriously the size of a self-respecting college beer fridge. In fact, it is so small that it doesn’t even have a freezer part. But we managed to cool our drinks by sticking them outside the window. The window even opened like a fridge door, so it was extra authentic. There are even bars outside the window, so there wasn’t even a worry that the local high school hoodlums would reef our beer! Woot.

Space Age

I am not sure if these are supposed to be squatty-potties or not, but it was cold and those were stainless steel. I don’t know who picked these toilets for a train station, but I think they might just have been sadists.

Cutting Some Hairs

I finally got a haircut as well last weekend. It was an interesting experience to say the least. The washing and even the blow drying at the end all cost extra. So people apparently quite often choose to style their hair themselves. As witnessed by this picture. You’ll have to excuse the fact that I am in the pic as well, we were trying to be subtle…. Lol. Ok, stop laughing at the idea of me being subtle and look at the picture already.

I also got Meg to take a pic of my haircut. The pic isn’t fabulous but you get the general idea.

Misadventures on the Deutsche Bahn Part II

Meg and I needed to go shop for food for the dinner/drinks party she threw on Saturday, so we hopped on a train that should have taken us directly to Westlar through Giesen. Well, to give them credit- it did go through Giesen at least. In Geisen, the train split into 2. The back half of the train went to Westlar. We were in the front half. So we went almost all the way to Marburg, nowhere anywhere near where we should have been. Ugh.

We decided, once we realized the mistake, to get off at the next stop and just go back to where we needed to be. There was even a train at the station. However, by the time we ran to the other platform it was pulling away. After a quick check of the schedule we found that the next train didn’t come for a whole hour.

Here is what we saw when we got off the train. It was not encouraging :s This was the platform at the station. yikes.

Fronhausen Train Station

After wandering a town so small that even a one horse town could scoff at it, we found a Liquor store. It was only about 25 meters away from the paddock of lowing cattle we discovered. There was even a guy leading a pair of horses and a tractor driving down the main street. I couldn’t even make this up if I was trying. It was this rural. And there was nothing to do. For an hour. Ugh.Cows in Fronhausen

Guy leading his horses down the street in Fronhausen

However, at the liquor store we found some amusement- we bought coke in full sized glass bottles and also a cheap bottle of decent champagne- so I suppose the side trip was not a complete waste of time.

Meg's Place

The train aside, i had a great time at Meg's place. There was great food and i met up with some people i hadn't seen in a while. it was good. There was also a cheesecake that Meg managed to bake up in her TOASTER OVEN b/c she doesn't actually have an oven- i was pretty impressed and it tasted pretty good too :)

The outdoor escalator over a busy street in Giesen

The awesome pumpkin cake thing we bought

A plastic gummy bear outside of a Gummy Candy Shop in Giesen

We also had a party on Saturday night too. WOOT. and yeah, it did feature a bottle of the cheapest Jagermeister ever- a big bottle for 4,99 Euro.

Aaron, Me, and Meg's spoon on saturday

i was almost shocked at the price of the Jag- it was so cheap! We also went to my first ever Discothek: Buster's Workshop. Yeah, well what can i say- the name says it all- it was a bust. Bad music, crap beer... list goes on for a while here. beside that though, Meg and i did manage to cadillac ranch (of all things) to techno. I have never dance so fast before.... it almost killed us both. But we ended up with a circle of people around us-- cheering us on! that was pretty sweet :D

Misadventures on the Deutsche Bahn

Trains. They terrify me. it is just so different than what i am used to at home. However, this weekend I went to visit Megan, thus necessitating using the Bahn. I had never been on a train trip by myself really, especially one that required changes. Ugh. it did so not go as planned.

I got to the Bonn main rail station and immediately started off to find my connecting train ( i had only 5 minutes to get to the right platform and get on the train). so i found the right platform, and the train was going in the right direction, at the right time. Despite this, i was in fact on the wrong train. So instead of going straight through to Frankfurt, i ended up in Koblenz. I was more than a little panicked when the conductor announced that the train ended there.

It was a moment of OMG-WTF-HOW DO I FIX THIS?!?!?!???? it was bad. and so frustrating. But, in a moment of serious lucky, i heard over the loud speakers that the train leaving for Frankfurt one platform over was delayed 15 minutes. NICE. so i totally booked it over there and eventually ended up in Frankfurt. By this time i was in serious need of either a drink (or two or three) or a buddy, so Meg met me at the station. my 3.5 hour trip took closer to 5. it was pretty ugly :s

Thankfully, i did manage to make it home on sunday on time and on schedule- without incident. i even got all cocky and took a short cut. Take that Deutsche Bahn!

Conversations

While discussing how the teachers here are ridiculously mean to the students:

Me: It's not like a fun mean - like the kind of mean that makes kids like you.

Meg: Haha-I know- when we're mean, it's definately totally the "I just mocked you in front of everyone-mutual muahahaha-ing" type.

Indeed it is.

Not Sure What to Think

Bowling for Columbine. hmmm. i'm not really sure what i think about it. I know that you can swing a documentary to represent almost anything, with no real middle ground covered. But i think Micheal Moore, while trying to discuss a really important issue, really let everyone down. it wandered all over and talked about things that had nothing to do whatsoever with Columbine. also, i think that there was way to much edited out for it to even be considered semi reliable

I give it 1 out of 1 000 000 000 loaded rifles... all pointed at his film and terrible documentary techniques.