Volkstrauertag

Wikipedia had this to say on Volkstrauertag and how it is commemorated:

"Volkstrauertag (German: national day of mourning) is a public holiday in Germany. It is observed two Sundays before the first of Advent, and commemorates those who died in war. It was first observed in 1952.

A Volkstrauertag was proposed in 1919 by the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) as a commemoration for German soldiers killed in the First World War. It was first held in 1922 in the Reichstag and in 1926, it was decided to observe Volkstrauertag regularly on Reminiscere (the second Sunday of Lent.)...

An official observation of Volkstrauertag takes place in the German Bundestag. The German Bundespräsident traditionally gives a speech with the Chancellor, the cabinet and the diplomatic corps present. The national anthem and the song "Ich hatt' einen Kameraden" are then played. Most states also hold their own ceremonies.

Because of the relation to Advent, the date is the Sunday nearest 16 November, i.e. in the period from 13 November to 19 November."

(check out the full article here--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstrauertag)

Despite this, so far i have heard no one mention it. I hadn't even heard of of it before I was writing my piece on Remembrance Day. I don't think it is a really big deal here, but time will tell and potentially nullify part of my post on Remembrance Day.

Winnetou, Part II

Remember my crazy buddy who dressed in the buckskins and wandered around town. Well, i saw him again the other day again. I'm just gonna say though- the second time was still so shocking and random that i may or may not have stared...again. i am a bad and shallow person :(

Is that a Salami in Your Pocket....

My salami loves you all really lots- so much that it underwent extra processing....

My Kitchen

I cooked some stuff the other day and i realized that i hadn't shown you a picture of my kitchen. it makes me a bit sad that the kitchen i have and don't use all the time is way bigger than the kitchen that my buddy Meg uses on a daily basis. She doesn't even have a freezer in her fridge :( it's a bit ridiculous.

My awesome beer fridge :)

St. Martin's Day

Apparently Saturday was St. Martin's Day. I am not really sure why he was so important and neither was my host family. But the mom had us do up some oranges real fancy like with cloves and tealights for a centre piece.

The results:

Lena and Quenten

My contribution to the crafty-ness

An Oft Repeated Statement

so we talked about Obama today while waiting for the world's latest teacher. the kids basically came to the conclusion that Sarah Palin was a gun-toting moron and were glad that McCain didn't win- because they were certain he would die in office and Palin would become president.an interesting thought, although i think they may have pirated that oft repeated idea off some sort of website...

A Few Minutes Late Indeed.

Hmmmph. If someone says that they will be a few minutes late, i don't mind. But 25 minutes is not a few minutes. However, if mentioning this lateness happens just before the class starts and the teacher hands you (the assistant) the text book and says get them to read this page- that is not ok.

Especially since these kids are UNRULY at best. There was throwing and yelling and being just generally disruptive. it was also a suck ass boring text about going to colonial williamsburg. after about 10 minutes i just ditched it. i figured whatever- the teacher isn't going to show up, she doesn't get to pick the material. we talked about the election instead.

Anyway, when the teacher finally showed up she was like - did you read and discuss the text? Are you finished with it? what are you doing now? It was a stressful class and was i not after a great recommendation on my resume a couple months from now- i would have jumped down her throat, mentioning that it says in my contract that i don't ever teach without the teacher in the room. *sigh* any time these people want to get it together, cause this sure as shit ain't the first time it's happened....

Clear and Concise

Today the teacher had me read a few paragraphs on the American Electoral System in order to expose the students to my "crazy/unclear/unaccented" Canadian English. So i did. however, as i was reading it to the students, i realized that i was reading in my absolute best jeopardy clue voice. you know the ones where they speak super slowly and incredibly concisely?

During it I was kinda thinking a) i am making Trebek super proud b) no Canadian (or anyone really) actually talks like that. so doesn't that kind of defeat the point of me reading so they can hear my accent? I know we speak all garbled and lazy like. so was the whole thing about listening to english or was it about hearing my weird accent?

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: