A Visit from the Parental Units...

This week my parents came to visit in Düsseldorf and we did a mini-road trip of the Mosel Wine Region, our little homeland town, Langenfeld, and a short excursion to Amsterdam. It was a really fun week and with a little help from my parents, my apartment is starting to look less like somebody else's leftover junk and more like my own place! 

Marv and me in front of Jan Wellem in the Düsseldorf Marktplatz. It was COLD!

We then took off for the Mosel River Region in our rental car. I'm definitely getting the hang of the German Autobahn and think I got into the 90 mph region this time. Our car was a stick shift this trip (automatic last time) and I was nervous that I was going to be stalling my way through Germany. Turns out I only stalled twice and it was within 20 seconds of each other after I'd already been driving for a few days.

The Parents on the Mosel.

 But, not surprisingly, for how much we all like wine, our relatives emigrated from just down the of another major German wine region...the Mosel Valley. It was beautiful and sunny and full of delicious Halbtrocken Riesling (Half-Dry, that means...I'm fully a wine snob at this point...but would drink out of a box if necessary, so not too snobby!). I bought another 12ish bottles of wine and am getting quite desperate to buy a wine rack!

Another adorable view of another adorable wine region.

Berg Eltz. The only part without scaffolding. 

We also got to visit a few castles. But, this was further proof that I actually have a curse. The castle was like 1000 years old or something, but wouldn't you know it, it was covered in scaffolding. What? They couldn't wait a few more weeks until I am not there? It was been standing for 1000 years...surely it could have made it a few more weeks. This is the same thing that happened to me when I went to see the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Acropolis in Athens...cursed. Cursed I tell you.

A relative on my mom's side immigrated to Michigan from Langenfeld in the mid-1800s.
It is now a town full of giant vacation homes in the hills. I am pretty sure our illiterate farmer ancestors were not the owners of one of them! It was a twisty, switch-back filled drive to the top of the hill but I did not stall!

A few of Langenfeld. Really steep hills everywhere around the town. You can see why a bunch of farmers with huge families had to leave, there just wasn't much farmland to be had.

The Catholic Church in Langenfeld. It was not there when the immigration occurred but was quaint and pretty nonetheless. 

There was also a castle down the hill from Langenfeld. This is probably where our family would have worked as poor peasants and not as actual inhabitants of the castle! 

No scaffolding but also closed for the day randomly.
It is a curse. 

In conjunction with our visit to Langenfeld, we also visited the city of Koblenz. Apparently, Koblenz means "confluence" in Latin and wouldn't you know it...it is the exact spot where the Rhein and the Mosel Rivers come together...a "confluence" if you will. We stayed over night here and spent the morning freezing and walking through the town.

This monument is at the "Corner of Germany" where the two rivers come together. 

With the heat blasting, we drove back to Düsseldorf. I had asked that we devote one day with the rental car to making large purchases that I cannot manage on the tram. I needed to buy a ton of stuff at IKEA. I've never actually set foot in an IKEA until now and I am sold. I can see why people were camping out at the one in Denver before it opened. They have EVERYTHING and it is seriously easy to spend a lot of money there. I got all new kitchen stuff so that I didn't feel like I was living in a college apartment anymore and also finally got some curtains which my mom then spent about 6 hours hemming so that they would fit my windows! (THANKS!!!)

My friend Chris was not nearly as excited about IKEA as I was.
I love how organized it is...so much better than American Furniture Warehouse in Colorado because you don't have to see every item at the same time, making it way less overwhelming. Plus, they serve meatballs in the snack bar....take that Jake Jabs. (This will only make sense to Colorado people!)

We spent the day getting lost in downtown Düsseldorf, even with the GPS as I am not accustomed to driving around here. I'm much better on foot, buses, and trams. It was actually pretty stressful having to drive around downtown because I am forever scared of sharing the lane with trams. My house looks much better now though thanks to all of this scary downtown driving. And, when I have Thanksgiving at my house, people will be able to use matching silverware AND plates. Yahoo!

Our next adventure was a 2.5 hour train ride to Amsterdam...or Hamsterdam as a partially-illiterate, stoner 8th grader whom I used to teach, called it. He told us that school wasn't important because he was going to move to Hamsterdam and sell weed. Good luck, buddy. The law is changing and only Dutch citizens will be able to buy it. And here I thought that he'd might have actually made it there...NOT. (His dad also liked to remind me in some super tactful, but regularly sent emails that his tax dollars paid my salary. I wanted to remind him that my tax dollars paid for drug prevention programs that were obviously not working either.)

Yay for sun! This is the first trip here where I've seen blue sky!
You can totally understand why Van Gogh freaked out the first time he went to the South of France and saw the sun!

I LOVE THIS CITY!!!

We had a great time in Amsterdam, stayed at a wonderful hotel, ate delicious sandwiches (twice from the same place they were so good) and went out for AMAZING Indonesian food with my friend Jonathan who lives there. I could totally live there. We did all the typical stuff...Anne Frank House Museum, Van Gogh museum, canal walks, and of course, a canal boat tour (where, as usual, I fell asleep just for a quick second....it is just so warm and rocks you, I cannot help myself.).

And, most importantly...WE FOUND THE SHOE!!!!

It is so dorkily touristy but WHO CARES! It is so fun!

Amsterdam is such a great city. I've been three times in the last year and would go back tomorrow (but annoyingly, I have to go to work instead!).

Nice hat.

The Swansons also LOVE cheese.

Dutch Milkmaids are We! 

Our new shoes. They just don't pack well, though.

$10,000 Delft Tulip Vase. I bought three.

Dutch Mini-Van.

SUNFLOWERS! Van Gogh needed some meds...badly. Who knows if his painting would have been as good, but he might have lived a bit longer. Poor guy. 

Cheap Heineken at our fave sandwich shop. 

My dad and I have eaten Magnums across Europe. THEY ARE THE SHIT.
They are also probably a billion calories. We didn't eat any on this trip. Sad day. I'd have to run a few miles before and after. 

If you thought I was a wine snob now...I'm not. Plastic cups still do it for us!
We did bring our own bottle on the train, though! Always thinking.
Score again for Germany!

It was a great trip. We had a fun time and I'm looking forward to Christmas break when we go skiing in Vail. Oh, my life is rough!

Deutsche Weinstrasse...German Wine Road!

This weekend was a three-dayer thanks to it being German Reunification Day...meaning...the day East/West Germany came back together in 1990. Four of us girls from school, (Lauren, Rhonda, Kendra, and I) went on a road trip to the Deutsche Weinstrasse- the German Wine Road.

The Wine Road is a 50 km stretch of road in southwestern Germany where there are hundreds of wineries and vineyards as far as the eyes can see. We were incredibly lucky and had AMAZING weather. It was cloudless and 75 (don't ask for the Celsius, I don't know!) the whole weekend with low humidity. PERFECT.

We rented a car and so I got to drive on the Autobahn this weekend. It wasn't really that exciting to tell you the truth. Maybe if I had a really nice car that was really smooth at 100 mph then I would like it. But, our rental car was a Chevy Cruze, there were four of us and we had about 40 full wine bottles in the trunk...not exactly optimum conditions for driving without a speed limit. For me, it was more stressful than fun as the Germans I encountered were massive tail-gaters, non-turn signal users, and there was often traffic that would stop rather suddenly. I guess next time I will have to rent a really expensive, fancy car in order to take full advantage. Driving in Düsseldorf in the dark on Friday night was probably the most stressful part of the drive as there are construction projects, trams, bikes, and many pedestrians everywhere and I don't know where I am going even with a GPS! But, now that I've rented a car once, it won't be so bad in the future. It makes me feel like an independent, real person unlike last year in England where I was too chicken-shit to drive and also I didn't have easy access to renting a car anyway.

Being that it is 2011 and who doesn't like to be connected, we had plenty of technology with us!

Two i-pads, one kindle, 4 digital cameras, 3 smart phones, 3 ipods, a GPS, and a good 'ol-fashioned road atlas got us through Germany! Guide book....schmide book! 

There are bike paths and walking paths everywhere in the area. We could just walk right into the vineyards, and so, of course, we did!

Creeping through the grape vines!

There were still a few grapes left of the vines. Yummy!

There were some delicious food options too! The traditional food for this time of year while tasting wine is called a Zwiebeln Kuche....which is basically like a piece of bacon/onion quiche. It was delicious and very cheap everywhere! But, most excitingly, there was Black Forest Cake and lots of it.

Before....

Twenty seconds later...
All for only 1€!!!

Now, I have passed by the world's largest ball of twine in Kansas before but if you want to find the world's largest wine barrel, you will not find it in Napa! Instead, it is right along the Deutsche Weinstrasse!

I feel like our car's trunk was actually carrying this much wine!  At least that is what it felt like when I tried to "step on it" while on the Autobahn. The lack of pick up might have had to do with the cake we consumed too! 

The Weinstrasse's best wine (at least in our opinion) was a Halbtrocken (half-dry) Reisling. We visited a castle and sat in the sun on the castle's patio enjoying a glass of it. It was one of those moments that really made you feel lucky to live in such an interesting, new place (and made you wish you'd worn more sunblock!)!

Lauren with our new favorite wine.
Castle walls, delicious wine,  gorgeous weather, and amazing scenery.
Great weekend!

Yum.

There was also another way to get around the Weinstrasse...a wine-o chairlift. Being a skier, I sure do love chairlifts! We didn't even get to ride it but I am obsessed with the sign for it. When you don't speak German (well, I know about 60 words now), you often just figure things out from the picture or you watch to see what everyone else is doing!

This picture was easy to guess! A wine-swilling chairlift!
DEEEELIGHTFUL!!!

The view from the castle was also quite beautiful! Hambacher Schloss- it was called.
We now know that "Schloss" is the German word for castle.

When my parents were visiting Germany in the 1970s, they were standing about a block from the Rhein River but couldn't see it. They were asking everyone around them "Wo ist der Rhein Flusse?" which means "Where is the Rhein River?" and people were really confused about what they were asking since the river was within spitting distance. So, we now like to ask where things are when we are literally standing right in front of them. "Wo ist der Schloss?" was our question while sitting on the patio of the schloss/castle. Maybe it was the delicious Reisling that made this so especially funny! :)

The little hike up to the castle. 

Remember that I could have been living in Kuwait this year!
I am betting that there are not any Kuwait Wine Roads where they serve bacon-filled snacks!
Score again for the land of pork and alcohol!

Though the Wine Road was only about 25 miles long, it took us two days to get down it. Part of that was because there were so many little places to stop and part of that was that we didn't plan ahead and get hotels. So, because of that, we had quite a drive to our hotel (and I say "hotel" loosely...we stayed in a boarding house which was like living in the dorms again!). Next time, we'll plan a bit ahead when traveling on one of the biggest travel weekends of the year. So, we spent a long time in the car. But, I always love a good road trip!

I like big bottles and I cannot lie. Baby got bottle! (Thanks, UT!)

Finally, we got to the end of the Wine Road where there is a Wine Gate. The Wine Gate was built in the late 1930s in order to celebrate German wine over French wine. I remember hearing SOMETHING about Germany being a bit overly-patriotic in the late 1930s but I can't seem to remember many details...oh, wait. The Wine Gate is only about 150 feet from the French border.

Rhonda "coming in for a landing" in front of the Wine Gate.
I know it is blurry but it looks like she fell from the sky and landed right in front of the gate!

So, because we were within feet of France..(Wo ist France?) we had to go there! And, you can't say you've gone somewhere (according to my cousin Terese in Denmark) unless you've had ice cream there. So, we hopped across the border and had a McFlurry! We were tempted to also order "Le Big Mac" but just being able to say "Le Big Mac" wasn't worth actually ordering one!

Standing on the Germany/France border.
"Ich bin in Deutschland" and "Je suis en France" on the other side!
In two countries at once!
That's a first for me (although I've been in 4 states at once!)!

Last night we stayed in Heidelberg because it was the closest hotel we could find. Heidelberg was about an hour from the end of the wine road and about 3 hours from Düsseldorf. Today we visited Heidelberg Schloss. It was very pretty and at the top of a giant staircase...that's okay, we needed to work off the cake, wine, and McFlurrys!

View from Heidelberg Schloss.

We, again, cracked ourselves up "looking for" the castle while standing directly in front of it.

The French blew up the castle in the 1600s and it hasn't been the same since!

This was such a fantastic weekend. When you get into the daily rut of school, workout, dinner, laundry, etc. (Notice that house cleaning is not on that list because I GOT A CLEANER!!!) I forget why I am living so far away from everyone I love when I'm just going through my routine. I like to remind myself why I'm living so far away by having the kind of weekend I just had.

If you're keeping score...and I am...

Score:      Last year-  0 This year- + 1 million.

Next up: Parentals visit in three weeks! I can't wait!!

Ich bin käse....

It has been a few weeks since my last post and I have been busy, traveling, sick, and busy again. I have started my just over six hours of German classes per week and not getting home until 9 two nights per week is making the weeks go quite fast. I am glad I didn't have to go to graduate classes much during the weeks I was teaching otherwise I might not have ever finished my master's degree.

German class is going well and is actually really fun! It is fun being like a kid again and learning something for the first time. Usually when I go to professional development stuff in education, it is very cerebral... so it is fun doing something that is just basic. Don't get me wrong, basic does not equal easy!

To learn the alphabet, we had to dictate words to each other and spell them. After a long day of teaching and a few hours of German class, the spelling words degenerated into silliness. Brain fry = reversion to 7th grade. But, let's be honest, I'm never far off!

German grammar is not easy! And, there are more articles and pronouns than I know what to do with! I don't think this will be my last German class if I really want to learn the language! Just like when I was in Spain and we thought it was hilarious to ask "How is the bathroom?" instead of "Where is the bathroom?" we have gotten stuck on nonsensical phrases like Ich bin käse which means...I am cheese. But, it lets us practice the ä which is different from a regular a. Anyway, generally, by the end of the 3 hours and 20 minutes class after a long work day, I am delirious and a bit silly.

The class is through an adult/continuing education program offered by the city. It will go until December so I should have a decent foundation by the end of the semester. At least, hopefully, I will be able to speak to waiters and the check-out people at the grocery store without just staring blankly at them all the time. There are people from all over the world in my class, mostly business people who would like to learn German for work. There are also two teenage boys in the class with faux-hawks who talk the entire time. They don't speak English so our teacher warnings (there are six of us from school in the class of 22) fall on deaf ears. The German teacher told them to go home the other day. Ugh. But, comical nonetheless.

In other news...

Last weekend I went to Holland with my friend Rhonda (Canadian but taught in Norway the last three years!). We went to Rotterdam on Friday after school on the train. It took just over two hours to get there. Her aunt and uncle from Canada were there for work so we met up with them. In actuality, even though we stayed in Rotterdam, we spent the whole weekend in Amsterdam which is only a 40 minute local train ride away. It was a super fun weekend (except poor Rhonda got a wicked cold which I now have!).

OF COURSE WE FOUND THE SHOE!!!
(My mom and dad will be visiting the shoe in October...so stay tuned!!!)

I love Amsterdam (and not for the reasons everyone always jumps to) because it is a beautiful city. The canals and 400 year old canal houses are just gorgeous. Every single house is unique and I love watching people fly safely around on their bikes because there are bike lanes everywhere! We mostly just walked around but did take a canal tour. You know me, can't stay away from river/canal/harbor cruises. Actually, I wouldn't have done it again in Amsterdam had I not been with people who'd never been there. Don't worry, I will do another one when my parents come to visit next month!

This was the perfect scene of Amsterdam. Bikes, canal boat visible through the rungs, and canal houses in the background. So interesting...except when you have to carry 900 pounds of luggage up the winding staircase like I did last year when Courtney and I were in Amsterdam. We'd had the bright idea that it would be better to share one huge bag instead of two small ones. Wasn't such a bright idea! 

Amsterdam and a weekend in Holland was also an opportunity to go on a carb bender! Except for a few beers here and there, I hadn't eaten sugar, potatoes, bread, rice, pasta, etc. for the last 9 weeks. The upside is that all of my clothes fit again and I got to tighten my belt a notch. The downside is that I live in Europe where there is SO MUCH deliciousness everywhere! So, I gave myself the weekend off and we started the minute we got to the train station!

They sell these delicious pretzels everywhere (brezel in German) and yes, I am drinking a Czech Budvar...I think where we ripped off Budweiser! I just like Pilsner, it has nothing to do with the label. 

The other reason for the bender when going to Holland is the BITTERBALLEN! They are deliciously fried balls of deliciousness. There is no other way to describe them, really. They are some sort of meat stew which is then deep fried and you dip them in mustard. I went ape-y for them last year when I was in Amsterdam with Courtney and I decided that being able to stuff my face with them was a good workout goal to keep me motivated over the last few weeks. I wish I could be motivated by things like good health, etc. but no, fried food is what does it for me!

Rhonda with some beers and bitterballen.  (I think the beers are Belgian but hey...Belgium is close!)

Amsterdam also has delightful small shops that are open on Sundays...unlike everything in Germany. There is no such thing as a relaxing Saturday because all errands have to be done on Saturdays as everything is closed (including grocery stores) on Sundays. In Holland, everything is still open so we spent most of Sunday shopping in the tiny streets of Amsterdam. Shopping however, was preceded by a viewing of the Canada vs. France World Cup Rugby match. Rhonda is a big rugby fan (and player) and so we met up with a friend of a friend in Amsterdam for some morning rugby watching at an Irish Pub.  Cappuccinos instead of beers.

A men's shoe store. Not in Colorado anymore. 

  This weekend wasn't quite as eventful as I ran a lot of errands. Not having a car makes errands take a lot longer. I don't miss having a car most of the time, but for carrying groceries, or a quick trip somewhere, it would be nice sometimes. Yesterday we ventured to a store called Obi which is like Home Depot because I really need some new curtains and some other stuff for my apartment. It took two trams and a bus ride to get there but we found it eventually.

Obi = Germany's version of Home Depot. It is even orange!
My favorite part? They had the German equivalent of Depot Dogs....Bratwurst! 

A lot of debacles and hilariousness often ensue when trying to buy things in a foreign country where you don't speak the language. There was a fair amount of sign language and pointing to buy some screws and don't even get me started on the curtain situation. That was WAY beyond my German vocabulary. Unless the German phrases needed are "What is your name? Where are you from? What languages do you speak? and What do you do for work?" then I am at a loss in most situations!

School is still going well. I still really like it there. And, speaking of, I need to end this post so I can do a little work...AND...study! I have a German test tomorrow! YIKES!!!

Beware..extreme teacher talk coming at ya!

If you are one of my new ISD colleagues reading this, I am afraid you are about to see the extent of my teacher geekiness springing forth. If you've been reading my blog for awhile (or taught with me) none of this extreme dorkiness will come as a surprise. But, in my defense, I know a few people reading this are my twins in teacher nerd-ness!

As I try to get all of the IBMYP (reminder...that means International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program) stuff straight in my head, I am really continuing to ponder and mull over the importance of making things visible for kids. This is something I have been working on for the last few years in my instructional practice...I mean, really, on the Tiger Team, we were known as the poster makers around the school. We were all obsessed with our word walls and "anchor charts" and managed to fill every available space by the end of the school year.

My basic "anchor charts" are the same in this school as they were at CBMS. I've developed a little system for the beginning of the year that when given the time, I will ALWAYS follow. I wasn't allowed to follow this last year and I paid for it dearly with classroom management issues and by the number of times I was called a bitch by students! 

Two summers ago I went to an institute called "Building Intellectual Character" that was focused around routines for thinking in the classroom. The institute was facilitated by Ron Ritchhart from Harvard's Project Zero who also has a book entitled "Building Intellectual Character." His latest book, and a heavy focus of the institute was on "Making Thinking Visible" which obviously, I (along with many teachers at CBMS, but especially the Tigers) had already bought into- as evidenced by the constant poster making. However, now, with the MYP, I am really starting to click with how entirely important that truly is.

Here are the beginnings of my implementation of "Making Thinking Visible." These are posters for each "Thinking Routine" that we have learned so far. After having my 8th graders write "Headlines" about the layers of the earth, I was EXTREMELY glad that I had taken the time to really teach the routine. "Start slow to go fast," is always true yet I am surprised every time for some reason!

The MYP at an international school is a different animal than in a regular public school. For starters, we do not have a mandated curriculum from a governing agency and therefore we are all curriculum designers (to which I say YAY because this is something I really enjoy but to some people, it totally sucks!) and our curriculum is a very dynamic thing. We are not able to just plan something (I know that public school teachers cannot do this either) and then do it year after year after year. The concept of "backwards design" is really taking on a whole new meaning to me and I am seeing how critically important well-planned assessment is to even beginning a unit. Because, how can you start a "journey" if you have no idea where you are trying to go?

But I digress...or do I?

There is so much thinking that goes into the planning of a unit. There are a lot more parameters to plan around than I have been used to. For example, at CBMS, I looked at the content I was required to teach and I developed my units (with backwards design) around that content. But in the MYP, there are about a million (or at least it feels like it) considerations to make. For example, not only do I have to plan around a unit question, and a well-planned assessment, now I also have to think about my Area of Interaction as a lens for the unit, but also what the "significant concept" is that can link to any content area, and what "approaches to learning" I am also going to embed and use as a lens for the unit. See how complicated it is? It is a very muddy and muddled process but I am getting lots of practice.

Oh look, I digressed (is that the past of digress or is there some other form of the word that I am forgetting) again...but I'm coming back to my original point, I swear...

So my point is this...if we want kids to understand all this (and ourselves), I think that making it visual for them is absolutely critical. They are expected to be able to speak about their experiences with the Areas of Interactions in depth by the time they finish the MYP program in 10th grade. But, how can this happen if it is all muddled up in their teachers' heads, let alone in their own? So, for the last few weeks, I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to un-muddle for all involved parties. And, guess what I came up with? POSTERS!!! (You could probably guess, I love them!) We are not talking about the kind of posters you can buy in a teacher store or at Target, but those that I work really hard to make myself.

And, I have been thinking a lot about how to arrange things in the best way to make it clearer for kids. I spent a few hours the other day getting things put up, and then today, had a different idea that was precipitated by a bunch of ideas kids were having, and I had to unstaple and redo things.

Here's my current thinking...as of today....

This will likely change. However, I want to give a shout-out to Lesli Cochran and Natalie Dudley at CBMS who always had chart paper with their unit questions where they continuously had kids reflect on their current thinking in regards to the questions. AND, they added to it all the time throughout the unit- so I stole their idea! We've only been doing this unit for a few class periods, but already small bits of thinking were starting to happen. The kids told me that we needed another section for "Interesting Facts" and "Questions We Now Have." Kids are smart.

This post has taken me a few weeks to actually write. In the time since I started it, I have been thinking even more how important visual representations are. I have noticed my students starting to use the boards themselves and in my 8th grade class, we have had to add thinking on an almost-daily basis. Through inquiry, we just continue to ask more and more questions!

The more we learn, the more questions we have! And then, in the midst of our study of the earth, specifically regarding earthquakes, there was a 4.4 earthquake in Düsseldorf the other night! The kids came to school extremely excited about it!

Even though I have been an inquiry-based teacher for awhile, I am really starting to think about it differently through the way that I am structuring units this year. We have been using the summative assessments to drive the entire unit. I introduced the assessment tasks on the first day of the units so that kids can realize that everything we do and learn is related to answering our big unit questions and completing our culminating tasks. I feel like the kids are more engaged and also it has a relevance to them that I haven't seen before when I have structured things differently.

Inquiry in progress! I have been using lots of web-based text sources that I bookmark for the kids in advance! The best part of that is that they are interactive AND kids who don't speak English proficiently, can read about the science content in their native language!

As you can read, I am really enjoying getting to be a reflective practitioner again. I am able to actually reflect on my lessons and have the time to spend planning them in a quality way (unlike last year!). To be perfectly honest, I am really having a great time being a teacher again! YAY! That is a really good feeling after the soul-crushing year I had last year (dramatic? yes.).

I also now realize that I cannot have a classroom that doesn't know the language of the "Thinking Strategies." They have become such a big part of my daily instruction that even though I was worried that they would be just "ONE MORE THING" for the kids to know (in MYP we have lots of lists that the kids have to be aware of!), I realized that I cannot teach without them. I am not necessarily teaching them specifically for a whole unit, but when a kid uses one, I name it for them and I walk over to the posters and we look at how their thinking fit with one of the thinking words. I think this is the best intro I can have so far...merely naming it for them.

What can I say? They have just become part of who I am as a teacher.

If you want to hear a podcast that has forever sold me on naming thinking for kids....here's a link....

"Words" Podcast from RadioLab



On a fun note!

I have been on two field trips in the last two weeks with the 8th grade...bowling and canoeing. Bowling was pretty standard but canoeing was a definite adventure!

The weather held until we were getting on the bus to go home! Lucky us!

Yes, the kids are perpendicular to the river! They had some steering issues! It was pretty hilarious but nobody flipped their canoe- shocking for 8th graders!

I start my intense German classes tomorrow after school! They will be six hours per week until December. I think that maybe I will finally feel like I live in Germany once I start taking German lessons. Right now, because my job is in English and all of my friends are English-speakers, I just don't feel like I am in Germany. I am really looking forward to it!  I feel quite inept that I cannot have basic conversations with people in German.

Next weekend I am heading to Holland with my friend Rhonda. We're going to Rotterdam and Amsterdam just for a quick trip. I have been working out as much as I can so I don't feel guilty about eating delicious bitterballen (fried deliciousness eaten with beer!).

This was a longun'! Sorry! I haven't written in awhile...mostly just lazy to be perfectly honest! I have been watching Netflix ever since I got my American IP address so my computer is generally occupied doing that!

Ciao!