In Deutschland: Warum Nicht?

Concerning School Buses and Such Matters As Are Important

I already want to connect words like school bus together, and I’ve only been here a month. But anyway, lately I’ve been hitchin’ a most legal ride with the school bus to school. For those of you who may doubt it, riding a school bus has the potential to make you feel most popular, especially if you teach elementary school kids. Most days, well, okay everyday so far I am overwhelmed by requests for me to sit with this child or that one. They then proceed to ask me various questions auf Deutsch. Some of them I can understand, some of them I can’t and some of them I can even give a proper answer. For awhile I felt my learning was coming along quite quickly, but lately it seems to of slowed down or reversed and it worries me something might fierce (sorry for the colloquial, I guess being so far from the southern states makes one develop a bit of a longing, or I’m just a whimsical person in general, who rightly knows?). The bus is often crowded, and is not a school bus, per say, but rather a city bus converted for that purpose. As such, it requires a fee of its passengers; my monthly fee comes to about € 40. Aber my bossman takes care of that bill. Just thought I’d throw in a random German word for you. To prove I know at least one. The teachers at school are afraid that I don’t like them because I am always reading. It’s mostly that I don’t feel confident about how to properly address them, and sure they might not care and will, most likely, forgive the new English teacher who is trying his hardest to learn their language. It is still a hurdle I must jump over. I have tried stepping and it has worked with the two English teachers, but they know English. I also talk to the 1^st grade teacher, but she rarely graces our fair teachers’ lounge. Tomorrow I will attempt to bypass my fears and spout out a stream of quite grammatically incorrect German, and hope that someone somewhere can understand it. I am also attempting to cut back on my readings in English, though they are so entertaining, I fear it is best to settle a bit more in the cold waters of the German language until I find them refreshing. Plus I really need to learn and should put my studious efforts away from learning of things like new Harry Potter spells or the history of Middle Earth, and into learning German. Today I helped with the church’s Kinderstunde, well it’s called KLUB and is usually pretty fun. Today we played soccer. I was also supposed to try and make the kids open a forbidden plate, but I couldn’t do it. It may have been my poor knowledge of German, or the fact that the kids were pretty sure something was up. We also ate junk food, but any free food for me makes for a good dinner. Or snack or whatever. Today I also got to help with the 1^st grade PE hour. That was fun, we played a game I learned last year as a Gym Teacher called line tag, but, and my apologies to the creator of the game, I changed the name to Schlange in das Wald. Snake in the woods. I don’t know why, it just seemed easier that way, and a bit easier to explain. And kids love animals, even disgusting snakes. No, snakes are okay. It was fun, but today I feel Germanically stupid. I mean by that, that today I had a hard time understanding German, though at one point during KLUB I was sure everyone was speaking English, or at least that I could understand some without thinking hard. But then that faded and it became hard again.

posted by Keith @ 8:11 PM