The end of the third week

Sooo I wrote the following to finish up and turn it in to the Center along w/ my finished photo project. Leave a comment or email me if you want to see it and I'll send it to you along with the written component =). I'm actually pretty proud of how it turned out.


(I wrote this entry as though I wrote it on June 20th, a Sunday)
----------------------------------------------------------------

This has probably been the MOST ACTION-PACKED WEEK of my life. I don't have the time to do all these things justice but just as a quick update on what i've been up to:

Wednesday me and Jonathan met up to plan the lesson we'll do on Friday. I wasgoing to visit his school, which is supposed to be a lot more diverse and lower income than mine, and on Monday he'll visit mine. We met at Hauptbahnhof, where we encountered about 15 ballerinas doing ballet in the middle of the station! It was so random and fanciful and awesome.

Thursday, ("research day") we saw at least 4 art galleries with Dr. Suhr, spending quite a bit of time at each (I say at least, because that depends on your definition of gallery—we went to several spots that were full of art, but some were more casual settings than others). There were a couple pieces not many of us in the group were able to connect with (including one with live chickens wandering around) but mostly I really loved it. There was this one open-air space with graffiti and murals all over the place, and furniture made out of random things like car seats mounted on springs, or pipes with ironboards...I guess at night it's a bar type thing, so I think we're all planning to go back there soon. After the group broke up Kael, Jonathan and I went in search of a goulash place Kael really wanted to try, and then we wandered around, ate ice cream, etc...it was such a gorgeous sunny day.

That night I really really wanted to go see Steve Aoki perform at Weekend, a club by Alexanderplatz on the roof of an office building. Mallory had been really interested in going, but ended up off on a weeklong school trip, so she couldn't :( and everyone else lived far away and was wary about going out on a school night, especially since they'd have long commutes afterwards. I was getting really depressed as the hour of departure (if i was indeed going to go) drew near, feeling like even though I'd probably enjoy the concert alone, I would also feel nervous/unsafe. Desparate, I turned to facebook...and basically it's a long story, but I ended up meeting with some sweet German girls who just graduated high school and two college boys from Pennsylvania. It was an AMAZING set, omg. I'm so glad I was able to make it happen. Just shows that people are open; someone just needs to take the first step! =) It felt so surreal to be there, in a room full of mostly strangers, all passionate about the same thing: this American hapa's music! <3>

Friday I visited Jonathan's school. It wasn't as different or disadvantaged as he'd made it sound, from what I could see. It was quite different though. The kids were a lot more outgoing than at my school, especially in terms of girls participating more. We did a lesson with an English class just talking about ourselves and our cities, and then assigning each kid an American city to research for a mini powerpoint presentation. A lot of the kids swarmed me at recess, showing off English words, telling me what they knew about America, asking if Jonathan and I were married...lol. After recess we went to a gym class, which was a total flashback to my study abroad in Stuttgart. I swear the gym looked exactly the same. We helped out a bit, they played this game that gets them to run around a lot, and we would count down to the beginning of the game in English :P.

Yesterday we had a fieldtrip to a Stasi prison. It was really chilling. On the way there Renee and I saw two women dressed up all sparkly and rainbow-y; it's the day of their big Pride parade, Christopher Street Day...sigh. We missed the whole thing. The weather was gray, matching our moods. It was pretty neat to see the prison & interrogation rooms, etc. especially having seen Das Leben der Andere, but the timing was really annoying.

After escaping the prison we broke off into groups as usual. Jonathan Renee and I went to a big bookstore near Friedrichstrasse in search of some things, ended up walking around and finding a little art market by the river. We went inside the Berliner Dom, a gorgeous gorgeous evangelical church.

More on Life & Work in Berlin

So I have been back in the United States for a while now; after a week of readjusting, including getting a dramatic hair cut (I had been planning on it for a while, but it was also u-n-b-e-a-r-a-b-l-y hot to have long hair in Chicago) and having a short-lived promotions job for cubsfanreport.com, I went to visit friends in Saint Paul for six days, returning in time for jury duty, which has since taken over my life. Whew!

But I need to have more blog entry material to submit at the end of the month, in order to receive the stipend for my airfare. So here goes! Luckily I am a photoaddict, and I wisely decided to store my photos from this trip in folders by week of occurrence, so I have plenty of reference to draw memories from.

Places I visited in the third week - The following will give you an idea of just how long my days were sometimes:

First, I went to school as usual. We had normal class for the first period or so, and then instead of English class all the fourth graders (Wild Cats) took the train to a bike course! The police run this little biking school, and they test children on their biking. There's a complex set of rules about how you're supposed to do it, I guess, in terms of signaling, stopping, etc. It was adorable, there was like a mini course with real street signs and mini stop signs, lights & such. I shook hands with a Berlin policeman; he was a really great combination of stern and funny and was able to handle even the troublemakers well. All the kids had to go through the course twice, being watched for errors by people stationed in various places, and then there was ten or fifteen minutes of free biking during which they were also watched. Seven errors or more would result in not receiving one's "biking license." They went through announcing how many errors everyone made in this really dramatic way; it was like a reality show where the cop would start out saying something about the kid's performance, and then draw it out until they thought they weren't going to get their license but really did. Except for in a few cases, where they actually didn't pass--then he was straightforward but emphasized that they were almost there, and with a little more attention and a couple lessons at the facility they could definitely pass.
After that, S had to take the kids back to school, while I got to head straight home. I called up Nick, who said he was off to meet Kael to check out an Icelandic art exhibit and that I was welcome to join them. So I did!

We met at the Nordic Embassy. (Well, Kael and I met at a train station and then got lost and then finally got the right bus over there, where Nick was waiting.) The exhibit was quite good; I never thought much about Iceland before, so it was neat to get a glimpse of the issues facing the country, as well as quirky takes on their heritage and future. We found out that there's an abandoned DDR themepark, and meant to locate & visit it, but never quite made it. :/. Oh well...next time! I know I have to return to Berlin one day. Soon.

On the way to the Nordic Embassy we had passed a building with a giant photo of a little Asian girl printed on one of their glass walls, and with a big Chinese character sculpture on the outside, so I insisted we investigate that after checking out the Icelandic art exhibit. We did, and it turned out to be a Chinese Cultural Center! It was amazing. One thing I love about traveling is finding little things that take you home, that make you feel connected to something greater...something to anchor you to an invisible web you fit onto as you float around the world. It was just so nice to see Chinese art again, hear Mandarin being spoken... They have cultural exhibits in there, offer language classes, and have a library anyone can use. Unfortunately it wasn't worth it for me to get a library card, as I only had a week left there and a dwindling supply of Euros...(it cost 30€ to get one, 20 of which was a deposit and would be returned when one returned the card, but still, for 10€ I could nearly buy the book I wanted to check out). But I asked the librarian if they had any books on Chinese people in Germany, and he found me a good one. I photographed some of the pages inside that contained resources for/about Chinese Germans =). It was such a trip to be talking to another diasporic Asian in German! Also it was really neat because even while speaking German, the librarian still had a recognizably Chinese accent. It warmed my heart, I don't know why.
I dragged my heels as we worked our way out, finally deciding to fully seize the moment and talk to the receptionist at the front desk. (She was young and had perfect German, so I was a lil intimidated.) I approached her, saying I was new in Berlin, and asking if she would tell me what her favorite restaurant was, and where I might find a Chinese grocery store. She told me about the best in her opinion, a Cantonese place called "Good Friends" (lol?), and also recommended a Shanghaiese restaurant. One grocery store was quite far away, but she told me about a train station, Savignyplatz, that had a lot of Asian shops around it. =) Success! Then I asked her if the language classes they offered were mostly attended by children of Asian descent, or if it was quite mixed, or what. She said they in fact most of the students in the language classes were adults with, "though you can't really say this, no apparent connection to China. They just have an interest." So that was an interesting/nice surprise.

After that, we went to Schöneberg--the area around Nollendorfplatz is a gay neighborhood, with a few gay night clubs, queer-oriented boutiques, etc. There were a lot of gorgeous old flowery metalwork doors, and we saw a plaque marking where Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the ideology behind Waldorf schools, lived and worked. As I just found out on Wikipedia, apparently Marlene Dietrich was born in this neighborhood! Anyway, in Berlin Pride is a really big deal; they have a whole month of events scheduled leading up to Christopher Street Day, which is when they have their Pride parade. Even the apothecary (drugstore) was all decked out in rainbow decorations, including bottles of their most colorful products in the window display. We found a neat army surplus store; I fell in love with a faux fur Berlin police hat, but I wouldn't pay 19,95€ for faux. Then we wandered into a very kinky rubber/leather goods store, just because. It was actually very nicely laid out. I guess if I were spending that much on rubber I would want it to be in a luxe atmosphere. There was dildos of all sizes (including some very, I mean EXTREMELY alarming ones), restraints, clamps a giant harness thing a person is strapped/zipped/tied? into like a cocoon, or a full-body straight jacket, rubber masks (including a pig-headed one), rubber paws... Everything was black. It was kind of fun to be in there, acting as if we walked into this kind of place all the time, when we clearly were sooo out of place. a) I don't think that place was intended for women, at all and b) we were dressed like normal or even more-vanilla-than-normal civilians.

And no, the day did not even end there! Another friend from the program, Jonathan, called up and decided to meet us in Schöneberg. Nick had to get home as he'd forgotten his key that day and needed to get home before his host went to bed superearly, as was her wont. While waiting for J, Kael and I got food from a little noodle stand under the train station. I got hot & sour soup, which was tasty but not much like hot & sour soup. All the ingredients were chopped up really small. We sat on the steps of Goya, a big epic-looking club (had Grecian-inspired white sculptures perched all over its façade), in the sunlight. When Jonathan arrived he and Kael regaled me with a tale of one of the most disturbing films they'd ever seen, in a German film class they'd both taken at the U. Apparently nearly everyone in the class had walked out by the end. It was about a woman who exhumed a dead rockstar and fell in love with him, but begins dating a live man while still keeping the dead guy in her house...I won't continue. It was horrific. Apparently it got banned after its first screening in Germany and still is. (They don't have a ratings system for films there, but they can ban something completely.)

At any rate, we then proceeded to seek out a place to watch the impending Fußball match between North Korea and Brazil. Supposedly there was a place called Fanmeile (Fan-mile), a big outdoor "public viewing" (since this is in English, they thought it was a term we used...) location for sports events. Jonathan's host had told him about it, and we thought it was supposed to be near the Reichstag.We went to check out the Reichstag on the way; I got some really great photos, and we even found fairy rings growing! We lounged in the grass for a bit and then continued on our quest. We found a sports bar, but no Fanmeile. We got directions from the sports bar people, but they ended up not making much sense. After wandering aimlessly and finding ourselves on the grand stretch of road leading to the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) we gave up and decided to just take the train to a place likely to have bars where we could watch the game. We ended up in a place with few businesses at all -_-, at least few that were open to pedestrians after regular work hours. It started to get dark, and we finally located a little bar. The boys really needed to use the bathroom so I ordered a drink and sat down. From the window we spotted a Döner kebab stand. The bartender said we were welcome to get food from there and eat it in the bar (they didn't serve food at all anyway) so that is precisely what we did, catching the last half of the game. It was a pretty good game actually; North Korea did quite well, scoring within the last 3 minutes of the game. (It ended 2-1, Brazil.)
Then, finally, we all headed home. I probably got home around midnight. It always takes me a while to wind down, so I bet I got four hours of sleep that night, or less. (Had to wake up at 5:15, 5:30 most days, as I think I said before.) And this after walking for at least a mile, if not two or three total that day. You can see how life was a combination of super stimulating and super exhausting.

Man, just writing about all that was exhausting. I'll write more about things I saw the third week later...

MWAH!
Z.

I Love Printed Materials, Pt. II

I had an entry like this in my India blog.

Printed Materials I've Purchased:

Magazines:

French Vogue (at the Brussels airport)
German Cosmopolitan
Jolie

Books:
(all purchased second-hand at a lil outdoor book market for 1-3€!)
An die christlichen Adel deutscher Nation (On the Christian Nobility of the German Nation) by Martin Luther --this one's a tiny hardcover printed in Fraktur, old German script!
Herr und Hund (A Man and His Dog) by Thomas Mann --this one's small and hardcover!
Kaltblütig (Cold-blooded) by G. P. Stierand (pulp fiction; I bought it mostly for the cover, lol)
Katz und Maus (Cat and Mouse) by Günter Grass
Narziß und Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Wie ich eines schönen Morgens im April das 100% Mädchen sah (On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning) by Haruki Murakami --the only one I bought that was not originally written in German

=D
These'll last me a while!
I also want to purchase this recently published book called Chinesen in Berlin, about the history of Chinese people in Berlin, but it's 15€...that's hard to justify when I got 6 books, 4 of which are classics, for less than that!

Things I´ve Done At School Recently

Baked cornbread with first and second graders. They split into two teams, one with 3 boys and one with 4 girls. The boys were actually much better at it, more efficient and cooperative, while the girls would argue over who got to do what and got mixed up, putting in too much baking powder. It came out beautifully, and some of the kids were really sweet with how eager they were to help out and compensate for the other children who left early without doing much.
I was surprised/enttäuscht that about a third of the class decided they didn´t want to try the cornbread at all =(. Also we had pieces of toast and crackers w/ peanut butter on them, and there was so much left over. I know it´s a time of picky eaters, but there were plenty of kids exclaiming over how yummy everything was, and the cornbread smelled really good... Everyone was baffled that the "bread" looked so much like cake. S was kind of annoyed about that I think, as it was crumblier than bread usually is.

Last night I used one of the Ghirardelli brownie mixes I brought from home to bring to a tea party today in a 9th grade English class. Our school is generally an elementary school, but the hearing impaired students can stay all the way till graduation, so this was a hearing impaired class. The teacher wanted me to pretend not to speak any German (I often have to pretend this, it´s kind of annoying) and answer questions the students asked. At first the questions were slow to come, so I told them the story of how brownies were invented. Eventually this one student got really into asking me questions and it was pretty fun. (The only ones I didn´t like: do you do martial arts? Do you like Jackie Chan?). I wish I could come work with them again, esp. as apparently one of the more engaged students was absent today, but next week they are going on a class retreat.

In the "Bee" class (classes are named after animals; there are the Bienen/Bees, Schmetterlinge/Butterflies, Geparden/Cheetahs, Pumas, Fledermäuser/bats, Hasen/hares, etc--S is the assistant teacher for the Bees) today while some students worked on reading and others worked on math, I went through the books about Chicago my mom bought with 3 little girls. I had to explain everything in German since they were first and second graders, and sometimes even when I knew the right word they didn´t know the concept yet. But it was fun. One of the youngest was best at helping me finish my sentences or come up with the right name for things. I went through the "W is for Windy City" picturebook, and whenever we came across something I had a photo for in the Chicago book I would show it to them. They seemed to like seeing the city, and relating the places and events I described to their own experiences. =)

And time flies on/und die Zeit fliegt weiter

I feel like I´m in some sort of time warp vortex. I can´t believe I have less than 2 weeks left here =(.
Last night S and I hosted a party for her birthday. We made American and German finger food =). It was a low-key but fun night. Some of S´s friends came and she had me invite the other Americans too. Some were still exhausted from the night before so one was four hours late and another missed it entirely due to an accidental nap, lol.

American:
pigs in a blanket
mini peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
stuffed dates

German:
Käseigel (cheese hedgehog)-- half a melon with toothpicks of gouda+melon or gouda+grape stuck into it, and a face of raisins and a red gummy bear to make it look like a hedgehog
Senfgurke (mustard pickle)--some kind of pickled veggie, soft, a bit sour and sort of translucent
Lachsschnecken (salmon snails)--smoked salmon with herbs and some sort of cream spread rolled up in a type of pancake to be snaillike
Russisch Brot (a snack from the DDR...can´t really describe the taste, just mildly sweet brown letter and number shaped crunchy things...)
Kräcker mit Frischkäse (crackers with fresh cheese)--some w an herb-cheese spread, some with a "peppasweet" cheese spread

Today was my first truly upsetting incident of the trip. A couple drunk men were harrassing us as we were getting a tour of memorial sites for the Holocaust, including a former Jewish cemetary. We had to call the police, who came too late. It was awful.

On the plus side, I got to see Rosenstraße, which is one of the places I was most looking forward to going to in Berlin. That is one of the few cases of open protest during the Holocaust. The Nazis had rounded up about 1800 Jewish men who were married to Gentiles and locked them in a building on Rosenstraße until they could be transported to a concentration camp. However, the women somehow found out where their husbands were being held, and they and other concerned people gathered outside on the street and refused to leave. There were so many of them, and being mostly "Aryan" women there was nothing the Nazis could do to them. The protesting went on for a week. Realizing that to follow through with their plans would be, as someone in our group said, "a PR disaster," the men were finally released, and most ultimately survived the Third Reich.

After that we went to a restaurant where most of the people I was with ordered "naan pizza". I had a Radler (beer+lemonade) and the panini S made me this morning, mmm! Then we walked until we found a café for some much needed "coffee to go" (comes in such tiny cups here!). Nick and Kael thought of going to a nearby fleamarket at the exact same time, so we headed over there. It was labyrinthine! Such an awesome assortment of stands. I don´t even feel like we spent that long there, and I found some great items, such as a 0,50€ (ie fifty cent) shirt that fits me beauuuutifully, a 6€ architectural silver ring, and big butterfly earrings made out of sponges. (sounds weird...looks surprisingly delicately pretty!).

Okay, just had a long break where I watched the Germany vs. Australia game (4-0, woot!), spoke to my dear parents on the phone, made and ate Buchstaben Suppe (alphabet soup) and started upoading some photos of the East Side Gallery on facebook. Time to get ready for school tomorrow/bed.

Gute Nacht! =)

Aaaaaahhhhhh!

Somehow my month here is nearly 50% over already and I have not blogged once!
Time here is flying away! I have been having such an amazing time living with and learning from S (we get along so well, we often talk for over three hours at a time, it´s ridiculous), observing and interacting with the children, and gallivanting about the city.
As I often did in my India blog when I was overwhelemed, I will break things down into lil categories:

Awesome places I have been:
~Gropiusbau art museum (we went to an exhibit today that was like BEING IN HEAVEN. It was almost sensory deprivation due to how thick the fog was, and there were bright colored lights, like the mist would change color as you moved about the room--visibiliy was so low I couldn´t even see my own feet, and people would come into view very slowly and myteriously; you wouldn´t see a wall till you were 6 inches away from it (one girl in our group cut her hand because of this, lol.) It was magnificent.
~A museum all about prosthetics and wheelchairs--so many incredible interactive exhibits. Now I know what it feels like to try to navigate Pariser Platz (the square right in front of the Brandenburg Gate) in a wheelchair, oh man
~The East Side Gallery, a long stretch of the Berlin Wall that has been preserved and is now covered in murals, many concerning peace and freedom....really powerful
~The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe --a pretty chilling experience if you do it correctly, but sadly it´s not made super clear from the outside what it is, so you have sunbathers, couples and children eating ice cream lounging on it in places. When you walk inside you get disoriented, the ground swells up and down, the gravestone-like blocks stretch taller and taller, you just see flashes of other people as they pass... There´s supposed to be information beneath it but I haven´t been down there yet
~Memorial for the Homosexuals Persecuted in Nazism --a big block of gray with a small window into it, where a black and white film of two people (according to wikipedia it switches every two years between 2 men and 2 women--this year it´s on men) tenderly making out can be viewed. It`s nice I guess, but I feel like something much more powerful could have been done. The accompanying plaque for it was really beautifully/well- written, though.
~One thing that´s popular here are bars with the most powdery, light, beautiful sand as their floors, located along the river. Strewn with beach chairs and giant square beanbags. Now that the weather is summer-hot, along the river and reclining is a lovely state to be in.
~Berghain--a superintense club. When I was in it, I kept thinking, AAAHHHTHISISSOBERLIN. And later (wandered there one night at the will of a guy in our group who´d been there before) when I looked it up online it turns out it´s supposed to be one of the best here. People even write advice on how to get in, lol, and we just traipsed in without trying or realizing how exclusive and well-known it is. Oops. I wasn´t that into the music and it´s tough to dance with a wristlet...but it was a neat atmosphere. We found all these sketchy (but clean and comfy) little nooks to rest in, and one in our trio actually fell asleep while I just sat there, resting my legs (we probably wandered for miles before finding the place, it was in a really random industrial area and everyone we asked for directions gave us different advice) and enjoying the thump of the beat in my body.

Actually, more on that night--slash another awesome place I´ve been, is on the big bridge that Lola runs through in the film Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run in English)! We were kind of running away from something and while it was happening I realized: I´ve seen this before! This happened in a movie! We are running where Lola ran! ^_^
Before finding Berghain we ended up near this river, and it totally looked like we´d been transported to New Orleans. Further down we found a club that had a beautiful swimming pool lit from the inside and like, built right on the river...Even though it was a warm night they weren´t letting people in yet, or we´d totally have jumped in.

I should probably talk about school! I love love love the children. They are SO CUTE and wonderful. Aaaaahhh. I´ve been writing down funny/strange quotes; shall put those in here soon enough. I´ve been surprised at how unruly the classes are, but I think that probably has more to do with the Montessori system than the teachers.

Random fact: Here instead of handles on the toilets you have buttons. Some toilets have just one button, but most have a small button and a bigger button....Guess why. X) O, Germans and their practicality/environmentallyfriendliness--no reason to use more or less water than you need!

Rarrgh. So tired. They really have us booked night till day pretty much, pretty much every day. I don´t see how they expect us to work on our research projects when we have field trips on every allotted "research day"... And most of us do sooo much commuting that it´s not just about being awake or alert, but true physical weariness and need of bedrest.

Speaking of which, that´s where I should be getting to! Have to wake up in 6 hours (circa 5.15am) to get ready for school-commute. Joyy. It´s been kind of empowering though, to know that I CAN do it if I REALLY need to...)

Ich vermisse euch alle! Hab euch lieeeeb!

Setting Out / Abreisen

Well, here it is, the night before my departure and I haven't written in between at all. :(
Finals were so gutwrenching, senior week a tangle of relief, working shifts collecting items donated to the Habitat for Humanity rummage sale, and packing--and then once I had everything in either my Grand Ave. duplex for the fall or my apartment back here on Lexington I had one day to pack before jetting to Montego Bay. Similarly, I get about 34 hours between getting home from Jamaica and leaving for O'Hare again. (It would have been more, but my connecting flight in Miami was delayed.) I think having done it once before, and now having a much bigger bag to work with, speed-packing is coming easier to me. My essential toiletries are already set aside from my last trip. I've fit all the things I need to bring to the classroom and my lovely host (I'm not going to call her my host mother, as she is not married and has no children) into my check-in; all that's left is a few more outfits, toiletries and shoes. I think the fact that my laptop is coming with me is also really comforting; a connection to home and a great resource no matter what else I may forget.

I've video-chatted with S (decided not to use her full name, as Germans are very particular about privacy) once in German last week. She seems super nice and is less than a decade older than me, and it seems like we relate pretty well. We've IM'd three times and she uses even more emoticons than me =P. It doesn't seem like she's going to put much pressure on me, so I'm feeling good about the classroom time. There is a class of 4th graders she teaches English, and a group of 1st & 2nd graders she does projects with. I would presumably help with language-learning activities for the fourth graders, and do lessons/games/projects about America in German with the younger children.
The school I am going to be at is a public one which is Montessori and equipped to meet the needs of students with hearing impairment and learning disabilities. (The impression I get is that some of these students are integrated into classes with other students, but some are in classes of their own. I'm not clear on if this is by class subject or severity of impairment.) They have a team of speech therapists which it sounds like S can arrange for me to meet with/observe.
I've done some brainstorming with some wonderful people about what activities to do. I like the idea of tying in factual information with fun activities. Seeing as the school has a kitchen, and seeing as I love food ;) I came up with several food-related activities.

Teaching about the World's Columbian Exposition/Chicago World's Fair of 1893 (400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the New World) - explaining what it was, and all the new inventions introduced there, including
-Wrigley gum
-ICE CREAM CONES (invented at the fair)
-elongated coins (LOL. hope I can find a stretched-out penny to bring)
-neon lights
-the Ferris Wheel
-brownies (I'm bringing boxes of Ghirardelli brownie mix, chocolate supreme and walnut)
-Cracker Jack (although this should have its own lesson, including learning to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"--it sounds like S really likes incorporating singing--and basic information about our National Pastime)

Really I want to teach all about how the nation was "discovered," "founded," etc., and help them to understand that it is a nation of immigrants.

Other things I am bringing:
- cornmeal & baking soda to make cornbread (perhaps could be tied into a lesson about natural resources, or regional differences)
- peanut butter (a big jar of Skippy, and a smaller jar of JIF just in case) to make "ants on a log." Could also talk about George Washington Carver
- macaroni & cheese mix (not sure if I really want to do this, but if not S and I can always eat it)
- lychee jellies (one of my favorite snacks growing up, which also serves to make the point that Americans eat a variety of yummy foods)

Hoping to find cranberries to make cranberry sauce, and root beer to make root beer floats. Neither of these are easily obtained in Germany, but here's hoping the small American food section of the grocery store near S's home has them...couldn't find cranberries at Jewel and root beer is simply too heavy to pack enough for 25 students in my one check-in bag.

I'm thinking to make cards that suit the fourth graders' vocabulary to play lo-fi versions of Pictionary or Catchphase.
Also I think it could be fun to go through a couple decades of American music each week, maybe give a little background on a particular genre and then play it while we cook?
S said their classrooms are kind of small, but if possible it might be fun to teach the vocab in the Cha Cha Slide and then dance it...ahaha.

Anyway, I ought to finish packing while I still feel awake. I depart at 4:55pm tomorrow; land about 8 hours later at 8:00am local time in Brussels, Belgium, and then have a 6 hr 55 min wait till my 1.5 hour flight to Berlin. Ay! At least at the end of it all, what with this, Jamaica and India, I ought to have enough frequent flier miles to have a free trip someplace...if I ever feel like flying again. I love love love flying, but yesterday for the first time I felt a hint of understanding for why some people dislike it, or at least are less than enthusiastic about it, and I'm worried that after this trip I might just want to stay grounded for years. Weee shalll seeee.

Gute Nacht Ihr Lieben!