Introduction, really

I suppose I should introduce this blog. Or maybe I shouldn't but I'm going to anyway.

My name is James. I just graduated from Whitworth University with a B.A. in Music Performance in May. I'm currently enrolled in Whitworth's Master in Teaching program to get some certification to begin teaching middle or high school band, and the plan is to also get endorsed to teach German in the near future as well. The program is awesome! I will be in class through the end of July when "summer break" begins for the program, and then I am postponing the rest until fall term 2012.

In the meantime I received a Fulbright English Teaching Assisstantship to Germany. That begins this September and will continue through June 2012. It's a pretty sweet deal-I'm getting paid to work in an English classroom in Germany for a year to help students improve their English skills, develop relationships with the students and the community and hopefully be a positive representation of American culture while coming to a greater understanding of German culture and language myself. I'm hoping to join an orchestra and/or choir while I'm there to keep up my musical skills, and maybe take some lessons too if it works out.

One of my best friends from high school also got a Fulbright ETA and will be in Germany at the same time as me! I'm looking forward to being able to share some of my experiences with her and beginning our adventure together by being seat buddies on the flight from Seattle to Frankfurt.

I've been planning on starting a blog to document my time in Germany but since I'm not around my family too much this summer I thought it would be fun to start one now so that they can maybe read up on me every now and then if they want (see previous post). It isn't going to be a daily kind of blog, but I may post several days in a row if I feel like it. There will be pictures and maybe some quotes and some YouTube videos of things that I think are funny, but mostly I think it will end up being a random assortment of stories and maybe a lot of posts about music I'm listening to.

Starting a blog, I think, can be a lot like starting a Facebook account. There are all sorts of funny stories that wouldn't take very much to write down, all kinds of things to do to my blog to make it look cool or more interesting to look at. I must resist the urge to post everything I do!