March

Almost caught up!

March has been reasonably uneventful. I had time to take in my first film here in Germany, which was great. It wasn't a hard movie to understand, since it was the Oscar-winning silent film The Artist, and the few words there were appeared on-screen as the caption thingys for the important dialog. I especially enjoyed the film because a friend of mine from high school worked as an office staffer for it. Besides that, it was a really good movie.

But the big thing for the month was the Fulbright conference in Berlin, which ended last Thursday. It was an incredible chance to meet Fulbrighters from all over Europe. I met an opera singer studying Bulgarian opera, a pianist studying in Paris, a musicologist studying 8th century Gregorian chant in Germany, and a few study grantees from around Germany. I met one guy in particular who grew up in Renton (about 45 minutes or so from Enumclaw), studied and will go back for a master's at Washington State University, and currently lives in Bonn (about 45 minutes from Cologne)! That was a funny coincidence.

It was also a really nice chance to catch up with ETAers I hadn't seen since orientation in September. In a way it was my first chance to really meet a lot of them, since I was kind of overwhelmed by everything that comes with moving to a new country the first time around.

There were lots of panels and speeches, we met several important people from Berlin, the German Fulbright Kommission, and I even got a chance to chat with the vice-chair of the Fulbright Scholarship Board in D.C. We heard about the history of the program in Germany, which as of this year has been here for 60 years, and about the vision J. William Fulbright had when he created it. There were musical performances interspersed, and a fantastic "music gala" of all the music Fulbrighters who were at the concert! If you want, ask me about the unbelievable tuba performance. I've never seen anything like it.

I think the thing I came away with the most was the reminder that this year I have here is such a great opportunity to learn and grow, and to have a hand in shaping people's perception of America and to get students to enjoy learning English. I also got a few ideas for the classroom or my English club I want to try, and was relieved to hear that some of the things that didn't go as I expected this year aren't isolated to just me.

I'll also say this: Fulbright really knows how to throw a great conference. We had a great hotel in a nice area of Berlin, right on Alexanderplatz and about a 5 to 10 minute train ride to all the major areas of the city. While we didn't have much time during the day to do any serious sightseeing, we did have a few hours here and there to run over the Ritter Sport store and museum or to just walk around.

Meters of chocolate!

I'm about 170 bars tall.