Briefly

My family is here! I picked them up last Wednesday in Frankfurt since I had the day off from school. We were able to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt there before catching our train back.

I'll say more later, but it is so fun to have them all here! We are all sleeping in my one-room apartment. Needless to say it's cozy with two cots and an extra mattress on the floor. You really have to be careful where you step at night. But we have had a great time just hanging out and playing games (I am SO good at Boggle, it's kind of sad) and visiting the Weihnachtsmärkte in Aachen and Düsseldorf. Today I had to do some laundry and do the readings for my university class, so the fam is on their own exploring Cologne.

I've been addicted to a new artist lately that my friend Tom recommended, so I thought I'd pass it along...

November

November, the third month of this crazy adventure. Also the busiest by far of the three months. It seems like almost every weekend there was something. Pretty fantastic. The past several months have been so unlike the last three years of having just a few minutes between school, work, and activities that I sort of felt like I was doing something wrong. So to have things to fill up some of that extra time was really nice.

First - a day trip with Robert to Aachen and the place called the "Dreiländerecke," or the "Three Country Corner," where Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium all meet. First, in Aachen we visited the cathedral. I'm pretty sure it is the most beautiful church I've been to. There are unbelievable mosaics depicting different saints, apostles, and just patterns decorating every single arch, curve, and wall. Everything is sparkly and brilliantly colored. The stained glass windows are incredible. Worth a trip.

We spent a little bit of time walking through the pedestrian areas full of shops and little fountains or sculptures, where we found this slightly creepy yet uniquely interactive fountain. Each of the several figures had moveable joints, so you could bend them into really odd poses.

But the main attraction for us on this particular day to the far eastern reaches of Germany was the Dreiländerecke, or the three-country corner where Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands meet. It turned into a bit more of a safari than the half-hour bus ride and five-minute walk we had imagined it to be. It was actually more like a half-hour bus ride, and a half-hour hike along a dirt road and trail through a forest to get to the top of the hill. But it was worth the effort. Just before we reached the official corner, we climbed an observation tower to check out the view.

Semi-creepy, yet pretty forest. Robert: "this is just like those
movies where the hikers get lost and then killed by the
serial killer!" *quote may or may not be exactly accurate,
but the gist is the same.

Some would say this is the best view of all...

We kept going. Just another 20 minutes and we were there! It was glorious. There were snacks!

Practicing for the main event...see below

On the ground there are lines to mark the national boundaries.
I totally jumped over Belgium.

I'm playing in the Big Band and Wind Band with Nicolaus Cusanus Gymnasium, the school I work at. The week after our trip to the Dreiländerecke, I got to go on the bands' 3-day retreat. We took a bus out to a hostel in a small town about an hour northeast of Bergisch Gladbach, where we slept, ate, and rehearsed Wednesday through Friday. It was a great opportunity to get to know some more students and for them to sort of get used to me as well. I discovered they play a card game they call "Arschloch," or "Asshole" in English, but my family plays it too! Except we call it Slimeball. I spent a few hours playing with them one evening, and it was fun to just sit around with some students and a few teachers. I roomed with a music teacher from NCG, whose class I sit in on every Friday, and learned that he played trombone in the Deutscher Oper in Berlin for a few years before he became a teacher! It isn't every day that you get to meet a professional musician of that level who is now teaching.

The  next weekend, I went to Düsseldorf for a meeting of all the foreign language assistants working in the Cologne-Düsseldorf area. That's roughly half or a bit more of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and it includes assistants from Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, China, etc., so there were lots of us there. It was especially nice to see some people from the Fulbright program that I had only seen once since orientation. I also enjoyed meeting several other assistants in Cologne, and learn that there are a few that actually live pretty close to me.

Apart from having lots of opportunities to chat with other assistants, we got a tour of the NRW government building, got to visit a museum about the Ruhr region, the Weihnachtsmarkt in the Altstadt of the city, and several other things that gave us the chance to learn and see more of the region we all work so close to.

Other things I did this month:

• Played in the Big Band/Wind Band concert.
• Went skiing at an indoor, one-run "Skihalle."
• Taught a lesson in a 13th grade class.
• Celebrated Thanksgiving by buying a counter-top oven and baking a pizza.

Travels

Man, a two-week fall break is pretty sweet! It gave me lots of time to stay up until the wee hours of the morning and sleep in until noon if I wanted to. That's quite a change from having to get up at 5:45.  I was fortunate in a way to have my university class cancelled for the same two weeks, so I had absolutely no obligations to worry about during the break.

My original plan was to spend the entire two weeks just traveling around Germany, spending a day or two in a city before moving on. That means spending a lot of money and planning well in advance where I wanted to go, neither of which I was prepared to do. So instead, I chose two cities in an area of Germany I had never been to and spend 5 days checking them out.

First stop: Lübeck, about 5 hours north of Cologne in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Welcoming Oktober

Well, I've been in Germany for over a month now. So much has happened! I've been through orientation, where I was "trained" to teach English to students, I found an apartment, I have a consistent work schedule, I've taught three lessons and sat in on or helped in countless more, I'm officially a student at the Universität zu Köln, I've seen the view from the top of the Cologne cathedral, I've visited Beethoven's house, attended a concert celebrating Beethoven, and as of two weeks ago, I've spent a weekend in Bayern and experienced Oktoberfest.

The Little Things

• The view from my window.

• Being able to tell someone how to work the machines at the laundromat.

• The student that says hello in the hall.

• Being called "Mr. Mitsuyasu."

• A landlord who helps me set up a bank account and register as a long-term resident, and who drives you to school 3 days a week.

• A landlord who is willing to wait for over a month to let me pay rent after my bank account is set up and my first paycheck comes in.

• Getting free, unlimited travel in North Rhine-Westphalia because you're a university student.

• Taking a university course and understanding almost everything.

• Standing in front of a class.

• Writing on a chalkboard.

• Using the letter X, Q, Z, or J and a "Triple Word" square in the same turn while playing Words With Friends.

• Actually, just using the letter X, Q, Z, or J and getting more than 11 points.

• Chocolate-filled croissants.

• Fresh bread ALL THE TIME.

• Being able to get anywhere in a huge city by train or subway.  Going downtown, just because I can.

• The fact that Nutella or Nutella-flavored products are more common than peanut butter.

• Bike lanes on sidewalks and the sheer number of people that use bicycles.

• Having cars stop for you at a crosswalk every time.

• Meeting other English Teaching Assistants from around the world working in and around Cologne.

• Making kick-ass homemade food that's (usually) healthy.

• Learning the bari sax so I can play in the school's Big Band and concert band.

Mixtape!

I meant to post this before I left for Germany. It's sort of my "music I listened to the most over the summer/songs that hit me just right, right now" playlist. I tried to keep it to one song per artist, but Passion Pit doesn't really play by the rules. After almost two years, I still can't get enough, so I suppose it's okay. 

Home, Sweet Home

Not a bad view, eh?

I finally found an apartment! Actually, I think my apartment found me. I was with a 5th grade class on their introduction to the school library, kind of awkwardly hanging out while the librarian explained how the library worked, when my Betreuungslehrer (supervising teacher) came in and told me he'd heard of an apartment. So we ran downstairs to the teachers lounge where the landlord was sitting on his break. He's one of the music teachers at the Gymnasium, and he had the 4th floor of his house/apartment building up for rent. I got to visit that afternoon after school, and of course I took it! I moved in two days later.