Teachers, Trains, and Gutenberg
Originally, I thought that I should have a set time to blog. Maybe once a week, every Sunday, or something like that. However, I doubt I would actually stick to that sooooo enjoy my random and irregular blogs whenever they pop up! Also, I apologize if you've been through my Facebook album and already seen some of this. I think once school really gets started these posts will be more directly related to my student teaching and my Facebook album more the travel (since I won't have many photos I can post from school online). And if you haven't checked out my Facebook album make sure you do that! I have a lot more pictures on there and usually post caption descriptions as well. There's a link in the sidebar if we aren't already friends.
Let's see, last time I posted was right after I got here. Quite a bit has happened since then, but I'll try to stick to the more important ones and be brief.
On Sunday we met Devina's teacher and she took us to an Italian restaurant at a tennis club with her family. We learned a lot more about the area, the school, and DoDEA in general. Ms. Lisa is super sweet. On Monday she took us to the base (which was incredibly nice of her because we live very far from her and on the opposite of the base from her!).
Once on base, I was introduced to my cooperating teacher (CT) finally! My teacher had changed from who I was originally told I would be with, but that is completely fine with me. I really like Mrs. Greer so far! She's this tiny little lady, maybe 5 foot even, maybe, and so sweet and kind. However, she rides a Harley and comes to school in her riding boots and everything and I just think that's great! I spent a lot of the day talking with my her about how her classroom is set up and helping to do some arranging (I'll have a picture for the next post, promise!). A lot of points on our teaching philosophies are the same which is such a blessing! I was worried about having a CT with completely different ideas than me. Mrs. Greer doesn't give spelling tests, only asks students to read at home for homework, uses flexible seating, and has a centers-based classroom! There are so many "center-based" classrooms and I am not yet quite sure if she does centers the same way I would, but it will still be good to experience it whichever way she does it. Mrs. Greer took Devina and me to the BX for lunch at their food court. Apparently, the BX on Ramstein is basically like a mall and Ramstein is the largest base in Europe, maybe overseas...I forgot. Anyways, they had a TacoBell, Popeye's, Anthony's pizza, Starbucks, Johnny Rocket's, Charley's Philly Steaks, Subway, Baskin Robins, some seafood fast food place, and something like Flaming Wok, but not actually that. After lunch, Mrs. Greer treated us to ice cream from the German ice cream man who gets to come on base and sell at the BX. She suggested spaghetti ice, which I got. It tastes exactly the same as regular ice cream, but there's something more fun about eating it like that.
On Tuesday we did not go on base, but instead walked down to the main part of Landstuhl and up to the castle ruins! The castle sits at the top of a hill and the views of Landstuhl from there are amazing. But, let me tell you, you have to work for it! It is quite an uphill jaunt. As far as castles go, it wasn't my favorite. I wish Devina could have seen something a bit less ruined for her first castle, but it'll do for now :) Also, we saw this neat tree stump men that had been carved into a few tree stumps on the path up to the castle.
On Saturday morning Mrs. Greer picked us hoping that we could get a temporary pass to get on base without having to stop at the gate house/welcome center thingy every single time. However, they couldn't do anything for us there and it was pretty much a waste for her to have gotten us, except that she did take us to a bakery and drop us off at the train station near base instead of at home. There we bought tickets two minutes before the train left and headed to Wiesbaden to see the other two NAU students!
I was horrible train guide for Devina's first train adventure...but I blame my lack of German and the differences between the German train system and the one in the UK. When I bought the ticket the machine printed three things: a ticket from Ramstein to Landstuhl, a ticket from Kaiserslautern to Bad Munster, and something completely in German that I assumed was a receipt. We rode to Landstuhl which was all of about 3 minutes away and got off. Since the ticket specified Ramstein to Landstuhl I figured that we were switching there, but I had no idea what to switch since I did not have a ticket that said from Landstuhl to anywhere else. We tried to find the ticket station, but it was closed since it was the weekend. We found a group of American ladies who decided we should get on the same train as them since it was going to Kaiserslautern (K-town). A sweet older Germany lady confirmed we were on the right train but wasn't much help after that and a German girl about our age used her train app to show us the route we should take all the way to Wiesbaden. Once we got to K-town I didn't figure out the ticket until right before the train left. We had literally just rushed up to it and pushed the button for the door to open and it pulled away about a second later. But that turned out to be ok. We went to the information desk and the lady explained that the supposed receipt was actually a ticket pass that meant we could ride any of the trains in that line all day! Which we accidentally bought not really understanding what we were doing on the ticket machine. So we didn't have to pay for an alternative to the train we'd just missed. She printed us off a schedule and after three more changes we made it to Wiesbaden!
That night we just walked around Wiesbaden some with Taelor, Jacob, and Tyler-Ann (Jacob's girlfriend who was visiting before she headed back to the states from her au pair position in Italy). We each got a bottle of wine (so cheap here!) and just hung out at their apartment sharing our experiences and hassles so far. Also, they introduced us to this delicious drink called Federweisser. I'm not really sure what it is, but it tastes like a bubbly light grape juice basically, but it's fermented and, therefore, alcoholic. Sunday morning we took the train to nearby Mainz. There we visited the Gutenberg Museum! Johannes Gutenberg is the guy who invented the printing press using moveable metal type in the 1450s. The museum had a ton of old books, small books, old printing press machines, some Gutenberg Bibles and then some small exhibits on printing techniques around the world. Sadly, pictures weren't allowed so I only have a few that I snuck while no one was looking.
My favorite part of the museum was an extra secure room with vault doors that, among other incredibly rare and valuable books, held three Gutenberg Bibles. A Gutenberg Bible is any one of the 49 remaining Bibles printed by Gutenberg shortly after he invented his machine. It completely revolutionized the book making process as everything was completely written by hand before. Most of his Bibles had two columns of 42 lines. In the old style, they would denote section changes by making the first letter of the section more decorative. Gutenberg left a blank space in his Bible for this letters to be filled in by hand letter. Therefore, even though every one of the Bibles he printed used the same frame and character arrangement, each Bible was unique in the illumination used to decorate and divide sections. I wish I had a picture to show you of the Bibles, but that room was one I wasn't going to risk a photo in. The only drawback to the museum was that I don't understand German. Many of the areas had English and German subtitles, but several only had German which was a bummer. After the Gutenberg museum, we ate some delicious hamburgers and then went to small natural history museum that had zero English descriptions, so that was interesting. We headed back to Wiesbaden around 17:00 and from there Devina and I went back to Landstuhl (which was another adventure because one of our trains was stopped for 20 minutes, thus making us miss all the rest of our connections. At each stop, we had to figure out when the next train we needed would come using the printed schedules on each platform. Our two and half hour ride ended up being three and a half and we didn't get home until after 11).
Remember when I said I was going to brief? Ha, that happened! I obviously stink at summarizing... I was going to start talking about this week in this post, but it's already super long, so I'll wait until Friday and hopefully post another one then.
Oh! One more note. When I first met my teacher I was trying to tell her where we lived. I kept saying Landstuhl (pronouncing it like land-stuh (rhymes with duh)-hole) and my teacher was so confused. I had no other idea how to explain it so I just kept saying land-stuh-hole. Eventually, she goes, "Oh! You mean Landstuhl!" and she pronounced it like lawn-sh-toll (kinda like a graduation stole but with a sh sound instead of just s). Anyways, have fun trying to pronounce that correctly yourself!
Let's see, last time I posted was right after I got here. Quite a bit has happened since then, but I'll try to stick to the more important ones and be brief.
On Sunday we met Devina's teacher and she took us to an Italian restaurant at a tennis club with her family. We learned a lot more about the area, the school, and DoDEA in general. Ms. Lisa is super sweet. On Monday she took us to the base (which was incredibly nice of her because we live very far from her and on the opposite of the base from her!).
Once on base, I was introduced to my cooperating teacher (CT) finally! My teacher had changed from who I was originally told I would be with, but that is completely fine with me. I really like Mrs. Greer so far! She's this tiny little lady, maybe 5 foot even, maybe, and so sweet and kind. However, she rides a Harley and comes to school in her riding boots and everything and I just think that's great! I spent a lot of the day talking with my her about how her classroom is set up and helping to do some arranging (I'll have a picture for the next post, promise!). A lot of points on our teaching philosophies are the same which is such a blessing! I was worried about having a CT with completely different ideas than me. Mrs. Greer doesn't give spelling tests, only asks students to read at home for homework, uses flexible seating, and has a centers-based classroom! There are so many "center-based" classrooms and I am not yet quite sure if she does centers the same way I would, but it will still be good to experience it whichever way she does it. Mrs. Greer took Devina and me to the BX for lunch at their food court. Apparently, the BX on Ramstein is basically like a mall and Ramstein is the largest base in Europe, maybe overseas...I forgot. Anyways, they had a TacoBell, Popeye's, Anthony's pizza, Starbucks, Johnny Rocket's, Charley's Philly Steaks, Subway, Baskin Robins, some seafood fast food place, and something like Flaming Wok, but not actually that. After lunch, Mrs. Greer treated us to ice cream from the German ice cream man who gets to come on base and sell at the BX. She suggested spaghetti ice, which I got. It tastes exactly the same as regular ice cream, but there's something more fun about eating it like that.
On Tuesday we did not go on base, but instead walked down to the main part of Landstuhl and up to the castle ruins! The castle sits at the top of a hill and the views of Landstuhl from there are amazing. But, let me tell you, you have to work for it! It is quite an uphill jaunt. As far as castles go, it wasn't my favorite. I wish Devina could have seen something a bit less ruined for her first castle, but it'll do for now :) Also, we saw this neat tree stump men that had been carved into a few tree stumps on the path up to the castle.
After the castle, we walked back down the hill and around Landstuhl. The town is cute and little. We found a little central park area and I saw those houses with the wooden framing visible. I love those houses. We found a local German place for dinner. I got schnitzel! I had some when I was in Munich last summer and have been craving it. I love it!! We also got some beer and Devina had her first taste of German beer, which is much better than gross American beer. I suggested dunkel bier (dark beer). Once we were nice and stuffed we headed home. When we were coming into town I didn't realize how down hill it was, but I definitely noticed the incline on the way back! Gosh was I tired. The walk back is less than fun, but there was nothing to do but keep walking it haha.
Wednesday and Thursday passed without much notice. We were running low on food. On Monday Mrs. Greer had gotten us plastic bags and instructed us to take as much of the snacks that had been put out for the teachers as we wanted. We came home with several packaged muffins, granola bars, and lots of oranges. And that's pretty much what we lived off of, aside from some sandwich stuff I had bought on Saturday. On Friday, we went to the base and went grocery shopping at the commissary. Devina has a friend who lives on base and he was kind enough to sign us on base and use his ID to let us shop.
On Saturday morning Mrs. Greer picked us hoping that we could get a temporary pass to get on base without having to stop at the gate house/welcome center thingy every single time. However, they couldn't do anything for us there and it was pretty much a waste for her to have gotten us, except that she did take us to a bakery and drop us off at the train station near base instead of at home. There we bought tickets two minutes before the train left and headed to Wiesbaden to see the other two NAU students!
I was horrible train guide for Devina's first train adventure...but I blame my lack of German and the differences between the German train system and the one in the UK. When I bought the ticket the machine printed three things: a ticket from Ramstein to Landstuhl, a ticket from Kaiserslautern to Bad Munster, and something completely in German that I assumed was a receipt. We rode to Landstuhl which was all of about 3 minutes away and got off. Since the ticket specified Ramstein to Landstuhl I figured that we were switching there, but I had no idea what to switch since I did not have a ticket that said from Landstuhl to anywhere else. We tried to find the ticket station, but it was closed since it was the weekend. We found a group of American ladies who decided we should get on the same train as them since it was going to Kaiserslautern (K-town). A sweet older Germany lady confirmed we were on the right train but wasn't much help after that and a German girl about our age used her train app to show us the route we should take all the way to Wiesbaden. Once we got to K-town I didn't figure out the ticket until right before the train left. We had literally just rushed up to it and pushed the button for the door to open and it pulled away about a second later. But that turned out to be ok. We went to the information desk and the lady explained that the supposed receipt was actually a ticket pass that meant we could ride any of the trains in that line all day! Which we accidentally bought not really understanding what we were doing on the ticket machine. So we didn't have to pay for an alternative to the train we'd just missed. She printed us off a schedule and after three more changes we made it to Wiesbaden!
That night we just walked around Wiesbaden some with Taelor, Jacob, and Tyler-Ann (Jacob's girlfriend who was visiting before she headed back to the states from her au pair position in Italy). We each got a bottle of wine (so cheap here!) and just hung out at their apartment sharing our experiences and hassles so far. Also, they introduced us to this delicious drink called Federweisser. I'm not really sure what it is, but it tastes like a bubbly light grape juice basically, but it's fermented and, therefore, alcoholic. Sunday morning we took the train to nearby Mainz. There we visited the Gutenberg Museum! Johannes Gutenberg is the guy who invented the printing press using moveable metal type in the 1450s. The museum had a ton of old books, small books, old printing press machines, some Gutenberg Bibles and then some small exhibits on printing techniques around the world. Sadly, pictures weren't allowed so I only have a few that I snuck while no one was looking.
My favorite part of the museum was an extra secure room with vault doors that, among other incredibly rare and valuable books, held three Gutenberg Bibles. A Gutenberg Bible is any one of the 49 remaining Bibles printed by Gutenberg shortly after he invented his machine. It completely revolutionized the book making process as everything was completely written by hand before. Most of his Bibles had two columns of 42 lines. In the old style, they would denote section changes by making the first letter of the section more decorative. Gutenberg left a blank space in his Bible for this letters to be filled in by hand letter. Therefore, even though every one of the Bibles he printed used the same frame and character arrangement, each Bible was unique in the illumination used to decorate and divide sections. I wish I had a picture to show you of the Bibles, but that room was one I wasn't going to risk a photo in. The only drawback to the museum was that I don't understand German. Many of the areas had English and German subtitles, but several only had German which was a bummer. After the Gutenberg museum, we ate some delicious hamburgers and then went to small natural history museum that had zero English descriptions, so that was interesting. We headed back to Wiesbaden around 17:00 and from there Devina and I went back to Landstuhl (which was another adventure because one of our trains was stopped for 20 minutes, thus making us miss all the rest of our connections. At each stop, we had to figure out when the next train we needed would come using the printed schedules on each platform. Our two and half hour ride ended up being three and a half and we didn't get home until after 11).
Remember when I said I was going to brief? Ha, that happened! I obviously stink at summarizing... I was going to start talking about this week in this post, but it's already super long, so I'll wait until Friday and hopefully post another one then.
Oh! One more note. When I first met my teacher I was trying to tell her where we lived. I kept saying Landstuhl (pronouncing it like land-stuh (rhymes with duh)-hole) and my teacher was so confused. I had no other idea how to explain it so I just kept saying land-stuh-hole. Eventually, she goes, "Oh! You mean Landstuhl!" and she pronounced it like lawn-sh-toll (kinda like a graduation stole but with a sh sound instead of just s). Anyways, have fun trying to pronounce that correctly yourself!
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