Fulbright

(W)rapping up

I have to say, I absolutely love my coworkers at the Gesamtschule. I now have a sort of “Ode to Ginger” to remember forever, as they wrote and performed a song for me as a good-bye present at the last teachers’ conference of the semester. I’ll post the lyrics eventually as they’re really quite clever, but I’m in Madrid now with limited time to write — lots of things to do and see!

I’ve had a hard time processing the whole end of the Fulbright “experience”, simply because of how fast the end came. It helped that I took the time to write a brief speech in German which I presented to my coworkers as a heartfelt thank-you for their support. Last August I was definitely dreading being placed in such a small town, but I’m absolutely happy with the way things turned out. I’m so thankful for the cooperative and passionate teachers I’ve been able to learn from and work with, and for the lively, passionate, intelligent students I grew close to throughout the year.

Side note: I feel obligated to mention that my 9th grade students asked me to choreograph a hip hop routine for their graduation ceremony performance, which I somehow whipped up in an hour in the staff room. They were tough to teach, but I ended up getting them to look passably “gangsta” (well, as thug as 15-year-old Germans from a small country town can look, having been taught by a ballroom dancer from the suburbs) and had them rapping to The Black Eyed Peas’ “Time of Your Life – Dirty Bit” in front of their parents. It was a success.

The odd thing was that, aside from a day of doldrums when I finally realized all of the great stuff about to come to an end, I wasn’t sad at all during the whole process of saying good-bye to everyone. I’ll admit, I shed a few tears when I bid adieu to Elke, the effervescent bundle of energy who is our choir director, but for the most part I have it in my head that I’ll see all of the important people again soon…whether it’s during the summer in Frankfurt or after being in Asia for a bit. Honestly, it was the happiest round of good-byes I’ve ever experienced – I’m optimistic about keeping in contact with the fantastic connections I’ve made here.

I feel peculiar writing this post because I’m already sitting on the balcony of my CouchSurfing host’s apartment in Madrid. I barely had time to tie up loose ends in Gießen before I was boarding a cramped RyanAir flight to meet up with Michael, a close friend from my time at UW-Madison.  Life rolls on…

To wrap everything up — probably too quickly to do the program justice — I guess that more than anything, the experience as a Fulbright  ETA has allowed me to grow as a traveler and (as completely corny and cliché as it sounds) as a global citizen. Yes, I learned the useful lesson that I don’t want to be a teacher…at least not full time, nor with pubescent children…but the simple ability to sustain a life where I took so much time for myself and did whatever I wanted, when I wanted to…how many people ever get that chance!? Truly, in every sense, I’m so grateful for each experience of these last ten months.

Ahora, on to the proxima aventura!

Wanted: Eurojob for schlagfertige Dame

Thought of the day: it’s an oddly refreshing feeling when the contents of your life fit into a three-piece luggage set.

Only three days of Fulbright ETA work left, most of which will be spent celebrating the end of the school year. If there’s one thing to learn about Germans it’s that they (like my fellow Badgers) have a strict “work hard/play really, really hard” mentality. Once tasks are checked off the to-do list, it’s time to party!

After Kyra, Rick and I held a good-bye party this past Saturday I was left feeling a little peculiar as I’m the one “staying behind”. Having to repeat the fact that no, I’m not flying back to the states just yet, and yes, I do want to live in Europe for at least another year (or two…or three) made me start honing my plans for the next few months. Here’s the run-down of my itinerary as I have it planned so far:

June 19-July 8: trip through Spain and some of western France. Tentative destinations: Madrid, Sevilla, Algeciras, Gibraltar, Tangier, Granada, Valencia, Barcelona, Carcassonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, La Rochelle.

July 8-August 30: au pair work in Frankfurt

August 30-October 28: trip to Indochina, i.e. Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam (and Malaysia as well, theoretically).

October 29-? Mystery.

During the summer I’ll have time to find a job that ideally will start in November of this year. I can easily see myself working as a representative for an international company in ______ (insert any large European city in English/German/French-speaking Europe).

Achtung, Achtung. Here comes the part where I ask for your help…

My experience includes public relations, communications, sales, language education, event planning, travel writing, translation and more — I’m now looking for anything that will keep me working in direct contact with people and not sitting mindlessly at a computer for 40 hours a week. Ah yes, and voilà,

my CV/resumé in both English and Deutsch.

If you or someone you know has a job/internship/project/idea that you know I could rock the socks off of, please leave a comment or send me an email (kern.ginger[at]gmail.com).

With that, I’ll just leave you with a substantial “thank you in advance!” and a note that the next blog post will probably be one of those sappy, all-good-things-come-to-an-end sob fests. You have been warned…

The good kind of prison?

A few days ago I volunteered a few hours of my afternoon to teach English at the Martin-Buber-Schule in Gießen, a school for mentally disabled and/or physically handicapped children. It was organized by fellow CSer Philipp’s mom, a teacher at the school, and turned out to be one worth remembering. The two hours I spent with these eight 17-year-olds were heartwarming and above all, fun!

For all of them, it was their very first English lesson (ever!), so we learned the basics: hello, good-bye, my name is _____, I come from _____, thank you, and the numbers 1-10. Two of them were especially excited to show that they could already count to ten, despite never having learned it in school, and one particularly vocal boy happily sang choruses of “What’s my name?” by Rihanna. Ah, American pop culture, your power frightens and pleases me simultaneously…

After the lesson, a few of the kids volunteered to lead me on a tour of their school. One of the girls, Sarah, grabbed me by the hand and enthusiastically led me through the building that the teacher described as a “prison”; to prevent the kids from wandering off and getting disorientated, the doors — all of the doors — must be opened by key, and a metal gate surrounds the entire school and playground. The security was great, the resources available to the 140 kids were more than adequate from what I could see (there was even a relaxation room with a waterbed, disco ball, and lit tubes of colored bubbly water)!

An unexpected added bonus: I learned something too! One of the girls is Germany’s #1 speedstacker in her category (stacking cups, that is — not bad, eh?), and taught me the basic stacks. Apparently no English lesson with me is complete without some spontaneous dancing, which delighted the kids to no end when another of their teachers showed up and started twirling me around!

It was fantastic to see how motivated the majority of the students were, regardless of their handicaps. I found it difficult not to compare the abilities and personalities of my students to theirs. It’s maddening when I see the huge potential of some of my students at the Friedrich-Magnus-Gesamtschule going to waste because of pure laziness, something the students in this class at the Martin-Buber-Schule thankfully lacked. It was also wonderful to feel so appreciated, and to not feel any societal distance between me and the students, as these kids all used the informal du form of “you” with me. I had a lovely afternoon, and was happy to hear “You can come back again, you know!” from many of the kids when it was time to go. Their cheerfulness and zest for life certainly makes me want to!

“A city of free will and dreamers”

…Berlin, as described by a beautiful Dutch-Indonesian woman with spiky, red hair as she cut my lion’s mane last weekend. The Fulbright Program invites its grantees to a four-day conference once a year and pulls out all the stops when it comes to hospitality. Most of the speeches and panels took place in the Park Inn Hotel on Alexanderplatz in the heart of Berlin (though Berlin has many “hearts”, Alex is one closest to many of the famous sights and museums), and also happened to be where I enjoyed the comforts of a hotel room for the first time in years.  Side note: I still can’t say I prefer hotels and hostels to Couchsurfing, especially when the shower is simply a modern-looking glass box in full view of anyone in the room, while the toilet has “artistically” frosted walls that allow anyone in the shower – and therefore, in the rest of the room – to see a fuzzy form of you doing whatever you happen to be doing in there. Give me a cushy couch and a blanket any day and let me be low-maintenance, thanks.

That’s not to say that the accommodation was uncomfortable or that conference was anything other than spectacular; the four days were jam-packed with a tour of Berlin’s Şehitlik mosque, lectures, discussions, networking and partying. I personally spoke with U.S. Ambassador Philip D. Murphy, author Josef Braml and posed a question (in German) to Ingeborg Junge-Reyer, Berlin’s senator for urban development regarding the untimely death of Berlin’s beloved polar bear, Knut. To avoid going into detail regarding the individual speeches, the overarching themes of the conference were simply “change is the constant” and “network, network, network”. More than anything, the few days in Berlin filled me with an immense amount of pride for being a Fulbrighter.

As such, it’s time for a much-needed plug for the Fulbright program. If you’re reading this blog, you likely have some interest in international happenings or, at the very least, you have an inkling of the fact that the world is a lot smaller than it seems. This awareness alone should make you consider applying for a Fulbright grant. Want my help? Whether it’s for an English Teaching Assistantship in any number of countries, or for a research grant for a project of your design, just email me/leave a comment and I’ll have you send your application to me for a thorough read-over. Questions about the Fulbright Program in general? Just read their FAQ page.

The most enlightening part of the conference was prompted by the electric atmosphere created by having so many bright, talented, idealistic people in a small space. I was surrounded by people who simultaneously outshone me in both number and impact of their countless successes and yet made me fiercely proud to be counted among them. I realized that I need to be more ambitious. To learn more, to use my time more efficiently, to dream bigger, and to implement the steps necessary to reach higher goals. I have the drive, and I have ideas, but I must develop the ability to be thrilled with implementing some of them that make me stand out from a crowd.

Right, enough of the diary entry. On to the weekend! I couchsurfed with an eccentric guy who sells books at a flea market for a living and knows more obscure English words than any non-native speaker I’ve ever met (what other German knows what topsy-turvy is)? Having been in Berlin before, I kept my sightseeing to a minimum, but lucked out with some beautiful weather to accompany what I did wander to.  Some of the other Fulbrighters stuck around for a few extra days, and I’ll just leave you with a sampling of the texts I received from a few of them as the weekend progressed to give you an idea of the craziness that ensued…

Thursday, 01:52 – “I’m in Busche. Come with a girl/lesbian. Bring no one else.”
Friday, 21:50 – “Oh my god Ginger, I think this is a sex party! He’s laying condoms, Crisco, gloves, and drugs all over the place! Ah!”
Saturday, 23:11 – “I need to catch my second wind. Looks like a dance/strip club? I might be able to throw on something snappy and boogie tonight.”

…A city of free will, that’s for sure…

Spring has sprung!

(Knock on wood!)

I imagine that most Wisconsinites are the sort of winter-bound folk who can truly understand the elation one feels with the subtle turning of the seasons. A few days ago in Gießen I felt a distinct shift that was manifested in the amount of sunshine and, directly related to its increase, a very apparent change in everyone’s mood. The Gießeners all had a little extra bounce in their step (hey, they were even looking somewhere other than the pavement!), and the birds were absolutely loving the respite from the dementor-like weather of the past four months.

It’s a welcomed change, as it signals the fast-approaching and much-loved German season “chillen und grillen” and means that I’m that much closer to the next travel opportunities which include…

Karneval (Fasching), Köln

This weekend marks the start of pre-Lent festivities which are as big of a deal in Europe as Mardi Gras in NOLA or Halloween in the US overall. Drinking and carousing on the streets is rampant, costume-clad fools stumble about while loudly singing choruses of “Viva Colonia“, and Germans are, suffice it to say, much less distant and stoic than usual. Check back in a week for a debriefing of the (not-pants-free) experience this weekend in Cologne!

Fulbright Conference, Berlin

Coming up in mid-March, the five-day conference is fully paid for by the wonderful institution that is Fulbright. I’m looking forward to having the weekend beforehand and afterward to explore Berlin for the second time, likely do some more Couchsurfing, and eat some damn good Dönerkebab.

Ulm Salsa Festival, Ulm

It was little over a week ago that I was in Frankfurt with my friend Katie (from UW-Madison, studying in Sevilla), but she’ll be returning to Germany in April for her second trip to join me in the “south” for a weekend salsa fiesta! She’ll be flying into Stuttgart, so perhaps I’ll make a day trip over there to revisit the city (this time hopefully without a horrifying lymph node bacterial infection…that was not a fun time).

Adventure, Anywhere (TBA)

You remember me saying I had about 11 days for spring break? Alas, not so. The tech rehearsals do in fact fall in the middle of my school’s spring break, meaning that my holiday is reduced to two 3-day weekends. Sigh. But hey, I’m open to suggestions! Switzerland? Luxembourg? Lichtenstein? Checking out a bit of a new country sounds smashing!

For now I think I’ll do some spring cleaning, get that good energy flowing (Tai Chi is fun, who knew?) and start whistling on my way to work. Or maybe I’d better save that for the birds…

I’m alive! I swear!

My, my how time does fly. Only five more months of this Fulbright grant to go, and I haven’t quite solidified the time frame for my plans for after June. I’d like to stay in Europe until approximately the end of August/sometime in September and then…well…if all goes right with the world I’ll be flying to Cambodia!

(Heh, your look of confusion amuses me)…Hang on a sec, you say. Germany…Cambodia…where is the connection?

Remember Ramon Stoppelenburg? (…This crazy Dutch guy, who I’m hoping wont mind if I borrow his picture to share with you…)

Apparently a great deal of fun in life comes back to Couchsurfing in the end (he was my very first CS host..awww), because I’ve nearly finished a 9,000 word translation of his website www.expeditionkilimanjaro.com that will allow him to better cater to all the German-speaking hiking fanatics in the world. It’s fun work, though considerably more difficult translating from English to German as opposed to the other way around, and I’ve enlisted the help of some friends in Gießen to keep their eyes on my progress and make sure I mean what I say and I say what I mean.

Still not following the Cambodia connection? Ok. Here goes. Ramon moved there in August of 2010 from Amsterdam and currently lives in Phnom Penh, the country’s bustling capitol. Given the flexibility of my current work/travel/life situation, Ramon and I agreed upon a somewhat non-traditional payment option and he is rewarding my help with an experience: a round-trip plane ticket (at any time, from anywhere in Europe, specifically) to and from Cambodia. Voilà.

Not only does this provide me with an excellent opportunity to travel a new continent (culture shock, I seriously can’t wait!), but I’m looking forward to the couple of months I’ll be able to spend further developing my game plan for life.

Not a bad deal, eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Ok fo realz, I’m freakin out. In a good way, of course. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!*

Impromptu Pilgrimage

It was just past five in the morning. They walked silently, their steps becoming methodical, sounding thuds muffled by the thin cover of leaves whose coral color couldn’t quite yet be made out in the predawn. The path steepened and they tramped on, her intakes of breath becoming slightly more deliberate as his remained unlabored. To be fair, she thought, this is about the twentieth time he’s made this hike. It did seem like a ritual, though she doubted he regularly climbed the Heiligenberg after staying out all night. They had discussed it earlier that morning, after the winter ball’s festivities had left her wanting to undertake something more thrilling. Two of the other Americans had considered accompanying them, but declined the hike in favor of their hosts’ warm beds and normal circadian rhythms. She realized that it would likely miss the tour of Heidelberg set for 1 o’clock the next afternoon, but was convinced that what Jon had in mind was something far more impressive.

After four kilometers of lazy switchbacks, he said casually, “It’s just up there. I’ll let you go in first so you get the whole effect”. She approached the high stone wall with growing anticipation, set her Trader Joe’s bag containing high heels, makeup, and a satiny dress on the steps outside and walked through the stone doorway.

Her eyes were met with two wide arching sets of tiered stone amphitheater seats. The muddied ground ran between the stone seating arena to the circular platform where she stood, and she stepped forward into the main ritual area of the Thingstätte. An unsettling feeling gripped her, as she knew this was where Goebbels himself had once stood, spewing propaganda to the some 20,000 people who had attended the amphitheater’s opening ceremony in 1935. Despite its brief use by the Nazi party, the place had a much more extensive, pagan history. The synergistic result could be felt as the two walked up to the top of the steps and turned to look down upon the space laid into the mountain.

A few steps past the top of the rows of seating, a hexagonal stone altar stood lonely in a small clearing. Flashes of past Walpurgisnacht celebrations came to her as she felt the grounds’ true purpose. “It’s crazy here on May eve,” Jon said quietly. She smiled and suddenly had the urge to climb on top of the altar. They were already considerably closer to the top of the mountain, and Heidelberg’s streetlights flickered small below. Standing atop the altar was no mockery of the rituals carried out on the Holy Mountain, but rather an opportunity to siphon from and float in their lingering vibrations. Strangely, the altar was not oriented to the east, giving them reason to search higher for a better view of the sunrise that was quickly approaching.

The ruins of the temple of Mercury provided a perfect spot to watch the skies lighten. They cautiously climbed the tower stairs, pitch-black walls giving way to an outlook from which they could see for miles down through the forest, over the Neckar River, across Heidelberg and, had it been a clearer morning, to the industrial columns of Mannheim on the cloud-covered horizon. Above the tree cover the wind whipped them viciously, and he pulled a fleece blanket from his pack for her to wrap around her legs. They sat for a while in silence, waiting. When it became evident that morning was upon them (though now cotton-candy colored, the skies had remained stubbornly cloudy, as German skies are wont to do), they descended from the tower and walked the short distance down to the altar and the Thingstätte.   In a fuller light, the Thingstätte was somehow simultaneously less and more impressive; she wondered how many visitors to the city were able to experience this creepy bit of history tucked away on the mountain at an equally eerie hour.

Their moods remained reflective as the two began the descent, realizing their bodies’ fatigue. The disconcerting tingly feeling was beginning to grow in her stomach and chest, the same jetlagged feeling she got when her body wanted her to simply lie down and sleep after hours of travel. She realized she’d likely come down with a cold as a result, but knew it had been worth the temporary stress to have been able to take part in a sort of ritual herself. They passed a few dedicated early birds running on the Philosophenweg on their way back down into modern civilization, and smiled to each other to know that for the night, they had had the company of the mountain all to themselves.

Margot Wendice, how do you do?

If you care to see me play a British trophy wife, you can see me in Dial M for Murder starting at the end of April with Gießen’s Keller Theater, the oldest English-language theater in Germany. It turns out that the schedule conflict issue with my spring break only applies to the second of the two weeks of vacation, as they can’t make us rehearse during Easter weekend. So, juhu!, I get to have my cake and eat it too! I’ll see what I can do with 11 days of vacation as opposed to 18…I’m sure I can figure out something exciting to do.

The other cast members are mostly Germans, along with a Belgian girl, a German/Brazilian girl, and an American guy as well. The cast and crew are made up of both high school and university students in addition to a few members of the community. What I’m really looking forward to is finally having my mishmash British accent critiqued and refined by two native speakers (Julie Pownall is one of them), both women who work with the Keller Theater.

Otherwise, besides a slight change in my schedule that allows me to work a mere three days a week for the next five months, there’s very little to report. Ah, but did I mention that I’m teaching a dance unit in the 8th graders’ gym classes now? Right…you try getting pubescent boys to dance samba, merengue and salsa without complaining or making it look like a football/soccer drill…on the other hand, the girls (and secretly, some of the boys I’m sure) are loving it! Shout-out to Erika’s Waka Waka dance choreography which I’ve adapted slightly to be a part of the lessons. Next week will be the last session for one of the classes, where I hope to teach some intermediate salsa moves and end in a classically European fashion, with an hour of elegant waltz. Maybe elegant is going a bit far, but we’ll see what we can do.

Next up: Heidelberg! The Fulbright program has coordinated a Winter Ball for it’s current and former assistant teachers, and I’ll be extremely surprised if it does actually provide the opportunity for me to bust out my formal ballroom skills. Either way, it should be a lark ^_^

After that? THE SUPER BOWL! I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a fair weather fan of the Green Bay Packers. I don’t follow American football (or any sport, for that matter), but it does feel nice that Wisconsin’s team made it to the final stage! I’ll be spending the night at Philipp’s house since the game starts at 12:30 a.m. for us; we’ll be baking real American-style brownies (none of this dry, vaguely chocolaty nonsense that Germans call “brownies”), grilling some brats and burgers, and indulging in some American gluttony in front of the Glotze. Thumbs pressed (fingers crossed) that the Packers win!