Festing

For the past 2 weeks we have been enjoying the German life of fall festing! Our first trip was to Bad Durkheim on Saturday the 13th. We started this trip off the same as we have lately...train difficulties, of course! Not too bad this time, we just missed our stop and realized it a half hour later. This time we are quite happy we did however because we met 3 other DoDDS teachers who we ended up staying with for the night. They showed us the way there and helped us make our way around the fest. The Wurstmarkt (Wine Fest) is the biggest wine festival in Germany. I have never experienced anything close to this! The fest is a big fair with lots of rides, all kinds of regional food specialties, along with traditional fest foods, and plenty to drink. Two large tents serve only wine (in 500 liter glasses) and another large tent serves both wine and beer. Traditional German music is played by bands in all of the tents, along with a few "American" songs here and there. The tents are lined with tables and benches full of people, which are most often being stood on. We met lots of other teachers there and had so much fun!!


This past weekend, Saturday the 20th, we made our way to Munich for Oktoberfest. Again, another amazing experience! We made it there with no train problems finally :) After getting off the train, we followed the flow of traffic to the main road where the parade was. We were able to get close enough to see the bands and horses pulling wagons for each beer brewer. It was beautiful. After the parade is finished, the crowds of people watching follow into the street and follow the parade to the fest. Lots and lots of people! When we got to the fest the 8 of us split up into 4 and 4 because there were way too many people to keep all of us together. It made it a lot easier to get into the tents and get through the crowds. We met up with some people there that one of the girls went to high school with. We spent the day in the beer garden, Hofbrau, with them. Saw all kinds of crazy outfits and the traditional Lederhosens and Dirndls, anything goes really. There were so many rides there, many I've never seen before. The girls got me to ride the swing ride, which was way higher than the ones in the US (see below!) After riding a few rides, eating some awesome food, and buying souvenirs we made our way back to Heidelberg. The train rides home are always long so I slept most of the way.


I am still loving my 6th graders! They make me laugh everyday. The teachers I am working with are also awesome! So many great ideas and very willing to work with special education students. I have seen them make great modifications for the students in special education to make them successful in the general education classroom without making them stick out or having to be pulled out. I am just starting to take over the social studies, math, and language arts classes. I've been spending most of my Sundays or after school during the week grading papers :(

We just found a nice market that is bike riding distance away that we've been going to that has lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. The apple orchard is my favorite; the apples taste amazing! We also try and make it to the gym that is on base. After a month without TV we have finally got a DVD player so we are able to watch movies now, but not actual TV, which is fine with me because I love movies. One of my teachers is a huge movie buff and has tons of movies and she brings in all kinds for us. We have already watched a couple seasons of TV shows, along with quite a few movies.

All 8 of us are leaving Friday for Amsterdam. I am looking forward to getting away for the weekend! We have a few things planned already for while we are there but I will post the details later. I hope everyone has a great week! Love and miss you all!!

Finally Settled

I am getting a later start to this than I had planned but I will do a catch up on what has been going on the last 3 1/2 weeks, which I cannot believe it has been that long already!

Living on a military base is way different than I was expecting! We have 2 different ID cards that we have to carry at all times to get on base, to use when grocery shopping, at the bowling alley, movie theater, all kinds of places on base. It took us almost a week to get both of our ID's, so it was hard to keep food at the apartment for those first few days but we survived :) It also took a while to get used to walking and taking a bus or train to get anywhere, which we are still trying to get used to.

I started school 2 days after getting here to set up the classroom and get everything ready. I absolutely love my teacher I am working with and all the other staff I work with. The atmosphere is so fun and outgoing and very laid back. I felt very comfortable and welcomed right away. I follow a group of special education students that are included in general education classes throughout the day. I have just started teaching some of my own lessons, but for the most part I make my way around the room and make sure they are on task and keeping up with the rest of their class. I have also had to do a lot of reading assessments and I have begun to see how much paper work is involved!

I am living in an apartment with 8 girls! Yes, 8! Six of them are from Western Michigan University that I have had in all of my classes, so I know them all pretty well. The other 2 are from Miami of Ohio. They have fit in great and we all are getting along very well. Sharing one shower with 8 girls was tricky to get used to, especially since we are all getting ready to go to school at the same time, but we have finally got into a shower schedule. We have been doing a lot of our traveling together and it seems to be working for us. You will be seeing a lot of "family pics" from all our our trips.

Our first two weekends here we spent in Heidelberg. We went downtown and got a tour of the entire city from a teacher and her teacher's husband, who is a tour guide. We walked up to the castle and toured the castle grounds then went across the river and took a hike up "Philosopher's Way" which is high above the city and has an amazing view! He then showed us the city's library, the university, some fountains, and where to find the best ice cream and food.





Labor day weekend we spent the whole day Saturday in Mannheim. We knew of a castle to see and a water tower. While trying to find the castle we found a huge, beautiful building...after walking for an extra 20 minutes, realizing that cool, huge, beautiful building WAS the castle. Whoops! Anyways, we toured the castle and couldn't figure out what all the people and cameras were doing out front. Come to find out it was the auditions for Deutschland Super Star (Europe's American Idol). It was cool to see the whole crowd in action for recording. On Sunday we took a train to Lake Constance, which was so pretty! It is at the very bottom of Germany and is shared with Switzerland and Austria as well. It wasn't the nicest of days but we had our own fun.




This past weekend was our first big travel. We went to Brussels, Belgium and visited Brugge, Belgium for the day on Saturday. It didn't start out the greatest, seeing we got on the wrong train, but we ended up where we were supposed to be (kind of). We got off the train in Brussels, but had another hour and a half walk because we got off at the wrong Brussels train station. It made for a long night, but we finally made it to our hostel and went straight to bed. Early Saturday we took an hour train ride to Brugge and toured a brewery, walked through the town, and had lunch. I've never seen so many chocolate shops, waffles, and lace! Of course the chocolate was great, and the waffles were by far the best I have EVER had!! We made it back to Brussels for the evening and had dinner and went out for drinks. Sunday morning we visited a chocolate museum and saw the Mannequin Pis before heading back to Heidelberg.



I have been loving the food here way more than I was expecting too. I have been adventurous and trying everything at least once. I've had schnitzel, donor kabobs, seafood spaghetti, bretzels, and lots more that I have forgotten or can't pronounce.

I miss you all back home! I will try my best to keep this updated for you. This weekend we are planning on staying around here. There is a huge wine festival in Bad Durkheim, which is one of the biggest in Germany. We are also planning on heading downtown again and seeing some more of the city of Heidelberg.

Will write again soon!

Amy