The Best Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Taught to my Students

Another little interlude post for you; Mainz one is coming, I'm just currently up to my (slightly too large for my liking) ears in YARP writing to have much energy left for serious posts.

These types of posts seem to be more popular anyway so I should try and write more.

So.

The Best Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Taught to my Students.

Now I don't mean like, illegal things or anything. I haven't been telling them the best ways to get a fake ID or rob a bank anything, though I have a feeling that would be a popular lesson. No I'm talking about stuff I either, in a fit devilry, taught them deliberately, or stuff I accidentally mentioned and then was forced to explain.

1# Cwtch, to cwtch.
No actual regrets here but I probably shouldn't have taught a class of 10 and 11 year olds the Welsh term for cuddling (umarmen in German if you're interested) before they know the English for it. Or, you know, how to count past 20, stuff like that.

In fairness, I did reluctantly teach them the English word afterwards. Cwtch is so much better though.

2# Popty ping.
Similarly, they asked me if all Welsh words were odd so for the giggles I taught them popty ping, which for the un-enlightened reading means microwave. They found this hilarious.

3# "budge up"
Not really necessary tbh. They all still remember it though, funny that.

4# The After Eight game.
Yeah so in yr 6 today they were learning the prepositions 'before' and 'after' and the teacher asked the kids if they knew the chocolates After Eights. Apparently they're much beliebt in Germany as there was a chorus of "jaaa"s.

Anyway, I stupidly piped up and said we play a game with them back home. Regretted it immediately when asked to explain the game, which basically involves putting it on your forehead and guiding it down your face as it melts, without hands, to your mouth, whereupon you eat it.

Small silence. Fit of laughing. Kid put her hand up..."Frau Thomas...sind alle Engländer verrückt?" (Miss Thomas, are all the English crazy?)

5# That I have (had) a fear of blackboards.

Bit random, but I have never been a fan of chalk on black boards. Luckily almost all classrooms in my comp had white boards, so I was spared, but I spent most of French Ling (inexplicably taught in the maths building at Southampton uni) cringing every time anything was written on the board.

When teaching my AG, we were telling each other unusual facts about ourselves by way of interesting introductions, so I told hem about my fear of writing on black boards.

I've had to get over this fear from day one in Germany as all classrooms are equipped with chalk and black boards, but now I've confided in the year 10s about my former fear they look at me with intense pity and concern every time I have to write on the board when teaching them.

6# That lacrosse is only taught in private schools in Britain

When learning about Canada the subject of lacrosse came up (Canada's national summer sport in case you're keen), and the teacher asked me if we play it in Britain.

My (absent-minded) response? "oh, only in private schools"

Now, until I arrived at uni (where to be sure all kinds of people play lacrosse) I'd only ever heard of the sport in the context of Mallory Towers books, and certainly not being taught at any of the many local comps in South Wales, so for some reason I have it in my head that its a 'private school sport', which I'm pretty sure is wrong.

Unfortunately the teacher responded with "echt?! Interessant. Schreib das mal auf Kinder" (really?! Interesting. Write that down kids). Oops.

#7 Welsh Days of the Week song...in English.

Ok so back in school we had this song that went "Dydd Sul, dydd Llun, dydd Mawr dydd Mercher, dydd Iawn, dydd Gwener, dydd Sadwrn hooray!" (Sunday, Monday, Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri, Sat hooray!). When my mentor was teaching her yr 5s the days of the week they weren't really getting it, so (as usual without thinking) I said I knew a song to help, planning to adapt the tune to the English days as I went along.

Sadly, my basic music skills failed me as I forgot that the way it is sung in Welsh there are more syllables than there are in English. Also I cannot hold q tune to save my life. Cue me standing awkwardly infront of the class going "Sunda-a-ay, Monda-a-ay..." And so on. Afterwards, faced with 29 even more confused faces the teacher just went "anyway...turn to page 38 in your textbooks"...

#8 That everyone has tapestries on their walls.

This one was a joint effort from Soph (friend from my school days who visited recently) and I. When teaching about the parts of the house a student asked "was ist Teppich auf Englisch?" In a momentary fit of madness Soph and I agreed it was tapestry...until, just as they're about to write it down it hits me that it means wallpaper, duh. So luckily my students were just spared from learning that all British houses are full of tapestries.

#9 The name "bunk beds" is related to bunkers in the world wars.

Whilst this is true, I regretted going on to explain to the class that the bomb-proof buildings used during the world wars are called bunkers, and that the beds within them would be called bunk beds, when a) the class looked confused and a few brave souls put their hands up and asked "es gab einen Krieg?" (there was a war?) and b) the teacher pursed her lips, gave me a haughty look and changed the subject.

Don't. Mention. The. War.

#10 My Dad shook hands with a bear.

Picture the scene. Yr 7 are learning about Canada. There is naturally a lot of talk about bears (or rather "beers"). I am telling the story of how when cycling in the Rocky Mountains my Dad came across a bear, and luckily was far enough away to retreat without sparking its anger (or rather hunger). Unfortunately, I was telling this story in German, and used the verb "treffen", which without reflexive or preposition means more to meet someone, or shake their hand. Which meant I gave my yr 7 class a highly amusing mental image of my father casually making the acquaintance of a bear.




Who said teaching is boring?




Plus, hey, at least this year I'll know I made some sort of impression...


P.S. Hey guess what? It hit me the other day I've been in Germany for 5 and a half months already. Crazy!

Ende gut, alles gut.

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Beth's hectic life in Germany!

This post is about a fun weekend in February (the first weekend). Soo picking up straight after the last one, Soph left my flat at 3.10 am to catch the dratted Flibco bus to fly home, which can't have been fun for her. 3 hours later, my own alarm went off and the horrific event I'd been dreading happening since I began working on a mountain an hour's train ride away happened: I accidentally pressed cancel instead of snooze.

A good 30 mins' dozing later, I began to sleepily register my lack of second alarm, so rolled over and looked at the time...a few seconds of pure confusion followed by utter horror, it was 6.53. My train left at 7.04 and the station is 7 mins (speedy) walk away. Shooting out of bed, I was a blur of terrified Welsh girl chucking clothes on and hoping for the best. Things were made more complicated by 2 things: 1) I was doing substitution first thing and had a class of 29 ten year olds waiting for me, so missing the train wasn't an option. 2) I was heading straight to Landau for the weekend after work, so had to pack 3 days worth of stuff into my little rucksack.

Year Abroad Tip: try and get stuff ready the night before work, even on normal days when you have more than 4 minutes to get ready it is a lifesaver.

Mettlach Bahnhof, my second home.

Anyway, I miraculously made the train, but unfortunately my stress levels soon peaked again when faced with 29 very whiny 10-11 year olds, who were doing their best to terrorize the sub. I hereby apologise to all sub teachers I made it my business to be rude to in school, I have now been on the other end of it and it really isn't fun.

Anyway, the less said about that class the better, except I accidentally told the class to "halte die Klappe", which basically means shut up and isn't the politest thing to say, oh and I made my first ever (and ideally last ever) student cry when I wrote his name on the board as a warning if he didn't stop talking. Na ja, teaching isn't all sunshine and lollipops.

Later that day (and having done my third run of the day for public transport), I found myself back on the Harry Potter train (see here for clarification) to Landau to visit Helen, with Meg coming to stay too. We've been trying to keep up these mini Southampton uni reunions roughly once a month as its a nice piece of home life that relieves the craziness of casually living in a foreign country.

Here's the route I took to Landau from Trier. Basically the same as to Wissembourg, as they're very close together.

Then followed a luuuurverly weekend of films, good food, a trip to Karlsruhe to see the beautiful palace, a looot of walking, lush cocktails and a pleasant evening in the rather pretty Irish pub, the evening only being marred by the discovery that my new set of playing cards weirdly only consisted of cards 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace, twice. This limited the amount of games we could play to er, snap.

Helen and I infront of Karlsruhe Palace, pretty breathtaking! Also very cold.

Stolen off Google, this is a shot of Karlsruhe (the palace is at the bottom of the picture) which shows how the city spreads out in a fan like shape from the palace, which I found immensely cool.

Me looking very sad at discovering I'd bought a specialised set of cards by accident that missed out numbers 2-8.

I'm sitting writing this on the train back to Trier from Landau. We had a bit of a lie in after a long sleep (in which Helen and I both nearly elbowed eachother in the face, oops) and a bit of a walk around Landau itself, which I actually really liked.

This week should be interesting: got a few things to sort out with my mentor teacher, who is still making me do a lot of substitution, plus a timetable to jiggle about for a bit of frische Luft as the Germans say.

Next weekend is...Karneval!!! I am more excited than an overly excitable dog about to be fed, so watch this space for a blog post next week explaining what it is and just how much fun I had running around Mainz in my dalmatian onesie/Welsh rugby gear. That's once I've got over the killer hangover, of course.

Tschüssi! Xx

*Oh, and the title is German's equivalent of all's well that ends well.

#YOLO

So writing this regularly seems a little difficult at the moment, but I'm pleased to report I'm having too much fun and am a little too busy on my year abroad, so that's the most important thing, gell?*

Anyway, so much to write about! I'll start with Strasbourg.

Feeling a little adventurous and fancying a weekend away Tylor and I headed to Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France. I'd always wanted to go there, having heard it was nice and also being the geeky linguistics student that I am I've written an essay or two about code switching in the area so was curious to see the linguistic situation for myself.

We headed down on the train, enjoying crossing the border into a new country in a comfortable but empty train. Our hotel was just outside of the main town, so ideal. And what a BEAUTIFUL place. Surrounded entirely by water, the old houses lean crookedly on one another for support, overshadowed by a number of majestic churches and of course the cathedral.

Petit France, Strasbourg cute oder?

A view of some lovely houses by the canal in Strasbourg.

I also met up with my uni friend Meg, who's living about an hour north of Strasbourg. You can read about my visit to the beautiful town of Wissembourg from before Christmas here.

I did it, I went full Alsace.

We enjoyed ourselves going for walks, eating crepes and practising our rusty French, until alas I was struck down by food poisoning and consigned to watch crappy French reality TV in bed, leaving Tylor to venture out in the snow alone and feed me miniature amounts of ginger ale.

On Sunday morning we travelled home, breathing a small sigh of relief upon returning to Germany, where you weren't in danger of breaking your leg the moment you stepped off the train, as they'd actually bothered to clear the ice unlike France.

Next fun activity: well actually kinda sad at the same time, but on the Thurs there was a WG party in honour of two things - my flatmate Marie's birthday and a friend, Chiara's, leaving party. Marie cooked an amazing meal for about 12 of us, then ( with a bit too much Riesling getrunken) we headed upstairs to the party.

That's me in the middle with a selection of flatmates and friends :)

Soppy moment here (I try to keep them to a minimum I promise) but several times during the evening I found myself thinking wow, how lucky am I. This is the kind of amazingness I set out for on my year abroad, but didn't hope to actually get; the opportunity to chat with good friends, meet new people, and even better party with them, entirely in German! When I think how lonely I could have been considering the location of my job I feel so very lucky that I took the gamble of coming to live in Trier. I realllyy don't want to leave at the end of the year!

Finally this week my school friend and fellow germanophile Soph took a break from serious doctory stuff to come see me in Trier. Was lush to see her: we reminisced about old times, tried some Guiness and Soph even came to school with me to see how terrible a teacher I am. We played a fun game with my AG (after school English club) where teams had to compete to conjugate a verb correctly: their reward? Being allowed to ask Soph a question. The team at the end with the most amount of info about her won.

I love being able to plan fun lessons like that.

I've already written the follow up post to this about the weekend after Soph's departure, so read on lovely people.

Bis gleich!



*gell is a local dialect word which is making it's sneaky way into my vocabulary, it means "isn't it?"

Also, the title is a shout out to Soph's catchphrase, which I think I heard at least once an hour during her visit :P