An Hessen führt kein Weg vorbei
I'm here! The title of this blog is the official slogan of the province of Hessen. As the plane flew into Frankfurt yesterday, I saw it plastered (in many languages) all over the outer airport walls. The official English translation (not quite like the original, but I suppose the government found out it's a weird one to translate): "Hessen: There's no way around us!"
I guess not - Frankfurt is located in the province of Hessen, and also happens to have one of the largest airports in Europe. Millions of people fly to Germany through Frankfurt, or land there as they run to catch their connections to other European, Asian or African destinations. Few people fly to Frankfurt to stay in Frankfurt.
Me included. However, I will be one of the few that stay in the province of Hessen - Marburg, to be exact. I had four smiling faces pick me up from the Marburg Hauptbahnhof yesterday - a former exchange student friend at Penn State (Chialing) who is now back home in Marburg, her friend (Christoph), one of my new roommates (Yvonne) and her boyfriend (Marian). The boys took my bags and I was free. And tired. The WG (Wohngemeinschaft = shared living space = apartment, basically) is cute, my room is great. I'm unpacking and getting organized. Last night, Chialing and I met for dinner downtown, of course we walked around and I took many pictures. Exhausted, I crashed around 9:30 pm and I'm pretty sure it was the best sleep of my life.
Today, Chialing and I are going to walk around "die Uni" and tomorrow I will begin the more official process of becoming a Uni Marburg student. Hopefully soon after that, I will be able to meet with someone from the Sprachenzentrum (language institute) where I'll be teaching in a few weeks. Then, syllabus creation time...I'm nervous about the possibilities of having a blank slate as well as NOT having a blank slate. Does this make sense? I still can't believe I'm going to be teaching English.
I guess not - Frankfurt is located in the province of Hessen, and also happens to have one of the largest airports in Europe. Millions of people fly to Germany through Frankfurt, or land there as they run to catch their connections to other European, Asian or African destinations. Few people fly to Frankfurt to stay in Frankfurt.
Me included. However, I will be one of the few that stay in the province of Hessen - Marburg, to be exact. I had four smiling faces pick me up from the Marburg Hauptbahnhof yesterday - a former exchange student friend at Penn State (Chialing) who is now back home in Marburg, her friend (Christoph), one of my new roommates (Yvonne) and her boyfriend (Marian). The boys took my bags and I was free. And tired. The WG (Wohngemeinschaft = shared living space = apartment, basically) is cute, my room is great. I'm unpacking and getting organized. Last night, Chialing and I met for dinner downtown, of course we walked around and I took many pictures. Exhausted, I crashed around 9:30 pm and I'm pretty sure it was the best sleep of my life.
Today, Chialing and I are going to walk around "die Uni" and tomorrow I will begin the more official process of becoming a Uni Marburg student. Hopefully soon after that, I will be able to meet with someone from the Sprachenzentrum (language institute) where I'll be teaching in a few weeks. Then, syllabus creation time...I'm nervous about the possibilities of having a blank slate as well as NOT having a blank slate. Does this make sense? I still can't believe I'm going to be teaching English.
posted by Janice | 2:57 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Janice- you'll probably be surprised at how your knowledge of German grammar will start to translate into English grammar chutzpah! Good luck with it all. And the students may know lots of grammar and you can just fake it... ask them why what they're saying is wrong ...or right! :-)
As someone who also had never taught English before, let me tell you that doing it at the Sprachenzentrum is a good first experience. The syllabus process is a lot less stressful than you'll expect ... they're pretty laid back about everything. No joke.
Tell Fabienne we say hi. :)
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