"Wenn Sie das Leben kennen, bitte geben Sie mir doch bitte seine Anschrift"

"If you know Life, please give me his address."

Well I've been here over a month now, and life can no longer just be about relaxing, fun and "settling in". What and where is life now? There's still fun, but suddenly I see work & deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. For me, my study and thus my dissertation proposal rank #1 at this point, and both of these things make me somewhat apprehensive...lots of work! There's also 2 conference papers to think about in 2010.

And to add onto that, there is now English teaching. I had my first class last week, and what an interesting class. I started off by telling them: "I am Canadian, I live in the USA and my forefathers are from the UK. I think I got a lot of places covered." The students average age is about 23, and I have 16 girls and 4 boys (heh). They can all speak some English, some better than others.  We did the whole quiz a partner and introduce them to the class game, followed up by some syllabus talk. Then, we went into chapter one. I got them all signed up for their presentations as well.

It's so weird to teach English. I kept almost speaking German...that's my teaching language! I feel like I'm doing something wrong speaking English, but not here. Also, I find it interesting to hear the errors the other way around. Instead of anglicized word order, I'm getting weird direct translations from German into English. I get what they mean, but I don't want to be constantly giving corrective feedback during moments when they volunteer an answer, or are doing partner work. I only discussed one grammar point while we were in class last week, because during the introductions many were still doing it the German way. For those who teach/speak German - some were saying: she lives here since 3 years. You know, very typical...so I asked the class how we say that in English, and one girl knew it was "she has lived here for 3 years". Excellent, score one for me if you are a fan of teaching grammar inductively ;) Some things don't work well inductively but that moment sure did.

This Thursday is the first partner presentation on family & friendship. I'm sure it'll be just lovely...I hope I will find enough materials to fill 2.5 hours every week. That's the longest I've ever taught at one time! Jeez..there will definitely be 10 minute breaks.

But today is Monday, and I am le tired. I had phonology class today and apart from almost entering into a discussion regarding how useful Pig Latin is for understanding English syllable boundaries, I was asked to report on where we split long words across paper lines when the entire word cannot be written on one line. Then, there were the 10 minutes dedicated to the linking R, etc. Geez. Both the American kid and I are not from places where this can be heard, so it's not like we were able to recreate it.

Anyway...enough about classes. This weekend was the international student trip to Weimar/Buchenwald. Cheap, fun, new people and places. It was great to get away from Marburg with some fun people and see a city I hadn't been to. Overall lots of fun and of course Buchenwald, sobering. There is nothing quite like visiting a former concentration camp. It is a horrifying place that moves you to the core, so unfathomable is it to imagine human beings treating one another in such a way. To finish this entry, I'll leave you with a haunting quote by Heinrich Heine from his 1821 play Almansor. I find it captures so well the dangers of hatred:

"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."
"Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings."

The great irony is that Heine's own works (probably even this play) were burned during Nazi book burning ceremonies in Berlin and elsewhere. An eerie foreshadow indeed...