It's getting routine

Ah...I do love routine. Remember how I had so little spare time at the beginning of my stay here and thought it'd only get worse once I started teaching full-time? Well, thankfully, things have only gotten better. My daily routine is pretty established and I'm getting everything done and then some! The lessons have gone better each day I've taught; I feel it's been weeks that I've taught now instead of only 4 days. I look forward to this weekend, but don't have a ton of things to catch up on. Praise God!

First period is starting to come around; they are more actively participating in discussion and seeming to enjoy class more. I've also been able to tweek my lessons more each day so that I have a balance of reading/discussion/DVD that I think works well to encourage learning while maintaining interest.

Second period is as lovely as ever. Wednesday I showed a short clip from youtube of one of Hitler's arousing speeches. I used this to help the students connect with their vocabulary word, demagogue. I couldn't easily get it to project on the overhead (for some reason) during 2nd period, so, being a smaller class, I just had them huddle around my laptop and watch it. This little event seemed to break the walls down even more and made my relationship with the students more comfortable. They crowded in, laughingly pushing and shoving, commenting on the video, interpreting the German for me, and guessing at what demagogue could mean. It was a good experience; I never would have thought I'd be glad for technological mishaps, but I was on Wednesday.

Seventh period is still deciding on me, but I've had a little bit more of a break through. One girl in particular seems to have a slight chip on her shoulder and isn't as friendly and affable as the rest. She's been talking to her classmates a lot during class, and I been trying to decide the appropriate way to handle it. Calling her out on it, especially during class, might only set her off; I feel as if she's the type that once your on her bad side, you stay there. So, I wanted to handle the situation carefully. God provided a way. At the end of 7th period on Wednesday, they announced over the intercom that Thursday after school would be a girls-only soccer game for anyone who wanted to participate. I happily exclaimed how fun that'd be, and how I'd like to play. Several girls in the class excitedly told me to join, and to my surprise, the one girl extended a personal invitation after everyone else had left. The next day, today, I had several girls from different periods ask me if I was playing, and then the girl from 7th made a specific point again to ask me. I was really glad for this, and thought that we could possibly build some mutual respect on the soccer field (haha, I feel like a guy saying that).

So, after school today I changed into my sports clothes (and underarmor...it was about 50 degrees out with a wind) and headed toward the field. It was a blast to play. We played half-field, 5 v. 5. I took turns playing goalie and forward and scored 3 goals. yay! There ended up being 3 girls from my English classes and we had fun all playing together. I felt weird having them call my Miss Kindt on the field, so I told them to call me Laura...hope that was ok. :) I laughed and joked with them as my peers, so now I'm curious to teach them in class tomorrow as their teacher. Overall, however, it was a great time, to be out in the brisk air, running, dripping snot, and coughing (I don't think this exercise helped my lingering cough at all). But it was worth it! At the end we took a smiling, then serious, then goofy picture. Here's the goofy one.

German phrase of the day: Where is the bathroom? = Wo ist die Toillete?

Also, I've had dinner leftovers for the past three days and it's been GREAT! And...we're having starbucks coffee with dessert tonight. Mmmmm. I've missed that. Heidi works at a Starbucks in Freiburg.