Orientation in Altenberg

So, the first few days here I spent at this orientation session near Cologne, where we got to meet the other American Fulbrighters, the Brits, Canadians, and Australians, and one Kiwi. We stayed in this monastery dorm place, and there were 4 to a room or so. They put us all together with the people going to the similar area/state/city. We met often with tutors who were german english teachers who came from almost all the states in germany to help us learn. Ours for Niedersachsen were very very nice and a lot of fun. We had to prepare lessons together for different age groups and teach 1 hour long classes and when we werent teaching we had to pretend to be that age group in germany, haah, you can all guess that I had a lot of fun with this. For the second youngest group we got to learn about halloween and drew costumes and described what and why we wanted to be this or that. I being the smartbutt that I am started out drawing peter pan, but changed my mind when I drew tinkerbell flying around him and decided that an overly feminine, tiny, flying pain in the rear who tells people to to think of happy things all the time, make funny faces like they are constipated, and then gets glitter in their eyes all in the name of flight to "neverland" or some land of pedophiles more likely hahahahaha was the way to go to keep things entertaining. what crazed man wrote that book!? (im kidding of course, peter pan is my favorite story/movie). Then we had to say out loud "I want to be for halloween Tinkerbell because she is funny and small and my costume will be pink and blue with sparkles and it will be funny because I am a boy" hahahahaha man...sometimes....it got some good laughs. I kept having to go to the bathroom, I progressively got louder as I spoke to my neighbor in german, I spelled things wretchedly wrong like "introducshun" hahaha. One lesson involved this word association game, and naturally, within three minutes was already on the topics of sex, pregnancy, infidelity, and Thomas Jefferson. well, that last one was a stretch but, yea. Our lesson went rather well, I did this wierd camp song which they had fun with but I was warned that it may take several decades for the germans to get used to such a thing, I told her I was very persistant and that they didnt know what they were getting themselves into, those poor deutscher. Every night we had a beer night and met with those who got an extended second year with the program. The last night we had what ended up being the best ad hoc talent show I have ever seen a group of people put on, ever. I started things off with a group song "ushy gooshy ushy gooshy good icecream, slurrp" haha and everyone was REALLY into it which i was nervous about, but according to my friend Kyle, ive got quite the charming personality that draws groups in like that, so woo hoo for me. after that i gave them all a brief history about step and where it came from and put together a three min routine for them of some stuff I choreographed for PAWS. they really seemed to like it. then there was a frenchhorn duet, a girl named Emily Crockett sang an opera song 5x better that miss i havent hit puberty yet but can sing better than you charlotte church (Emily was SO AMAZING ive never met someone who was my age and sang opera so well...), some guy played bohemian rhapsody on the piano and the entire room sang it, apparently we are a professional choir because it sounded really good. Then Alex from GB played piano, a great piece called Samba, and then one could black and white (keys?) by chopin which was excellent. Then there was a stand up comedy act, a camp skit called "candy shop" which i was fortunate enough to be called on for (I was a lamp that when my nose was pushed turned on and said "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" like that ahhh you make when something slightly holy happens halleluja light beams down from the heavens kind of ahhhh, and when turned off went "wwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoooooow". Turns out they didnt need people to get up and play the role of candy because we were all the "suckers" hardy har har. I felt like a kitten who has just gotten sprayed in the face with water. sigh. There was also a bayerish german lesson and berlinerish lesson, a song by myself and two others called "das alles ist deutschland" by the Prinzen, and then also a girl from GB got up and played guitar, her name is emma greenfield (www.myspace.com/emmagreenfieldmusic) and was soooooo goood! I fell in love instantly. It was really an excellent evening. We had some beer afterward and I opened up about the past few months of life to my friend Kyle and a bit to Jeff and Emily C. All in all, a great first few days in Germany. Plus, I got to smell cow manure whilst listening to the most beautiful and POWERFUL church organ ever (not really) but it was great, and very hypnotising. a touche and a well done to the catholic church i must say. It was sad to leave everyone but luckily some are in Hamburg who I got close to, and Annalise is in the school right next to mine. Now....off to teach.

Much love, namaste, and forests of peace,
Shim