Don't worry, just Thursday

A lovely night...

Tonight was the closing ceremonies for the classes we taught. So we and all of our students were invited to Dr. G's family's restaurant where he had spent the whole day cooking--similar to after the 4 week program was done--and we ate in this beautiful banquet hall and got to give our students their certificates and talk to them more and get to know them in a not-class setting. It was really cool! Even just the ladies that I helped in Noelle's class that I had so much fun with brought me a bottle of champagne "from our tisch--table" and everyone said so many thank yous and so many "best wishes"s and there were flowers and chocolates and bottles of wine and delicious food and fun stories...it was a good time. (The bottle of champagne instantly earned me 8 best friends).

Anja told us about her very first job ever. Here's how it went down:

She set up an "internship" in NYC that was actually a job, but for her visa it was an internship. This was Sept 1999 to April 2000 I think. ("So you were there when everyone was so scared about Y2K?" "Yes, yes, everyone was ZO scared!") She set it up six months before, tried to keep up communication through email, they didn't reply, she showed up and they had no idea she was coming. She had no place to stay, so she stayed at the YMCA for two weeks ("And I was eating my cornflakes for dinner --because I didn't know anything else to do--and watching TV that I couldn't understand and a mouse ran across my room!) and then knew someone who knew someone who set her up with a tiny little studio apartment for $750/month ("Wis a bathroom for the whole ground? Story?" "Floor." "Floor, but...") then she realized it was within walking distance of her job (!!) that DID end up working out and being a good experience! Right in the middle of Manhattan! She does architecture stuff. ("Ant I went out se first night to go see and I zaw sis white outline of a man on se zidewalk! And I sought, 'What am I doing?' but I callt my boyfrient and he told me 'Stay! Stay!' ") Amazing! ("I sink sen I wass a little bit--what do you say...naive?") Good experience, I'm sure!

It was fun to talk to them and talk about bad misunderstandings between dialects and different experiences they've had with traveling (another one accidentally took a picture of a dude on a bike late at night in the Bronx and got held up at knifepoint at the next stoplight for the camera) and even a daughter of one of the teachers who helped coordinate visits for part of the group who is doing an internship at a hospital with premature babies because you have to do an internship before starting at University somewhere. She's not sure where she's going to U yet but may end up teaching English! We talked about twilight and Harry Potter...good times!

And my awesome people gave me a book with phrases to learn from the Sachische dialect! It was really sweet of them because they know I like languages and all! Karlien was smart and asked what she could have done better--I had to infer that last week was a hard topic to talk about, which I kind of guessed, but then I also got to talk about that it was risky for me too! They said I always seemed prepared and they wouldn't've guessed that I didn't feel prepared, so that was good!

So that was tonight, a beautiful night. :)

And then my facebook status about my brain having disintegrated was due to my observation log assembly adventures. I had two school things to do for the whole day and I was kind of hoping that I would perhaps be able to do something fun like upload 100 year old pictures onto facebook, but I once again proved that I am 100%, irrefutably a not-superman human. I got my Computers hw done in the morning no problem while Karlien was sleeping, and then the observation log adventures began. We had to have all the materials with all our lesson plans, observation evaluations for 5 middle school classes and 8 TUD classes, a list of all the other students' classes that we've helped with, and signatures from all the TUD classes and middle school classes.

Why Katie is a disorganized mess (or was today at least):

1. My signatures were on approximately 8 different pieces of paper that I had to cut out and tape onto one or two sheets because I always forgot to bring the one original sheet with me

2. I went to the copy shop with Karlien and had forgotten to add something to my first lesson that I had written in before, so I just left space for it to write it in nicely. "Dr. G won't care--not very professional, but..." I also had forgotten the sheet that I had written out for myself listing which documents I needed to print. So I just did the best I could with what I could remember.

3. Then, I got back from the copy shop and realized that I had forgotten my last review activity because it was hiding at the end of my lesson plan that didn't need to be printed, so I didn't see it. I also realized that it would probably be a good idea to someday make the list of all the student classes I assisted and that it might be good to print it out. And, I figured since I had all this other unprofessionalism going on that it might be good to make cover pages to try to make up for it. So I threw all those into one document with the edited one page of the first lesson plan and went to the copy shop with Erin.

4. Where I realized that I hadn't saved the doc onto my flash drive.

5. So I went back the THIRD time and was walking away and remembered that I had wanted to check to see if they had thumbtacks because Dr. G is always playing with this red thumbtack and we thought it would be funny to get him a box. I wasn't sure when we were giving him his present, so I went back and got them. The FOURTH time. I mean, it was cooler today and I wanted to go for a walk anyway, so it really wasn't bad...except for Karlien keeping going "Kaaaatie!" I can hear Arika saying it in her Arika way too--what is it with roommates? haha--just have to accept it I guess.

6. Then Jesus miraculously provided the missing middle school class notes and 2 TUD classes' worth of notes in my notebook to make up my deficit. But I was still missing middle school teacher's names and a couple of dates.

7. Then I assembled them on the tram and turned it in. Hope it's alright! Not too worried and nothing I can do about it now...

And now I should probably go to sleep. "Probably." (in chorus--name that movie!)

Das ist alle, dear readers! Expect some pictures soonish! Tomorrow we go to another museum with a girl from one of the classes Karlien, Erin and Courtney observed. She works there. I'm pumped. And then Sunday the Dresden church is visiting the Berlin church and I'm super pumped for that too! I think Sat. night we're going to bake/cook for it. :-D But I've got my work done for now (until we get more Computers hw or finals are around the corner instead of down the street aways) so I'd really like to get some pictures up before I'm home and unmotivated because I can just pop out my computer and show you. :)

Guten abend!