Oktoberfest/ new apartment!

Hi! Sorry I haven't written in a while, its been a busy few days… first off, on Friday, Karen and I headed down to München for Oktoberfest. It was completely insane as expected, and I at least had a blast, (I’m pretty sure Karen did too…) we had reserved a hotel room east of the city, abt a 15 minute metro ride, and it was actually really nice, esp considering we only paid abt 45 euros each for it! Friday night, we went to the Augustiner tent, and, after not eating since about noon, we proceeded to get completely smashed off of a couple of “maβe” which are 1 liter glass mugs of beer (I stole three, pictures of them are on picasa  )
Saturday, after accidentally sleeping in till 9, we made our way back into the city, only to find it completely swamped with people. Because it was so sunny and beautiful and warm, Karen and Eileen (another BC girl) and I decided to tour München, which is gorgeous, and I took lots of pics, apu… We made our way back to Oktoberfest, and met up with the other fulbrighters in the Hacker Pschorr/Schottenhaller tent, and made some very good friends. (some of us made better friends than others) It was Italian weekend at Oktoberfest, so the few and far between Germans were hard to notice, hiding behind all the loud, wasted Americans and Italians. We found some anyways, and hung out for a good long while, also with a bunch of NYU kids that are scattered throughout Europe on exchange semesters.
Sunday, Karen and I got up relatively early, and headed into München for our last day. Karen, who had, the day before bought a dirndl, (see pics) convinced me to try on lederhosen, just for the pics. I should’ve known better. I am now the proud(ish) owner of some authentic Bavarian Lederhosen. I will eventually take pictures in them and post them, probably holding my Masse! Btw, liquidity-wise, 1 Maβ is about a 6pack of beer, and has the alcohol content of your average American 12pack. Thankfully, its good German beer, so you drink it slow(ish) and can actually enjoy the taste… anyways, Sunday was much emptier in the fairgrounds, probably because the Bayern-München soccer team had lost sat. evening, and the city was in mourning. So we didn’t have to wait in line for any tents, and ended up hopping from Hacker-Pschorr to Hofbräu to Löwenbräu to Paulaner to Spatenbräu. Needless to say, amazing. I poured myself onto the ICE back to Göttingen, where they happened to be giving out free beer onboard. Bad news bears. Oh well! I remembered to get off at the correct stop! I got back to my house around 8pm, had dinner, and promptly passed out.
Monday, had school bright and early, biked home, packed, went back to school for the afternoon class, the oldest of my students, and I got to interact with them a lot, we were talking about genetic engineering and cloning (they’re reading brave new world). It was great to finally be able to speak to students in a normal tone, and with a normal pace, and not have (all) of them stare at me like I’m an alien. Then, went home, finished packing, and passed out for another couple of hours. At 8, packed up Carina’s van with all of my stuff (it took abt 2 seconds to load both bags into the back, then swung by another teacher’s house to pick up my bed. Of course, with my luck, it also happened to be torrentially downpouring (note to self- lean mattress against radiator to dry it out) I moved all of my stuff into my room, which now contains my bed, a small schrank (wardrobe, and nothing else. I’m gonna need to go furniture shopping soon- living out of a suitcase sucks! OH, I just realized, I’ve been here for exactly 4 weeks! Yay! (sorry, still sorta spastic and exhausted- did I mention I only managed to get abt 6 hours of sleep all weekend?) The new apartment is awesome, its small, but very well suited to me, with 10 foot ceilings  I will post pics of the apt as well! So, for those of you in the area, or expecting to be in the area, chezSean is open for visitors! My one roommate’s name is Julian (yoo-lee-an) he’s 27, and finishing up his last year in the university here. He’s from the area-ish, and so far, we’ve gotten along quite well. Ok, I’m off to go do my first bit of grocery shopping, so that I can cook my first meal in Germany! YAY!

WEEKEND!

YAY! its finally the weekend!! (for me at least, sorry everyone else..) this week was eventful, i put in my visa application, which ended up being much less beaurocracy than expected because karen and i came well prepared!! I also bought a bicycle today, its big and black and badass! (speaking of asses, i need to get a new seat, because my behind is killing me!) it was a used bike, and has all the standard things on it, including lights and a basket! yay! now all i need are streamers for the handlebars (and a new, squishier seat)

tomorrow morning, karen and i are leaving for munchen for the weekend, to experience some Oktoberfest goodness! It will be an insane time. i will try to take as many pictures as possible, thankfully my camera has autofocus!! i won't be online or anything this weekend, but feel free to comment, shoot emails, whatever! i will update and post pics when i come back sunday evening.
-seany

Weekend in Hamburg

Hi, sorry i haven't updated in a while.. i've either been doing absolutely nothing, (friday, only left the house to go for a run, otherwise watched movies) or i've been gone. this weekend, i went up to hamburg to see the city, and visit a couple of the other fulbrighters in the area. the weather was perfect, it was like 70 and sunny, perfect for walking around a harbor city... we wandered around, beers in hand, (YAY GERMANY) and saw alot of the really interesting and diverse city. We ended up staying up till abt 5am, out in a really fun, cozy bar, before passing out hard! my lovely trip did end on a bad note, however, as the ATM at the train station decided it didn't like my (correct) pin, and so told me it was eating my card, good luck with life, aufwiedersehen! i hate german atms... they're not even polite abt it! so, my deutsche bank ATM card is gone, thankfully i had enough cash for an ICE still in hand, but ended up going to the bank today, and ordered a new one.

In other news, my first week at school was good. nothing really challenging or interesting, i'm nowhere near actually doing anything constructive with the students, being that they're all still scared of me. I ended up having mostly 5th and 6th graders, which, frankly, kinda sucks.. Its great that i can help them early, with their pronunciation, but part of my project for being here was to teach a business-style american english, which is hard to do when half of the class is still wearing velcro shoes and miley cyrus tshirts (including some boys... oh yeah, we're def in europe) I'm really hoping to get my stammtisch program off the ground pretty soon, so that i can actually have conversations with the older kids, and find out more abt them, what they want to know, what they feel is lacking, etc... its all well and good to show kids spongebob to teach them english, but there's only so many seconds of that i can stand (read: 2) Today, my afternoon classes were cancelled, so i only had one... at 750... how nice... i promptly came home, and went back to bed! lets see, what else? nothing, really... this week, i'm going to hit up ikea, buy stuff for the apt, do my visa anmeldung, (hopefully) and... uhm... ? do other things? i really do have too much free time... i need to pick up a hobby. or a german. a swede perhaps?
have a great week everyone, i will be posting pics of hamburg momentarily.

-seanyB

APARTMENT FOUND!!!

YAY!!! i finally found an apartment!! its just south of the city center, in an old building, and has 10 foot ceilings! its a 2 bedroom apt, and the guy who owns it lives in the other room. so, thats a HUGE relief off my back. other than that, had an interesting day-- followed the 11th graders around all day, which involved math, spanish, philosophy, some social studies something, and physics!! YAY!!! i wanted to shoot myself, pretty much. but my actual classes start tomorrow, so i'm excited for that, except for the fact that they rearranged my schedule so that i only have ONE class mondays, of course, first period, FOUR on tues, 3 on weds, and 2 on thurs... ugh, so much for german efficiency... ugh, at least it will be better when it will only take me 5 mins to bike to school rather than an hour to bus there! OH, on that note... one of the teachers offered me her spare bike at school today, and took me out to look at it. It was a very nice bike, and would've fit me perfectly if only i were about a foot shorter, and possibly still 12. oh well, something will come around

and now its time for me to go to bed!!

good night!

First day of school!

So today was my first day of school, which was kinda exciting! i felt like i was in kindergarten all over again, except this time sitting in the teachers' lounge, awkwardly staring at my feet while the other teachers stared at me, rather than beating up girls. I followed a 6th grade class around for the day, which was... interesting... they asked me all about myself in the english class, and i very quickly realized that i have absolutely nothing in common with 12 year olds. My favorite music, books, movies, bands, art... none of them (even the teacher) showed the slightest hint of recognition... oh well! it was interesting to see the social aspects of gradeschool from the teacher perspective. there was the nerdy kid no one wanted in their group, likewise the ADDchild that couldn't sit still for 2 seconds, the popular kids, it was all very interesting... they were all perfectly polite and nice and slightly scared of me, which is just the way i like it! I also got to meet a bunch of the teachers, once they had established that i actually belonged in the teachers' lounge (note to self: stop wearing a bookbag everywhere!) and i was invited to play in the teachers league volleyball matches every monday evening, which should be fun! They are all relatively young, and seem to want to get to know me, which is also nice, as long as they don't try to do it en masse, like they did today, where i met more than 40 new coworkers in about 5 minutes. i flat out told them i'm not going to remember names, so i'm gonna have to steal a yearbook and start trying to memorize :x shit!!
i left around 12, being that classes were almost over, and i needed to go to the ratshalle to get my visa, only to get there, and find out it has the most stupid and inconvenient hours in the history of german beaurocracy (which is a feat, lemme tell you!) so... yeah, i'll be going back on thursday, which is the only possible time during their daily 2 hour daily open period that i can go. so rude...
in other news, i went out to dinner tonight with all of the university fulbrighters, who are having their orientation in goettingen this week. there are two in the goettingen area, so hopefully we can hang out occasionally, but they all seemed very nice, and of course the free food and booze helped the situation!
in more other news, i have karen to thank, for apparently introducing me to a stalker/crazed 12ishyearold ballerina who wants to play with me whenever i have free time. everyone together now: THANKS KAREN! i may plead gay. or possibly desperately in love with karen... should be fun paybacks, in any case... i hope you're reading this karen, i'm sic-ing one of my students on you!

back to school tomorrow, i'm following around one of the 11th grade classes, before i start my scheduled term on weds, which consists of:
Mon: class at 750 and 1030
Tues: class at 750, 940, and 1030
Weds: class at 750, 94o, and 1220
Thurs: class at 840, 1130
Fri: LOOOOOONG WEEKEND

aaaaand thats it!! more updates tomorrow, don't forget the now COMPLETELY uploaded Hannover pics, link to the right (it says KLICKEN SIE HIER, kids...)

Hannover visit, the internation fireworks competition!

Just got back from a lovely day in Hannover, which is a 25 minute ICE ride north of here (or an 1.5 hour regional train ride back, at 1am... uuugh) Karen and i saw a random poster at a bus stop, like you do, for the international fireworks competition, and decided it was worth a visit. We shot off an email to all (both) of the fulbrighters we know in Hannover, and asked if they wanted to meet us/show us around/have a beer. We met up with Andrea, who is teaching there, and toured the city, which is amazing... it was almost completely destroyed during WWII, where it was bombed into oblivion, except for the statehouse, oddly enough, which is huge and looks like a castle (pictures are on the link to the right) There's an old church that was bombed, and now the walls stand as a memorial to all those who died, and its really quite stunning, as the pictures show... We wandered around Hannover, following a red trail through the city that vaguely reminded me of the trail of tears through boston, as poor karen probably heard abt 02e42352894 times yesterday. There are lots of old buildings and historical stuff, and a huge shopping center and fussgaengerzone (pedestrial zone). We also walked down to the lake in hannover, which is a big rectangular thing with boats and fun things, so took pictures of that too! After, we went for dinner at a little falafel house, where i had a lamb doener (mmmmmm) and then we made our way up to the huge english-style garden north of the city, where the fireworks were being held. Admission price to the gardens was 15 euros, and we were prepared to pay it, but when we got off the Ubahn stop, there were people sitting in the grass by the side of the road, so we figured, why not? we sat there for abt an hour, listening to music, before the show started. It was awesome, synchronised to music, and very colorful. I got some relatively good pictures, and a movie, which i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to post (not that mama at home will be able to see with dialup anyways...) We then hopped on the crowded Ubahn when it was over, and jetted back to the haubtbahnhof, in order to catch the last train back to goettingen. We missed the IC by literally a minute, and then had an hour to kill, till the regional train came in. Thankfully, we killed this hour mostly by figuring out how to break the 50 euro bill that karen had, because the ticket machine wouldn't take 50's. We made our way into a little store, and bought things we never knew we needed, like little bottles (and cans) of wine for the trip home, a hand towel, and pretzel sticks! Through further exploration of the train station, we found what appeared to be a headless "nessie" sculpture, which was vaguely depressing, so we decided to liven it up by riding it, see pictures.
Meanwhile, throughout the trainstation are people walking around in strange costumes, asking for stuff. Apparently there's a tradition in germany, where, the night before you get married, part of your bachelor/ette party involves going around and getting random things from people, while dressed as either the perfect hausfrau, or husband? strange, to say the least... In any case, our train eventually got there, and we hopped on, and popped open our respective alcohol selections! Got back to goettingen around 1ish, too late for me to hop the bus back up to weendenord, where i live, so i crashed on karen's couch.

outside of this, apartment searching seems to be sucking, we've only heard back "no"s, if we've even heard back at all, which really really sucks!! i really need to find my own place closer to the city, and karen really needs to find a place with internet.
craptop is now bugging me to restart, so i will give in to its wishes...

happy sunday, hope you all enjoy your weekend! to those of you in TX, i hope you're ok, shoot me an email!!!

-seany

....aaaand we're back!

YAY! so the past few days were spent in Altenberg, which is just outside of Cologne. Its a really old monastery, complete with cathedral, et al. All the english FSA's had to get together here and go through orientation, which was partly fun and partly useless. I got to meet a whole ton of other americans that are gonna be doing the same thing as me, but spread out all over germany, which is great, because i now have couches to surf on!! A bunch of them were really fun, and we ended up hanging out alot, and planning our oktoberfests together, which should be ridiculous!! i finally got to goof around and be myself, instead of trying to behave and not be overanxious re: finding an apartment. It was also really nice to find out that there kinda is a backup system for us in place, and that if we are stuck with something, we can actually do something to change it... i've decided i'm going to register for classes at the Uni here, even tho its gonna cost me an arm and a leg, and i'm hoping that i'll be able to get into this semester still... the beaurocracy involved is staggering, and even more daunting when your german is stuttering at best. oh well, something will work out! I'm going in later to pick up a course catalog, so we'll see what classes i can/want to take!

I don't start teaching until monday, and most likely for the first week or so, i'll just be sitting in on classes, until they can get a normal schedule for me, and teachers put in requests for my time (thankfully not to me!) I think i'm going to fit in pretty well at the school, the teachers are all pretty young and active, and i'm going to try to join in their activities as soon as i can, which will help my german too! I'm also about to post pictures to picasa from goettingen and altenberg, so click the link below, and check out the fun pics!!


CLICK HERE!

Hiho, hiho, its off to cologne we go?

Hi, just wanted to let peeps know that i'm gonna be in cologne until thursday afternoon. We have our orientation thingy, which i'm hoping will prove somewhat useful. I probably won't be online, so feel free to leave comments, messages, emails, whatever! I will be posting pictures from cologne and Goettingen when i come back, so get ready for those!

-seany

almost a week!

Ok, so I landed last tuesday in Frankfurt, after 8 boring hours of non-sleep and not enough legroom, breezed through immigration/customs (they said my German sounded perfect!) and then gathered my luggage, which was ironically the first off the plane. Since I had counted on it taking forever to go through customs, i hadn't booked a train ticket till noon, and it was now barely 7am (2am body time). I made my way through the extremely confusing airport terminal, then ended up having to take the S-bahn into frankfurt proper to go to the haubtbahnhof. (main train station) So i got there in record time, and then had 4 hours to kill... whooopie! i found a nice quiet corner in which to sit, amidst all my crap, and looked like a bum for a few hours. Apparently my ploy to not look american didn't work, as nobody asked me for directions, but i got asked if i needed help finding anything (in english) about 5 times... poo! as it was rapidly approaching the point where my body was about to shut down, i decided it was time to move, and maybe go for some coffee. so i found a starbucks in the train station, walked up to the counter, and ordered a grande something. 20 minutes later, half of it gone, and i remember that i havent eaten in 4 hours, and i have a slight allergy to caffeine.
the next hour or so went by in a pretty quick, jittery blaze. Got on the ICE to Goettingen, sat in the nice, dark, quiet train for about an hour, all the while trying not to fall asleep on my lap. I had told karen, the other fulbrighter in Goettingen, that i was arriving around 1ish, and so she told me she'd try to meet me there. I got off the train and was met by Frau Kramer, who is the head of the english dept at the school i will be teaching at, and karen! we had a nice little convo abt Goettingen, and how dead on my feet i was, and then we went out to lunch. After lunch, she dropped me off at the house where i am staying, and they had hung an american flag up, and had cakes and cookies and coffee all ready for my arrival. I sat in the dining room, glaze-eyed, and lacking in the german skills, also having not showered for the past 40ish hours. I quickly begged out of food, and into a shower, which did wonders for my human-ness. Went back upstairs, met Frau Krause's 4 sons, and proceeded to stare blankly at them as they asked me questions in german. I promised myself that i would stay up till 7pm, and i actually made it, before completely crashing at 7:01. Had the typical terrible night's sleep from jetlag, and only ended up getting about 5 hours.
The next days since then have been mostly spent exploring goettingen, finding good food places, setting up a bank account, registering as a resident of the city, and generally touristing around (no fannypacks tho!) Goettingen is a great little city, lots of really old buildings and cobblestone streets. The entire downtown area is a pedestrian zone, so its a great walking and biking city (reminder to self: GET BIKE!) Karen and i have been mostly inseperable during this time, as we understand each others' broken german, and we're stuck in pretty much the same situation.
On friday, i went into my school to meet Frau Kramer again, and get things with the school all set up. I sat in the teacher's lounge in jeans and a longsleeve T, and i think i was still overdressed... looks like teaching isn't gonna be such a formal job! I got to meet a ton of the teachers, few of who's names i remember, and got lots of requests to come to classes and talk to the students "in real american." I visited a bilingual geography class (6th grade) and was forced to answer questions from the class about myself in english. They all seemed pretty excited that i was there, so that'll be a huge relief! Frau Kramer also talked to me about doing any extracurriculars, and i'm definitely going to be doing that. We're going to have a stammtisch witht the older kids, and probably an american movie night for the younger ones at least twice a month. In addition to that, i'm going to work with karen to try to do a thanksgiving dinner, which should prove quite interesting, considering turkeys are hard to find up here. (no butterball) Yesterday was rainy, and kinda gross, so karen and i decided to have movie day before our WG visiting appointments last night, so we got some good bread, cheese, and wine, and sat in her room, watching movies and generally relaxing. The two apartments we saw last night were really nice, actually! One was only looking for a girl, so karen went up and said she really liked it, the other was looking for either, and it was pretty nice, and in a good location. we left our numbers, and hopefully we'll hear back from them soon. Otherwise, the WG search has been a bit stressful; the demand for living space is so high that the person renting out the room has to choose from a bunch of candidates, which sucks for us! We've seen quite a few of them, most of them completely gross and old, which sucks. In addition to that, these houses were all built before jesus, so the ceilings are all at about forehead level, the rafters are at about chin level, and the doors reach up to my shoulder. I have enough back problems, so those are an automatic no, at least for me! (and for karen, unless she never wants me to ever visit) Today is nice and sunny, and so in a little bit, i'm going to be meeting karen somewhere to do something, not quite sure what, where, or when yet, but something will fall into place, i'm sure. Tomorrow we leave for Koeln for our orientation thingy, which will last thru the 11th. Here, i'm sure we will learn how to open a bank account, register as a resident, find a WG, and do everything else that karen and i have already had to figure out on our own(s) Oh well, at least its another mini-vacation for us!! Plus, we get to see all the other fulbright kids from BC, and everywhere else too. that should provide us with some valuable contacts for where we can couch-surf around germany!!

ok, this has gotten quite long enough, i hope only a few of you has actually made it this far down!! i will be posting pictures either here, or on my picasa account, for which i will provide the link.

hope all is well!!

-seany:o)