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)