Claudia’s Grading, I’m Blogging

I’ve already been reminded by at least a few people over the last few weeks that I haven’t been blogging quite as much as I used to. (It’s actually quite nice to know I actually have readers). And so, whoever is actually reading will notice I’ve been doing some catching up over this last day or 2… and I have so much more catching up to do. I certainly need at least a brief note about the First of May, one of the largest, most outrageous city-sponsored (well, at least they agree to pay for the clean-up) parties I’ve ever seen. And I do have to finish a couple of posts that I started and just never got around to finishing, like the one about the American Idol song competition song I wrote. And Claudia has put in repeated requests for my various experiences dealing with the hardships of the strike and biking to class, to lessons, to the sing-a-longs, in the week of the single most stormingest weather I remember all winter (yes, despite what I said in my previous post, there was actually one week of intense, torrential downpouring, which coincided perfectly with the BVG transit strike), and I still have hopes that I might get around to something more in depth about the weekend in London, and then hopefully I come to just a short bit about Schlachtensee with Natali (not that I don’t have plenty to write about Natali, just not that much about Schlachtensee, which is a really beautiful lake, but just a lake all the same), and the new Deutschkurs, and then maybe even some general thoughts about the German language… I’ll see.

But, at the moment I’m gonna take a short break from blogging in the past, to enjoy blogging in the now. Not that anything particularly interesting is going on at the moment, just hanging in the living room typing while Claudia is hard at work grading away on that neverending stack of student papers (of which she has less than 6 of 21 left to go at this point, Yay Claudia!, and yes, I stand by my choice of the word “neverending” for a variety of reasons which aren’t important right now), and so a typical night at the Claudia-Kenny Wohnung (apartment), although usually I’m doing German homework instead of blogging.

And this is some of my favorite time here, relaxing, sharing a bottle of wine with Claudia as we both tend to our business, taking breaks occassionally to eat, drink, be merry, and then back to it, whatever “it” happens to be on a given night. So, unlike most of my other event-related posts, this one’s in homage to the joyfully mundane… and to Claudia.

Incidentally one of my problems documenting the Claudia story is that she hardly ever lets me take pictures (granted I generally like to take them at the most inopportune times (well, inopportune for Claudia anyway. For me they are quite opportune.) ). But I’ve been more active with the camera lately, after realizing that I had been here many months already and had so few pictures (and incidentally, another problem which will be more and more readily apparent the more photos I upload, is that Claudia’s camera, the one I use, takes really crappy pictures which come out completely blurred more than half the time. No idea why. But I’ve compensated for that a bit by using it to take video).

So when Claudia went to the bathroom tonight, I thought it might be a good idea to go grab the camera to have ready later while she was doing her grading thing and document this most typical of evening activities. Only it occurred to me that, once she became aware of my presence with the camera she might object. So naturally, I pointed the camera at the bathroom door to at least get one good shot of her coming out…

…and there I waited, very quietly, patiently, listening for the door handle to move, finger on the trigger… but what about that delay from the time I press the button till the time the picture actually shoots? a good second and well long enough for her to react and blur tings up real good… or… perhaps I could switch to video mode…
and that’s just what I did. And here is the result.

(note: give the links a good minute or 2 to load. I don’t understand why they should take so long but it seems they do.)

And what’s that? More Claudia you say? I agree. So here’s a little bonus video I took while demonstrating to Claudia the video function on her own camera: Is it on?

And finally here’s a few shots of die Lehrerin (the teacher) in her natural habitat:

“Stupid, stupid students… points deducted here for being stupid… some more here… stupid”

“Hi, I love grading. I have such wonderful students.”

Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island)

Spring is finally here in Berlin. There’s really no mistaking it. There are only 2 seasons here: cloud and no cloud. From about October through most of April a huge blanket of cloud covers the entire Berlin sky… and cries. And it continues to cry, every day, and not too hard, just a whining steady sob. You don’t feel bad for it, you just wish it would shut the hell up and go away because it’s bringing everyone down, but it stays, day after day, month after month, keeping the streets and people not quite soaked, just generally wet. You hope after a while that maybe it’ll let it all out in a huge torrential outpouring of negative emotion and rain, and then it’ll feel better and open up a little.

It doesn’t quite do that, but it does eventually leave, making way for the other season, which we are in right now. Everyday just seems perfect, clear skies, warm weather, people out and about living, making babies, drinking, playing music, feeling good. To celebrate, I went with Natalie last week to Pfaueninsel, a tiny island in the Southwest corner of Berlin where peacocks roam free.

We didn’t actually make it there till about 3 or 4 hours later than we had originally scheduled for a few reasons, namely dinner and church with Dragana the night before, and breakfast with Dragana the day of. And that’s not to make it sound as if any of these diversions were unwelcomed in the least, quite the opposite in fact. Dragana is quite the cook and her lasagna was, I must say, one of the best I’ve had in a long time, all the more impressive because of her strict dietary restrictions (e.g. no garlic or onions among other things). After dinner we went to her church, a Serbian church, for an orthodox Christian ceremony celebrating the Orthodox Easter (which occurs some weeks after the more commonly known Easter). Dragana is actually quite religious and so this was important to her.

We got there about 11:30 pm. The place was packed and when the ceremony began, Dragana was near the front of the congregation singing with the group as they proceeded to go out the door and walk around the church a few times, with the enitre herd of, well, I guess at least a few hundred people following, most of them holding candles. It was actually quite beautiful for a moment but I couldn’t help thinking how much cooler the whole thing would have been with some alcohol and drugs and perhaps some street performers and nudity, and perhaps even a mock battle between the two guys in front with the huge staffs with crosses at the end… anyway, the group made it around the church about three times before Natali and I snuck out for the night, now well past midnight.

Morning came, Dragana called and invited us over to eat, which we did even though we had already eaten, and there we sampled some more of her delicious food, and her husband/boyfriend (can’t remember) offered me some Serbian schapps, homemade by Dragana’s father or uncle or something, and it was delicious, with a sneaky bite that lagged a few minutes behind. After three of these and some pleasant conversation I was ready to see some peacock with Natali.

And so by around 5pm, Ubahn to the SBahn to Wannsee to the bus through the forest to the boat, we made it to Peacock Island. It’s a quite nice place to spend a day, or in this case an evening, calm, peaceful, a few different walking paths around the island to explore, and then you can always go off-path, and then you hear some honking and follow the sound to the beautiful blue peacocks.

We took our time, making our way around the island, watching and playing with the compelling freaks of nature. As we were coming back around towards the dock we spotted 4 peacocks in the tall grass and ventured off to see them up close and feed them some chocolate, when it began occuring to Natali that she wasn’t quite sure what time the island closed and that perhaps we missed the last boat. I laughed it off, playing along a bit, sorta fueling the anxiety as the impulse hit: “well, I guess we’re spending the night here”.

I was quite sure we weren’t stuck there for the night, and though it would’ve given me a whole lot more material to blog about, turned out I was right. That’s not to say I didn’t start to get a bit nervous when I saw the boat comfortably docked without another human in sight. And then when a human did finally appear and I asked him in my horrible German something to the effect of: “Hello, we’d like to go home now” he responded sardonicly in words that, though I couldn’t translate, I understood intuitively meant: “sorry, no more boats today”.

You just don’t see humour like this very often in Berlin, and so, it’s very effective and quite refreshing when you do. After a minute or so watching us squirm he directed us over to the boat with a smile.

Some pics:

 

An albino

“Hmmm… you would go well with my blue carpet. ts ts, here peacock, peacock.”

::sigh:: “He just won’t come”

Chillin’ with a Pfauen

“He went that-a-away”

Last Day of A2 at the VHS – meet my class

The last day of class (now a couple of Fridays ago) was a social day, a big international feast. Many people brought food, drink, and desserts specific to their culture. I thought long and hard about what I could possibly bring: I couldn’t really make hamburgers for 20 for the obvious reasons of money and time and, well, plenty of other logistical details. I even checked wikipedia for American cuisine. I thought about making fudge (which turns out to be American), but by the time I realized this the stores were closed and I had no time.

(incidentally, just a quick note on Thursday: After my first meeting with the new class I met with Natali and went to Phelipe’s (Columbia) from the old class, who was having a small lunch party. Sylvie (It) was there as well as Pascal (Fr.) and his partner. Felipe cooked a really yummy pasta dish and we sipped wine well into the evening. I mention this because, well, I’m trying to alleviate some guilt at not having brought in anything to Friday’s feast, and truth is, I just didn’t have the time after Felipe’s. It was really OK though. We had all explicitly acknowledged in class that bringing in something was completely contingent on everyone’s own situation, time, money, resources, etc. and no one was obligated to or expected to do anything.)
Anyway, Kaveem took some video with his cellphone of the event, which I’ve spent nearly the last 4 hours trying to figure out how to post online to share with my faithful readers. (Basically you can’t upload video to the blog with a free account, nor can you upoad it to flickr and embed it with a free account, and I really didn’t want to pay anything, considering I have my own webpage though it has nothing on it yet). So after much sweat and tears I believe I have successfully uploaded it to my webpage and hopefully I can link to it.

Meet my Class

(hopefully that works). If not, here’s some pics:

A very blurry Me and Natali

Me and Paco (Spain)

Setting up (Much more food to come)

Natali (Ukraine) and Dragana (Serbia)

Thai Girls (Sirirat & Surochai)

A very pregnant Sylvie and Liu

mmmm Lecker!

still Lecker, but from the other angle. (Peace Kaveem!)

Deutsch A2 at the VHS – The Test

I wanted to mention the last few days of the course in my previous post but as I was nearing the end it seemed the political discussion so dominated my other thoughts that it was best just to break off there and leave that as it’s own post. Also, it’s 3:30 am and I must get some sleep.

(continuing after some sleep).

The last Tuesday and Wednesday of class was the big test, a practice test actually, designed to model the actual official test one has to take in order to demonstrate to the state your level and progress. Many people in the class need this for various reasons (showing where they are on the path to integration, receiving certain state benefits and aids, possibly this test would also be the official way to demonstrate to a university that you’ve met entrance requirements, I honestly don’t know). The test is really of no consequence to me at this point, and so I’m really content to move along at my own pace. I hadn’t given much thought to it and so it was almost a surprise when it came.

It’s difficult to know just where you stand in such a class as this, in regards to your level of German, and this is in contrast to my first class at the private school where we were all beginning pretty much from scratch and so, were mostly at the same level. Many in this VHS class had been living in Germany for some time and regularly use and communicate in German fluently, though often with very poor grammar and many errors. Natali (Ukraine) for example, has lived in Germany for 10 years and speaks German quite fluently  but her grammar is not good. Erina (Russia) also speaks German fast and comfortably. Many of the Muslim women speak German comfortably and regularly communicate with each other in German.
I’ve always felt like I was somewhere in the middle to low end. My grammar is not terrible but vocabulary is practically non-existent. I tend to have to look up words 5 or 6 times before they make their way in smoothly. I’m also pretty slow to understand people speaking German at a normal pace.

The test was in 2 parts: Verbal (Tues.) and written (Wed.). For the verbal part we were each paired with a partner and we were to (alone in the room with just 2 teachers/graders) have a Q&A with each other on a certain topic (which turned out to be “daily life”). My partner, as chosen by the teacher, was Natali who’s also my girlfiend. I blanked in trying to think of a question and so I came up with “Wie langa hast du in Deutschland gewohnt? (how long have you lived in Germany)”. This was a flub for 2 reasons: 1. It didn’t match the topic 2. I put Natali in the awkward position of having to admit that she lived here for 10 years and could only speak German at this level. I was quite sure it was a flub as soon as I said it because Natali immediately gave me a look that seemed to say: “WHAT??!!!??” – oops.

Anyway, it was really all in good fun and very casual. The teachers were friendly and laughing all the time, helping us when we needed it.

The next day was the written test which was more difficult than I’d ever imagined it would be. But I went through it slowly and carefully.

Anyway, let’s cut to the chase. I missed class Thursday to attend my new class (which unfortunately overlapped the first week, more on that later I hope), but came back Friday for the final day which was really just a big feast (more on that soon I hope). However, I was quite shocked to find out that I had actually scored second best on the test, a 92!! Second only to Erina (who incidentally didn’t come to class for the last 3 weeks or so. She’s dealing with a lot, including her second child who’s I believe about a year and a half.). They don’t give the tests back, only the number grade, I guess because they follow the official version quite closely and don’t want the questions and answers getting out, and so, to be honest I’m actually deep in my heart a bit skeptical. I know I did OK, but I can’t fully get around the thought that perhaps an extra 1 was carried erroneously or something.

But anyway, there you have it. I can now speak German at the A2 level. I’m taking a course now which focuses only on conversation, also at the VHS (though a different one), and is really just a chance to practice German at the A2 level. I’ll take up B1 in September I think.

Political discussion – Deutschkurs style

(First off, before I begin I want to give a heartfelt shout-out to Jacob Aaron Saltzman, a newcomer to what may be generally referred to as existence. Now it’s only been about 5 days, but it looks like the rookie from Long Beach, Long Island has a promising career ahead here in the field of life. Congrats to the family and particularly to the new dad and my oldest buddy, Jason, who I’ve now known for about ten of eleven elevenths of my own personal existence.)

moving on…

I’m about 2 months and 3 books behind at this point, but since I gotta pick it up somewhere, let’s start about 2 weeks ago with my completion of German A. The process of learning the German language here is quite standardized. I believe there are 3 levels (A, B, and C) each divided into 2 courses (eg. A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2). (I don’t believe there is a D level, but I’m not sure exactly). A couple of weeks ago I completed A2 at the Volkshochschule and so I think some things here deserve some reflection, among which, but likely not limited to, are: the people in the group, the day we discussed politics, comparisons between the 2 schools I’ve so far attended, and the general experience of learning a new language.

I took Deutsch A1 at Die Neue Shule, a private school, with a max class size of 10, where I met some great people, whom I’ve already mentioned some months ago in my early days of blogging when I actually, well… ya know… blogged. (this reminds me I’ve got to remember to shoot some hello emails out to Marco, Cynthia, and Audrey to see what the latest with them is). I enjoyed that group very much. But that’s not why I’m writing now. I mean I wouldn’t mind writing more about that course – there’s still plenty to say afterall – but then I’d really never make any progress in detailing my progress with learning German and my general experience of learning the language. So here the focus is on Deutsch A2 at the Volkshochshule (VHS).

… and like the first, this was a truly wonderful group as well, though there were some interesting differences. The VHS is a wonderful institution run by the state. It’s considerably cheaper than any private school, and many who go there have their tuition subsidized. It draws a lot of people from the huge Turkish population here in Berlin who are doing their best to integrate into the the culture, as well as from a wide variety of other cultures, SES, ages, and general life situations. Some nationalities represented in my class: Chinese, Thai, Ukrainish, Russian, Serbish, Afghan, Spanish, Italian, French, Columbian, Turkish, Kurdish, Pakistani, and I think a few others. Many women were married with children, at least one was pregnant with her first, at least one guy was gay… well, not to go off on too much of a tangent here, but the point is, it was a wonderfully diverse and interesting group.

Unfortunately, this post is going to have to be a bit disjointed, because I’m really trying to sum up 3 months in about as many paragraphs. Every week was interesting, and so many people had such colorful stories which naturally lent themselves to such interesting conversations, but just to choose a single particularly interesting day, a couple of weeks before the end of the course we did a unit on politics. This was basically about learning the words and language to talk about the German parliamentary system (most of which I’ve already forgotten) but, as with every topic, we do a variety of exercises and have open discussions – an important part of becoming comfortable with learning a new language.

So Anke, the teacher, put the question out there about how important understanding politics is in our own life and why. I had a lot of opinions but since I’m a little slower with my German than many others in the class, and since this was such a complicated topic, I thought I’d sorta sit back and observe a little. Some of the Muslim women in the class, along with Kaveem (Pakistan) were quite vocal to start the conversation and some others from Western Europe joined in. I can’t remember specifically what they all said but there was general agreement about, well…, about everything.

With this discussion, as with my total experience here in Berlin thus far, it is the similarities rather than differences I find most striking. I’ll never forget my first day, first month, first time this or that, how anxious I was to do just about anything: (e.g. crossing the street – “oh, they stop on the red and go on the green too”). Everything was alien, and so I naturally adopted the perspective that I was alien to everything. This I think is a better way to approach things than beginning with the assumption that everything is familiar and thus learning the differences.

So it was striking to me how everyone emphasized ideas such as freedom, democracy, justice, empowerment… how important it is to be informed in order to hold those in power accountable for their actions. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was open to it, whatever it was, and it didn’t come, and that was striking to me.

Anke was looking around the class, making eye contact with different people trying to draw them into the discussion, and I had the distinct impression that she was focusing a bit more on me than on others at this point, perhaps to get a US perspective. I had been quiet up till now, but I did want to say something. And so I began (and bear in mind we’re all having this discussion with the pedestrian vocabulary of people at the A2 level) “Politics is important to me because, the politics of my homeland is important to the whole world” … and instantly I could feel everyone nodding in agreement with me, acknowledging the fact that their worlds are so affected by US politics… and I continued… “und die letzte 8 Jahre war sehr schlecht (and the last 8 years were very bad)”… and at this point I couldn’t even look up anymore, it was difficult to continue… but… “und ich weiss was passiert wenn die Leute nicht politik verstehen (and I know what happens when the people don’t understand the politics)”…

…inside I was holding back tears. I was apologizing for what my government has done, for the trust the world put in us and how the current administration betrayed that trust. Even though people in the US have gradually been waking up to the fact that this administration is incompetent and downright disastrous, I don’t think that most people are truly aware of just how much damage has been done to the image of the US in the world, and how important that image is. (I’m half tempted at this point to continue on this tangent which could easily fill many books, and already has, from the manufactured case to go to war in Iraq, to warrantless wiretapping, to suspension of Habeus Corpus, to Karl Rove’s brilliantly evil campaign tactics, to Alberto Gonzales, to redefining “torture”, and the list just goes on and on and on… but I really didn’t mean for this post, nor this blog in general, to be political in nature and I have other things I need to get to. I will, however, recommend the always brilliant Frontline (PBS) with Bush’s War, available online in 10 minute segments, and well worth the time.)

Anyway, class discussion continued, and for awhile about the US. It truly is amazing just how much everyone knows about US politics. I think it was Kaveem (Pak.) who brought up the Florida recounting fiasco and others jumped in to talk about. Sylvie (Italy, pregnant) was involved as well, and she in particular is very knowledgeable in world politics in general (I believe that was her field of study and is her career. I do know that she had spent a few years in Afghanistan either in a political or perhaps humanitarian capacity, not sure exactly).

But that wasn’t the last interesting episode of the day. Then Anke came around to Liu from China. Liu is a sweet guy, at about 6 years or so my junior I believe the youngest in the class. He rides the same train as me for 2 stops on his way home and so we talked frequently after class almost daily, mostly small talk to practice our German together. He’s often smiling and I get the feeling he’s a devout church-going god-fearing Christian. He’s easy to talk to at this level of conversation and so always a welcome subway companion.
Liu responded to Anke that he did indeed think that understanding politics was important. Anke, visibly interested in Liu’s perspective, probed further and asked what he thought of politics in China. He responded in a sorta naive youngish way, “I think the politics in China are good”, and with that you could sorta feel the class collectively groan in disagreement. Anke probed a little further asking some more slightly pointed questions that I can’t exactly remember now, but Liu stuck to his initial opinion acknowledging here and there that “yes, perhaps that is not so good, but in general it is good”. Anke turned to the rest of the class to see if anyone wanted to get involved in the discussion. Paco (Spain) said something to the effect of “no comment”… and with that class had ended for the day.

Walking with Liu to the train after class, he asked me if I understood the topic today (remember, I’m generally translating here. Again, we’re speaking Deutsch like 6 month olds.) I replied that yes, I did and I thought it was very interesting. He then kinda confessed that he really didn’t know much about politics and he just didn’t know what exactly to say (not surprising considering he’s, I think, 25 or 26 not to mention from a country with a communist ruling party which suppresses information from beyond their borders, but mainly not surprising to me because of his age. Sadly I don’t remember having much political awareness at 25 either). So I asked a little about access to information and censorship of the internet and his thoughts. He said simply that earlier it was bad but it’s getting better. I really wanted to talk more but we only had a few minutes before he had to make his transfer and this was a bit of a complicated topic considering our Deutsch skills at this point, and he didn’t seem to have much info to offer anyway.

Anyway, this would be a good point to end this topic, but I did want to also briefly mention a related episode in class a day or 2 later (typically topics in class last a week) when we were doing activities in groups of 3. I was in a group with Liu and Lina (Lebanon). I haven’t had much contact with Lina but she always seems very sweet and friendly and my impression of her is that she’s also quite intelligent. The activity was to discuss with each other the systems of government of our homelands and to ask each other questions. I believe Lina was at least familiar with the names of all 3 US candidates in the running, and some of the basic aspects of the political system such as the names of our 2 primary parties. (frankly, I can’t really explain it that well past a certain point. This stupid super-delegate system that the democrats have come up with is so utterly self-defeating, and ironically undemocratic, and really makes no sense that I can work out). Lina tried to describe the system she has in Lebanon, but she also could only get to a certain point before breaking into a laugh and dismissing it as “kompliziert zu erklären (complicated to explain)”. However, I could grok that it was basically democratic in nature with multiple parties that each have comparable amounts of power currently. Liu then explained as best he could the one party system of China. Lina and I kinda looked at each other smiling, I think thinking the same thing. So I asked Liu, do you think this is good? He said he believes the current leader of the Communist party, Hu Jintao I think, is a good leader, and is good for China, compared to previous leaders. Liu did acknowledge that with the one party system when the leader is good then everything is good, but when he’s bad then the system is bad. Me and and Lina were practically jumping out of our seats trying to ask the next question: well when he’s bad is there any recourse for the people? Liu thought for a second and sorta replied: well, no, not really.

And that’s where the current story ends folks.