Dear Everybody,

Sorry. It's been too long.

I figure I have a decent excuse as to why I haven't blogged in what seems like 2 months. Wait, it HAS been almost two months. Damn. But honestly, I've been have such a great time over here.

At first, it was quite difficult to get into a solid daily routine because of my odd work hours (1 PM - 9 PM Monday through Friday). It was damn hard to coax myself out of bed because there really was no reason to wake up before, say, 10 or 11 AM. I'm definitely not complaining, I know a lot of people who would kill to be able to sleep until late without getting fired.

But, you see, I never got anything done doing things this way. I would wake up late, get or make something quick for breakfast, and shortly be off on my way to work. Then, I'd get home around 9:30 and I'd be too tired from teaching some of the cutest Korean students to do anything. So I'd get in bed a watch a movie.

Not conducive to a healthy blogging environment. No, not at all.

So, while I've been away, I've been working hard. I have completely altered my schedule. Mom, you would be proud of me. Now I wake up somewhere in between 8:30 and 9 AM and, in doing so, leaving myself plenty of time to exercise, make a well-balanced breakfast, and (not until now, of course) do a little blogging.

Go me.
___________________________________

So, anyways, here is a brief recap of some of my endeavors since the last post:

1) I've been working a lot. I really have no real complaints about my job. The children are wonderful. I have to admit, they are much more fun to teach and be around than my former German students. The reason is simple - almost all of the WANT to be there. They want to learn, come prepared, and try hard. And they like to have fun doing it. Makes life a lot easier.

2) Had my first Korean Halloween. I had no clue as to what I wanted to be. I haven't had to think up a costume in the longest time, because I was always traveling or playing football games on Halloween in college. So, some friends and I went to a costume shop, and this was where I found (and fell in love with) a Jesus-type wig/beard combo. So, I was Jesus for Halloween. It made for a good laugh when out at the Halloween parties.

3) I went to Seoul again. This time the sole (get it?) objective wasn't to party all night. Instead, it was a nice, quiet, early Saturday afternoon trip with my main group of people. This group, consisting of Rhys, Stacey, Jamie, Emma, and Sarah, is my go to group when going out or doing anything. Nice people. So we all went up to Seoul and sat down for an absolutely delicious, 3-hour, Western lunch (I had a great burger, some fries, and a couple of good beers - Erdinger and Kilkenny). Then we all did a little bit of shopping. Rhys and I hit up the electronics market, which Rhys tells me is the largest one in Asia. I don't doubt it, either. This place was incredible. Long story short - I ended up buying myself and early Christmas present - and iPod Touch. The way I figured it, I had plenty of cash and hadn't treated myself to something nice in a long time. Not to mention, my iPod from 2004 is kaput. The Touch is wicked awesome and, IMO, a good buy.



These are kind of the main highlights. On the weekends, we often go downtown to have a few (and normally a few more) drinks at a few of our favorite places. Rhys recently introduced me to a bar called Rolling Stone, and it's already my favorite. The owner has a vinyl collection of pure classic rock. He must have over 3,000 records. He gives you paper so you can write down requests, and he just hangs out and keeps the music playing. The beers, although it's a bit pricey (you pay for the atmosphere) is self-serve. It is awesome.

I've also seen some great movies: District-9, One Week, and Inglorious Basterds. I recommend each one. One Week, in particular, is one you should all see. It don't know how big it was Stateside, but I really enjoyed that one. See it.


Here is a video of one of my favorite students, Robert. He's 9 years old. He loves cleaning, taking baths, and looking outside. None of these answers have been doctored, he seriously enjoys these things. Sadly, Robert wont be coming back to Langcon next semester, for reason unknown. Jamie and I like him so much that we're thinking of asking his mother if we can, on occasion, offer to hang out with him on Saturdays, just to have the kid around. He's SO funny.



Here's a few photos. One Jesus shot and then a bunch of the kids from my school. As you can see, they are adorable and fun to be around.






















Anyways, I have to be on my way. My laundry is almost finished and I have to hang it up to dry. Then a nice hot shower is beckoning me - did I mention how damn cold it is here already? In the evenings, the temperature routinely dips down to -1 degrees Celsius. And it's only November 19th.

I'll try to make this whole blogging in the morning thing a routine.

Much love to you all.

-r

My School - Avalon Langcon

Be amazed people.

That's right - I'm doing my second blog post in as many days. I'm really letting my hair down. Well, I guess I can only figuratively do that now, since I recently buzzed all of my hair off..all by myself. I don't really know why. It was kind of spur of the moment. But now that it's short, I'm enjoying it - less maintenance, less annoying, easier. Although, it is quite cooler on my dome nowadays. And definitely not as stunning. But there are always trade-offs. The other good news about it is that it showed me that I'm not balding - here's to hoping that never starts!


I've really enjoyed my job as a teacher so far. Colleagues are great, the two front desk folks, Kevin and Claire (Jasper thought Matilda was too "old" of a name, she it's since been changed to Claire) are very nice and helpful, and the kids, on the whole, are adorable and hard working.

When I started out, my teaching schedule was a little confusing. I had missed the week of training that Jaime and Miranda did, so I wasn't clued into just how our school worked. I kind of had to learn on the fly.

We teach kids that range in age from the 1st to 4th grade - so they're either just starting English or have had a year or two already. The class levels are broken up into two sections: the Base Camp Group (for beginners) and the Columbus Group (for the slightly more advanced kids). The Base Camp Group has three levels, which are, in ascending order, Atlas, Compass, and Telescope. I have three different Telescope classes. The Columbus Group is broken up into (again, in ascending order) the Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, Navigation, and Discovery Groups (I think think the "sail boat/discovering America" theme is clever). I have three Nina classes, one Pinta, one Navigation, and one Discovery. I can basically converse normally with my Navigation and Discovery classes - the students are very intelligent and quite advanced.

How many times certain classes come to our school also varies. We have 5 day classes, 3 day classes (MWF), and 2 day classes (TT). All in all, I end of having five classes a day - starting at 2:30 and ending at 8:40. I have to be at school at 1 for preparation, lesson planning, meetings, and any grading that needs to be done. We are required to stay until 9 PM, but those last 20 minutes only really allow me to clean up and get organized for the next day.

So you can see how, at first, I was a little discombobulated. It took about a week to get into the flow of things, and now it's a piece of cake. What's great is that the weeks absolutely fly by because it's quite the fast paced working environment and the kids make it very fun.

Let me tell you - the way to win a Korean student's heart is to play rock, paper, scissors with them. I think I'm simply known as "Look! There's the teacher that always plays rock, paper, scissors! Let's go see if we can beat him."

That reminds me of another perk of the job: In Korea, students don't call their teacher "Ms. So and So" or "Mr. So and So." Rather, they call all the teachers "Teacher." If they like you or can remember your name, you'll get the "Teacher (insert your name here)." I get a lot of the "Teacher Russell!" Very cute. When walking through the halls, you basically hear one of three things (or a big jumble of all three): "Teacher!" or "Kai Bai Bo!" (rock, paper, scissors in Korean) or simply an ear piercing array of incessant screaming as the students run and play.

Remember to check out my Flickr Photostream to see some photos of my school.

I also plan on getting more photos of some of my students (maybe I'll secretly pick my favorite ones or just take class shots) and some shots of my now almost hairless head.

Hope you liked the reading.

Ciao!

-r

Hi folks!

I hope you are all doing well. I certainly am.

It's been quite some time since my last post and I'm sure that you are all simply dying to read something, anything about my goings on in Soko.

So let's get started. But please bear with me, as I am about to try to recall some stuff from several weeks ago. Luckily, there are a lot of photos that can do most of the talking.

I went to Seoul a while back (some of you may remember my Facebook status, "Going on the Seoul Train") with a few co-workers and friends. In all, the official group ended up being Jaime (one of my better friends here in Soko; we work together; live in the same building), Sarah (a teacher at Avalon, the main branch of my school and fellow Washingtonian!), Lucy (a teacher at Avalon as well), and Jasper (a native Korean, co-worker, and an overall fun guy).

We left fairly early, riding on the KTX - Korea's equivalent to Europe's high speed ICE trains. Thirty minutes later, we were there. Not bad. We dropped Lucy off at her hotel so she could get some shut-eye. Lucy is a self-proclaimed insomniac and hadn't slept much the night before. Meanwhile, the other two girls and I went and did some exploring of the Itaewan district in Seoul.

A few initial observations of Seoul: 1. Humongous. There are 24.5 million people in Seoul and is the 8th largest city in the entire world. Hot damn. I think it goes without saying that I'll be making many a trip up to Seoul just so I can properly experience everything it has to offer. 2. Fun. There are tons of things to do, rangning from touring and checking out historical sites to the great night life. 3. Kind of expensive. Korea, more or less, is a damn cheap place. You can make a little go a long way. But Seoul is a little more expensive than what I've grown accustomed to here. Even so, it's not that bad when comparing it to Berlin, Amsterdam, Seattle, NYC, or any other place like that.

The bulk of our day was spent at the Gyeongbokgung Palace (which means "Palace Greatly Blessed by the Heavens"). It is a royal palace and was first constructed in 1394. It is the main (and largest) of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. If you don't know about the Joseon Dynasty, look it up. Pretty impressive. Anyways, the Palace was destroyed by the Japanese early on in the 19th Century and is still being rebuilt. Amazingly, only 40% of it has been rebuilt! Nonetheless, this place was awe-inspriring. I can't even begin to imagine what it'll look like when fully restored.

The highlight of the Palace tour was definitely the traditional Korean tea ceremony at the end. Our guide brought us to the last building on the tour, where we got to sit down and listen to traditional Korean music played on some radical traditional Korean instruments. After the music, we were taught the official "tea bow" (I don't know what one calls it, so we'll just call it that. What you basically need to know is that it's a lot more intricate than your simple everyday bow). The host then had all the men in the room stand up and, after watching all of us bow, chose the 4 best dudes to come to the front and have a "bow-off." I was one of the guys. So we all did the bow and were rated based upon how loud the cheer from the crowd was. I, being the attention to detail guy that I am (joking), was rewarded with the loudest cheer and was sent to the back room for further "preparation." One thing must be noted - the two girls I was with, Jaime and Sarah, are most likely the reason for my winning. They were loud.

So, I am in the back room and, right when I appear, a few Korean ladys start dressing me in some real old school, traditional Korean clothing for the ceremony that was about to take place. After a couple of minutes, once I and the winner of the female's division were dressed, we were presented to the (rather large) group. Amidst loud cheering and jeering, my Russian companion performed our bows (men and women have different bows in these ceremony) flawlessly - and then the ceremony began. My friend and I got to sit in the front of the room while the rest of the show played out. We also were presented with the tea first, me being the only sucker in the entire room drinking my tea out of a bowl. I would later conclude (most likely erroneously) that it was because I was the king. That's right, me, Russell, a king for a day. Ha!

Afterward, we slowly made our way back to meet up with a well-rested Lucy. On the way, we cam across a wicked fountain that seemed to be quite the central hub for people to hang out. It was also a hot day, so there was a plethora of wild children running around and having the time of their lives.

The evening was fairly typical for a night of partying in Korea - hopping to one place to another, staying out until the sun comes up, and lots of fun being had. Jaime and I opted out of paying for a hotel, hostel, or anything else. Instead, we thought it would be better (and much cheaper) to simply party through the night with Jasper and a few friends of his that we met up with and then take the train home in the morning, once they started running again. Long story short, Jaime and I walked into the door of our building at around 7 in the morning - completely dead and partied out. But we had a great time with our friends in Seoul.


Now you're probably thinking to yourself, "Where are these bloody photos that he was talking about??!" It's a completely rational thought, and I understand.

I decided against uploading photos onto my blog this time around. It took too long and I couldn't share the whol collection with you. Instead, I thought it would be way cooler (and easier for moi) to quickly upload all the photos on Flickr and give you the link. So here you go:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30716372@N05/

You can go ahead and bookmark this page. Hell, make it your homepage. I'm going to be putting all of the photos that I deem appropriate here, so check back regularly. You'll also notice I have some photos of my wonderful school there as well. A post on that place will come eventually. Enjoy!!

Damn, long post. I'll spare you. Hope you liked the reading. To everyone back home - I miss you! I think about you all a lot and often wonder how you are doing. Expect random Skype calls here and there. Much love to you all!

Cheers.

-r

The Beginning

Welcome back!

I've been living over here on the other side of the big pond for exactly 9 days now - so I'd say a post is long overdue. And judging by some comments I've heard (mainly my pops and sister), you think so too.

I arrived at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea, "soko," Last Friday at 4:30 in the morning, Korea Time. After going through a gauntlet of tests and formalities - a swine flu quarantine test (I passed), immigration, and customs - I lugged my weary body over to the baggage claim area and found that both of my bags had safely arrived. If you remember, this wasn't the case when I arrived in Germany about a year ago. Things were looking up.

After that, I had to buy a bus ticket to Cheonan, the place I will be calling home for the next 12 months, and figure out a way to call my boss, Jason, and let him know my arrival time - so he could pick me up and bring me to my sweet single apartment. Now, I didn't have a working cell and the payphones were understandably difficult to decipher. Imagine me standing there, in the middle of a humongous, bustling airport, at 6:30 in the morning, with all of my belongings for the year sitting around me in two large packs - and with no clue how to make a phone call. After some quick "field research," I learned that I could rent a cell phone for a reasonable price, make a call, and return it right then and there. If I remember correctly, it ended up costing me 70 American cents. Not bad - this will continue to be a theme in Soko - stuff is CHEAP here.

I made it onto the correct bus in time and settled into my seat, getting comfortable for another 2 hours of being in transit. I was enjoying the scenery when, all of a sudden, I found myself waking up in an idling bus - I was so tired that I apparently fell immediately into a stone-cold slumber. I was supposed to meet Jason at a Coffee Bean (a coffee shop my sister couldn't stop talking about before I left. I guess lots of "stars" go to the ones situated in areas where "stars" live, L.A. maybe?). While grabbing my bags from underneath the bus, a dude taps me on the shoulder and asks if I was Russell; it was Jason and he decided it'd be easier to just walk the 50 meters from the coffee bean and meet me at the bus stop. Nice.

A short stop by the school I teach at to pick up my cell phone (which is nicer than any I've ever had in my life up until this point) was the only thing that separated my from my apartment and some much needed sleep.

I walked into my apartment to find this: An already made-up bed, a washer (no dryer), fridge, stove, various necessary kitchen utensils, television, places to store and hang my clothing, iron/ironing board, and sweet wooden floors. All I could think was one thing: RADICAL!

I then proceeded to throw my stuff in the corner and pass out on my bed for several hours, for the television, gas, and internet dudes would be coming by to hook everything up at 4:00 PM.

That evening, I went out to dinner with 3 of my 4 eventual colleagues: Jasper (one of the two native Korean teachers), Jaime (from Philadelphia), and Miranda (a Canadian). It was a good time and, I'm happy to say, I think we are all going to get along very well this year. They are all very nice, respectful, and fun-to-be-around individuals. My 4th colleague is a guy name Julius, who is the other native. He is a well-traveled and very polite/courteous person. Each brings something different to the table, so to speak, so we enjoy our time together.

So, all told, I think I had quite the successful journey to Cheonan, South Korea. No lost wallets, no lost baggage, no wrong turns, and no missed buses. It's been only 9 days and I've already fallen in love with the area, culture, and food (all 3 topics will make for good post material later).

Okay. This post was just a little "Costco taste test". In the following couple of days, I'm going to be throwing up posts about my incredibly awesome school (that will include pictures, hopefully a few of my adorable students) and my first trip to Seoul (which was amazing).

Thanks for reading.

-Russell

p.s. - Everyone back home: Miss you!! Much Love.

A Change to the Blog

Hello, folks.

As you all know (I hope), I've returned to America. I've been here for several weeks now and it sure is great to be back. I do, of course, truly miss everything about living in Germany. I'll never forget the friends I made over there and the things that I was lucky enough to have done. I also hope to eventually return to that part of the world and hopefully stay for a little longer.

All that being said, my travels and blogging does not stop here.

I will soon be embarking on a new, rather exciting adventure. In early September, I will be leaving the country once again, this time towards Asia - South Korea, to be more specific. I'm very excited to experience this part of the world!

(For those interested: I found a job as an English teacher over there. But it wont be a cake-walk like I had it in Germany - I'll be working a full workload for a teacher. No more 12 hour work weeks!)



Obviously, I would be a fool to leave my blog URL (russingermany) and title ("Fulbright Adventures") the way they are when I am no longer in Germany or on the Fulbright. This brings me to the main reason for my post: Stay tuned for a change in URL. I wanted to give you all a fair warning with this. Unless I want to buy a new URL, which would direct you to it if you were to type in my "russingermany" URL, I will be forced to change www.russingermany.blogspot.com.

To make things easy for you (and me), I was thinking something like www.russinsoko.blogspot.com would be perfect. "SOKO" is short for South Korea.

So, consider yourself warned. Stay tuned!

Cheers,

Russell.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, my 10 months or so in Germany is just about over. I'll be leaving on a jet-plane come this Friday at 10.00 AM German time.

Boy, what a year it's been. So much has happened - here in Germany, back home in the States, and all around the world - while I've been here that I don't even know where to begin.

I thought I'd give you a nice little recap of the year's happenings, but with so much having happened over a pretty long chunk of time, it'd be almost impossible to go over it all.

So I came up with the not-so-original idea of throwing it all down in a neat and orderly list, Momma Wacker style (this joke is only understood if you're in my immediate family. Let's just say that Mom likes making lists :) ).

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Los Geht's!! (Let's go!)

Places I've been/Things I've done:

-Oktoberfest: word cannot express how cool/fun this experience is. Everyone should go at least once in their life. And I mean the REAL Oktoberfest, not the fake one they do in Leavenworth.

-A bike tour with the ever so kind and friendly Baumann Family on the Mosel River, which is deep in the heart of the German wine country

-Berlin x4 (Met a good friend, Erin; Took two of my best friends from home, Sara and Leah, there; Fulbright Conference/Wacker Family Meeting; Met two college football teammates, Steve Martin and Drew Watkins.

-Hamburg x4 (Met my good buddies, Ian and Sean; Day trip with the Baumann Family; Met my aunt, Anna-Maria there for a 'soccer' match; Met my three good friends from the Fulbright, Ian, Alex, and Erin, there for a final get-together blowout party)

-Amsterdam x4 (Went with Alex, Ian, and Ashley - another Fulbright friend; Went with Leah and Sara; Went with two friends I made here in Bremen, Mena from Italy and Cristina from Spain; Met back up with Steve and Drew - They paid for my train tickets and place to sleep! Thanks again guys)

-Koeln (Cologne) and Duesseldorf with Leah and Sara.

-Saw a Sankt Pauli 'soccer' match with my awesome aunt Anna-Maria in Hamburg. Thanks for the t-shirt!! Then met up with Ian and chilled and threw the Frisbee around for a while.

-A field trip to a zoo with class 6B.

-A field trip to go ice-skating with the 5th and 10th grade classes.

-A field trip to go on a tour of Weser Stadium with class 6A.

-A week-long field trip with both 5th grade classes to a pony ranch (so much fun!)

-Went to a concentration camp with my family. Kind of a downer, I know, but it's something I feel is very important to learn about and be aware of.

-Had a big, huge, Wacker/Olbrich family meeting/party in Eckernfoerde (Where my mommy was born). It was the first time in the history of our families that we were all there together at once. A major big deal.

-Visit the little island of Fehmarn with my family. Both my mother's and father's families come from this island - small world!

-I met my cousins Jan, Tim, and Leif in Kiel for Kieler Woche. Great time. I spen most of the time with Jan and got to know him pretty well. See you in the Summer of 2010, hopefully!


Whew! I'm tired after just writing that!


Things that have happened since I left home:

-My sister got engaged! Of course, her fiance, Trever, had to wait until after I left. Oh well, all the same. Congrats to them! They're officially getting hitched in July 2010.

-OBAMA was elected!! (YES WE CAN!)

-Preposition 8 passed in California...unfortunately.

-China walks on the Moon for the first time.

-A $700 billion bailout of our terrible economy is approved by Congress.

-O.J. Simpson is finally convicted - of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room.

-Pirates are back!! Jack Sparrow from 'Caribbean,' from the real ones.

-Madonna and Guy Ritchie split up after 8 years.

-Russia invaded Georgia.

-North Korea begins acting like a crazy communist country again and tests missiles and a nuclear bomb. The whole world is mad at them.

-Air France Flight 447 crashes somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, all 228 people on board were killed.

-Go Obama! Yes We Can! Wooohoo!

-I was offered (and accepted) a job to teach English in South Korea!

-One of my good friends and college football teammate, Beau Jacobson, passed away. R.I.P. Beau, I miss you brother.

-Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays (the OxiClean man), David Carridine ("Bill" from the Kill Bill movies), and Paul Newman passed away. R.I.P. folks.

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A lot has sure has happened since I left Seattle on August 23rd, 2008. I had the incredible opportunity to experience the wonders of Deutschland, thanks to the Fulbright Fellowship.

But the journey does not end here: Like I just stated above, I'll be going to South Korea sometime around the beginning of September and will, of course, continue blogging.

I'd like to thank you all for reading my blog. I know sometimes it must have been a ride of highs and lows - boring/dry at some parts and incredibly fantastic at others (only joking, probably only just fantastic, hehe). I just hope you had as much reading about my experiences in Germany as I did writing/having them.

Make sure to check back 'ab und zu' (every now and then), I may just post something worth reading during the summer!

Much love to you all-

-Russell

I know that it's already past midnight where I'm at, so it's actually Sunday for me - but it's still Saturday back home in Bothell..

Saturday, July 27th, is the late Beau Jacobson's birthday.

I just wanted to take a moment to remember him. Happy birthday, Beau, where ever you're at now. I miss you like crazy, brother.

The world is definitely a worse off place without you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTYi4I30ye0
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Stay tuned for a final post - recapping my exciting year in Germany!

Hope you're all doing well,

-Russell

The Last Days of School

This is the first post I have written while at school. I really just couldn't wait to tell you about the highlights from these last couple of days.

This past weekend I met up with my cousin, Jan, in Kiel for Keiler Woche ('Kiel Week') Here is a link to some good information on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_Week. I arrived on Saturday around 11.15 AM or so, and the fun immediately ensued.

There is really a lot to do and see during Kieler Woche, which is probably one of the reasons why it is a week long (it's actually something like 9 days, but it'd we weird to call it 'Kieler 9-Tage Fest' or something). All kinds of great, delicious food, good drinks, rides - one being called the Power Tower, which shoots you straight up and down at high speeds, http://www.powertower2.de/ - and so forth.

Jan and I mostly did a bunch of walking, talking, eating, and checking things out. Unfortunately, we didn't do any of the scary rides, with me being pretty poor these days and Jan having no desire (those rides, apparently, are a lot more scary/dangerous when you're about 6'4" tall!!). Later, we met up with Jan's two brothers, Tim and Leif, Tim's girlfriend, and a friend of Leif's. It was really nice to simply be able to hang out with these cousins of mine who I honestly didn't really know before I came to Germany. I think that might have been the best part of the trip. But Kieler Woche was pretty radical as well.

On Monday, I only had one class. Afterwards I spend a good amount of time doing the lame and necessary things such as returning class books and cleaning out my little locker (lots and lots of paper in the form of worksheets, etc). In the evening, at 'home,' my far too nice guest family and I had a very nice 'Abschluss' dinner. What I'm basically trying to say is that we had one last, big, and delicious dinner as a group. The two parents of the family are actually leaving Germany before I do, as they are headed over to Ireland for a couple-week Summer vacation very early this Friday morning - exactly a week before I hit the road (or..air, I guess..). Great food, great conversation. An overall good time with them. If any of you - Jochen, Sigrid, Helge, Oliver, und Devi - are reading this, I just want you to know that I can't thank you enough. With your help and hospitality, my year in Germany was much easier than what it could have been. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!!!

Today, Tuesday, was also awesome. I was invited to an Abschluss breakfast with both 5th grade classes and their teachers, and Herr Slama, who is retiring after one more day of school tomorrow. Together, we all made up the entire Pony Ranch Fieldtrip group. It was a lot of fun to hang out with the cute and funny 5th graders, whom I got to watch grow up SO MUCH in just this past year. At the end of the breakfast, Herr Slama and I were given some very nice and thoughtful gifts. I was given a small book, with the pages being made up of short letters and pictures from all of the students. Some tried their best to write in English and the most were in German, but it's a great gift. Something I can always have to remember two of my favorite classes by. I also was given a short DVD with pictures from our incredibly fun field trip to the pony ranch. Very awesome stuff. THANK YOU FRAU RAUBE, FRAU FISCHER, AND CLASSES 5A and 5B!!!

Well, that's that. Tomorrow is my last day of school here at the Heinrich-Horstmann-Schule. I've been invited to yet another Abscluss Breakfast tomorrow morning, this time with the 6B. After that, I might never work/teach another day in Germany for the rest of my life (but hopefully not!!!). Then I'll be starting the always fun task of packing my life back up into a few suitcases, closing accounts, and cleaning my room. Great.

Stay tuned for one last big post. I plan to review the year and so forth. Should be interesting, I hope.

Aufwiedersehen!

-Russell.

The Auslaenderbehoerde

Boy-oh-boy. I hope you're comfortable, because I've sure got a story for you.

On Thursday (June 18th) I had to go to the Auslaenderbehoerde in Bremen. This long and confusing word translates to "foreigners' registration office." I think the English title is pretty self-explanatory: If you live in Bremen, and you aren't a German citizen, you have to go to this wonderful place to register yourself. I've had to go here once before to get my visa extended. Had I not done that, I would have been sent home after my initial 90-day "tourist visa" had expired.

Here are some observations and complaints from my 2nd go-around at the Auslaenderbehoerde:


I arrived at precisely 6:37 AM. I know because I made it a point to check. I checked because I had been specifically told to come an hour and a half before they actually open because so many foreigners have been coming the last few weeks to prepare for the Summer break, and I had a feeling that it was going to be a long day of waiting.

I was right.

I ended up being there for almost 6 hours. SIX HOURS!!! I left the damn place at, again - this is a precise time, 12:15 PM.

Here's why I think it takes so long: Every single foreigner is lumped together into one group. It doesn't matter why you are there. It could be to get a simple stamp on your passport; it could be to pay a fee in order to have your visa extension go through; it could be to apply for a visa extension (this is pretty much what I had to do. But I only needed a 4-day extension). My visa expires on the 30th of June, and I am flying out of here on July 3rd - so there is a 3 day window where I would have been living here "illegally." Before I went, I had asked if I could simply go to the airport with an expired visa and my flight plan, thinking that they would let me go because I was going home, and that's where they send someone with an expired visa - back to where they came from; but they basically said, "No, you would subsequently encounter lots of complications from the asshole border patrol and probably miss your flight." Great.

So, I show up at 6:37, and the line has already made it's way outside. And I thought that I was being tricky by showing up so "early." HA! I get in line. After a couple of minutes I find out that the line I am standing in is the line to pre-check-in before we actually officially check-in. Once I make it to the front, I hand over my passport, they write my name, country of origin, and purpose of visit on a piece of paper that looks like it was just pulled out of the wastebasket. Then they tell me, "You can go up to 'Waiting Room #2' and wait. We will begin calling people down to 'Waiting Room #1' to check in at 7:45. So I had about a 45 minute wait before I could check-in and wait some more.

When 7:45 rolls around, a very soft-spoken man starts calling people off the list - 15 people at a time. My name gets called in the 3rd round. I am sternly ordered to go down to 'Waiting Room #1' and get in line to check in.

After standing in the official check-in line for about 30 minutes, my turn finally arrives. I start talking to the nice looking lady and explain my situation:

"Hi, I need to extend my visa, but only for 4 days. It expires on the 30th and I'm leaving the country for good on the 3rd of July. I was told by this office that I HAD to come here and do this," says Russ in a polite tone of voice.

"No. You may not do this today," check-in lady says matter-of-factly. "You have been given an appointment on the 30th to extend you visa. There are other people who are more important than you today."

"But I WONT BE HERE on the 30th. I wont be in Bremen. The appointment does not work for me. That is why I am here today. I wouldn't come here to wait forever if I didn't have to," says I.

This went on for a couple of minutes, for the lady could not comprehend that I was leaving and that I wouldn't be in Bremen on the 30th (I will be in Bad Salzuflen, at my Uncle Wode's). It took some explaining and stern words, but I finally got her to cancel my appointment and check me in for that day. This is where the waiting OFFICIALLY began.

By this time, it is around 9:00 AM. I had already been there for almost 2.5 hours, and I just now started actually waiting. Sweet.


This is where I want to give you a little list of the types of people you might see at the Bremen Auslaenderbehoerde:

-Lots of babies who cry incessantly.

-85-90% Turkish/Kurdish people.

-Turkish/Kurdish parents of the babies who cry nonstop who stare at you, also nonstop, while ignoring their babies. This after having been given the, "What the F are you looking at!?! I know, it's strange - there's a white, german-looking man at the foreigners' registration office" eyes.

-A fair amount of Africans.

-The crying babies. I can't stress the crying babies enough.

-Posters of known and wanted terrorists. Not actual people in the flesh, I know, but it's just really strange to see these all over the walls.

-Old women who have a deep, manly, "I've been smoking for over 50 years" cough. Also, they don't cover their mouths once while presumably hacking up icky stuff from the depths of their lungs. I think I switched chairs about 5 times.

-One REALLY attractive Georgian girl - not the state, but the country. I managed to get a peek at her passport while in the 'pre-check-in' line. This girl was really gorgeous. I wouldn't mind running into her, or any of her other Georgian friends for that matter, again.

-One long-haired, bearded, German-looking white dude. Sitting alone and looking supremely annoyed.


So the waiting continues. The number of people waiting slowly trickles down, until I am one of 3 people left. Finally, at PRECISELY 12:03 (Again, I made it a point to check) I was called. Oh, joy! I go to Room 44, sit down, and talk to a guy behind the desk. I explain my situation, once again, and here is what he says, "Oh okay. This is easy. I can simply write a short letter saying that you are allowed to cross the border because you're leaving and you have your flight plans along with you. It should take 5 minutes. Go back to the waiting room and I'll call you back in."

Sure enough, 5 minutes later, Mr. Nice Dude calls me back in and hands me a single sheet of paper with no more than 30 words on it. That's it.

At the Bremen Auslaenderbehoerde, 6 hours of waiting gets you a 5 minute sheet of paper.

I stepped out of the building at exactly 12:15.

I am now allowed to leave Germany.
--------------------


I hope you had a lot more fun reading my story than I had experiencing it. You would think places like that in Germany would be more fluid, seeing as how Germans are normally known for their efficiency. But, no. Not the case here.

That's one place I WONT be missing when I get back to the US of A.


Have a good Friday, everyone!

Cheers,

Russell.

What a day!

Hi folks!

Please, don't say anything. Don't even think it. I know I'm a slacker. You don't need to remind me because I'm already ashamed.

And to add a little salt in the wound, this post isn't even about all of the truly awesome stuff I've been up to. I'll be trying to get to that later this week before I meet my cousin, Jan, in Kiel for a big, week-long party called Kieler Woche ("Kiel Week," and we're only going for the weekend, not the whole week).

This post is about the incredibly weird/random day I had today. Normally I'm full of great and descriptive words for things, in an attempt to keep you interested and make me sound a little more literate than I actually am. But this time, I'm almost speechless. So here goes:


So school these days has been pretty lax. There is a week and a day left, so many of the class periods are pretty easy going, open-conversation ones. I must also say that most or all of the students have lost any of the little bit of desire they once had to learn and are now completely unruly. I've got absolutely no control is a couple of classes. I've tried anything. But, luckily, I'm to also to the point where I'm okay with just putting my hands up and saying, "whatever, you've all taken your finals. If you don't want to listen and learn, it's your problem."

Anyways. I'm in the class 9A today in the 4th period. Most of the students are great in this class. All year they have, more or less, sat attentively, completely awestruck sometimes, while I tell them about all of the "strange" things in America. Today's class was very easy. Okay, I'll be honest. We didn't do anything. The teacher had nothing planned and everyone was just sitting around and chatting. Four girls were even playing a board game. I did my best to chat in English, but really, at this point it's a lost cause with these kids. After some time, the teacher got interested in one of the students who likes to think of himself as "emo." (If you don't know what that is, look it up.) She started asking him a couple of questions, just simply interested in what it was. While they were chatting back and forth, some of the other students were really antagonizing the kid in question whenever he answered. They would just chime in with snide, rude comments at every opportunity. One student in particular, a Turkish kid, was being the the aggressor in these antagonizing comments. It got to the point where the "emo" kid said something (too fast for me to understand) that basically amounted to a challenge. Like, "want to fight?" Or, "I'll kick your ass if you make another smart ass remark." Something like that. The Turkish kid accepted the challenge. Now, instead of walking around the row of desks to face his foe, the Turk picked up a chair and HURLED it across the room at the other kid! No kidding. This kid, in the middle of class, picked up a classroom chair (they're like, what, 10-15 pounds? Maybe 20?) and tossed it at the kid. And if that wasn't enough, he picked up ANOTHER chair and threw it at his target. By the time chair #2 was being picked up, it kicked into my brain that I should step in. By the time chair #2 had landed, the two students were face to face, doing the "middle school fight." This basically amounts to something that looks half like aggressive hugging and half like terrible ballroom dancing. I hurried over and put the chair-hurler in a full headlock and twisted one of his arms up behind his back and told him, in soft-spoken English, that it would be in his best interest to cool it. And, as quickly as it had escalated, it was over. The two seemingly having forgotten that they hated one another. Five minutes later, class was over and they all left cheerily (probably because they knew they were one hour closer to Summer vacation).

The second strange thing happened to me while I was in the city eating dinner at my favorite Turkish restaurant (I swear there's no relation between the Turkish kid and the restaurant I was at. I just really like their food. If you haven't tried Turkish food, I recommend the Adanas Plate - super good).

I'm quite the regular at this place and all of the dudes who work there know and like me. We always have pleasant conversations and a merry old time. But today, well, today was different. While I was half eating/half reading my new book (by David Sedaris, he comes highly recommended from yours truly) this crazy looking guys walks in and immediately starts talking (more like yelling) to everyone there. Every person in the building was automatically his best friend. Now, this man was absolutely, positively, flamboyantly homosexual (Achtung! I am not homophobic in any way, I'm totally cool with gay people. I'm just describing this fellow). He had that super homosexual walk that almost looks like he's competitively speed walking in the olympics, but without the heavy arm movement. His legs were like wet spaghetti and his hips bounced from side to side as if he was walking down the runway at a fashion show in New York City. Before he ordered anything (which only ended up being 2 Becks beers) he went around to EVERY SINGLE person in the shop, telling all of us how "sexy" we were, while slapping our shoulders and kissing our cheeks. I managed to evade the first round of cheek kisses, but was sneak-attacked after he returned from a bathroom trip. I'm not, in any way, exaggerating, people. It turns out that this guy is a French Canadian from Quebec and was speaking an English/French/German mix to everyone, regardless of who they were.

"You so sexy!" "Danke schoen!" "Sexy Sexy!" *Kiss on stranger's cheek" "Sexy!"

Again, I'm not exaggerating. This had had to be about 15 drinks deep. Or just really, really, REALLY homosexual.

Anyways, this went on for about 15-20 minutes. All the while, every single employee and customer were laughing/looking around in confusing/completely at a loss of words.

And then, as quickly as the chair throwing began, and as quickly as our gay French Canadian friend appeared, he vanished. Apparently he had a "reservation" in Cuxhaven and had to catch his train.

After he left, no one knew what to say - so we all just went back to eating/cooking food.

I think he said his same was Dominic.
-------------------

In other news:


Psyche! I'm done writing. Stay tuned for another post later in the week.

I half-promise that I'll write it.

Ciao!

-Russell

The Legend of The Dude

This is a shout out to my best friend and one of the coolest dudes around: My brother, Niko aka The Dude.

I may be his older (albeit smaller) brother, but I sure do look up to this kid. The Dude has been through a lot this past year and I was unfortunately away, out of the country, living in Germany the whole time.

This is a guy who persevered through all of my "big brother antics" when we were younger (when I still happened to be the older AND bigger brother) and several other hardships to develop into an intelligent, strikingly handsome, athletic as hell, lovable, competitive, and endearing individual. I don't think my parents could have asked for a better 3rd child, the perpetual 'baby' of the family.


When I was only a Sophomore in college and The Dude was going through his college search and football recruiting process I received a phone call from him. He wanted to tell me about an essay he wrote for a college application. The prompt, or theme, for this particular essay was to say who his hero was and why. He was so excited to tell me about it because, as it turned out, I happened to be his guy, his hero.

At the time, I didn't know what to say to something like this. I didn't even know if I liked having this type of hefty responsibility bestowed upon my already faulty shoulders (I had shoulder surgery just a short year before). But, it was, and to this day it is still such an honor to have had my little brother tell that to me.


Well, Dude, here's to you. I truly and sincerely admire the relentless work you have put in this past year.

I couldn't ask for two better role models than our kickass father and you, Dude. I really mean that.

So, thanks for being one of MY Hero's too.

I love you and can't wait to see ya in about a month!




-russ

*tweet tweet*

Before I actually do any real blogging, I want to take a moment to remember a great friend of mine, Beau Jacobson. Beau was a great friend and teammate for three years while I was in college. He was found dead, after having drowned, out off of an island in the South Pacific. He was there, doing what Beau did best, pursuing and achieving a goal of becoming a successful pearl farmer.

Beau lived life with a zest that was to be unrivaled. He did everything full-bore, 100%. Whether it was loving his family, playing football, hanging around drinking beers with his best friends, or being a student - Beau did it to the best of his ability. Anybody who knew Beau would tell you the same thing. I, myself, might not even have been a UPS Logger had it not been for him. He was a central figure at a recruiting lunch and an overnight visit me and 5 other high school friends took. He was obviously a very persuasive and positive man, for I made a firm commitment to UPS. My friends who didn't even end up going to UPS still remember Beau Jacobson from that one, single night. That's the kind of impact a man like Beau will leave on you.

I want to thank you for being such a great friend and tremendous positive influence to me, Beau. It's no wonder that writing this brought a tear to my eye. A guy like you will never go away. I miss you.
_____________________________________________________

Beginning of real post:

I know what you’re thinking, and I’m sorry. Okay? It’s been far too long. I know, I know. I’m not going to sit here and pump you full of excuses about how much fun I was having out in the beautiful weather instead of staying cooped up inside all day long to blog on “the internets”. Instead, I figured I would jump right into things…

So, I have quite a lot to write about; so much, in fact, that when I look at it, it just seems too daunting to me. That got me to thinking. You see, I want to keep you filled in on the things I’m lucky enough to be able to do – and some of the stuff that still needs telling is some of the best (i.e. the whole Wacker gang coming to visit). However, with so much to write about so many separate escapades, I felt I needed to come up with some kind of creative theme to help paraphrase everything.

And now, my (hopefully) entertaining, blatantly satirical, “easy-way-out” blog post theme – Twittering. Or tweets. Whatever the heck you like to call them. (Please refer to www.twitter.com to better understand this nonsense)

You may remember me telling you all about my setting up a twitter account a little while back. At first, I was into it. It was such a thrill to be able to update an entire clan of followers (last time I checked I had, like, about 2) so quickly! - But not so fast - After a while, I found that the act of actually spending time to think up ways to best screw up my spelling and grammar to fit my message under 140 characters is an incredible waste of time. I mean, I’m just about to finish up a full school year of being an English teacher! How can I just stand by and let myself butcher my favorite language like that? I am ashamed, people. I am ashamed. Enough time spent thinking about it got me to the point of boycott.

And now for my last “tweet:” A chronological collection of pictures and descriptions, arranged in “tweets,” of everything from my last post up until now. Hope you enjoy.

A "tweet" Story, by russ:



1st stop: Berlin 4 my Fulbright Conference! Excited 4 a fun week and to see my family!! This is the view from my hotel room. woo hoo!




Here's the whole Wacker fam! I was on my way to a function for the conference, they were on vacation! It was so great to see my fam in DLand




Me and some other Fulbrighters at a dinner. There were open bars all week, wow! This one had nothing but wine. They made sure we had fun!




We even had time to explore the city-we rented bikes! heres us hanging out on the river. ian rocks! http://www.myspace.com/ianhooper




heres some of my friends on a really big bench! we found a strange garden w/ many random things in it. it was actually kinda hard to get on!




next stop: sachsenhausen concentration camp w/ the fam. 'arbeit macht frei' - 'work is liberating.' it was sad, but i its important to learn




an actual uniform worn by a prisoner. they also had an officers uni, some huuuge rolls of barbed wire, and many artifacts on display.




heres niko on a toilet in a dorm bathroom. they would force up to 200 inmates in here at a time, with only 5 minutes to do potty and wash!




remnants from a human furnace. you can imagine what youre looking at. those are roses on the rack. they were everywhere in the camp...



next stop: fehmarn - where the wacker clan hails from. fehmarn is an island, here is the bridge leading to it! it was really big!



wisser's hotel: if not for this little place i wouldnt be around. the meeting place of oma and opa. thanks for the 'short' genes mom! :-/



next stop: eckernfoerde, moms home-town. here's 4 generations of family, germans and americans mixed in there. holy cow! great to see ya'll!



heres mom and dad at a birthday dinner in Eck. they had a great time during their week in germany. hey, theres Lutz in the back filming!




everybody at dinner on the first night. what a big group! the food was tasty and the company great. it was fun to speak in german w/ them!




all the younger relatives went out to the bars after dinner. heres niko and our cousin lutz! we were lucky: one night was '40 beer' night!




heres me and my sis, eva! we had a great time together even tho she missed her fiance , trevor. she plans to get hitched in 2010!!



the dude and i doing a 'prost' with some whiskey. it was gr8 to be back w/ my bro for a while. hes hulked-out ripped now but not like manny!

____________________________________________________

Phew, okay. That's the end of my Berlin/Fehmarn/Eckernfoerde Journey. A couple of notes/facts to leave you with:

- All of those stupid little "tweets" all qualify under the '140-Character or Under' rule that twitter has. They're legit. Count if you like.

- I said this was an idea to streamline and make it go fast. This method actually turned out to be waaaay longer than normal. But it was fun, so I persevered.

- The blogging doesn't stop here! I still have to write about my way fun trip to Heidelberg to visit my cousin, Hannah. There are some pretty good pictures to accompany that post.

- Also, for the near future, my plans for the Month of May: This Sunday I am going to Hamburg to watch a St. Pauli football (soccer) game with my aunt, Anna-Maria. Then, immediately afterwards, I am going up to Elmshorn to visit the Baumann Family and celebrate their son Philip's confirmation. THEN, on the following day, a week long class field trip with the 5th graders to a pony ranch starts. This lasts till Friday, a week from today. The following morning, I'll be hopping on a train back over to Berlin to meet up with two college teammates of mine, Drew Watkins and Steve Martin. So, more blogging will be necessary!

Hope you liked this experiment. I really am done twittering - I'm sticking to the blog. I'm going to try to get my Heidelberg post up tomorrow, before I go on this field trip.

Thanks for reading!

russ.

Gone for the weekend - Visiting my cousin Hanna in Heidelberg!

Supposed to be a really pretty student city, with many American students studying abroad there.

Should be a good time!

a surprise visit to school

This post is pretty belated but, at any rate, I feel it's significance still warrants at least a little something said about it.

So this happened about a week before the Berlin Fulbright Seminar (coming soon in a post).

I was sitting in the teacher's room, reading The Pillars of the Earth (What a great book! Mom, I can't believe that Tom Builder died just like that! I'm almost finished.) on my free time when a girl from one of my 9th grade classes came in, asking for me to come with her. I asked her what all the commotion was about, being slightly perturbed by having to leave my book, and she tells me there is a visitor.

I had no idea who in the world might be visiting me in the middle of the day at school. When I walked into the secretary's office, there is a big black dude awkwardly standing there. I was slightly caught off guard because it's not every day you see a man like him in little farming-town Osterholz-Scharmbeck. I was even more caught off guard when he greeted me with a beautiful, American sounding "Hi!"

It turns out that the man, named Eugene, was a student at the very school I teach at now 27 years ago when OHZ (the hip way of saying Osterholz-Scharmbeck) was occupied by the American Army.

***(History Lesson: As I wrote in a post a while back, OHZ was occupied by the American Army for a while some 30 years ago. It was, for all practical purposes, a real little American town in Northwest Germany. It had American schools (high schools, etc), sports, foods, etc.)***

I ended up showing Eugene around (I know, it doesn't make sense since he was a student there) while we talked about all kinds of random stuff. He was on a short 2 week vacation and wanted to pay a visit to his Alma Mater high school. He lives in Dallas, is a huge Dirk Nowitzki fan, and forgets a lot of his German. On this particular day I had 2 hours of afternoon lessons with the 6B, not one of my more enjoyable classes. So I decided to take Eugene along, knowing that the pupils would be totally intrigued by this guy.

Surely enough, they were. And they had plenty of questions to prove it too. We spent most of the afternoon doing a little question and answer session with him and the pupils. He gave some of them 1 dollar bills (they loved that) and had some wonderful things to say to them about education and whatnot. He understood the whole Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium deal they have here in Germany, so he knew that my students were not the best of the best. It also looked like he realized that they were hanging on every word he said, so he took the opportunity to tell them, basically, that if they want more of those dollar bills, they have to go to school, learn, and learn to enjoy it.

All in all, it was a great surprise. I met an energetic person who enjoys life, got to hear some good stories, got to practice my German (I was translating mostly everything..), and the students, I think, learned something from him.

Thanks Eugene! I hope you are doing well down there in Texas.

Stay tuned for posts on the Berlin Seminar and my time spent with my family.

Also: Click the silver FOLLOW button on the right hand side of the screen. It makes it easier to keep yourself fully updated. If anything, just do it to humor me :)

Some photos...

It's been faaar too long since I've made a post, but I'm too tired to do anything productive tonight - so I'll give you a little taste-test list of what's to come.

I have a whole lot to write about after spending a week in Berlin and Eckernfoerde.

Soon to come:

- A story about a surprise visit to my school.
- A recap of my Fulbright Seminar in Berlin - Including party/family photos.
- Detailed account of my German family get-together party-fest that took place in Eckernfoerde, which is where Mom hails from. Photos included.

Here's a photo some random dude from the German Bundeswehr (Army) took of me on the streets of Berlin. It was a totally random deal, which I will be including in my Berlin post.

Ciao!