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!

Get a load of this article, found on ESPN.com.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3965863

How this girl is not sitting in jail on charges of attempted murder, I have no idea. Something tells me that if a man were to stab his girlfriend in the head with scissors and in the neck with a knife, he wouldn't get away with just a slap on the wrist (aggravated battery with a deadly weapon).

I just don't get it. I am a supporter of woman's rights. I think it is a tragedy that women with the same qualifications doing the same job as men earn less in the workplace. To me, that's something that just isn't right.

But, come on, shouldn't there be equality in the courtroom? Can all girlfriends get away with stabbing their boyfriends after this precedent has been set?


On another note - I've recently tricked out my blog here a little bit with some new features, one of them having the ability to automatically send you and email whenever I publish a post. If you would like to be put on the list, simply say so. That way, if you want to read what's going on over here, you don't have to keep coming to the blog only to be disappointed by the lack of activity.

Possibly more to come later in the afternoon (my time).

russ.

Also -

As you can see, I updated the blog's layout a little bit and added a couple of gadgets on the right hand side and under the posts.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

r.

Spent a great weekend in Amsterdam (I'm beginning to get to know that place fairly well now) with a couple of friends I've made while living in Bremen. One, Mena, hails from Italy and teaches Italian at the Gymnasium in Osterholz-Scharmbeck, which is the town I work in. The other, Cristina, is from Spain and, you guessed it, teaches Spanish. Although, I'm not sure which city/school she is in: It's a small dorf (village) close to Bremen.

At the moment I have a few too many things to do to be writing a comprehensive review of the weekend, so I may get to that and throw some pictures up later.

My main reason for the post is to pass along, simply put, a great story. I found it on ESPN.com. It's about a Duke basketball player and his story.

I don't want to give away too much, so all I'll say is that it reminds me how lucky I am to have two parents who love me and want, above all things, for me to be happy.

Love you Mom and Dad! (And cant wait to see you and Eve and The Dude in less that a week!!!)

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=nolan

Hi folks.

So I just got home from a rather strenuous day of managing the organized chaos that makes up my pupils.

I've kind of developed a routine of reading (online) all of the newspapers, sports news, etc that happened the day before in the World (please remember that when I'm sleeping you are busy being awake, so I sleep right through lots of the important stuff) when I get home from work. Today, while reading my stuff, I came across yet more Obama-bashing stuff.

Articles, message boards, facebook groups, and the likes. One thing I found particularly disturbing, or annoying, or very "little kid like" if you will, was a group on facebook criticizing the "lack of change" that was once promised and the raising of taxes, citing the fact the former Clinton Administration employees are being brought back, yadda yadda yadda.

News flash everybody. It's now official. Many Americans have a shorter memory span than your house pet! It seems that they have forgotten the WONDERFUL lives they had the joy of living these past 8 years. The worst terrorist attack in our country's short history, a never-ending (and terribly, terribly expensive, something most Americans fail to remember)war, an economic crisis that we might never recover from, The Patriot Act, and..wait...I'm forgetting something..ah! That's right, RAISED TAXES! These are all things that "the guy THEY voted for" helped bring us.

Here's my problem: Quit complaining. That gets us no where. What's wrong with bringing back people from the Clinton Administration? How is that not change? They aren't Bush Folks and they were part of our last successful Administration. That is damn good enough for me. Hell, right now I would say it's the best choice. I mean, they did SOMETHING right, didn't they?


Okay, this has been a far too negative post. I think you all know by now, after reading my 20something blog posts, that I am an uber-positive guy. My glass is always half-full. I'm a peaceful guy (off of the football field, hehe). If I grew up in the 70's I would have been one of the people saying, "Make love, Not war." My reason for bringing this up is two-fold:

1) The way I see it is this: Where the heck does complaining get us? I feel like this is the time, if there ever was one, for our country to UNITE (A word our incredibly respectable Founding Fathers found important...hmm...) for a single cause. Many people may not like Obama, but I think EVERYBODY dislikes a terrible economy and a lower quality of life, and I wrong? So what's stopping us?

2) I felt I was being counterproductive with my ranting, but it had a point. Which is outlined in #1.

REMEMBER ALL YOU NEGATIVE NANCIES: A democracy (Remember, this is that ingenious style of government that was implemented waaaay back in 1700's) doesn't function when everyone acts like a toddler who just had their favorite toy taken away.

The rather great idea behind this whole democracy thing is that, through ACTION, you can get your government to work for you. Action means actually doing something. I know, that sounds hard. But it actually works. Ask Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is a time to celebrate!!! Like these people! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfgCEzhYVDg&feature=related. I implore you to watch this, very funny!

Anywho, my rant is over. Big thanks to Mom and Dad: Both forwarded good links to me in the place where you can leave COMMENTS (hint, hint). Plus, they're just really, really good parental units.

Thanks for your continued blog loyalty.

And now, a bunch of random stuff for reading/viewing pleasure:

Music I have been listening to a lot as of late:

-Bob Dylan
-Bob Marley
-John Mayer
-Tenacious D
-John Legend

Books I'm currently reading: (I like to switch a lot)

-Harry Potter #1 in German
-Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" (An X-Mas gift from my great family!)
-Ken Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth" <--Way, way good book/author. Comes highly recommended from me.

-Number of books I have finished since arriving in Germany at the end of August: About 22. That's almost embarrassing, almost.

Wicked-awesome websites:

- www.pandora.com
- www.surfthechannel.com
- twitter - www.twitter.com/russellwacker
- www.theonion.com <--If you're in the mood for satire on almost any topic.

Today is a day of great jubilation!

Earlier, I was thinking about things I've been meaning to do/stop doing (i.e. long term tasks, bad habits, etc.), and I realized that I have completely quit biting my nails. That's one bad habit I can check off my list; one that I've been doing for as long as I can remember (especially during football season) and that has been near impossible to stop.

Yay!

You know, each day I work here as a "teacher," I enjoy teaching more and more. I think I know now for sure that I will be, at some point in my life, a teacher. I just find it very fun and fulfilling (that's some nice alliteration right there). When, I have no idea. Things (like COLLEGE!) are expensive. And these days it's not good to be spending money that you don't have..So we'll see.

Anyway, I'm pretty beat after my second long run of this still very short week, so I'm going to call it a night and zone out to a movie for what's left of the night.

Cheers,

russ.

ps - Alliteration is the repeated occurrence of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase. Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant in a string of words, not the sound as is in alliteration. An exemplary example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" or my nifty one, "fun and fulfilling." :) Thank you Ms. Glock in 8th grade English at Skyview Jr. High, I specifically remember learning this in her class when learning how to write poems. How I remember the specifics, I have no idea.