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.

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Some photos...