Gut in Hamburg angekommen!

Well, ich bin endlich hier! After months and months of plotting and planning and filling out applications and submitting an endless number of forms I have finally arrived in Hamburg, Germany for the start of my Fulbright Grant. For those not in the know: this past year I applied to be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Germany. I was awarded the grant this past March, and for the next ten months I'm going to be living and working in Hamburg, assistant teaching English at the Gesamtschule Eidelstedt. I am of course incredibly excited and grateful to be taking part in this. It's going to be an absolutely fantastic year, and now that I'm a week into the grant I thought I'd fill you in with a little news on what's been happening.

Anyway, I left this past Friday from Salt Lake City to Cologne via Chicago and London. Quite a flight for sure; I was in airplanes and airports and trains for over 24 hours, and I slept for 15 when I finally arrived. I spent a day recuperating in the city, and the following Monday all of the other German Fulbrighters and I loaded into a bus and headed to Haus Altenberg for our three-day orientation. The orientation was great. Having spent the week before departure losing sleep and thinking non-stop about the enormity of what I was about to undertake (10+ months in a foreign country, tens of thousands of miles away from everything I know and love), it was comforting to be surrounded by a lot of other people experiencing the exact same thing. We went over a bunch of information related to the program and what exactly the assistant teaching job entails, and at the end we got to do mock lessons to get a little practice in teaching, getting critiques from our teachers and the other grantees. All in all a great experience, and I met some really awesome, friendly people too.

Yesterday I boarded a train from Cologne to Hamburg, which took about four hours, and met up with the host family that I'm going to be staying with until I can find an apartment of my own. For the next three weeks I'm going to be living with Gesche and Manfred Ketels and their 16-year-old son Jakob. So far they've been super friendly and helpful. Last summer I spent six weeks in Berlin doing a short-term study abroad, and I had a bad experience with the lady I was staying with, Katja. I sort of walked into Katja's life at a bad time (she had just gotten out of a pretty serious relationship about a week before I arrived), and our personalities were not terribly compatible to begin with, so I was nervous to see what the Ketels would be like. Thankfully they are all much better adjusted than Katja was, so I'm going to feel right at home while I'm here.

And just today I got to go to the school to meet all the teachers and see the students I'll be teaching! It was an incredible rush getting on the bus this morning and setting out to do what I've been planning for and thinking about for over a year and a half now. I kept on having thoughts like, "Well, five more stops now, can't be far," "Oh man, that's a really little kid, I think he's probably going to the school," "Here come five more. My god, I'm probably going to be teaching these guys," "A school zone! Aaaah! we're getting really close now." Stepping off the bus and walking into the school was really something else, it's a little strange to be on the other side of the education system after having graduated from college only four months ago.

The kids were absolutely fascinated by me. They would flock and crowd around me when I came into their classrooms like I was some kind of celebrity--a foreign oddity from far and distant lands. I guess the ruse we're playing on them is that I don't speak any German, so they could only speak to me in English. They were super excited to test out the phrases they knew on me, some of which included:

"Do you play for the Utah Jazz?"
"Do you come from England?"
"How much did your shoes cost?"
"How old are you?"
"Do you know Beyonce/Michael Jackson/Barack Obama?"
"Do you have a gun?"

Really interesting to see what they've learned about America through the international culture filter. Germans are big on basketball, but the Jazz question was surprising, especially considering they haven't been any good since the 90's, which is when a lot of these kids were born. A few of the students were pretty, um, forward as well. When one of the girls asked me how old I was, and I told her 22, one of the boys from the back chimed in with, "Ach so, he is too old for you!" A little later one of the other girls came up to me, told me that I am "very beautiful." I just sorta smiled and nodded and said thank you.

In the near future is: getting further integrated into the school (observing lessons, etc.), buying a phone and taking care of visas and bank accounts and immigration forms, and finding an apartment of my own. I am so incredibly stoked to be doing this. Unimaginably so. Any and all fears and trepidations I had about this before I left are pretty much gone, I'm just loving it so far. I'm gonna be diligent about keeping this updated, so check back to see what's happening!