Three months! Part two.

Well, the hotly anticipated part two of our three months post. Here’s a few more blurbs on what’s been going on recently:

-Tutoring. I’ve picked up a few extra students outside of school to start earning a little extra money. Eight-hundred Euros a month is a surprisingly livable wage in Germany, since a lot of things end up being cheaper than their American counterparts, but that’s still not a lot of money. Anyway, my landlady is pretty well connected in the neighborhood, so I ended up landing three tutoring students through one of the Turkish families on our street: Memet, Betül, and Esra. Immigrants in Germany kind of get a rough deal in school, since English is a mandatory subject, and they have to take another foreign language on top of that. So your standard immigrant student speaks their parents’ language at home, German around town, and English + Spanish/French/Italian in school. In a lot of cases the immigrant kids actually speak the best English in class, since they’re already used to learning foreign languages, but for the most part it’s just confusing and frustrating for the kids to be stuck between 3-4 languages.

But anyway, it’s been fun helping out with the three kids’ homework. The family is really nice too. They always take my coat when I walk in the door, give me coffee and tea, let me try out a bunch of different Turkish foods all arranged out on platters in the living room. Sometimes I stick around and chat a little bit after we’re finished.

-Classy Parties. The other Fulbrighters and I got invited to a holiday open house at the US Consulate yesterday afternoon to meet and greet, and that was quite an experience. Walking up to the building was pretty stressful--lots of police with guns and vests and metal detectors, and then a bunch of Secret Service-looking guys on the inside. The building itself was very impressive: vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors, great outlook right onto the Alster (the big lake in Hamburg). At first the party was a little weird, since I was the first Fulbrighter that showed up, and was at least 20-30 years younger than everybody else there. I chatted up some guy in a suit for a little bit, drank some eggnog, and then fortunately some other people from Hamburg/the surrounding area showed up, so I had some people to talk with. We all introduced ourselves to the Consul General before we left, and she turned out to be a really friendly lady.

-Christmas Plans. Gonna stay in Hamburg for Christmas I believe, at any rate I’m not going home for the holidays. Having suffered through 25 hours of planes and airports upon first arriving in Germany, I definitely don’t want to repeat the experience two more times in a week and a half! I’ve got a few friends who are staying in town, and I also think I’m going to be celebrating Christmas itself with the Ketels (note to self: send that email soon), so I won’t be totally alone. That would be terrible and a little depressing around this time of year. Thanksgiving away from America turned out pretty well, so hopefully the first Christmas away from family will be good too.