Some Serious Stuff

So for the most part I expected to write only about fun and lighthearted fluffy things on this blog. But of course life never works out that way. UGHHH

I started my internship earlier this week. I'm pretty sure this is going to be my last week at it. So what did go wrong, exactly?

For starters, I took this internship because I wanted to get a good idea what education was like in Germany, specifically bilingual education. A Deutsch-English Kindergarten seemed like a good fit, though I would have preferred older kids.

In the end that was just the problem. The kids at the Kindergarten, at 2, 3, and 4 years of age, are just too young. I feel less like an intern and more like a snack distributor and babysitter. I like little kids just fine, but this is so so so not what I was looking for. There's no "lessons" or "learning" going on (rightfully so) at this age. It's like nursery school. I am not really into doing three days a week of this, unpaid. It's exhausting work, and I didn't look forward to going there on the days I had it earlier this week.

I tend to be a stick-it-out kind of person, but I don't like the idea of dreading the times I have to go to my internship (currently Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) while I'm here in Freiburg. Time goes by too fast, tomorrow it will have already been one month since I arrived in Europe. I don't want to be willing the weeks to go by while I'm here. I want to enjoy and savor absolutely every moment of it.

So I'm ultimately pretty bummed about the whole thing. I badly wanted to enjoy the internship and for it to work out. I feel bad too- everyone at the school has been nice and the kids are friggin' cute. I'm going to think about it the next few days, but I'm pretty certain that I will end up leaving. Which brings us to my next problem. How to quit? Do I tell them my real reasons for leaving or do I make up a nice little excuse about not getting credit for it after all so I'm sorry I wanted to work here but I can't? Everyone who I've talked to has been telling me to tell the truth. After all, I have real, legit and perfectly reasonable grounds for leaving. I know this is right. In the end, I'm not sure what I'll do- give them the nice little planned out excuse or tell the the truth. Either way, I'm seriously dreading it.

Debauchery

This week we saw: 

Some Creepy masks.

Germans, along with the rest of the world, don't hold back when it comes to celebrating Carnival, or Fasching, as it is know here. The pictures above where taken on Rosenmontag, the Monday before Lent. At least I think that is what it refers to.  I'm going to play the Jew card here and say I have no idea of the succession of days leading up to Lent. Is it Rosenmontag -- Fasching -- Lent???

 Oh how could I possibly forget that this day included a lot of THIS:

We stayed in town after classes that day and sampled the many food stands that had popped up. I'm not going to go into much detail here except to say that one too many Nutella crepes may have been consumed. Calories don't count when they are part of a Multi-Culti experience, RIGHT??????

So the big news around here is that I got myself an internship! I know Mom, you are about to hit the roof in how quickly I got this thing organized.  I will be working at a German-English Montessori Kindergarten. Basically, the people who work there speak either only German or only English to the kids. I will be speaking English, but lets keep that on the DL since I'm doing this for credit and I don't think the German profs would be so psyched about that aspect. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing there, save that for next week's blog post.
So what does this have to do with International Relations? you may be wondering. Absolutely nothing. As much as I (mostly) like my major, I decided I wanted a slightly different experience this time around, since I hear enough about politics what with the IR major and living near D.C. The internship is definitely going to pack my schedule, but I think it will be worth it and it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

On Friday, instead of the usual German routine, we went on a HIKE. You can add that to the record books MOM, your daughter went on a hike. I was a little stressed out since I had the internship interview scheduled right in the afternoon. So after the hike I ran back to IES and changed, hopped on the tram, and found the Kindergarten. The hike was great, though. Not to strenuous and lots of views.  I can see picnic hikes in our future up here once the weather is warmer.

We could not resist the see-saw

 

 

On Saturday we went on ANOTHER hike, where I finally wore the hiking boots that were lovingly gifted and collecting dust in my closet by my mom. On Saturday, IES took us to Engelberg, Switzerland, about three hours by bus. It was gorgeous! The views were pretty stunning:

I forgot my hat...

 

 

 

 

I think that wraps it up for this week, check back for more obligatory posts MOM, with an additional obligatory post shout-out to Virginia!

Parental Visit

The week began with the parentals coming to Freiburg to spy on visit me. Parental visits are great because I get FREE FOOD, EVERYTHING PAID FOR to spend some quality time with the parents.

Unfortunately I did not document this parental visit, so just use the picture below for reference.

This week was also the beginning of OIL, our 3-week long German intensive class. In addition to German stuff we get to go on field trips and do all the touristy things like going to the history of Freiburg museum. It's pretty nice, all in all. I mean Wednesday's class theme was on food. Needless to say I was the star participant in class that day. On Thursday, we got to visit the soccer stadium, where Freiburg's team SC Freiburg plays. Here are some pics I took from the stadium and later on the ROOF, where we got to climb up.

 

Views from the roof:

Solar Panels on the roof, Freiburg is know as the most environmentally conscious city in Europe.

Have I mentioned how ridiculously cheap food is here, especially groceries? At Kaufland, a huge nearby supermarket that has pretty much everything my heart desires, I can get bio (that's Deutsch for organic, pronounced like BEE-o) eggs for a little over 1 euro. The other day I stopped at Aldi (European Aldi, which is different from the crappy US one) and got rice, several yogurts, tuna, and muesli all for under 5 euro. Even eating out is not that ridiculously expensive. I had a delicious pasta dish the other night for about 4.50 euros. As always, things are too good to be true....eating out in Germany DOES eventually get expensive because you pay for ALL drinks, including water. With my 4.50 pasta dish I got a puny little glass of bubbly water that I paid 2.50 euros for. No free water or unlimited refills here! I'm still looking for a solution to this whole pay-for-all-drinks-including-water thing. I don't think sneakily holding the glass beneath the table and refilling it with water from my water bottle, as the parentals saw me do at dinner the other night, is going to cut it.
 
This weekend we headed to Colmar, a city in Alsace-Lorraine, France, where I was able to put my 5+ years of French to good use. It has a very unique culture, having changed back and forward between French and German hands 5 times. The culture and language are French with German influences. Here are some pictures:

 

After Colmar we headed to the Badischer Winzerkellar. It's one of the biggest wine processing facilities in the world. We took an extensive tour of the place and then a wine tasting! I didn't take any pictures here because...meh. Wine tasting -- it all tastes just like wine!

I think that about wraps it up for the week. I just realized I haven't posted a single picture of Freiburg the city yet! What a travesty! Here are a few: 

Here's some more pictures from meals and other fun things from Freiburg. 

culinary expertise

shared meals

On the bus on the way to Colmar

Lunch in Colmar, ham and cheese crepe.

How's that for another obligatory post, MOM????