Sleeping In and Misunderstandings

I got woken up in the middle of the night and then I couldn't get back to sleep until almost five. Needless to say, I was a little groggy in the morning. I got up around nine, had breakfast and went back to sleep until 11:10. That was sort of a problem because I had told my mentor teacher at the school that I would meet her at 11:15ish. This is where we find out problems with her English. I swear she told me that she was getting to school at 11:15 because she didn't have any classes until then and she would be around - so I figured that it was okay that I was a little late. I thought this was a little confusing at the time so I asked her about five times to confirm that - but apparently what she actually meant was that she was done at 11:15, so by the time I got there, she was already gone. On the bright side, everyone (aka three people) that I talked to were very nice. The principal of the school, Herr Kuchorz, gave me a tour of the school building and explained a bit what I was going to do.

Interesting Things About the School
1) They apparently have a fantastic art program. The kids are only 5th to 8th grade - and I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing anything that good when I was in 5th and 6th grade art.

2) They also have an excellent music program - especially the choirs - and I'm pretty sure that he said there is even a choir made up of just the teachers. I'll have to look into that one.

3) When the school was first built, they had approximately 1200 students. Now they only have about 700. Why? Because after the fall of the wall, people all left for the West (because they didn't have jobs here anymore or they wanted to reunite with their families or all of those other reasons that people left for West Germany). Apparently it is such a problem at some of the other schools in the area that they have trouble staying open because they don't have enough students. With everything that I've studied about East and West Germany, school/education for younger students is one thing I never really considered.

4) The walls are covered with paintings and drawings and everything done by the students. There are murals celebrating different Abitur years and all sorts of things. In the wing for the oldest students, this is especially so. Besides the fact that it looks cool, apparently it's a way for the school to save money on painting and renovation since they don't get so much money for that. The policy is that if the students want to paint the walls, they pay for the paint - and as long as they pay for the paint, they are free to do whatever they want.

I met my landlord today also. He speaks fairly good English, which he of course wants to practice. I was very impressed actually, except for one mistake. I was downstairs talking to his mother (who lives underneath us) and he was running in and out doing some errands. At one point, he starts talking to me about spoons and I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. It wasn't until he told me that he was going to show me how to get into the apartment if I had forgotten or didn't have my spoon that I realized he meant key. I'm not quite sure how he mixed those two words up - but I'm sure my German is just as silly sometimes. Two that I used to mix up a lot are aufwachen and aufwachsen (which at least are very similar words). The first means "to wake up" and the second "to grow up". Now I understand why I used to get strange looks when talking about what time I got up that morning.

The mother of Herr Kobe, my landlord, was interesting. She asked about my parents and I told her that my father had died and so we started having a conversation about whether or not my mom had to work now. I explained that mom had already worked before. Then she asked about whether we got a pension or anything like that (which I wouldn't have known what she was talking about if I hadn't gone to the movie the night before where I learned the German word for pension - Rente). She explained that her husband died when she was 48ish right around the time of the fall of the wall. There she was with four children, no longer any form of social support, hadn't worked for years, and suddenly the state tells her, "There's nothing wrong with you. Go out and work - you're not eligible for a pension or anything yet because you're not old enough." And at the time, it was much more difficult to find a job as a woman.