erm, English?

Wednesday morning began with a light jog. And no, I don't exercise. In my weekly fight with the gate key (yes, I've managed to get it open without having to vault over, but it's always a little bit of a struggle) I watched the 52 bus fly past my street... insert here the stream of expletives that ran through my head as I finally got the gate open and went flying down the road. As I ran, fiddling with my purse trying to reach my wallet so that my chipkaart would be ready, I watched 52 come to a complete halt at my stop, "yes, he's seen me coming" I thought, relieved that I could take the sprint down a notch. Nope! I watched in horror as the break lights disengaged and the engine began to purr, the wheels starting to move forward. Resume sprint. I tore up to the side of the bus waving my hands like a madman. After a split second of "why doesn't this bus driver see me???" he stopped the bus and let me on. Whew. For the next few stops I tried desperately to get my panting under control and cursed myself for leaving my gym shoes at home...because sureee, I would totally work out if they were here.

After sitting in 5IB on Wednesday I had a nice long chat with my little Bammer student. He told me about half of his internship in Adairsville and the other half outside of Tuscaloosa. We talked about preferences in NFL teams and whether I would watch the Super Bowl (probably not). I've promised him that I'll make an Auburn fan of yet... or that I'll make the class watch the end of the Iron Bowl every day.

I left school around 17:00 to go catch my bus home. Sitting at the appropriate terminal, contemplating the use of adjectives (because I'm really cool and not a huge dork at all), I was lost in my own thinking until the terminal was approached by a cute little old lady. She smiled at me as she came close, so I smiled back. She stood for a moment, then let out a stream of incomprehensible Dutch in my direction.
"I'm so sorry, I don't speak Dutch" I replied. Normally at this point people switch to English or wave "never mind" and move on, but not this woman. Onward she plowed, grinning widely and spewing a string of words that I didn't have the slightest clue of what they could mean. I think she might have tried a few english words, but the Dutch accent drowned them out. Back and forth we went, her speaking in Dutch occasionally miming her intent, me smiling and stammering out answers to questions she may or may not have been asking. Every once and a while a lull would occur, and I would think "oh thank goodness, she's done" only to be re-engaged with a fresh string of Dutch. Needless to say when the bus finally arrived, we did not sit next to each other.

I did, in fact, sit next to a man well, he sat down next to me, who addressed me in English.
"This bus go to Bennekom?" he asked, showing me a Google map with directions to get off at one of the stops along the line. Perplexed at his accent, but relieved to hear some English, I assured him that it did.
"I have to ask, is it that obvious that I don't speak Dutch or do you just speak English?"
I took the perplexed look on his face to assume that English was not his first language.
"erm, English"
After a few minutes of awkward silence, he offered that it was his first time on this bus line. I soon learned that he was Syrian and had fled the country because of the war. He had just met with a lawyer to get his nationality switched over to the Netherlands.
Unfortunately, we reached his stop before I could find out any more so I just wished him luck and sent him on his way.


The past couple days I've been teaching with no supervision. Let me tell you, I am totally getting kicked in the karma for being a cocky little brat in high school. Boy, do these kids give me a run for my money. But the adrenaline of being in front of a classroom hasn't worn off, which I'm taking as a good sign. 

This weekend I'm taking the train and seeing what kind of trouble I can get into, stay tuned for tales of my inevitable adventures. 

being a real teacher

On Monday, I taught my first class solo. I went into V5IB with guns blazing, the kids were chatty and a little unruly. So putting on my big girl pants, I was very stern about how I would not tolerate that sort of behavior, then put on the movie we were supposed to watch. I returned the next day, Tuesday, to finish the movie and start on their Language and Culture unit (which has been mine to teach since December). Now, let me back up a little bit and give you some context. I can't keep the upper form classes straight for the life of me. In every class I shadowed I would give my little introductory spiel - "hi I'm Ms. Sheridan, I'm from America, I've come to........."  But since I bounced around in just an observational capacity so wildly in the first two weeks, I have no clue what classes I've been in and what classes I haven't.
Back to the present. I had created a worksheet to go with the movie and was settling down to go over the answer and one of my questions asked about the importance of accents. Thinking I was being slick, I told them to think about my accent and the connotations it carried and it was then from somewhere in the crowd, "um, miss? we don't know who you are."
...
For a full class and a half they had just been letting some random person teach their class, no questions asked. Oh I felt like such a doofus. Quickly I apologized and gave them a brief synopsis, trying to focus mostly on geographical features that shaped my accent so that we could get back to the lesson quickly. As they peppered me with questions, I talked about how I've lived in Alabama for the past few years because I attend Auburn University and from out of nowhere I hear "roll tide!" ....excuse me, what?
Apparently, one of the boys had done his internship (all the fourth year IB kids spend two weeks in an native English speaking area working or going to school) around Tuscaloosa and because of that he became an Alabama fan. Flabbergasted didn't even cover my reaction. "I'm halfway around the world and I have an Alabama fan in my class? You have got to be kidding" I exclaimed before I could catch myself. We had a little bit of banter before I steered the class back to the activity at hand. But seriously, what are the odds?

My activity for the day was to have students get in groups and think of all the stereotypes that are associated with American English versus British English. The more, vocal, group in the back quickly started shouting fast food restaurants. I probably didn't help my case when I insisted that they hadn't lived until they tried a Taco Bell Doritos Taco Loco. Woohoo! Reinforcing American stereotypes!

The rest of my day consisted of 4th year oral exams with Ester. Pretty much student after student reading aloud texts, describing pictures, and talking about one of the preset conversation topics  (zzzzzzzz). We were probably the world's worst proctors, talking and joking while the students were looking over their materials. But it made the atmosphere more comfortable and we were just trying to put the students at ease. And that's the story we're sticking to.

technical difficulties

Here's the deal friends, I do my blog writing on the bus ride into school each morning which means that you're going to be a day behind on my life. And as much as I'd like to think you all are absolutely hanging on my every word, I think you'll live. This means that all of my writing is trapped on my phone - yes, I do the majority of my blogging in the "Notes" app on my phone, my thumbs are sore at the end of it, but you guys are worth it - until my phone gets wifi and I can email the writing to myself. As of right now, little iPhone is being a complete DIVA and won't connect to the wifi. So I have stories for you from this week, but I'm just lazy enough that I refuse to retype it. As soon as I can get my phone to quit being a problem child, you'll have stories from the past few days. Hang tight in the meantime and know that I'm fighting a foot cramp just so that I can finish this post for you (and I don't want to get out of bed because it's really cold).  

Sneak peak for what's ahead: my student is a bammer, I meet a Syrian, and decide that it's really time I learned Dutch. 

foreigner first world problems:

Not having any of the normal technology. I'm a pretty loyal Apple user, and like most schools, Marnix is solidly PC. Which is all well and fine, I don't really care what kind of computer people use. The issue arises as I am constantly needing to borrow other people's technology so I can show my classes PowerPoints/videos/print worksheets/etc because my little mac can't be hooked up to the projectors and won't run the grades system. And, an extra excellent perk of being only fluent in non-native tongues, working things like copiers and computers has become whole lot of "well, this looks right-ish" (i.e. everything is in Dutch). This morning as I tried to patch in my flashdrive to one of the teacher's computers, while the screen was being projected up on the overhead. I was yammering on about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory while trying to figure out what buttons to push and I hear a little voice from the back, "um, miss? I wouldn't have done that if I were you..." aaaand that was the point in the day where I gave up on trying to figure out the computer for myself and just had students do it for me.

Also, I got to be the big scary teacher today with T4, they got a stern talking to for their use of Dutch in class (they're really not supposed to) and the class volume. Boy did I ever feel like a big fat faker, trying to discipline kids who I barely have a few years on. That's student teaching for ya, I suppose.

sunday stories from the monday busstop

As the title of this post alludes, I wrote this yesterday in transit, but didn't get the chance to actually post it. So imagine all of this happening twenty-four hours ago and you'll be all caught up...

I woke this fine morn to realize that my month of being an "I'm going to kick caffeine" monstrosity had been for naught. I should mention, in my correspondence with my Dutch supervising teacher, I had been warned that I might want to kick my caffeine habit because the coffee at Marnix wasn't very good. So, given that my crippling addiction had gotten a little out of hand, I spent Christmas break as a complete terror, irritable with caffeine withdrawals. The headaches stopped soon after Christmas, and I was proud to say I no longer needed coffee to start the day. Well, in the wake of jet lag, I tried the so called "garbage coffee" at school and quickly discovered that I've been drinking "garbage coffee" all of college. Unrefined American taste buds for the win, again. It probably goes without saying that it was a slippery slope from there... 
So, back to the present, it didn't take long to realize that the splitting headache I had throbbing behind my right eye was just a side effect of my weekend caffeine come down. Luckily I didn't have to push through the pain very long. Walking around with a pocket full of US dollars hasn't been doing me a great deal of good - who would've guessed?? So this morning I made the trek to Arnhem, the closest train station with a currency exchange. I spent the majority of my bus ride eavesdropping on a pair speaking in English, the girl was Dutch but I believe the boy was a Scot or Brit. I debated the whole time whether or not I should say something, but felt awkward and decided they were probably on a date. As much as I love playing "the blocker - third wheel extraordinaire" I decided to let them be. When I arrived at the station it was still a little early to go do my transaction, but I did happen to find an old friend of mine: Starbucks. I popped in, made a fool of myself trying to use my chip card and flusteredly (yep, I did just make that word up. It seemed most appropriate), used cash instead, and sat down to enjoy my grande latte and muffin. My plan was to people watch until, of all the tables that were open, the oddest couple dropped into the table next to mine (conveniently blocking the window). She was small, black and fairly cute. He was tall, dressed like a Roswell-ian hoodrat, had more hair on his neck than I have ever seen on a young-ish man, and seemed to have trouble with opening his eyes all the way. Needless to say I was very perplexed at the match. I did some (probably not so) sly people watching until they started being really PDA canoodle-y. Like, really? It's Sunday morning. Enough of that nonsense. So I focused my attention on the copy of Stormbreaker downloaded to my phone as I nursed my soup bowl sized coffee. Turns out, in Europe, a grande size coffee actually means grande sized, not just "barely bigger than small".
After I watched my new friend, Hairy, spit something into the dregs of his coffee and I had finished off my own, I walked down to the currency exchange where I had, in my infinite wisdom and understanding of the Dutch language, accidentally reserved 160 US dollars for myself instead of 160 dollars worth of euros. whoops. But the lady behind the desk was very understanding and we got it straightened out, no harm, no foul.

After that little adventure, I headed back to Renkum. My host family had offered to take me to Doorwerth Castle so we all piled in the car and wove through neighborhoods and farmland until a large castle lay before us. wowzers. I can't recount many of the details concerning the history of this structure because the tour was in Dutch, but I can say that it was a piece of history far older than anything America has to offer. We explored room to room, stopping to watch the actors dressed up in traditional Middle Age garb and try on some knights armor for ourselves. Once we had covered the castle's interior, we meandered a little around the castle grounds and took in the vast amount of greenery surrounding the grounds. 

Doorwerth Castle 

In front of the castle 

Janne and I get ready for a joust

Afterward we headed back home for homework and lesson planning. It rained pretty intensely from around 17:00 on, bringing in the colder weather. Apparently we're supposed to get snow this week. yay?

nobody cried, nobody died

It’s Friday night in Holland, and I’m curled up with my space heater. Yep, seems about right. I’m not even upset about it – it has been a long stinking week. A great week, but a long one.

I picked up my first round of lessons with T4 this week. “Monologues, Soliloquies, and Asides” on Wednesday, “Present Perfect Tense” today. Nobody cried and nobody died. And what I lack in comprehensive knowledge of English grammatical rules, I make up for in enthusiasm. But for the sake of my sanity and the students, I’ll be doing less grammar and more literature from here on out. It’s nerve racking to have your expertise put on the line like that, but I really like it. After school on Wednesday we had the second round of MarnixTalks, a speech competition for the upper form students where they create a speech about anything, then present it (in English) to a panel of judges. I stuck around to hear the speeches and help with set up/break down. We enjoyed a dinner cooked by my host teacher’s husband - who is an amazing chef, by the way. I could've eaten the whole pan of creme brulee by myself. Let me tell you, they do things a little differently in Dutch schools than we do in American schools. Around half past five, we all gathered around the staff room tables, which had been pushed together to create one big community table. Bowls of soup and salad went round, followed by offers of “red or white?” My dinner mates were thoroughly tickled when I regaled them with tales of a teacher friend who could not to return to school on a half day to get some grading done because she had drank a small a margarita with lunch. There's been a bottle of wine sitting in the staff room's fridge ever since, and it makes me giggle every time I see it, because I'm obviously twelve years old. One of the biggest cultural adjustments has been how lax Dutch society is. Walking to the bus station this week I passed by one of the little smoke huts – glass enclosures where people can go to smoke when there’s nasty weather – nearby the bus terminals. As I passed by I detected a hint of something a little more… fragrant… than a cigarette. A smell I had really only encountered by my high school's art basement and in fraternity houses, if you catch my drift. For a split second, I was aghast. Here? In public?? Aaaand then I remembered that I’m in Holland.

Other than that, things have been pretty uneventful. I’ve been trying [you like that present perfect continuous tense?] to become as immersed in Marnix as I can. This morning I sat on the judges panel for the Junior Speaking Competition and got to hear a handful of T2 and T3 students talk about their take on culture. We heard everything from women’s rights to sports to initiation rituals. It was amazing to see the effort and ability of these kids. I wish we could’ve sent them all to the next round. After that I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for my lesson (i.e. double and triple checking my activities in between cutting up with the other teachers in the teacher’s lounge). After school, I spent about twenty minutes wandering around the small town of Ede. Just checking out all the store fronts and whatnot when I stumbled across this gem:

I’m not really sure why I found it so funny, probably because that’s a whole fish she’s lowering into her mouth. mmmm.

As the students taking oral exams next week, I’m taking on a pretty full load of classes for the teachers who will be proctoring the exams, so this weekend will be filled with lesson planning. In fact, I’m about to have a pretty hot date with my main squeeze, Charlie Bucket (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for you non-literary people who might have been deluded into thinking I have an active love life) so that I can do some guilt free exploration tomorrow.

I’ll leave you with this, I have a week off for spring break in February and am a little overwhelmed with possibilities. I’ve been leaning toward seeing Greece (Athens or Sparta) and Rome – I’ve spent many an afternoon with my nose in Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology”, much to the ridicule of my English major peers. But I don’t know, with (almost literally) the whole world at my fingertips – where should I go? Suggestions? 

A Conversation After School

student A: "Americans have all these weird rules about their flags. Like you can't burn them."

student B: "Then how do you keep warm?"

me: "From the fire within your chest, fueled by freedom."

thank goodness they laughed.