It's all about the Bengt

Stepped off the edge of the earth?

bengt — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:32:27 GMT

In a word, no. I didn't check when the last time I actually posted to LJ was, but i know it has been quite awhile. I've been quite the busy fellow the last few weeks. I had a week that I was in Italy, where they have the internet, just not where I was. Shortly thereafter, Monica, a fellow German major from Lawrence and now assistant teacher like me, came up to visit. And after that, I came down to visit her in the Rheingau region of Germany. In addition to that, I've been working about the double amount of hours at school. In other words, with everything (and that fact that I don't and probably wont have internet at home this year) I haven't gotten to posting, emailing or anything much internetty for awhile.
In any event, things are going pretty well here in the Germanic world. A few mean people taking me on because of that country that I come from. Lazy students, a lot of them. Yes. All this and more in coming posts. The next few weeks should be a bit quieter.

Also, can someone please do me a favor: Get Colbert 08 in the Illinois Primary!

Italy

bengt — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:41:42 GMT

I just remembered that I didn't tell you that I am in fact going to Italy with that 10th grade class. I mentioned that a few weeks ago and it worked out. We leave tomorrow evening and will be in Tuscany for about a week. I guess I will see Florence, Pisa, the Mediterranian Sea and other fun things.

Briefing you all about everything

bengt — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:36:12 GMT

So a lot has happened in the last couple of weeks since I last posted. I have been pretty busy at school and trying to get myself all set up here. There were also two weeks of special activities at school. The first week was the school week, where students did projects relating to the main theme. The Theme was Wizardry and Magic in School. By the way, this would be impossible as a theme in American schools (although, a private school like this one could possibly get away with it). The next week was Europa Woche, Europe Week, which brought with it fewer classes and yet more projects. I almost got drafted into playing piano with some students, but I was so out of practice and never learned anything about that style of music anyway. So I got out of that.
Last weekend, I met some of the other assistants from the area, the bulk of whom are from Britain (including a girl from Northern Ireland with the coolest accent I've heard in my life!). I slept on one of their floors in Rostock and was really stiff thereafter. However, I didn't even notice how my shoulder or neck felt until the next day sitting in school.
This week in school was much shorter, because it was Tag der Deutschen Einheit (Day of German Unity). The main celebration for Germany was here in Schwerin, and it was PACKED. There was a presentation about the Bundestag, the national parliament, which was cool. The 'Speaker of the House' and the Governor of this state were both there to speak to us a little bit, as well as some conservative legislator who isn't well known. The legislator and the Governor gave little speeches proclaiming their support for a ban on the extreme rightist parties and for better health care, etc etc. Then we all were asked to vote as to whether the government should be in charge of the national education system. It was a nonsense question and the only person to vote against it was one of my students from 10th grade, who was dorking around about it.
Otherwise, there were a lot of different booths, with different foods and information about various things. For example, there was a tent with information about how one could get their files from the Stasi era (the Stasi is the 'Staatsicherheit' people, or State Security Department in East Germany, which kept files on many people, from major political opponents to regular people who may have said something vaguely against the state). There were booths from different governmental departments, different vendors of food. And each German state had its own section. I bought some real cheese from some Swiss vendor and some real sausage from a Hessian place. I also bought some local honey somewhere. There were many stages with music or children's programs. All this went from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday evening, when there was a HUGE fireworks/music show at the castle. It was really cool, because they had the Schwerin castle lit up, laser lighting and spewing smoke and everything. The music was exactly what we'd expect from German musical performances: despite it being the main national holiday, I didn't hear the national anthem once, but instead kitschy 80s music. This included the first song during the light show, where the singer was on a platform that is raised and lowered hydraulically, and hanging under that platform was a giant disco ball. He himself was wearing all white and his gestures must've been gigantic, because I could see him clearly from across a river and down on the ground.
Anyway, it was a fun big festival. According to the People's Newspaper (Schweriner Volkszeitung), there were at least 250,000 people at the festival. Since the total population of this city is about 90,000, this place was packed, and it's kind of nice to have the place back to normal now.

...and then I found five euros!

bengt — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:48:57 GMT

Yesterday was an odd day, I have to admit. Things were good, but also kind of annoying. The teacher that I work with most was just in one of her moods. I guess she gets them more and more now. She's nice enough much of the time. But she's at the very end of her time teaching, and it's getting more and more obvious. Not that she's lazy about it, but she just has her way of doing things and it's too late to change the system. Anyway, she snapped at about everyone possible over the course of the day and basically grumbled the rest of the time. There's this wrong and that wrong. It's basically what I've been annoyed about in German people for a long time, times twelve. This isn't right, that isn't good enough, why do things have to change, things were so much better before the reunification, why can't I have my own room/stuff/laptop?, and on and on it goes. For whatever reason, though, I can communicate with her despite all that and we get along quite well.
Anyway, I went shopping yesterday, got a whole lot of food, so I can eat like a human again. I hadn't had a chance to go grocery shopping for more than a week, since I didn't really have a weekend. I mean, I had sunday, but that sure doesn't count, since nothing was open except the kiosk, where I got my 4-week TV guide. And then I decided to make myself a salad. There hadn't been any dressing at the store, so I decided to be rustic and make dressing by mixing vinegar and olive oil. Well, I guess I got the propotions all wrong because it was the second most acidic salad I've ever had (the first being three years ago, also in Germany, also the last time I tried such a foolish thing as making salad dressing this way). So I burned my mouth a little bit, it is surely unpleasant, but I don't think anyone's noticing the little welts on my lips...
Anyway, today started out that one of the other teachers is organising a Klassenfahrt, class trip, and I guess the other teacher had to bow out of helping out. So she was desperate and my teacher suggested that I could go along and this teacher (the one who I'd visited last weekend, actually) was quite pleased with this solution. So, pending the 'ok' of the principal, I could well be going to Italy for a week in October with some students for a nice price.
So that set a nice tone for today. My classes were fine. In the 8th grade, a class of 6 girls, they were writing little essays about the USA. I get along with two of them especially well, because they are very hard working and interested to learn new things. (they also helped me out of a jam yesterday: I was walking across the playground and a couple of my students were playing basketball. They said 'Hey Ben, these guys wanted to meet you' and over came two little kids. I asked which grade they're in and it was 3rd grade, and it was immediately clear to me that my older students had just pawned off the annoying little kids on me. Anyway, the topic of the conversation was 'are you REALLY a teacher?' and I said, yes, of course. And they didn't believe a word of it. So I looked around to find someone to prove me right, all the while realizing how silly it is to justify myself to 9 year olds. After showing them my drivers license didn't work ('Hey, it says that he's 84 years old!!!') I turned to the building and there were these two girls sitting in the 2nd floor window and said to ask them. At first they decided to be mean and say 'no, he's a pupil too' but finally they relented. That didn't work really either, so I got a teacher to tell them. Then I went to tai chi.) Anyway, they were writing some amazing sentences and coming up with some really good ideas, which is really great to see.
This afternoon, my teacher and I went into town and met up with a guy from LISA, which is connected to the Education Ministry and chatted for awhile. The guy is British, so we could speak a lot in English and he's very smart indeed. He showed us some interesting things, like this test that they'd tried out on some classes and he showed us a graph of how each of the questions varied. For example, it would show how many percent of the students got a question right comparing one school with a more general sized group (the state or city or something) and when both those numbers were low, then the question was bad. And then he showed us the questions and we guessed what was wrong with it. It was fun. After lunch, he gave me a general outline of a verbal comprehension test and I was to tape it. So I wrote down some notes and away I went. I'm not gonna post the actual task here, because it may be used for the 6th graders' class tests in March. But it was very interesting, as I was not to actually write out what I was going to say, but to have some points to hit and thus make it more natural. I thought it was gonna be a big pain in the neck to do, but actually it was pretty easy. When I was finished, both he and my teacher said that I am very good at this. I think doing theater in high school, and various speech groups, has given me a bit of an idea how it works. By no means am I profi-level, but good enough for their purposes, I guess. I think they'll use me again, which is fine, because I enjoyed doing it. A little improv here or there, in the classroom or out, doesn't hurt.
And then, to top things off, I went to the 'mall' and saw a couple of my fav students, bought a black dress shirt for the Schulball and found the specialty tea place.  Man, I oughta just go to bed now before something goes bad!

Networking and a trick

bengt — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:34:01 GMT

Everything is going well. I found out last week that the Tai Chi group at my school does the same Tai Chi routine that I learned through PBS quite a few years ago, so that's exciting that I'll get to practice that a little bit more. Although the teacher does it a little bit oddly, so I'm gonna have to keep an eye out that I dont mess it up.
I'm pretty tired, because it was a busy weekend.  On Saturday, we had an Open House day, and it seemed to go down pretty well. I guess they had a pretty good sized line of people applying to get their children into the school, which is good. Otherwise, I talked with a few teachers, particularly Senor Träger, the Spanish teacher, who I found out should be Herr Doktor Träger, with his doctorate in Latin American History, I think.  I also spoke with this one student, who is very interested in chatting with me in English. He bought me a 'hamburger', which was a sort of beef filet, with mayo and chopped tomato on a hard roll. They also charge 1 € for "hot water" at the cafeteria, which is kind of outrageous, in everyone's opinion.  Anyway, I got to chat with a bunch of students. I met one on the streetcar coming to the school, although I'd already spoken to her before, and we talked about the US, Indiana where she had been an exchange student last year. Then with some friends of the student that bought me the hamburger. It was a good time to make connections, despite the fact that it was annoying to have to go to work on a Saturday.
Afterwards, one teacher asked if I just wanted to come over and hang out with her family, completely spontaneous. Now, this is Germany. Who's spontaneous here? Not very many people! Maybe I just have met the wrong people, but so many people seem to like their plans so much. So anyway, I joined her and her family. We decided it would be fun to try and throw off one of the daughters by saying that I could only speak English, thereby forcing her to use her English a bit. More precisely, we just didnt tell her that I spoke German and the assumption that I couldn't followed. She was very nervous to do speak, but sort of settled into it and actually seemed pleased when I told her that she spoke well; she only sounded a bit nervous, but that's ok, I said. Then came the question: Do you speak German? I said, some. She said, 'well, what's the German word for..uhh. tree?' Pause. 'Baum?' 'OH sehr gut!' Finally, during the grillen, we decided to spring it on her. She was annoyed, but it seemed like she was used to little tricks in their family sometimes.  Anyway, the news that I speak pretty well in German had been filtering through the rest of the party, so much that a couple of the people asked me to say something, to see if the teacher had been lying about my lack-of-accent. I dont know whether they were disappointed, but they seemed content at least.  Anyway, this was as far as the evening went pretty much. One of the other daughters of the teacher, who is 18 or so, was also an exchange student, but in Miinnesota and they had just visited in the summer. They seemed most impressed by the coldness of Lake Superior, even when it was 95 out.
Anyway, Hannes, who drove me home, invited me, more or less, to go to the Achteck, a club and hang-out place, and I planned to go. But after such a full day of talking with people and everything, I couldn't even keep awake in my uncomfortable desk chair. So sadly it didnt work.  (I found out today that a couple more students were there on Saturday night as well so I would've known quite a few people there.. oh well, I would've been grumpy or something anyway).
Finally, on Sunday, after church at the weird place that I go to here, I took a walk around one of the 7 lakes here. It took about an hour, but it was a nice time, and there were a lot of people around there. After that, I went home, ate something light, and then went to a museum exhibition of East German posters. There were some really good things, but not as many as I'd hoped. There were, however, two Hulot posters and that was fun to see!

Tafelbild

bengt — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:11:49 GMT

I have to share with you part of the mind map from the chalkboard this morning. The 8th grade had to come up with facts about the US and this is some of what they came up with:

America
People: 300 Million, GW Bush, Hispanics, Asian Americans, stars, Natives, African Americans
Sights: Statue of Liberty, skyscrapers, the Old State House (Boston), White House, Walk of Fame
Sports: basketball, baseball, American Football, athletics, cheerleaders, boxing
Food/drink: fast food (hamburger, french fries), orange juice, Chinese, coffee to go, eggs, lemonade, pizza, cola, spaghetti, crisps, toast, T-Bone steaks, hot chocolate
Other: flag, guns

Question and Quick Update

bengt — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:48:36 GMT

Hello all.
First the question: Anyone have a favorite photo album website that they would recommend to me? I do want to post some pictures of this very nice city, and I made some very beautiful ones last weekend, although I nearly harmed camera doing so. I dont have internet, but I can put pictures on my Wechseldatenträger (memory stick) and then upload them from this here internet cafe. Sounds like fun, eh?

Germany is going well. My classes are going just fine, although it's getting tiring with me standing in front of the classes, vamping on things to say and trying to elicit questions about whatever they want. And doing this in classes from 7th grade to 13th grade. It's a lot of fun to find out what they want to know and to see what they already know, or think they know. Someone told me that Americans eat Chinese food for breakfast. Another one made the interesting observation that Spongebob's last name in English, "Squarepants", is oddly the opposite of his name in German, "Schwammkopf" or "Spongehead". I think Spongebob Spongehead would be kind of silly sounding, but that's why they stay with the German name. Others asked me my political stance, as usual. They ask whether I'Ve met so-and-so famous singer, who tends to be nowhere near as famous in the US as they are here. The something Dolls? No idea. Someone asked me a question that they were afraid would be too intimate, "do they have magazines in America?" Clearly something got lost in translation. Besides, what are 7th graders asking questions like that and "do you drink/smoke?" for? and am I allowed to answer this kind of question? I mean, if teachers can get sacked for smoking and talking to a student at the same time, can we discuss this kind of thing? How am I to be a good example to the youth of a foreign country?
Anyway, it will be nice not to always be answering questions about me. I mean, I dont even have that much to say about myself..but it's nice to see that most of the classes are interested, at least with some encouragement.
Tomorrow, I'Ve got a couple periods and then I'm gonna learn how to golf with a PE class. I'm not sure why, but I might as well learn something new. And it gets me in contact with some classes and a teacher or two. They also found out that I can, at least in theory, play piano, cello and sing. Now they want me in on that, which will be fun too. It's all overwhelming, I guess. But it's just the first week of school. No problem.
Now, I'm starved. Time to work my way home and then make some food. Perhaps I'll meet my flatmates? And I'll thwap one of them, who was very loud at 1:30 last night and then again at 4 am. Hardly heard a peep out of him in a week and then on a Tuesday night he's loud. Ah well, it wasn't that bad, just kind of weird.
I hope the weather back there is warmer than here!

Re: WeatherSTAR 4000

bengt — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:30:18 GMT

Ok, these people are really loony. They mostly don't have actual recordings of the Local Forecast from 1995 or anything (which would be sad enough). They have it EMULATED on their computers. There's a commercially available emulator of the Local Forecast, and some others just create it with Macromedia or something. Who DOES that with their time? I guess they have a memory or something and they go back and reconstruct how that would look on TWC.. at once, I'm torn between saying this is really cool and saying that it's really lame...

How I just met kindred spirits on YouTube

bengt — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:13:26 GMT

So last week I heard about this "documentary" called "Loose Change" which is a conspiracy theorist's history of the September 11th attacks. First of all, I decided that I would like to be a Conspiracy Theorist when I grow up, because you can claim anything you want and anyone that disagrees with you is either lying or has been lied to. Anyway, I watched this documentary and thought it was pretty entertaining for how much BS they were putting out. A few good points, but lots of hearsay and selective hearing on their parts. Then, I looked at youtube's "Related Videos" section and found "Unfastened Coins: The Titanic Conspiracy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHs6J0OXVI) which is made in exactly the same style as "Loose Change" but a parody. I sent the link to my best childhood friend, Kristin, and we agreed that we TOTALLY would have made something like that when we were little.

Then today, I was looking around at other YouTube things and found that there's an oddly large number of people who are The Weather Channel freaks. And not just TWC in general.. no these people know EVERYTHING about "Your Local Forecast" technology. And I mean everything. They have clips of WeatherSTAR 4000, which was in use for many years (which I remember fondly, but that makes me sound weird), WeatherSTAR XL and Junior, etc etc. Two of my personal favs were of 4000's glitches: occasionally, the computer would put up the national forecast rather than the local one, just showing you the weather in big cities all around; someone had gathered a couple instances of that and put it on the web.
Then I saw this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFI7Q0anySM This guy knows who did the voiceovers saying "Forecast for your area" and such. They changed them in 2000, and so he burned the post-Y2K guy's voice onto an old clip of a pre-2000 Local Forecast.
Quoth the poster: "Remember back when the WeatherSTAR 4000 and Junior had Dan Chandler's narration on The Weather Channel? Since 2000, Allen Jackson had been doing the narrations. This is what the WeatherSTAR 4000 and Junior would be like with Allen Jackson's voice"

Are we all nuts? At the same time, I"m a little relieved to know that there are other odd people in the world. But does this bode well for my students, present and future?

A Press Release of Sort

bengt — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:33:57 GMT

My application for year 2 in Germany has been accepted!! I will be sent off to the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. I'm looking forward to it and hoping for less craziness than I had at the beginning of this year! But hopefully I get a nice school with nice students and nice colleagues. Surely I can't get everything, right?

Anyway, it's going to be fun.. but no worries, friends and families of me, I will be home for most of July and August. I get back on July 3. I hope that I get to see you!

I mean it, AT the airport. Mark your calendars... or just sometime during July and August..

Observations

bengt — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:22:36 GMT

Too serious, or not serious enough? On the subway, I saw a woman reading a book by one of Germany's funniest authors. Didn't even break a smile. She read with quite a bit of concentration so she probably missed the funny parts.

There are polite and friendly clerks. I had to go to a bookstore to pick up a book for the 9L class; when I went to check out, clearly the clerk-lady thought I was a student and, since this is a teachers' wholesale bookstore, that would've been weird. But she was very nice to me, asked me "what are you anyway?" and gave me the teacher discount, being well-enough convinced of my position.

Are Germans perhaps the reason for Sammy Huntington remaining popular? The book I bought is called "The Eye of the Storm" and it appears to be mainly about a hurricane. But main theme is made clear in the first 4 pages, which I read in the subway. I wasn't smiling either. The thesis statement, as it were, of the book is this: "...my father does not want me to date American men. He says there are too many differences between us, between Japanese and American people." And the girl proceeds to break up with her boyfriend, even as all the fishermen are rushing to shore to get away from the hurricane. Let's just call it bad timing on her part. But there would be no problem with this kind of book, except that many of the English classes seem to be reading this "clash of cultures" kind of book, including "Bend it like Beckham", "Heat and Dust" and various other "immigrants meet citizens of English-speaking country and are persecuted for no reason." (Can someone be persecuted for a reasonable reason?)

Italian Ice. One place where there is absolutely no clash of cultures is when the German world receives Italian ice cream parlors. For a reasonably reasonable price, one can get a couple of scoops of nice creamy ice cream. Yeah, I try to be German, but I just can't help but smile at the ice cream, even as it drips upon my sneakers. It's just so nice, you can't get mad at it.

kvetch kvetch kvetch

bengt — Wed, 16 May 2007 20:22:53 GMT

Apparently 4 congresspersons (and their spouses in some cases) are taking the "Foodstamp Challenge" this week. They have to budget their food to equal $21 for the whole week, or $3 per day. One reading of their blogs might show how new a thing this is to them. Suddenly, budgeting isn't merely a theory!
http://timryan.house.gov/
http://foodstampchallenge.typepad.com/

Yes, they too don their vestments one voluminous head-hole at a time

bengt — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:32:37 GMT

Found this beautiful article on the Discovery Channel website: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/24/baptism_hum_02.html?category=history&guid=20070424100000

But the beauty of it is particularly in the last few paragraphs...The article seems to go from more theoretical ideas about the afterlife to more, shall we say, practical issues.

Unbaptized Infants Released From Limbo

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

type size: [A] [A] [A]

April 24, 2007 — Limbo, the state between heaven and hell where almost eight centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching consigned the virtuous but unbaptized, is expected to be abandoned soon by Pope Benedict XVI.

The only one entitled to sanction the limbo’s abolition, the Pope has blessed a 41-page report of the International Theological Commission, titled, "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized."

An advisory body to the Vatican, the 30-member commission concluded that the concept of limbo reflected an "unduly restrictive view of salvation".

"There is greater theological awareness today that God is merciful and wants all human beings to be saved. Grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ's special love for the little ones," the report, posted on the Catholic News Service website, said.

Following a three-year study, the document concluded that "serious theological and liturgical grounds" provide hope that "unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision."

Limbo, which comes from the Latin word meaning "border" or "edge," has never been defined as church dogma.

Nevertheless, it has been a strongly debated issue since the time of St. Augustine, who persuaded a church council in 418 A.D. to reject any notion of an ''intermediary place'' between heaven and hell.

Augustine’s view was based on the assumption that only baptism removes the stain of original sin — which all children are born with. Thus, unbaptized babies would simply go to hell, though their punishment would be the mildest of all.

Immortalized by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as the "first circle of hell," where souls were not punished but doomed never to see God, the idea of limbo was still strong in 1905. At that time, Pope Pius X stated: ''Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer, either.''

Belief in limbo began to change with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), in which the church conceded that everyone — baptized Christians or not — could actually have a chance to be saved.

The idea of scrapping limbo and examining the afterlife fate of unbaptized infants was first proposed by Pope John Paul II. Indeed, the new Catholic Church's catechism, issued in 1992, does not contain any mention of limbo.

"Limbo has never been a definitive truth of faith. Personally, I would let it drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis," then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and now Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in the 1980s.

According to Vatican sources, the commission's findings could be ratified by the Pope by the end of the year.

While urging parents to continue to baptize their children, the document also states that the salvation for unbaptized babies who die is an urgent pastoral question since their number is greatly increasing and parents can experience deep anguish thinking that their unbaptized children are in a place where God is not present.

As the document stated, "People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness."

They were unable to extract DNA from the remains, meaning they could not identify the sex of the mummy or the cat.

"The embalming products appear to have prevented the conservation of the DNA, and they are too old, so it didn't work," Charlier said.

Even perfumers were called in as detectives. The researchers had them sniff the remains, using their exceptional olfactory senses "so they could identify the smells, the vegetable matter, in the embalming and guide our research," Charlier said.

The remains were supposedly recovered from Joan of Arc's pyre and conserved by an apothecary until 1867, before being turned over to the archdiocese of Tours.

Joan of Arc was tried for heresy and witchcraft and executed after leading the French to several victories over the English during the Hundred Years War, notably in Orleans, south of Paris.

The illiterate farm girl from Lorraine, in eastern France, disguised herself as a man in her war campaigns and said she heard voices from saints telling her to deliver France from the English.

The journal Nature was first to report that the team had concluded that the bone was from a mummy, not Joan of Arc.

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Some more news's

bengt — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:56:14 GMT

Just so you all know, I have seen this news on the web, after vaguely hearing about it on the radio yesterday.

BERLIN, April 20 -- The U.S. Embassy in Berlin warned Friday that Germany faced an increased threat of terrorism and that Americans in the country were particularly at risk.

Although the State Department regularly issues warnings about dangers to U.S. citizens in Europe and elsewhere in the world, Germany has rarely been singled out as a potential security problem.

In posting the warning, the embassy in Berlin said U.S. diplomatic and consular offices across Germany had increased their security in response to "a heightened threat situation." The embassy did not give details, but U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the warning was prompted by increased activity in the country among Islamic extremists rather than by a specific plot.

German authorities said they viewed the warning seriously and have taken extra measures to safeguard U.S. interests.

They also ask Americans living here to take further precautions to protect onesself and property. Not sure exactly what I'm to do with that information, but there we go. I'm happy that they're letting us know, but it's not like it was unthinkable that Germany could be threatened somehow. To the two of you visiting in a couple of weeks, have no worries! Hannover has no US interest in it, besides the American diners.

Also, in other sad news, BOTH of the Italian restaurants I like have closed. One of them had a fire (possibly due to the stone oven they used), the other one has been closed during some remodeling.

Anyway, just wanted you all to know some of the things going on here.

A project

bengt — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:19:03 GMT

Greetings one and everyone,

I have just now begun a new blog, a German politics blog, with the idea of imitating an American political blog. It is still forming itself in some ways, but I have a couple of posts already up and hope to keep it up well. The blog Bengt will still be used but hammelsprung is the one for German political noise. I can't promise that the new one will be successful (or any good for that matter) or how long I can keep it up, but it seems like an entertaining thing to try out for a little bit. Check it out, friend it, forward it to any friends that may be nerdy in that way.
Till next time in the web!
the Bengt

Last week's word, part 2

bengt — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:39:36 GMT

Last week, I reported the sighting of a new word: Amokläufer. This word means "someone who runs amok."
Now, this word has shown up again and in the form of: "22 Tote bei Amoklauf auf Uni-Campus in USA". Just saw this on n-tv, the German 24-hour news channel.

How sad. I guess this is what we'll be talking about in class the next few days...

I just found this napkin on my desk...

bengt — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:20:58 GMT

On this napkin, I wrote down some good funny mistakes from some university student's papers that I graded for my professor friend in Aachen about 6 weeks ago. So enjoy!

1. "We benefitted from the interest Americans take in everything foreign and their general talkativeness as they allowed us to train our conversation skills and improve our fluidity very much."

2. "Pop music usually deals with problems in society and romanticism."

3. [after the other students returned from the US, people's speaking didn't just get better.]..."Instead an American accent and instances of slovenly American diction emerged in class."

4. "The junior certificate [test] e.g. basically consists of writing a letter to an imaginative pen pall."

5. A title of one paper: "Myself as a Foreign Language Learner or A School-o-Graphy of an Amnesic Mind"

Trip Part 1: Lithuania

bengt — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:06:56 GMT

Last week, my friend Erica and I were on a trip in the Baltic countries. I just want to let you all know a bit about it, some fun little tidbits and hopefully some interesting stories.
On the first day in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, we had some trouble getting to our hotel. At the airport, we had to get money out of the ATM and were only able to get large bills out (100 lita bills, if I remember correctly, which is a lot of money there) and we got on the bus. The bus driver, needless to say, does not accept anything that large. Thus, we had to get out of the bus and reconsider. We decided just to grab a taxi and figure everything else out later.
We got to our area and I, for one, was taken aback. This is an area that looks like a run-down area of town.. like what you see next to railroad tracks in the US. The hotel was a little bit away from the street, so I could see people's backyards and they were mostly dirt, laundry hung up, sometimes even a trashed car sitting back there; all a big change from the Germans' finely cultivated gardens. We were later to find out that this area is the Bohemian district and is partly supposed to look that way, but surely it doesn't hurt that it already looked that way after the end of the cold war. It was interesting, though, to see a place like that, sort of preserved in time back then. It was kind of odd to see a place like that.. not that there ARE places like that, but that there are such places when I'm there.
Anyway, after checking in at the hotel, we hiked around the Old Town. We went into a LOT of churches, including a couple Russian Orthodox ones, and climbed up to the remains of the old castle up on the hill. We got directions from a woman in the building on the ground how to get up there (communicated with gestures and not much else) but still ended up walking around a large portion of the hill. It was cool up there to see people just hanging out on some old broken wall at the edge of an old castle. It wasn't a museum, it was a hang out place, with the equivalent of mall rats up there. We can call them castle rats. Up there, we could see a large portion of the town, the new parts and the old parts. Later, we hiked some more around downtown where we found a Mary shrine in an old city gate, we saw the large presidential palace (which has no human security that we could find, front or back), and the main university building, which had 8 courtyards or something. We also saw a great little monastery in the middle of town. It was much more peaceful than I'd have expected in the middle of the city.
We ate that evening at a Lithuanian restaurant. It was kind of kitschy, with waitresses in costume, some musicians playing traditional music and a chicken cage in a wall near the entrance (which I found to be rather distressing). The food was good though, I had some sort of beef dumpling and a Lithuanian beer.
Back at the hotel, I decided to see what was on TV. There were two channels. On one, there was a music program. It seemed to be a fundraiser, with traditional music and a lot of older people sitting at long tables, clapping in rhythm. The other channel had an American sci-fi thriller of some sort. All the voices were dubbed by the same deep-throated man. He wasn't acting at all and he did all the voices, men, women and if there had been children, he'd've done those too. All without feeling.
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The next day, we decided to get out of the city and see something in the countryside. Erica knew about a place called Trakai which wasn't too far away. The bus was supposed to take 30 minutes, but we apparently got on the wrong one and thus spent 90 minutes in a bus that got progressively more crowded.
It's a nice town though. Very small, and so on. There was a beautiful old Russian Orthodox church there. I liked it a lot because it had wood floors (and the smell that comes with it), plants on all window sills and random dishes on shelves and window sills. it had a nice atmosphere, like an old American church. There was also a Catholic church there too, but it wasn't particularly interesting, except that it was on a high hill overlooking a large part of the town.
We went on to the Peninsula Castle, which was pretty much ruins. There were some castle rats there, drinking, hanging out. Trashing the place a little bit by just chucking their glass bottles at the foot of their wall.
Then we went to the Island Castle, which is where the real show in town is. It was mostly rebuilt and lots of visitors were all around. Going inside the rebuilt castle gives one a good sense of the way it felt inside. You can walk through the entryway and feel how close the walls are and then walk through the door into the inside of the castle and it opens up really widely. The castle itself had a museum inside now. Some of it was about the history of medieval warfare in the area or the history of the immediate area (the castle protects a large set of lakes and it strategically place at the head of them). But there were also the collections of some wealthy patron from the 19th century and his collections of stuffed hunted animals, a smoking pipe collection and other things.
(There was also this awesome kid on the bridge going back from the castle. There were a few musicians around, including a girl playing the Beatles on the flute and another playing something on violin. But this kid had a whistle. And he was playing some song in his head on the whistle, but since there was only one tone, he just appeared to be playing some rhythm that I couldn't recognize. Monotonic music, I guess).
Then we went over to a cemetery of the Karaites, a Turkic group with some kind of Jewish ties that settled there. The cemetery is not kept up, as part of their philosophy (sort of a dust-to-dust kind of thing). So there were gravestones that had eroded a bit, fallen down, etc. One tree had broken in a storm or something and smashed up some metal fence around some stones. Total chaos there, but it was also somehow nice.
Then we worked our way back to Vilnius, where we went to the market. The market was closing but we got some honey from a really nice older man. then we walked around some more, found the Parliament building. We ate at an Azerbaijani restaurant that evening. Also good food.
To be continued</div>

German Word of the Day

bengt — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:59:27 GMT

As I was reading a rather bad article about the evils of violent video games (bad in that it harped on problems for 21 paragraphs and then at the end vaguely hinted that there should be solutions to the problems but proposed none..) I found this great word:

der Amokläufer: (pronounced a-muck loyfer) the person who runs amok. I can only assume that the female is "Amokläuferin"

I'm gonna start calling my trouble students that.

The party line?

bengt — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:32:49 GMT

Just to inject some irony into your day:

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) made headlines last month after complaining about Congress’ new schedule that requires members to work five days a week:

“Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.”

And then, January 10th:
KINGSTON: If the Democrat Party truly wanted to take on poverty, they would have to say what is the relationship between marriage and the poverty level and between hours worked and the poverty level, because the truth of the matter is, if people end poverty, many of them would marry and work 40 hours a week, they would be out of poverty. … It’s not something I have the knowledge of or the information of, but it’s an economic fact that I hope we could have committee hearings on and discuss this. If we want to attack poverty, that’s where we need to go. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Orkan Kyrill comes to call

bengt — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:23:17 GMT

Funny. This morning I got out early as usual and thought that the weather was pretty warm, even though it was raining. Rain isn't all that weird here, in fact, I'd say it's the most typical weather type. I found out from one of the teachers that there was a big storm coming. This was at that time hard to believe because it was only raining a bit at that point. People kept bringing up this topic, more and more; eventually, a little bit of hope crept into the teachers' conversations, as rumors began to fly that school may be closed later. Finally, about halfway through 4th period, which I had free today along with 3rd period, the principal came into the teachers' room and announced that school would end after 4th period. Additionally, we should pay attention to the news tomorrow, in case school is completely cancelled for tomorrow.
The reason for all this fuss? It's a storm called an Orkan (which is translated as hurricane) named Kyrill. They way I'd describe it is some sort of non-snowy nor'easter. It's windy, cold and wet. Cold is pretty relative in my opinion, because it's actually about 40 or 45 out, I think. But it's very windy, even in the rather protected area I can see from my window. Apparently, it's supposed to get worse and that's why they closed school. The wind is apparently at 46 km/h, most likely with gusts. I was trying to put some pictures of it on here, but LiveJournal is too cool to let me do something like that.
So a few minutes later, the principal made the announcement that school was cancelled for the rest of the day; the squeals of delighted 5th graders could be heard throughout the building. Shortly thereafter, the rejoicing of the teachers began as well.

Just to relieve your worries...

bengt — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:45:18 GMT

To all of you that have read the report in the NYTimes and other newspapers, that Polonium was found in Germany. This is related to that spy that was poisoned a few weeks ago in England and his connection to Russians and all of that. I am in Hannover, not Hamburg, and there have been NO REPORTS that I know of that Hannoverians are in any danger.. or the people either.
End report.

The times, they aren't a-changin' so much

bengt — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 14:42:31 GMT

I always intend to write for this journal more often, but during the week, I just don't get a chance, or I'm too tired by the end of the day to write anything. I realized this week that things haven't changed in my life nearly as much as I'd thought. When someone at a school asks me to take part in some class or activity, it's clear that I still don't have the ability to say no. This week, I started working with a new English class, the 10th graders, with whom I will be working particularly on oral and verbal skills. I also changed my projects with some of the other classes, doing more regular kinds of classroom techniques and less Ben-lectures. I also started playing with the school orchestra, which is fun, but also a little depressing. The same goes for the school choir AG, which I also joined. After orchestra with Bettcher in middle and high school, and choir at LU the last 4 years, it's hard to go back to doing what most people did in high school. I am one of two cellos, playing some parts of the Nutcracker arranged by someone.No more Mozart's 40th, arranged by Mozart; no more Dvorak 8th, arranged by the composer.There are two cellos, sometimes a violin,three saxophones, a drummer, a recorder, three flutes and some kind of bassoon-flute hybrid. It's a cute orchestra, and obviously it's hard for a small school (1000 students) to get a ginormous sized thing like we had, but it's just such an adjustment. The choir is also quite small, and we're singing American gospel songs, which is pretty cool, although having to sing them in a German accent just to fit in is really hard. And they don't groove like we do either.I'm also a bit confused about my role in that group, because in any other music group I've ever been in I had to be there all the time.But here, I told the director that I might not be able to make every rehearsal, because of schedule conflicts and he's so darn relaxed about it:"It's youa lyyyfe" he said.He's really nice, but I feel like there's something that I'm missing.In any event, as much a pain as it is to be at the school through 8th period (3:00), I'll probably keep going for two days a week.
Everything else seems to be running pretty well.There are times when it feels sort of apocalyptic that I've messed up something or other, and my enjoyment of this place depends on the time of day, it seems.But at least I'm enjoying my work and other things that I'm doing.Next week, I will start working with another AG. An AG is an after-school club.Both choir and orchestra are AGs in Germany.AG stands for Arbeitsgemeinschaft (work-community) which gives you an idea of the German perspective on such things.The new one that I"m going to be working with is for 7th or 8th graders who have particular trouble with English.I added it because it sounds rewarding, and partly because I was specifically asked to do so.A couple of the classes that I work with these days seem to be less receptive to me, so I enjoy working with teachers who like having me.So I think that if the teacher asked for me (through one of the deans, in fact) then it's probably a good sign.It takes place late on fridays, so that's a bit of a drag, but I don't think it's so strict that I can't take one off every once in awhile. And it only lasts to the end of January anyhow (at least voraussichtlich).It should be fun.
Powersaving: I don't get the German green perspective on life. For example, at one of my many homes (guess which one from this story), I was strongly advised (dh ordered) to hang up my laundry instead of chucking it in a dryer.Many other Germans don't have/use clothes dryers generally, mostly as a cost/energy saving idea.But they also wash clothes at a generally higher temperature than Americans do.It's not uncommon for clothes to be washed at 40 degrees centigrade.So I figure that the energy saving is pretty well balanced out that way.Similarly, Germans often open the windows to get fresh air into the house, even when it is below freezing outside.At school, this tends to happen during every passing period.So they cool off the room and then have to reheat it all over again.They usually keep their place at a lower temp regularly, but still.Anyway, I just don't like having a lot of cold air rush into my world every short time; must be my midwestern self coming out there.
Finally, a small contest with no prize. Who can guess what is probably the most valuable thing that I have here with me? Hint: it's not electronic, unless my apple has appreciated in value..

Election 2006: A day off from school and a one-man party

bengt — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 11:54:43 GMT

Today is an election. Vote! I sure didn't. I didn't have an address to send an absentee ballot to. Also, my home representative is the Speaker of the House, the governor is going to get reelected despite strong evidence of corruption of his people, there are no senators up and I don't know of any special ballot initiatives or anything. So I'm going to enjoy one of my favorite things from afar yet again. I much more enjoy being in the US, watching cable news coverage of the elections until late in the night, and then waking up in the morning to see how much of what they said was true.
This year, we have a kind-hearted showdown between the Republicans and Democrats (and a few other parties too, I suppose). The Republicans have painted the US into a corner regarding Iraq, subverted traditional international laws about torture and prisoner treatment, botched foreign diplomacy on many points and have possibly been spying on whomever they choose for 5 years or more. Republican-Libertarians find themselves supporting more government spending and regulations; "Values Voters" (you know, as opposed to the others of us who have no values) find themselves supporting torture, execution, and war. Until recently, the party of moral values hasn't had a functioning Ethics committee in Congress and allowed lobbyists to take over and turned a blind eye to some disgusting stuff.
The Democrats have fashioned a very clear response to this difficult situation: passive leadership. Adopting the motto "We ain't them", they have reacted by not reacting. Their plan is to have no plan, to deny that they will do certain things, but not say that they will do other things. It's just like was written in my notebook for Sufism class: "The opposite is also true." How very Zen of them. The Democrats put some confidence in their standard bearer, the famous comedian John Kerry (quoth the Daily Show John Kerry routine: "under certain particular circumstances, you might be a redneck... unfortunately, I can't remember them right now"). Democrats have been embroiled in their own scandals with lobbyists, although the lobbyists know full-well who has the actual power at the moment.
Well done, politicians of America. I'm sure change is necessary, but to whom shall we turn? This guy? http://whitneyforgov.blogspot.com/ After Tuesday, I will go back into my wishful world, in which Lincoln, Jefferson, Webster, Clay (the Great Compromiser), Harrison (just cool), and Frelinghuysen (google it!) are the candidates. Next week, I'm registering as a Whig Party member.

And when the votes were cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump!

Lebensmittelvergiftung

bengt — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:23:04 GMT

So just as soon as I'd figured it all out. Yesterday, I really started to feel at home in my new room, I bought foods and some practical things. In the evening, after hanging out for a little while, I went into downtown Hannover to buy some things I need, including hangers and a couple of books, as well as a copy of Die Zeit, the weekly intelligentsia newspaper here (the headline of which this week was "Gebt uns das gute Amerika zurück"-"give us the good America back, y'all"). Anyway, the problem came right after that. I decided, since I don't have any cooking utensils to speak of and I'm not sure if the ones in the common kitchen are common utensils or not, I got fast food, Burger King. I've eaten there before, so it was most likely just fine (not like the nowadays ever-suspicious Döner stands). I took take-out back home and ate it pretty much right away, felt fine. ate an apple or two later, unpacked most of my stuff in my room, and went to bed at about 11 to get up at 5:30 for the early-bird train to Burgdorf. At about 1, I woke up with a very odd stomach ache. I switched to another podcast on my ipod and then went back to sleep until about 3. From then on, it was clear that I was very sick; I shan't put in all the details, but suffice it to say that I think it was food poisoning. So at 6, I had to figure out how I was supposed to call in to school, which no one had bothered to explain to me. I called Mattias and asked him about it and told him that I couldn't come in today, called Lars and the Sekretariat as well. I was very happy that the Kiosk down the street had carbonated mineral water and Ginger Ale, which mommy always said was good for stomach aches. Now, however, I'm doing much much better. My stomach still hurts a little bit at times, but it's better.
Also, I figured out how to get onto the internet in my room. It also runs some chatting programs, so I'm not gonna lose track of some people this year. It hasn't yet got some websites, but we'll see.