Greetings! Oops, did not mean to leave quite such a gap between blog posts but I’m here now. The Teaching Assistant gig is turning out to be a pretty sweet one; it looks like I’ll be helping out with 2-3 lessons a week, as well as having office hours and going to the ‘Stammtisch’ pub nights on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The lessons are shaping up well after a rather embarrassing first class where I ended up arriving later than the students (in my defence the class starts at 7:30am. Just let the horror sink in for a minute). However the content has been really interesting and next week I’ll be making my first presentation to the class (on British variations of English), which I’m excited about. Also next week I am due to present something on Renaissance Poetry, definitely more daunting as I haven’t studied poetry since GCSE!

The Stammtisch nights have so far been really fun; they are technically events for the German students to come and practice their English, but in reality they tend to be mostly international students who don’t want to speak German. Either way, they’ve been a great way to get to know people, and as they count as part of my working hours, I can’t really complain! I have yet to start my office hours, but as I understand them they’ll be a time for students to come and discuss their projects, practice presentations or just ask any general questions about English they may have. They also make me feel very professional, I just hope they live up to the hype and I can actually help the students out.

In terms of extra-curriculars, I have gone along to a choir and a Zumba group which have both been a lot of fun. Both are all auf Deutsch though, which meant I had to ask my more German-proficient friends for translations more than once. But music and dance are universal languages, right?

I’m also taking a TEFL course to get some more academic background knowledge as well as practical stuff. I should also be starting an afternoon German course on Monday; however I didn’t manage to pay for it until after the deadline and might not get a place after all. It would be such a shame to not be able to work on the language while I’m here. Everyone around me speaks such good English that’s it’s hard to practice my extremely broken Deutsch!

Prayer points:

  • That I get in to the German course!
  • That my presentations next week go well and I can learn from them
  • That I can make the most of my time here and organise some trips to other cities
  • That I can get more involved in the church I’ve started going to

Thanks for reading!

Bis Später!