It’s been almost a month into our TAB experience and each week presents new learning experiences and exciting adventures.
Teaching here has been, exciting, eye-opening, and even challenging. I think the biggest challenge is the language barrier. Since the students are still young and not fully fluent in English, I have to make sure I keep my language plain and direct. Mistakes and misunderstandings happen, but all of us are able to laugh about. The primary school I am teaching at starts at 8:00am and ends at 1:00pm – in the afternoon some students go home while a majority will stay for clubs and extracurricular activities. The teachers are able to go home after 1:00pm, but many of them use the afternoon for lesson planning and staff meetings. I believe this creates a better work life balance for teachers in Germany. One of the most unique parts of the school are the school chickens! Each class shares the responsibility of taking care of the chickens, this includes, cleaning the coop, feeding, and collecting eggs. During recess two students are in charge of ‘guarding’ the chickens, they wear high vis vests and make sure the other students don’t crowd the chickens. They take this job very seriously, it’s pretty adorable.
Hamburg is such a cool city to live in, there a special culture and rich history within every street. I recently learned Hamburg has the highest concentration millionaires in Germany, this is evident when being downtown as it seems like everyone here owns a Porsche. Even if you don’t own a fancy car, it is not difficult navigating the city. The trains and buses here are very efficient and it easy to get to any part of the city. There are many small and charming towns outside of Hamburg which are easily accessible through the trains. My favourite has been Lüneburg. It is well-preserved medieval town south of Hamburg (about 45 minutes from central train station) which was not destroyed during WWII. It really felt as if Jenica and I were walking through a fairy-tale. It is wild seeing buildings that were constructed in the 1100’s, our Canadian brains struggle to comprehend seeing buildings that old.
Schools here have a fall break starting on the 18th of October, which means we only have three weeks left of TAB! I did not expect to get as close as I have with the other TAB students, but we have been going on many adventures together. We even have a trip planned to Austria and Munich next week.
Tips: If you ever find yourself in Germany don’t forget to bring your student ID. Many museums, experinces, and yes even clubs, have reduced or free admission for university students. Most of the time you can say you are a student, and they will give you the discount without proof, but there is the odd occasion where they will not give it to you without a physical ID card. Since our UofC ID cards don’t have an expiration date I plan on bringing it with me for every trip I take to Europe!
Tschüss!
Hannah