First Advenutres

Hallo!
  WHHEEWWWW.  Have I really been here for two weeks?  I often can't decide if it feels like I've been here for 4 months or 4 days!  Krissy and I claim that we'll know we've become Berlin residents when we can use the credit card machine without any assistance and get people to speak German to us just by looking at us, and I don't think it has to do with our clothes.  I guess our frantic faces, wind blown/wet hair, inside out umbrellas and loud laughter give us away before we have the chance to speak.  I don't know how no German people's umbrellas don't flip in the wind, but ours do every time without fail, haha. UMBRELLA.  I love my umbrella.  It's an extension of my arm.  I bought it at the drug store and it's a sunshine yellow color.  It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Mostly because we only have about 7 hours of daylight, and the daylight is more of a graylight.  It's my own personal sunshine.  Krissy has one with pink flowers, and I think we're the only ones who have colorful umbrellas, because most are black/gray/navy.  Which makes us stand out even more, but we love them.  I'm so glad that the people here don't reflect the weather.  I still cannot get over how nice everyone is.  Although they are a little more conscious of the schedule, they are so very kind and helpful.  I love people of Berlin.

* A few other little things that makes me happy every day.

- All of the little girls with long blonde braids remind me of Andie, haha. AND shout out to ar-lo. because they all love my headband, and think it's so cool that my sister made it.
- My diet largely consists of pretzels and nutella.  Which is fine with me.  It always makes me think of My 6305 roomies and the beach house roomies.
- I get the same feeling waiting at the bus stop every day that I had Freshman year of college when I would walk from the parking garage to my dorm in Owen on the Quad and think to myself "am I really here?" or ask Morgan, "Is it seriously the end of January? What happened to December?"  I'm so grateful to bed here.
- I have to be to the school at 7:15am, which means about a 15 min. walk from the bus station in the dark.  It is so quiet and so peaceful.  The perfect time to pray for everyone back home and for the day ahead.  It might be my favorite part of my days here!


FIRST DAY OF TEACHING:
    I taught my first reading lesson last Thursday.  It went really well.  Since it was my first lesson in the classroom alone (my teacher was in the back room because we're trying to let the kids get used to having two teachers) I was simply reading aloud from the chapter book they are reading as a class.  I was really into it, acting it out as I read and trying to get a feel for the students, who were a little wary of giving me their attention at first, when all of the sudden the table to my left starts freaking out a little.  I thought, ohh nooo, I'm the worst.  Until I look over and one of the sweetest girls is running for a kleenex, blood all on her hand, saying I'm so sorry Miss Long, but I pulled my tooth out, I just couldn't wait!  hahaha.  Ay yi yi.  This would happen during my first lesson.  I think they planned it. Just kidding, but it really was funny and I won't be forgetting it for a long time.

MITTE in the day:
 Mitte means middle in German, and that's what the heart of Berlin is called.  My sweet house mom took us to the city our first weekend here.  We got to see the Brandenburg Gate, The Reichstag, The former Berlin wall, the Embassy's, Hotel Adlon (the infamous hotel where MJ held his baby over the railing) and tons of beautiful buidlings.  The city is very cool looking. Because of the bombings a lot of the area had to be rebuilt.  There are extremely old beautiful buildings right next to a funky modern buildings.

MITTE in the night:
 We've set Thursday night as dinner and a museum night.  There are so many museums in Berlin and we don't want to miss any of them, so we've decided that every Thursday night we're going to have dinner in the city and walk over to one of the museums.  They are open late on Thursdays and often free for students!  This past Thursday we went to dinner and then went to see the Holocaust Memorial and the Brandenburg Gate at night.  The gate was beautiful.  The Memorial, was heavy.  It is big stone blocks of different sizes that are built like a maze.  The ground isn't flat and moves up and down with the stone blocks.  I think the architect wanted it to seem overwhelming.  It was most definitely overwhelming.  You can just feel the loss staring into it.  We were trying to decide whether to walk in it or not because it was so late.  It was a little erie.  We walked in a little bit, and we all had out our cameras to try and capture the vastness of it all.  My camera is brand new, I got it for Christmas and it hasn't given me any problems over the past few weeks.  I took about three pictures, but none of them would really come out normal.  All of the sudden my camera locked up.  It was switching back and forth between all 20 settings on its own.  It would't let me turn it off or take a picture.  That was enough for me to exit and call it a night.  When we walked out of the maze, I took the battery out and turned it back on and it was fine.  I walked away speechless.  I cannot imagine the horror that the Holocaust victims went through.  The memorial is definitely one thing I will never forget!

It has been a wonderful two weeks.  I can't wait to write about my time in Copenhagen, Denmark this past weekend.  It was incredible.  We got to see the queen!!