I come from the land of Plastics.

The last two weeks have been rather uneventful to be entirely honest. however, I have had (as always) some weekend fun. Bochum turned into going to a tiny ghetto movie theater (which was only 5 Euros!) to see the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Emily and I did an extremely good job following this rather acid trippy movie in German. I did sort of start to lose my attention span when I realized they put real melted butter on the popcorn. There was an actual pool of it on the bottom of the bucket...cold soggy butter popcorn = the first time in my life I thought "maybe that's too much butter." Saturday we met a few girls in Essen where I was forced to sled down an ice ramp in front of Germans as well as go ice skating. Now when you picture the sledding hill...think of those big colorful slides at the fair that you ride down on a towel. Cover that with ice and there you go! (was that too Midwestern of a comment?) This past week though was an interesting one for the German school system. Student report cards get handed out tomorrow (on Friday). In order to insure that they are ready in time the following measures are taken: 1. Tuesday there is no school and teacher sit around with their big black folders of grades and decide which students are nice enough to deserve better grades than they earned. No I'm not joking. Teacher 1: "Well Timo only got a 4, but he's a pretty nice kid." Teacher 2: "Yea I think he's a pretty swell kid. Should we give him a 2?" Teacher 1: "Yea sounds like a plan." 2. All German teachers shut down. In other words I got to teach an extra four lessons this week because they didn't want to do any more work than fill out their gradebooks into the big black folders. It's very stressful when you only have to figure out their grade twice a year. 3. Fridays are the equivalent to that last day of elementary school that only lasted an hour. The kids go in get their report cards and at 10:25 they get to go home. Pretty sweet huh? 4. Last but not least Monday morning the school schedule changes. The teachers are emailed their new schedules on Sunday night; however, I not being a teacher will not receive a schedule. Aka I'm going in blind on Monday. Woo. I didn't intend to sound sooo grumpy, but I'm a little grumpy today so it comes with the territory. Other school news: One of y 13th graders told me she sees Americans as plastic people who come from a land of plastic. I picked up an extra hour every week where I get to teach whatever I want (alinging to the theme). Tomorrow I got invited to a school dance. Sweet. The theme is "over and under the sea." Oh and my school "tentatively" offered me a teaching job for next year. I politely said I'd have to consider it, but I didn't think it would align with my plans for next year. Saturday I'm going to a wedding expo with Katie (the engaged one), Emily, and Merianna. We are going to pretend to be rich snotty foreign women and demand only the best. Katie herself said she expects a lot of "tutting." Well that's it for now. A very boring post...don't you think?