Catch Up

Hey! I'm a bit overdue for a blog. Here's what's going on with me:

Work - My demonstration lesson went very well and I was offered a job at the D.A.I. Of course, when I say 'job' that makes it sound as though I'll be 'working', which isn't necessarily the case - I've been hired to be part of the teaching pool, so I'm now available to take classes and private lessons, but I haven't been assigned any yet. The good news is that there are a few classes that haven't been assigned teachers that will be offered up during a meeting on October 8th, so hopefully I can start with one of those.

It's become clear that I need to find other jobs as well, as what I have is not a full-time position. One of my projects for this week is posting up advertisements around Tübingen for free lance work, and I've sent a few resumes to institutions both here and in our neighbor Reutlingen. (these are two of about seven thousand southern German towns that end in -ingen)

My first intensive German course comes to an end this week. It's been very helpful and I've kept on top of the material. I'm becoming slightly more functional outside of courses, but I still have a long way to go. Minor achievements include getting my hair cut and being able to ask for a loaf of bread from a bakery without using any English. I have short frequent conversations with my roommates in German, and the general immersion has been very useful. I feel good about where I'll be in two months.

The roommates and I have been having quite a bit of fun - we went to Oktoberfest in Munich on a whim one lazy Sunday, and the following week went to Stuttgart's comparable festival. Both were quite wild - huge beers, really good food, tons of people wearing authentic German clothes (yes, liederhosen), and lots of amusements - full size roller coasters, ferris wheels, rides with ominous names like "Air Wolf" and "Space Death". At each festival I consumed the equivalent of a two liter bottle of Coke (which is, accordingly, two liters) in high alcohol content beer.

I took lots of pictures but my poor iPhone decided it was no longer able to live happily in this world, and decided to take it's own life. So until I acquire a camera, I won't be able to post pictures here. Sorry. I'll make sure to write that many more thousands of words.

Sophie, the girl who's subleasing my apartment to me, comes back to take her bed and some furniture on Thursday. I knew this was coming, but somehow didn't think to replace the bed. I also kind of want to see if the apartment that I'm moving into next will be furnished or not. So I might spend a few nights on the floor, but, hey, I'm young.

I'm putting the Paris trip on hold. My financial situation isn't so hot right now, since I'm not yet working, and I need to prioritize things a little.

Right then - talk to you soon!

The Day I Fought a Crocodile

This was a big week for me - I started German classes on Monday, and they're great. It's three hours a day, from 9 - 12:15, and they move at a great pace. I'm so eager to learn the language that I'm taking to it very well, and I can already say a lot more (viel mehr) after just three days. I can't wait to see where I am in two months. I plan to take the A1 - A2 (beginner and advanced beginner) courses and then see if I know enough to learn the rest through usage. It's also nice having somewhere I have to be every day.

I stopped into the DAI on Tuesday and introduced myself to the hiring manager. I'm coming back next Monday to teach a fake class to her and a couple interns, which is a sort of interview for the job. It should be fun - and after my TESL course, I'm very ready for that sort of thing. The only problem is that all of the Fall semester classes already have teachers, so the most work I can get this year is substituting, privat tutoring, and sitting in on other teacher's classes. If I do well I'll have my own classes starting in January...but that's still a long time to go with no income, so it's going to be a bit tough. This means I have to look very hard for my own private students and other work opportunities.

So I'm in my first play here in Tübingen - I'm playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" with a theatre troupe that operates out of the University. We had our first rehearsal tonight - I'm the only native English speaker in the group, which is wild. The play seems very informal - rehearsals once or twice a week, drinks afterwards, parties every two weeks. It's as much about the social part of theatre as the art - and I would be lying if I said I wasn't okay with that. It seems as though there might definitely be opportunities for me to create my own projects sometime in the future - a Tübingen longform improv troupe, or a production of a play I've written... there's tons of interest and people willing to take part in theatre, and that's all you need really.

I found out today that the lease on my apartment won't be extended (there was a chance that it would be) so I have to move out the end of October. Apartment search time!

I'm thinking about a possible excursion to Paris next month. It's so cheap, and I had a blast in London.

I didn't really fight a crocodile. I'm sorry I lied to you.

That's all for now. Tschuss!

The London Epic

I'm back safe and sound from my trip - if not a little sleep deprived. It was a frantic and awesome three days...so here goes:

The Most Excellent Adventures of James

"The Larks of London"

Day One

I awake promptly at 3:30 in the morning, grab my bag, and go to catch my bus. I arrive at the airport, go through security, and go straight to my gate, having checked in online. As soon as I'm board the plane, having gotten very little sleep, I crash. However, I'm sharply awoken when THE PLANE CRASHES! I awake with a start to the plane violently lurching in the air. My final thoughts are "So this is how it happens. I go down in a plane." At the moment that I choose to accept my fate, I open my eyes and look out the window, only to realize that we've landed in Stansted Airport, and that the violent lurching was the plane hitting the ground. I had been sound asleep for the entire ride. I groggily and a little sheepishly wander off the plane, still shaken up from the moment of impending doom.

The bloke from customs demanded to know why a Yankee had any business visiting his Queen's great country, but after a few suspicious questions he decided to let me go. "But if you ever come back to the UK, you better bring some proof that you're actually working." Sure, man, whatever you say. I have a bus to catch. I found the bus, and by 10:00 in the morning, I was in downtown London.

Finding my hostel was a little tricky, as I was newly thrust into an unfamiliar terrain with many gray winding streets that looked identical...like this:

When I arrive at the hostel it's too early to check-in, so I leave my bag, acquire a map, and head out to start exploring London. I walk down a bustling Oxford Street, grab a chicken pasty from a street vendor, and head to the British Museum.

I easily killed a few hours there, and that was still moving pretty quickly. The collection of Egyptian, Roman, and Greek sculpture was incredible.

Their most famous piece is this little guy:

It was very hard to look at the Rosetta Stone in all it's glory...maybe because of the sheer historical significance of it, maybe because of the overwhelming academic achievement that it begat, or maybe because EVERYONE ELSE IN LONDON was looking at the Rosetta Stone in all it's glory, thus making it impossible to get close.

One of my favorite parts of the museum was the subtly entitled "Reading Room", a huge beautifully designed white hall with staircases taking you to every level.

After leaving the museum, I headed back for my hostel, but on the way I stopped by Covent Garden:

Quite a few people there. And also I passed the National Portrait Gallery, which wasn't as dull as it sounded - plus, it had this one, which was a treat:

This is a very famous portrait of Shakespeare which I instantly recognized from textbooks and lectures in college. It's supposedly the only portrait of him painted during his life.

Back at the hostel, I check in and get my room - I reserved a room in a ten bed dormitory, but they had upgraded me to a six bed room. I was the first one to arrive at the room, which was a small compact sleeping area:

Not bad for 12 pounds a night. Plus, it's in the Piccadilly Circus, which is in a great location for exploring Central London.

Speaking of exploring Central London, it's time to do just that - I read about a free tour on the back of my map, and I went to join them in the late afternoon. The tour takes two and a half hours, and we see and talk about everything there is to see in Westminster, such as...

Trafalgar Square

The Houses of Parliament

Big Ben

Buckingham Palace

And Westminster Abbey, just to name a few. It was quite amazing to see such classic pieces of architecture in person. You can see countless pictures, but it just doesn't compare.

The tour ended around 7 o'clock...I'm getting a little drowsy since I've had a pretty long day, so I go to a pub and have a nice classic English meal of fish and chips with Guiness. It was delightfully good.

Afterwards, I head back to the hostel. Somebody else has joined the room now - a very awesome Israeli girl named Ofir. We start chatting and quickly become friends. She spent six years living in Washington State before going back to Israel for college, so her English is not only fluent, but she doesn't even have much trace of an accent. She's in London with a couple friends vacationing before her school semester starts.

The two of us wander around on the streets for a while, and I end up getting to bed around 2:30 am - almost 24 hours since I awoke to leave for London.

Day Two

I'm up by 9. I go to the subway and buy an Oyster card, then take the Tube east to Tower Hill. I circumnavigate the Tower of London. It's pretty spectacular.

Equally beautiful is the nearby Tower Bridge:

This bridge steals the glory that the London Bridge (which, in it's current state, is very unimpressive) used to have - London Bridge was the first and only bridge for many years, and it was quite elaborate when it was built.

After I'm done walking around the area, I walk along the Thames and cross a bridge into Southwark neighborhood - home of the attraction that I'm most eager to see in all of London:

The New Globe is a complete reconstruction of the original Globe theater that debuted Shakespeare's plays. They moved the location slightly, but the building is very carefully modelled after the original - adding, of course, fire-proof safety measures so that it doesn't meet the same fate.

I took a tour of the the theater and went to their Museum. The whole thing was quite great, and another thing that is amazing to see in person after reading about so much.

I bought my ticket to see As You Like It at 2 PM. It was a great show, with some of the best Shakespearean acting I've ever seen. I guess if anybody should know how to do it right, it's these guys.

On the way home I stopped by St. Paul's Cathedral:

I had dinner on the way home to the hostel, and spent the rest of the night wandering around the streets of London with Ofir.

Day Three

I sleep in. I've seen everything.

No, just kidding - but the third day lacked the frantic pace of the first two because I didn't have quite as much energy, and also Ofir tagged along with me the whole day today. We went down to South Kensington, which houses several Museums as well as Hyde Park.

We went to the Science Museum first. It has exhibits such as the Apollo 10 space pod and the world's first jet engine, as well as tons of interactive exhibits - these were especially fun, of course. We stopped and saw a stage show about explosions halfway through.

Hyde Park was next - we walked around for a while and went to a river. It was a little chilly and rainy, so we didn't stay too long.

The rest of the day involved a Sushi dinner and three or four pubs.

I went to sleep around 2:30 in the morning, woke up two hours later, and walked to the bus station where I was going to be picked up by my shuttle to the airport...although I started to get concerned when I saw it drive by. I realized that I was standing at the wrong bus station, and the next bus wouldn't come for another half an hour, putting me at the airport with only 25 minutes to spare.

I thought about going to to the Tube and trying to get a train to the Airport, but decided that my best bet was just to hope that I made it on time. I did - it was close, but I made it through security quickly, didn't check any luggage, and already had printed my boarding passes, so it turned out all right.

And that's that - London in three days.

Wake Me Up When September Starts

All right, now things get fun.

On Wednesday, my TESOL certification course came to an end, which makes me endlessly happy. That thing stole my August. I emailed the hiring manager of the DAI, the institute at which I'd like to work, and expressed my interest and included a resume. Making a resume for something other than theater was a first-time experience for this little college grad.

I found out about an English production of Twelfth Night that is going on in Tübingen and emailed the director - he said that the ensemble would workshop the piece together before staging it, and that the casting would happen during that time, and that I was more than welcome to join. So I think I may have gotten myself my first acting role in a foreign country!

Last night I went bar-hopping with my two guy roommates - I haven't spent much time at all with them, so it was pretty cool of them to invite me along. We went to
four different bars, taking turns buying rounds, and finally ended up at a electronic club. It was fun to verge on the yet-unexplored bar side of the town.

I spent the last couple days making sure everything is in order for my vacation to London. Tomorrow morning I catch a bus at 4:20 in the morning, arrive at Stuttgart airport at 5:30, get on a plane to Stansted airport at 6:45, arrive in the UK (losing an hour) at 7:25, get on a shuttle to downtown London at 7:55 and arrive around 9:30 in the morning - and then start exploring.

I haven't planned much to do once I arrive - I'm definitely going to try to catch a couple plays while I'm there, and see as much as I can. Since I don't have an income yet, it's going to be as economical of a trip as possible...which may be hard to do in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but we'll see.

I get back to Tübingen on Thursday, have a workshop of Twelfth Night on Saturday, and start my German classes Monday.

I'll let you know next week how everything went!