A New Start

http://sjnextchapter.blogspot.com/

Where I am, What I'm doing

So, I had this great plan to blog while I am here in Germany, in this small town isolated from pretty much everything.  My arrival and first few weeks here have been ok.  But it is difficult because I feel somewhat isolated.  There is no one around my age to spend time with, at least that I have found, and I have combed through the city fairly thoroughly by now.  It is mostly an older population that is here.  

I started another blog, but I was so confused before I left, that I did not even finish the blogging I was going to do before I left.  Nor have I posted anything to it since my arrival.  This is not good of me, but I think my plans for the near future have changed.

I think the Squirrely Jedi is undergoing a slightly stressful period of change at the moment.  That said, I don't think the separate blog is going to get off the ground.  So I will just be posting here from time to time, when I feel that I have something useful to post.  I have been trying to find ways to improve my German, and that has, to this point, largely involved reading and writing, as I do not see the landlords often, and I have not made any friends in the city yet.

I won't even go into the teaching just yet.  Some of my classes have been ok.  Others have been, well, awful.  But I am slowly figuring things out, and will try to do better.  A break is upon us here, though.  Today is Germany's Reunification Day.  And I have the next two weeks off.  So I am traveling to Berlin and Münster so that I can do my own thing and also meet up with some friends and new acquaintances.  I am looking forward to it, and I leave on Sunday.  

Unfortunately, being separated from the blog a little meant that I almost forgot who I was over the last couple of weeks.  But I was thankfully reminded by German Professor in an email.  So the Squirrely Jedi will continue to post things here from time to time, but at the moment, I haven't figured out quite yet how the blog fits into my daily routine here.  In some ways, it doesn't.  But that does not mean that I do  not miss it.  And that I will not be blogging anymore.  I just have too many things going on in my mind and life right now to feel obligated to daily postings.  So here is the best I can promise.  To post things, in English, when I have the time and something that I want to say.  

Beyond that, right now, I can't say.  It seems I'm undergoing a period of change, and I'm just not sure what's happening to me.

A New Blog in the Works

The next few weeks will be interesting ones, as I get ready for my trip.  But just for that, I am putting together a new blog.  I thought it time for a fresh page and a fresh start for a little bit.  There may be some overlap until I leave sometime around the first of September between the blogs, but after that I will probably just post to the new one. 

To find it, just click on my profile pic.  It's the other blog listed in my profile.  SJ in Deutschland.

Where I am, What I'm doing

My apologies for the blog hiatus, to anyone who still reads. The end of the semester and the start of this summer has been, well, hectic.

The biggest news is that I am going to be postponing St. Louis for a year to go teach in Germany. I got the Fulbright! Better late than never, I guess. So I have been undergoing the great filling out of paperwork, and have been poked and prodded in a medical exam that I will unfortunately never be able to forget. But as of right now, I'm going. Gamer Guy will stay home and hold down the fort and a job, presumably, while I'm gone. And come to see me at least once, of course. If he hopes to stick around, that is ;-). I ship out in September, so I have a little time left for hanging around and finishing up the summer job.

Which has been working with a program for high school kids at the university here. It's been mostly fun. I teach German and work as a tutor and counselor, and drive a 12-passenger van (which is a sight to behold, I am sure). I am thankful for a short week this week, after which I'll spend the holiday with Gamer Guy and his family.

And after the insanity is over, hopefully I will continue to blog. Or perhaps I shall start a new blog when my adventures in Germany begin...

The Decision

To answer the question of a curious few, yes I did make a decision about grad school. And I will be going to Washington University in St. Louis. And Gamer Guy is going to go there with me.

The only question left now has to do with my Fulbright application. I found out that right now I am an alternate, and could still be chosen for a position if one became available. But I won't find that out for an additional month or so of waiting. Whoopdie-freakin-doo. If that happens, then Wash U will defer my acceptance for a year, and Gamer Guy will wait for me in N-ville, and better get his butt over there to Germany to visit me at least once. If that doesn't work out, we'll be moving to St. Louis at the end of the summer. Wow.

Changes are coming. And they're going to be big. It's kind of hard for me to process at the moment. Right now, I'm trying to focus on finishing up my classes, graduating, and getting over the allergy sickness that attacked earlier this week. There will be some more posts to come soon, when I have a little more time and feel a little better.

Oops

Wow. So I just didn't post anything during the month of March. I didn't mean for that to happen. But the grad school visits and conference days sort of made the month go by so fast, that I feel like I sort of missed it anyway. But soon here I will post some awesome pictures of San Francisco. And I will update on the grad school situation once I have made a decision and can perhaps explain this to myself as well as to anyone else.

So yeah. Life is insane. I have no other explanation.

Pictures from Berlin

Back in Berlin! I have to say that I was excited, once I got there and got over the terrible flight and the following nausea and everything else. I got to see more of the city than what I had during my exceedingly brief 60 hour excursion from my summer abroad, and that made me happy. Above is the church that was bombed during World War II that has been left without its top as a memorial to that time. This is in the western part of the city.
This has got to be one of the most bizarre pictures I took. That is the statue of Marx and Engels as seen from behind as they look on in the direction of Alexanderplatz and the tower there, which seems to be disappearing in the clouds. It was snowing that morning -- that light, quiet kind of snow that made it a pleasant morning for a stroll.
This is the angel atop the Siegessaeule, which stands in the western part of the city, but is not far from Unter den Linden, where the Brandenburg Gate is. Maybe Wim Wenders was on to something with his "city of angels."
I thought it kind of funny that the Reichstag still had its Christmas tree out in the middle of January. The picture is a little bleary because the afternoon was a little bleary, but I thought it was still a pretty scene.
This was one of the cinemas I visited while I was there for my work -- Hackische Hoefe. Cool place. You walked through this gate and then into a courtyard, and the entrance was through some double doors and up several flights of stairs. I saw a documentary here one night, and the director was actually there for a discussion with the audience afterward. Very cool.
This is another movie theater I visited -- called Babylon: Mitte. I saw a couple of films here as well. I liked this one a lot too. The theaters were small and the atmosphere was fun. This was also where many of the films from East Germany used to debut back when Germany was divided.
This is a view of the relatively new memorial to the Holocaust that is also not far from Unter den Linden -- just down the street, actually. I like this place. It is an odd sort of contemplative spot in the middle of a very busy city. The strangest was when I went the last time and was there early in the morning.
This is a close-up view of the Quadriga that is on top of the Brandenburg Gate.
This is what one calls good timing. On one of the sunny days, I happened to be passing through here when the sun was in this spot. I thought it made for a cool picture of the gate.
This was a somewhat "grungier" cinema I visited with my host sister one night to see a film. It may look a little scary on the outside, but it ended up being fine. Lots of graffiti. It was also a small place. Unlike most cities in the states, there were many small theaters in Berlin that I visited -- more so than the mulitplexes. There was also more of a variety of films to be seen there, which was cool.
This is inside one of the old East German "secret police" (Stasi) prisons. The group took a tour there and got to see the inside of several buildings. It was kind of creepy. Some of the rooms looked just like the sets they used in The Lives of Others.
The Berliner Dom -- also not far from Unter den Linden. It's a great big church. Yeah. I liked this view of it from the bridge

Pictures from Potsdam

Potsdam is a smaller town that is attached to Berlin's transportation system. It technically belongs to and is the capitol of the state of Brandenburg in Germany. The above is a picture of part of what is known as the old city -- part of which is being restored in the wake of being left to ruin or destroyed by the DDR in the era of a divided Germany.
This building holds the Film Museum of Potsdam, which German Professor and I visited later that afternoon. There is an entire history of the Babelsberg Studios, which was cool.
Here is an example of one of the bizarre-looking facades that have been erected in front of some of the buildings in the town, as the city is concerned with returning itself to its former "aesthetically pleasing" glory that it was before the influence of the GDR.
Some of the ruins that have been recovered post-GDR era.
This is a mural on one of the buildings in town from the DDR period. There is debate over what to do with it, as Potsdam has been trying to get rid of former East-German influence, yet it is part of the history of the town.
This is a building that has not been touched since the end of World War II. Those are boards covering all the windows.
One of the gates of the city.

I believe this particular section of buildings is called the Dutch Quarter. It is the something quarter. I could be mistaken at this point. It was odd to see the buildings which, at first glance, all looked the same. But when one looks more closely, one can find many little differences.

Photos from Dresden

Dresden is an interesting combination of the very old and the very modern. Some of this has to do with the fact that it was bombed to Hell and back during World War II. A great effort was made in order to preserve what was left of the old, historical part of the city. Much was also reconstructed with as much of the original materials as possible following the war. Dresden, like Meissen, then became part of East Germany, and it is in some ways a wonder that so much of the old did survive that regime as well -- as those in charge had a tendency to demolish the old in favor of the new. In fact, there are still some East German buildings in the downtown that no one there really knows what to do with. But I'm getting off track.

The above picture shows the entrance to what used to be the royal residence in Dresden. We were guided around by a guide in full period wear who really should have worked on his English. I would have been happy to listen to him in German, but the class of students there with German Professor were only 100-level students. That would have been ugly.
The grounds themselves were very picturesque in that way that such old buildings are. We were led around and told about the month-long parties that would be held in a place like this. Hard to imagine.
This is the opera house that lies beyond the residence near the edge of the river in the old part of the city.
This is more of the old part of the city.
This is the interior of the local Frauenkirche. (I say local because there is also a well known church in Munich that is also known by the same name.) I went with German Professor, Honors Program Director, and a couple of other students to a service there on a Sunday morning. The inside was amazing. This was also destroyed in the war.
This is the exterior of the church. The darker stones integrated into the building are the original stones that were left in the wake of the bombings. There wasn't much left.

More pictures to come soon.

Photos From Meissen

About halfway through the trip, we took a three day excursion to Dresden, which is directly south of Berlin in Saxony, and while there, took a day trip to a small town called Meissen. This name may sound familiar to you, as this is the town where all of the expensive porcelain is made. The trademark for Meissen porcelain is the two crossed, blue swords. This was the view walking over to the main part of town from the train station. On the right is the town's castle and main cathedral, which we visited.
A closer view of the cathedral. The castle is the white building in the background.
This is looking out from near the cathedral back at the rest of town, along with the bridge we crossed from the train station to get into the main part of town. It was a very nice day there.

Looking over the main part of town. Again one that probably did not see a lot of bombing during World War II. However, this was located in the former East Germany. Yet the porcelain was allowed to continue. Go figure.