The Braunschweig News At One

Hey all! Long time, no write. I know. I've been catching up on the real-time real world lately, skyping with family and sorting out stuff in the states. But now I'm all caught up and ready to bring to you all NEWS OF BRAUNSCHWEIG!

*cue the news theme music*

Good Evening / Morning and welcome to the Braunschweig News at One. I'm Oh No Raychel.

In our top story of the evening, Early Thanksgiving at Raychel's was a smashing success. Attendance topped out at eight people and, according to exit polls, the cooking was well received. Let's go to our field correspondent, Raychel, with the story. Raychel?

Thanks, Raychel. I'm currently sitting in Raychel's apartment on Charlottenstrasse, eating the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers. Normally, Thanksgiving would be tomorrow (Nov. 27th) but, due to poor calendar-reading skills, local American Raychel Whatserface held the annual food festival last Thursday, on November 20th. She spent over eight hours cooking delicious homemade cranberry sauce, stuffing, and turkey. She bought two turkeys, but the oven was actually too small to accomodate more than one bird at a time. Hence, the marathon cooking. Friends of Raychel's and friends of Raychel's roommate stopped by at around 3 to enjoy TONS of excellent food, a semi-live performance of Arlo Guthrie's Thanksgiving hit "Alice's Restaurant" (or is it "The Alice's Restaurant Masacree"?), drinking of beers, watching of sports on TV, and the saying of "what I'm thankful for"s. Raychel even dressed up like some 1950's June Cleaver lady to present it all. Festivities lasted until the next day, culminating in a post-feast leftover lunch where friends munched on turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches and avoided the now disgustingly congealed turkey gravy. Back to you, Raychel.

Thanks, Raychel. Pictures of the Thanksgiving festivities will be made available to the public as soon as whoever took some posts them on Facebook, because Raychel sure as shoe polish did not have time to take pics herself.

And in news abroad, Raychel went to a fun house party here in sunny Braunschweig with some of her English-speaking friends. The theme of the party was "things that are dead / things that do not exist any more." The English-speaking group went as ... disco! Get it? Disco is dead? Anyone? Moving on ... pictures of this event to follow. Needless to say, the costumes were hilarious and a hit. The party-goers had a great time disco-dancin' and love-romancin' and ... (any Hosty fans out there who can finish the song I just started singing?)

And now, we're over to Raychel with sports. Raychel?

Thanks, Raych! Hey, folks, it's Rowdy Ray here, comin' atcha with the WACKIEST sport in Germany, handball! Can someone please tell me the rules for this sport? Because I spent most of Thanksgiving evening watching it on TV and all I can come up with is that sometimes you bounce the ball and sometimes you throw it, but ALL of the time you fall or are knocked down. They play on concrete, though, making handball the roughest sport I've ever seen. Also, yours truly was invited over to a colleague's house last week to watch England play Germany in soccer. Over mini-pizzas and Wolters beers, the rabid fans poked fun at each other, cheering and groaning over goals scored and missed. The game was excellent and, in the end, England pulled ahead by one point. Go, fellow English-speakers, go! Woo! Back to you, Raychel.

Thanks, Raych. And now, the weather with ... Weatherman Dave, who is live outside Rayche's apartment. Dave?

.... Dave?

Okay, we've lost Dave's feed. We'll have to cover it from the studio. Well, it's snowed here in Braunschweig. The temperature has hovered somewhere between "stick your hands in your armpits" cold to "my eyeballs hurt" cold for the last five days or so. It snowed on Early Thanksgiving and a few more times after that. The snow has stayed in little pockets of white fluff all over the place, on parked cars and nestled into bushes. It's absolutely beautiful. I licked some the other day. It's a little embarassing to admit, but I did. It was such a pretty snow and I was so happy to be out in it that I licked a snow-laden bush branch. Yes I did.

*cue the outtro music*

Well that's all the time we have for now. This has been the Braunschweig News at One and I've been, and always will be, Raychelicious. Goodnight.

Quick note -- I won't be on Skype from 5 to 7 my time today. I might be on from 7 to 8, though (noon to 1 p.m.). More news later -- bye!

Skype, Day One

Hey all,

Just a quick note to say hello. I was on Skype today. I found a friend from here in Braunschweig and an Algerian named Lotfi who said I was very pretty, asked me to call him, and then promptly got blocked by me. No talking to strangers. My muddah would not approve.

Anywho, I won't be on tomorrow, as it's my Pretend Thanksgiving. I, in my infinite wisdom, thought that Thanksgiving was this Thursday and not the next one. I decided to have Thanksgiving dinner and invite all my friends. We're going to eat turkey and stuffing, listen to "Alice's Restaurant" and other American classics, and watch any kind of football we can find. This day just happens to be my mom's birthday, so if I don't getcha on Facebook or phone you then Happy Birthday, Ma! I love you bunches!

It's Skype Tutorial Time!

Hi lovelies,

It's been about a week since I posted last and I have many things to say, but most important among those things is this: I have Skype! my user name is raychel.winstead -- come look me up! For those who aren't in the know, Skype is an awesome free software that lets you phone people up through your computer. If I call your computer from my computer and we both chat over Skype, then that's totally free. If I call from my computer to your telephone, then that only costs maybe ten cents a minute or something. I'm still working out the details but here's the basic tutorial so that you can come join me:

Get (And Install) Skype

1. Go to the Skype website at http://www.skype.com/download and click on the big green "download now" button. I'm using Skype version 3.8, but if you get the 4.0+ beta versions (the newer stuff) that's okay too.
2. You're gonna get a dialogue box popping up that says "you have chosen to open SkypeSetup.exe -- would you like to save this file?" Yes, yes you would like to save this file. Once saved, it should show up as a blue box icon on your desktop saying "Skype Setup".
3. Double-click that blue box and get to installin'. It's easy. Just follow the little steps and, at the end, you get a neato Skype all installed. It looks like this:
4. 

Getting Your Account

1. So, now that you've got your Skype installed, you'll wanna create an account for yourself. On the log-in screen, click on the little blurb under the "Skype Name" box that says "don't have a Skype name?"
2. Follow the steps in the box that pops up. Make up a user name and password, blah blah blah. At the end you click "Sign In" and it creates your user name and signs you in to Skype. You're in! It looks like this:

Getting Started On Skype

1. Okay, so by this point there's a Skype tutorial that's much better than mine to take you through the rest. All you need is a headset with a microphone (any of the normal ones you'd buy for your computer will do; just head out to Wal-Mart and grab a pair. Headphones + microphone = your friend!)

A neato bonus when you first start using Skype is that your first call to a land line is free. I tried calling home at 11 p.m. my time, but neither Mom nor Marv picked up. I left a message.

Well, anywho, I'm on Skype now. Add me! You can leave me a comment, an e-mail, or smoke signals letting me know when we can get together and chat. If not, I'll be online every day between 5 and 7 p.m. my time (10 a.m. and noon for you Central Standard people) unless otherwise posted. Love ya, guys!

Alles Neu

So, I haven't posted here in over a week. I've had internet access; I just haven't had either anything particularly interesting happening to me or the desire to write about nothing in particular. But now I do! I wrote a list in school today, an actual list of things to talk about on my blog. Like, for example, the fact that I had to make a list of things to talk about on my blog. Or the fact that I was in school today.

So, let's see ... school is awesome. I have a 5th grade class, an 8th grade class, a 9th grade class, two 11th grade classes, and a 13th grade class regularly. The others I will occasionally sit in on, but I don't do as much with them. I'm really enjoying working with the students on my own. Usually I'll get a group of five or six kids and, while the teacher is doing the lesson in one room, I'm doing either the same thing or a conversation group with my kids in another room. This makes me like a special vacation to the kids, who are eager to get out of the classroom where they spend the day for any reason. Everyone wants to go hang out with Raychel. Yeah.

So, I sometimes get to plan my lessons. Like for one lesson, my co-teacher was talking about magazines -- just magazines in general, and how they're different reading material than books or newspapers. An hour before the class starts, he's like, "Would you like to take a group and do your own lesson on magazines?" You betcha! I was on that like syrup on waffles. What we did was this: first, we brainstormed all the magazine titles we could think of. My students named them and I wrote them on the board. This was actually kinda funny, because there were a lot of titles that I didn't know (being not German and all) and they kept having to explain it all to me. Then we talked about what sort of things are in a typical magazine -- cover, table of contents, articles, letters to the editor, advertisements, fashion shoot pictures, yada yada ... This is all pretty normal stuff to do in a class. But then we played this fun game: I had the students rip pictures out of some magazines I'd brought (all sorts of pictures - old men, pretty ladies, babies, weird guys in outlandish swimsuits), then I posted them around the room and asked the students to go around looking at them all. I said, "Okay, imagine that you have to spend one weekend in Braunschweig with one of these people. Who would it be?" and then I had them go stand by their choices. Of course, there was a huddle of boys around the pretty lady picture. Us talking about this decision went like this:

Me: "Okay, so why did you choose her?"
Boy: *with laughter* "Well, it's obvious ...."
Me: *i'm-waiting look*
Boy: "She is very ... uh ... beautiful." *and we're all laughing*
... at this point I'm just getting a kick out of the fact that he's shy about his choice, so I press on.

Me: "And what are you going to do on your weekend together?"
Boy and friends: *increasingly childish laughter at what we all know is the first answer to jump to mind.*
Me: *i'm-waiting look*
Boy: "I would take her swimming."

I genuinely did not expect this answer, and it cracked me up. So, I laughed, he laughed, everyone laughed, and we had a good time. After that exercise we did another one where students read an article in pairs, then one member of the pair rotated groups. The new person had 60 seconds to explain to the person who stayed seated (in English) the plot of what they just read. More switching of places and 60 second explainations lead to a kind of fast-paced loud game of Telephone. At the end I had people tell me what they learned from the other articles, and the result was also funny. The lesson plan itself wasn't actually brilliant, but we did have fun and I did get my students talking the entire hour, which is pretty tough to do with older students. The older they get, the more reluctant they get to talk and play games. It makes it hard to be a language teacher and not just resort to worksheets all the time. Bo-ring. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I had a lesson plan that really made me proud of myself at the end of the day because 1) they spoke the language, 2) they heard me speak the language, and 3) we all came out smiling. English doesn't have to be torture! Hooray!

Speaking of speaking the language, I get made fun of so much for the way I talk here. Not by Germans, mind you: by other English speakers. I hang out with people from England, and at least once a day (on a day that we all meet up), they will laugh at something I say that is "American". Like "tomato". It's not "tuh-MAY-toh", apparently, but "tuh-MAH-toh". Oh! Or the way I say "dig this" which is, admittedly, really more of an idiosyncracy than an American thing, but still ... oh, and don't even get me started on the way we pronounce the Dreaded D-Word, the tasty late night meal of lamb and yogurt sauce on pita bread -- the döner/donner. I have been told that I say this word "wrong", and that it is physically painful to at least one of my English friends to hear it my way. That's okay, though. I don't mind. I just call it "soccer" instead of "football" and watch them all freak out. >:-)

Photo Dump!

Oh, lovelies -- I'm a happy camper! I have photos for y'all. Check out each photo gallery by clicking on the bold title with the gallery's name. If you can't get to the photos, send me a comment and I'll make it better.

Wandern - really, just photos of pretty things I see day to day.

Up the Asse Mountain - I went hiking up this mountain called Asse with my roomie and her daughter.

Signs, Stickers, and Graffiti - a collection of my favorite street art in Germany.

Schulball 2008 - now with updated behind-the-scenes photos!

Sights to See - what to do and photograph in Braunschweig.

Hannover - a trip I took to visit a friend in Hannover. Lotsa sight seeing good times.

Narcissism - photos of me. Me, me, me, me, me.

Rubber Duck Race and Children's Circus - just what it sounds like.

Berlin in a Day - a daytrip to Berlin I took with a class of German and Polish exchange students.

Churches, Cloisters, and Cathedrals - parts ONE and TWO.

I also have several video and a Skype tutorial following soon, which I'm working on right now. Hope you like the photos. :-D