Lots of posts!

For the sake of ease, I am publishing the following posts in one go! This brings me nearly up to date with my diary! Enjoy :)

Wednesday 14th September
Bins go out on a Wednesday. Well, when I say bins, I really mean bin bags, and more specifically, the yellow bin bags. These are for all packaging material, except glass and paper. At the minute I only have one bin in my flat, so if I want to avoid the nasty weekly bin sortage, I’m gonna need to get myself some extra bins.

Thursday 15th September
It’s official, I have watched my entire DVD collection, twice.

Friday 16th September
Ramona explained to me today what had changed since pre 1989.
Then:
1.there were only 2 state-owned TV channels. If you wanted more, you had to have a special aerial, which everyone had.
2.cars were in short supply as you could only buy ones that were made in East Germany. You couldn’t just go out and buy one, you had to register and therefore it could be 2-3 years before you got one. So people took good care of their car knowing that the next one could be a long time coming.
3.homelessness didn’t exist.
4.there were no drugs.
5.medicine and health care were free.
6.you couldn’t travel West, only East.
7.the school system was such that everybody schooled together until the 8/9th class (14/15 years old) and it was only then that you changed to Gymnasium/Realschule etc (grammar, secondary).
8.milk, bread, the essentials were cheaper.
9.there were certain you didn’t know existed because they just weren’t sold. Certain fruits were difficult to come by: Ramona had never seen a kiwi til post 89. Bananas were also in short supply.

Monday 19th September
The impression I get is that many young people are not proud if being German. When they discover that I chose to come to Germany, they all ask “Why?!” as if I’m totally crazy.

People are disillusioned by the elections as well. Especially because everybody wants change but obviously not enough to step out and vote for the opposition. The result is that there is now no government. Schröder called the elections a year early as he no longer had majority in the Bundesrat (like the house of representatives in the US) – the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) did so they made it impossible for him to govern. In yesterday’s election the CDU got 35,9% and Schröder’s SPD (Socialist Party) 34%. But Schröder is announcing he won as the CDU and CSU (CDU’s sister party in Bavaria) are technically 2 different parties and therefore his party has the largest proportion if the vote. This is crazy as the CDU/CSU have always been considered the same party when it comes to election results. This is the worst possible outcome as there needs to be at least 3 parties in the coalition to make an absolute majority.

On a brighter note, I spent this weekend in Chemnitz with Jos. It was really fun. We spent Friday evening chatting to her flatmate from Dublin, Linda, went shopping on Saturday afternoon, after the lady in the tourist information refused to let us do a walking tour of the city – see, we really did try and do something cultural! Chemnitz was formerly called Karl-Marx-Stadt so Jos showed me the biggest landmark in the city – Karl Marx’s head. (not his actual head of course). We watched a DVD on Saturday night and then Sunday morning we went to church, although we needed to leave a little early as we both had trains to catch. I really like Chemnitz, it’s big enough to be a decent sized city but not so big that you can’t find your way around. I’m looking forward to going back soon.

Also, I finally got my oven to work – woohoo! It’s gas and I just couldn’t get it to light, even though there was definitely gas coming out! A nice English teacher sorted it for me – I’m sure she thought I was totally incapable, but the problem was I was trying to light it at the back (is that not normally where you light a gas oven? Please someone clarify this for me so I know I’m not totally insane! Of course, if you don’t light it there, I don’t want to know) and I needed to light it at the front. So I had baked potato to celebrate.

Wednesday 21st September
This week is Project Week in school. It’s also random excursion week so all of years 6,8 and 12 are away for the week, not really sure why! But the school is incredibly quiet! I went to Leipzig today with the class 11 (L6th) that I’ve been working with. Their learning about the American diplomatic presence in Germany, and they’ve all got slightly different topics to present, such as German-American relations, the Sister-Cities programme, the Embassies etc etc. So today we went to Leipzig to visit the Consulate-General. It was fun, and I learnt that Glauchau is in the process of becoming the sister city of Lynchburg, Virginia, which I thought was quite exciting. Afterwards we had some free time to look around, and I found ….. The British Shop! It’s amazing! I can buy PG Tips, Cadbury’s chocolate and even, wait for, Heinz Salad Cream! I hadn’t realised all the things I couldn’t buy here. To be honest, I haven’t really missed them (except the tea – had to get mum to post me emergency rations) but I can order from this shop over the internet, so I thought it might be fun to do a bit of a lesson on food. There’s not much difference between German and British food (ok, except the sausages) but we have so many different brands, and things just taste different! So I’m formulating that lesson plan for when the scary time comes that I have to get up in front of class and actually do something with them!