It's a Bowl!

Starting on September 29 (according to my contract, although I'm pretty sure there is a week of training beforehand) I will be working for Wattsenglish, Ltd. Here is an excerpt from the 'About Us' section of their website

Wattsenglish is a UK registered limited company and with schools and franchised branches in Central Europe, is one of the leading organizations specialising in young learner language education. ...

In relation to our daily activities we concern ourselves with, the implementation of trained native English speaking teachers into the Czech education system., the outsourcing of our teachers to kindergartens and primary schools, the teaching and managing of our own specialised language kindergartens, after school lessons and clubs, as well as regional events. These are all areas in which Wattsenglish continues to push the boundaries of good teaching practice. It is our constant aim to enthuse young learners with the desire and motivation to communicate in a second language which stays with them for life. ...

Our teachers come from many different places and backgrounds but are all trained native English speaking teachers and hold a Wattsenglish certificate in the teaching of English to young and very young learners. The Wattsenglish teacher training programme (as accredited by the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport) enables our teachers to understand the benefits of building a relaxed and encouraging English speaking environment, to be able to pull on a wealth of ideas and activities as well as to build confidence in working with rich and varied resources and materials for their learners. ...

Here is the video sample I sent them during the interview process:


You're going to have to turn the sound on your computer up really loudly, because I recorded it with my digital camera. I bought the camera in 2005, so in technology years, it's ancient! After watching it, you will get an idea of what their teaching method is like, with the constant repeating in unison of simple sentences. I will see most of you soon, but if the next time I see you after that, I talk to you like a 6 year old learning English for the first time, I apologize in advance.

In der Küche mit Maggie

For as long as I can remember, I have been a fan of eating. However, one of my newly developed hobbies is cooking and baking. My enjoyment is very mercurial though. There will be a period of time where I will bemoan the thought of so much as boiling water, let alone actually creating a whole a meal. This is when I live on bread and cheese. But then, I will get an idea. Or I will have a few odd ingredients left in my cupboard and the challenge of trying to create something substantial/eatable out of them is enough to shake me from my lethargy and get to work. Another important factor in creating a chef out of me is craving something specific. As you can imagine, living on a budget in another country definitely puts some restraints on what you can and cannot purchase at the local grocer. Combine that with the fact that there's nothing open on Sundays here and you find yourself looking up "homemade tortilla chips" in Google search. If you do so, you will find that homemade tortilla chips are made from tortillas, which is not very helpful (not to mention surprising seeing as they're called tortilla chips) but you can also make homemade tortillas. Therefore, I present to me my final product:
It's not very often I get inspired to take a picture of one of my creations. Satisfying and delicious.

For the Visually Impaired

See, there's my name.

das Umweltbundesamt

Here is my first publication as a professional chemist.

I had to take a screen shot because it was done in PowerPoint and wouldn't give me the option to save it as anything but .ppt or .hml. I may have been able to figure something out if this computer were not entirely in German. Not that I can't read the German, it's just I don't know what I'm looking for in English. So the picture is tiny, but you should be able to make out that my name is listed second (maybe if you squint...well just trust me). I photoshopped the diagram of the person and the three pictures of in lab stuff are mine! The data found in the graph are also (mostly) mine, although Anja made the graph. I contributed to the written stuff as well, but most of what I wrote got edited or changed by the head of the Department who did the final editing. He's the one who took the poster to Sweden back in May. I actually haven't seen the actual huge poster version, but I know it exits somewhere.

Currently in lab we have a new column for the GCMS (Gas Chromatograph, Mass Spectrometer) and the power went out which through something off during the calibration process, so we have to start over. So basically I do nothing but watch people move around really small, expensive objects, and type things into computers.

But mentally I'm still on the American college student schedule, so I've been on break for a month now. So doing nothing fits my plans nicely.

die Verkehrsschilder

I don't understand some of the traffic signs in Germany, and apparently neither do the Germans. Or perhaps 4-way intersections are uncommon in Berlin. Stop signs are very scarce in Germany. I remember noticing that the first time I was here in Leinfelder-Echterdingen when I was 16. There are yeild signs everywhere down there, but in Berlin I don't see too many of those either(granted I'm not in a car as much). There are lots of stop lights.

But anyway, I was almost to work the other day, when I came upon a 4-way intersection. I pass this intersection every day, but normally there's no one there, and I just bike through it. However this time there were three cars. I was the last one to arrive at the intersection (plus I was on a bike), and I completed the square, so to speak, so now there was a car (or bike) in every spot. The car directly across from me kept waving for them to go, but one of them wanted to turn left, and the other go straight, so it was pretty impossible for them to go at the same time. But that's what kept happening. They would both start to go, then they would both stop, and then the car across the way would angrily wave some more, and even beeped the horn at one point (like that is going to solve anything). I was going to volunteer to cross the intersection first, but I had failed to do the down shift thing, so I was in the highest gear, which doesn't exactly allow for the smoothlest of transitions from stopped to moving. So I figured my wobbley zig-zagging through the intersection at a speed that a pedestrian could probably beat, would not be the best thing to satisfy Mr. Impatient.

Finally they worked it out, and we were all on our way. I thought maybe the signs that were on the corner did say something about how to deal with 4 people at the intersection, but I didn't know what they meant. It's just a bunch of blue circles with either a red slash or a red X in them. I looked them up when I got to work, and apparently, they have to do with parking. Interesting.

trampen

The cheapest way to get to Prague (or anywhere, I guess) is to hitchhike. I’ve done so twice so far with Miki. He advises against my going alone, for safety reasons. And I agree with him for linguistic reasons. I think I could get myself into the Czech Republic, but seeing as I can only say “My name is Maggie. I’m an American.” and “I live in Berlin.” I don’t think that would really help me get to Prague. Miki has hitchhiked almost every time since the weather got nice to Berlin and back. The only thing is that it takes an indeterminate amount of time, so if you have some place to be that evening, chances are high you might not make it. Miki has a lot of luck alone on Weekdays. He usually goes with truckers. The two times we’ve gone together have been on a Friday that was a German public holiday and a Sunday. Neither of which are the best choices since most of the people traveling already have full cars. So we receive a lot of the “I would take you, but I have no room” shrug and gesture to the back of the car. Regardless, on both occasions we ended up at our destination at the end of the day, and I thought they were both pretty pleasant experiences.

Of course I say that now. However, hitchhiking requires a lot of patience. It’s a philosophy that requires patience, faith, and trust. So says Miki. This past Sunday we stood for almost two hours in Berlin before finding a ride just 50 km down the road. But that first ride is all you need to prove yourselves a trustworthy trekker, because in our new spot, it was obvious someone had to have dropped up off there in a car. We found the next ride within 10 minutes. Here are some helpful hints to keep in mind if you ever wish to hitchhike around Germany. Yes, I know, I’ve only done it twice, so I have no credibility, but most of this is information from Miki.

1. Use signs so it is clear where you are headed. This eliminates unnecessary stopping which could annoy the drivers as well as you, since it gets your hopes up.

2. Stand somewhere where it is easy for cars to pull over and stop, or where they are already stopped (like a gas station or rest stop).

3. Shave. This one doesn’t really apply to me, but in general, look nice. They have to trust you too.

4. When you get a ride, follow the lead of the driver and other people in the car. If they want to start a conversation, have a conversation. If they just want to drive in peace and listen to the radio, keep to yourself. But don’t fall asleep. (Okay, so I broke this when driving from Dresden to Prague on Sunday, but only because it was like one of those sun ovens we cooked pizza in in girl scouts in the backseat. And Miki was in the front seat having a conversation with the driver in Czech.)

5. Know where you want to go. Sometimes people offer their own ideas, and that’s great. But you should still have some idea of where you want to go, and make sure they are going past that before you get in the car.

On both occasions, the first ride was a married couple. The first time I almost didn’t spot him since he was just gesturing us over from the gas station while he was pumping gas with gloves on. But it was a nice quiet ride and they ended up giving us a box of Rittersport chocolates. They took us to the last gas station before Dresden, which also happens to be the last gas station in Germany on the highway to Prague. We found that out with the next couple who offered us a ride. I think he was German and she was Romanian. They were awesome and obviously just liked adventure. They lived in Dresden, but offered to stay on the highway to Prague and take us to the next gas station. They specifically cleared out their backseat for us, which had been filled with lots of lumber, and gave us beer. She kept saying that they would go with us to Prague, if it weren’t for the fact that they hadn’t fed their cat. And her reaction when they accidentally ended up in the Czech Republic was hilarious. The final leg of that journey was on a bus full on 6 or 7 year old soccer players. They were just starting a movie too, and about 10 or 15 minutes into the drive, someone changed the subtitles to English.

This Sunday was a little less exciting, but it didn’t take nearly as long. (We stood in the first gas station in the Czech Republic for an obscene amount of time the first time we went. We got on the soccer bus at 10 or 10:30pm. So like I said, you can’t make same-day plans.) The first couple was nice, but the ride was short. The next guy was the most interesting. He took us to the last gas station before Dresden. He was coming from a poker tournament in Berlin in which he placed third. He was Austrian but lived in Dresden. He’s been to Las Vegas 27 times. He knew Pennsylvania because he flies into Philly and takes a train to Atlantic City. He loves Las Vegas so much, he flew his wife there to marry her in the little white chapel (I pretended to know what that was). The last guy was the Czech who talked to Miki the whole time while I slept. But he seemed nice. He had an ostrich egg in the back seat which I almost sat on. Perhaps I should add that to the list. Don’t sit on someone’s ostrich egg; you might break it. Luckily the egg was not harmed.

Spellcheck Generation

I edited my last post so it now contains the correct spelling of the word ladder and well as the word soap in place of soup. Seeing as I figured there was soap in the house so I had no qualms touching a dead mouse. I was not planning to make soup out of it, nor use soup to distract the cat. But those were good ideas, Mom.