To satisfy your curiousity about the title of this blog, I will begin with a few snippets from the past week:
1) One of the German teachers at the kindergarten, while living in Minnesota apparently acquired the ability to swear in English. In German, the word "scheisse" is pretty much a literal translation of the word "shit." But in German the word doesn't have such strong connotations; it's more like "crap." So the German teacher has been occasionally exclaiming "shit!" since September. If any of the children (who are specifically placed in the kindergarten to aquire English language skills) start cursing in English, who will be most likely to take the blame?
2) Last week I was standing outside the kindergarten bathroom, waiting for a student to finish brushing his teeth and going to the bathroom before naptime when I heard a voice from inside. "Suzanne?" said the boy (often this sounds more like "Zoo-zanne?")
"Yes, Jens?" I replied, peeking into the room.
From behind the stall door Jens rather contemplatively asked, "When is the Easter bunny coming?" The things that go through the idle minds of children...
3) While three-year-old Martin and I were looking at a book together one morning, he suddenly leaped up and announced in German, "I have to poop!"
"Well, go go go then!" I ushered him toward the door. But a thought struck him and he spun around and blurted (again in German), "Wait! How do you say 'I have to poop' in English?!"
Not all of my recent experiences have involved bathroom humor, fortunately. One recent experience that is plenty humorous, but involves no bodily fluids or swearing occurred when I was taking the llama, Eddie for a walk at the zoo. The department has high hopes for Eddie. They plan to train him to be well-mannered and comfortable enough for him to be a sort of ambassador for the zoo, attending media events and visiting sick children in the hospital. For a llama to travel, tolerate crowds, and regard new situations and locations calmly, it takes some work. Part of Eddie's training for this involves just wandering the zoo with me for a change of scenery (for him, not me). During a walk last week we meandered past the elephant exhibit while Mwanna, the African elephant matron, was lazily tossing sand onto her own back. As Eddie and I passed, somehow an idea registered in Mwanna's elephantine brain. She splayed out her massive ears, threw her trunk into the air and all 11,000 lbs of her thundered toward us. The sight was enough to make my heart jump into my throat, even though I knew the moat separated me and Eddie from the freight train heading toward us. Eddie, with his somewhat challenged llama brain, did not know about the moat. Eddie only weighs about 200 lbs--a butterfly compared to Mwanna-- but 200 lbs of terrified llama bolting down the visitor's path at the zoo is still enough to drag me. It was pure luck that this occurred on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon, so no by-standers witnessed this. I managed to stay on my feet, and managed to hold onto the lead rope Eddie was attached to (both accomplishments in themselves) but I could not stop his panicked charge until well passed the giraffe house. Quality America's Funniest Home Video material.
Lastly, I would like to apologize for any past lapses in grammatic and punctuational accuracy. I should also apologize for future lapses while I'm at it. I'm convinced that learning a second language has a tendency to shake up the details of the first language. I can't place apostrophes correctly anymore, and inevitably I begin to type or write the word "house" as "hause" (a bastardization of the English and German words). Commas appear where they shouldn't and precise word choice is laborious at times. On the other hand, I have also found that some grammatical structures have begun to emerge in my German speech completely independently of my own efforts, and that is somewhat encouraging. That being said, I will now leave you to continue my study of demonstrative pronouns and the accusative case. Just kidding. I'm going to eat some frozen yogurt and watch German cartoons.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Of Elephants and Obama
On the first day of Spring in Magdeburg, the sun appropriately rose brightly and the temperature spiked to a balmy 50 degrees. So I took a long walk and spotted crocuses poking through the soil in the park and many different species of bird that I am as yet unable to identify. And once I was convinced that Spring had really arrived, I came back to my apartment to blog.
Spring means that we are doing daily presentations at the Tierisch Nah Arena at the zoo, so we've been busy with that endeavor. It's a daunting task to try to improve their program because anything I propose has to be explained in German and I then have to write my training plan in German or convince the head keeper that what I want to do would be a good addition to the presentation. He and the curator decided the program this year is too short, but since this season's show is already upon us, we needed to find some animals that were easy to acquire and quick to learn. This discussion all culminated in the decision to get two rats for me to train (the previous rat, who is three years old has been retired) and also an egg. Luckily I am not expected to train the egg, but once it hatches into a Brahma chicken, I will be expected to teach it something. The behaviors I train are totally my decision (no need to convince anyone in German this time), so if anyone reading this blog has an idea for something they would be interested in seeing a rat or a chicken do...I'm open to ideas.
The department that cares for the program animals also cares for the elephants and rhinos, so even though I am not an elephant or rhino trainer, sometimes I get roped into helping out with a few things and spend time in what literally translates to the "thick-skinned house." This building, constructed in the old zoo style, is mostly of concrete, and with the high ceilings, echoes like a giant cavern. When the keepers are working with the elephants, their deep voices (all the elephant trainers are men) carry through the building and remind me a little of going to the Greek church when I was a child. I think the similarity must be the sound of someone speaking in a foreign language, confidently and with a bit of a drawl, and the drawn out phrases resounding in the concrete rafters.
All of the doors in the "thick-skinned house" are heavy metal slabs that take some heave-ho-ing, even from the larger men, and there are resounding clangs all through the building when we shift animals from stall to stall or from inside to outside. My favorite door is the one between the back hallway and the elephants' indoor enclosure. This door is only human-sized, not meant for elephants, and sometimes it is left open so that when I am walking down the hall, a trunk might be mischieviously snaking out to feel around the door frame or sniff out treats. There is a small slot in this door so that when it is shut, the keepers in the back hallway can peer through and view the enclosure. Often though, when I have attempted to look through by standing on tip-toe and putting my eye directly up to the slot, a giant, dark-lashed elephant eye has been staring right back at me, blocking all view of anything else. Because of the elephants' frequent use of the peep-hole, I am now uncertain as to its original purpose--was it inetended to let the people keep an eye on the elephants, or the elephants keep an eye on the people? Most recently I have been allowed to help clean the animals by giving the rhinos baths, which mostly is just spraying them with an expertly aimed hose, and helping keep the elephants clean by brushing the dirt off of them. This is accomplished through what must be a comical routine to anyone watching, where a 9-foot elephant rolls over onto her side and a 5-foot 2 inch keeper vigorously dislodges dirt from the wrinkled skin using a push-broom.
In the kindergarten, the biggest news these days is that we have two new children in our class. They are four-year-old twins, whose mother is Canadian and has been speaking English with the girls at home. For me, this is a big change. I have grown so accustomed to gesturing wildly and speaking slowly and repeating myself often and to just giving up on explaining difficult concepts because none of the children understood. Suddenly, there are two lanky red-headed children who understand everything I say. It was almost unnerving at first. The comforting part of their presence is that they automatically gravitated toward me, which is the opposite of what all of the German children did; I never had to work extra hard to get the English-speaking children to warm up to me, and in fact, I have to sometimes suggest that they please don't cling quite so much or maybe just let me have a bit of space for a moment. I am also interested to see what happens when they interact with the German-speaking children. They have only been at our school a week and already I have overheard some interesting mixtures of German and English in conversations where children use both languages to make themselves understood.
On their first day, the English-speaking twins arrived at the kindergarten peeking out from behind their mother's knees. She introduced me to them by saying, "This is Suzanne; she comes from The States. Who else do we know from The States?" (The correct answer here is something like Uncle Josh) One of the twins exclaimed, "Barack Obama!"
Spring means that we are doing daily presentations at the Tierisch Nah Arena at the zoo, so we've been busy with that endeavor. It's a daunting task to try to improve their program because anything I propose has to be explained in German and I then have to write my training plan in German or convince the head keeper that what I want to do would be a good addition to the presentation. He and the curator decided the program this year is too short, but since this season's show is already upon us, we needed to find some animals that were easy to acquire and quick to learn. This discussion all culminated in the decision to get two rats for me to train (the previous rat, who is three years old has been retired) and also an egg. Luckily I am not expected to train the egg, but once it hatches into a Brahma chicken, I will be expected to teach it something. The behaviors I train are totally my decision (no need to convince anyone in German this time), so if anyone reading this blog has an idea for something they would be interested in seeing a rat or a chicken do...I'm open to ideas.
The department that cares for the program animals also cares for the elephants and rhinos, so even though I am not an elephant or rhino trainer, sometimes I get roped into helping out with a few things and spend time in what literally translates to the "thick-skinned house." This building, constructed in the old zoo style, is mostly of concrete, and with the high ceilings, echoes like a giant cavern. When the keepers are working with the elephants, their deep voices (all the elephant trainers are men) carry through the building and remind me a little of going to the Greek church when I was a child. I think the similarity must be the sound of someone speaking in a foreign language, confidently and with a bit of a drawl, and the drawn out phrases resounding in the concrete rafters.
All of the doors in the "thick-skinned house" are heavy metal slabs that take some heave-ho-ing, even from the larger men, and there are resounding clangs all through the building when we shift animals from stall to stall or from inside to outside. My favorite door is the one between the back hallway and the elephants' indoor enclosure. This door is only human-sized, not meant for elephants, and sometimes it is left open so that when I am walking down the hall, a trunk might be mischieviously snaking out to feel around the door frame or sniff out treats. There is a small slot in this door so that when it is shut, the keepers in the back hallway can peer through and view the enclosure. Often though, when I have attempted to look through by standing on tip-toe and putting my eye directly up to the slot, a giant, dark-lashed elephant eye has been staring right back at me, blocking all view of anything else. Because of the elephants' frequent use of the peep-hole, I am now uncertain as to its original purpose--was it inetended to let the people keep an eye on the elephants, or the elephants keep an eye on the people? Most recently I have been allowed to help clean the animals by giving the rhinos baths, which mostly is just spraying them with an expertly aimed hose, and helping keep the elephants clean by brushing the dirt off of them. This is accomplished through what must be a comical routine to anyone watching, where a 9-foot elephant rolls over onto her side and a 5-foot 2 inch keeper vigorously dislodges dirt from the wrinkled skin using a push-broom.
In the kindergarten, the biggest news these days is that we have two new children in our class. They are four-year-old twins, whose mother is Canadian and has been speaking English with the girls at home. For me, this is a big change. I have grown so accustomed to gesturing wildly and speaking slowly and repeating myself often and to just giving up on explaining difficult concepts because none of the children understood. Suddenly, there are two lanky red-headed children who understand everything I say. It was almost unnerving at first. The comforting part of their presence is that they automatically gravitated toward me, which is the opposite of what all of the German children did; I never had to work extra hard to get the English-speaking children to warm up to me, and in fact, I have to sometimes suggest that they please don't cling quite so much or maybe just let me have a bit of space for a moment. I am also interested to see what happens when they interact with the German-speaking children. They have only been at our school a week and already I have overheard some interesting mixtures of German and English in conversations where children use both languages to make themselves understood.
On their first day, the English-speaking twins arrived at the kindergarten peeking out from behind their mother's knees. She introduced me to them by saying, "This is Suzanne; she comes from The States. Who else do we know from The States?" (The correct answer here is something like Uncle Josh) One of the twins exclaimed, "Barack Obama!"
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Press Your Stupids
Last week I had the pleasure of traveling beyond the boundaries of Magdeburg to visit the west side of the country. The project manager for our bilingual/environmental education kindergarten wanted to spread the word about our unique endeavor and also rub elbows with some other prominent zoo educators, and the prime location for these activities was the European Zoo Educators conference in Cologne. Representatives from 22 countries attended, which meant that something like 16 languages were represented as well. Fortunately for my ignorant American self, the conference is now always conducted in English, since it is the language of science and the most common second language in Europe.
When Shannon, and I arrived in Cologne, the first thing we noticed was that west German people look more...American than the east German people we've been seeing in Magdeburg. Cologne attracts a lot of tourists and while riding the tram in heavily touristed areas, we had a hard time guessing which passengers were Germans and which were Americans or Canadians (until we heard them speak, of course). We still apparently stood out like neon signs though, because twice people asked us if we needed help navigating the city when we weren't even lost.
We spent much of our time sitting in the conference room in Cologne listening to presentations and discussing the future of environmental education in Europe, but since the conference was held at the Cologne zoo, when we had breaks, we could take a few minutes to watch the cheetahs lounging or the red pandas gnawing bamboo. During coffee breaks and check-out-what-the-lemurs-are-doing breaks, I met people from The Netherlands, Scotland, Croatia, Finland, Estonia, the Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Everyone wore nametags stating their home zoo and home city, but Shannon's had been misprinted to read "Magdeburgoo." By the end of the conference, we had received standing invitations to visit zoos in Munich, Duesseldorf, Halle, and Copenhagen.
If my linguistic skills seemed limited in Magdeburg, they were down-right moronic in the company of the European zoo educators. The man I met from Estonia spoke Estonian as his first language, and then subsequently learned Russian, German, Finnish, and English. Not all of the participants at the conference spoke perfect English, but considering they were on their third or fouth or fifth foreign language, I forgave them and just tried harder to understand despite thick accents. One man from Switzerland gave a very entertaining presentation on exhibit design, pointing out that modern zoos should hire smaller companies with more innovative ideas to avoid the current problem of all zoos having exhibits that look exactly the same. His reasoning was sound and his ideas were clever (it's true, why would you want to see another gorilla exhibit in Portland when you know it looks exactly like the one in Seattle? And why would you put up expensive fake rockery in your orangutan exhibit when you know orangutans don't live near giant rockeries?) but he had one slide in his Power Point presentation that read "MONOTOMY!" and I had to keep myself from laughing. Of course he meant "monotony." I can't be too smug about that though, since I made my own very embarrassing mistake while trying to wish my project manager good luck in a meeting. Germans say "I'll press my thumbs" instead of "I'll cross my fingers," but apparently the word for "thumb" is similar to the word for "stupid," so I meant to wish her good luck, but what I actually said was, "I'll press my stupids for you!"
While I enjoyed talking to people from other countries and learning about their zoo programs, I have to admit, the food was also a noteworthy highlight. The Cologne zoo knows how to throw a party. On the first night for the conference's "ice-breaker" event we received a light dinner of cheeses, salads, soup, and traditional German deli-style meats in the zoo restaurant, which has a romanticly lit, warm atmosphere, and of course we were served all the beer and wine we could ever want. The next night the catering team concocted an amazing array of Chinese food (yes, apparently they have that in Germany) including stuffed wontons and several stir-frys. Oh, and of course, all the beer and wine we could ever want. Dessert was one of those fountains which drizzles warm chocolate onto various goodies, and I now vouch for chocolate-covered honeydew melon as the new rival for chocolate-covered strawberries. Also, chocolate-coverd mini-muffins were a new treat that I probably should never enjoy again if I'd like to continue fitting into my jeans. On the last night of the conference our departing dinner was served in the aquarium, another venue with a romantic atmosphere, only this time it included seahorses and damsel fish drifting by while we ate. The menu this evening was another traditional German meal consisting of fried potatoes, salted pork, and fresh tomato basil salad, oh, and don't forget--all the beer and wine we could ever want.
When we weren't being stuffed with gourmet foods, Shannon and I explored a little of Cologne's city center. We had practically been ordered to see the Dom (German word for cathedral) which has rightfully earned its fame by being the largest cathedral in Germany and arguably the most beautiful (Germany's second largest dom is in Magdeburg). Admittedly, if I were to try to describe the dom, it would sound just like every other old church you can think of: stained glass, candles on the alters, high ceilings, paintings of the apostles etc. But I was impressed. This cathedral was absolutely cavernous. If you looked up to see the tops of the stained-glass windows, they were so high you just about fell over backwards, and the organ was so enormous it looked like it might blast a hole right through the stone walls if someone tried to play a hymn. The outer edges of the gigantic rooms were lined with tombs of important men, and if you carefully picked your way down a staircase, part of the crypt that was used hundreds of years ago was open for viewing. My only regret was that our visit was too late in the day for pictures to turn out well, as the cathedral is lit entirely by candles and whatever sunlight can sneak in through the stained glass.
After we experienced the ancient church, we moved on to experience the hip and trendy pedestrian-only shopping strip. There we discovered a Kentucky Fried Chicken (not KFC!) and numerous high-end botiques from various countries. And for our cultural edification we also visited the Cologne city museum to look at the statues of city officials and artifacts from medieval battles. The museum's exhibits also included many artifacts from the world wars, the most memorable of which was a small calandar where a German woman had kept track of every air raid the Allies made on Cologne between 1942 and 1945. June of 1943 was the worst month, with 123 little tally marks.
Now we've returned to Magdeburg and after thirteen days in a row without a break, I finally have a weekend! After I've caught up on all my chores, the plan is to be very German by sitting in a cafe for hours, drinking hot chocolate, reading, and doing crossword puzzles. That's the life.
When Shannon, and I arrived in Cologne, the first thing we noticed was that west German people look more...American than the east German people we've been seeing in Magdeburg. Cologne attracts a lot of tourists and while riding the tram in heavily touristed areas, we had a hard time guessing which passengers were Germans and which were Americans or Canadians (until we heard them speak, of course). We still apparently stood out like neon signs though, because twice people asked us if we needed help navigating the city when we weren't even lost.
We spent much of our time sitting in the conference room in Cologne listening to presentations and discussing the future of environmental education in Europe, but since the conference was held at the Cologne zoo, when we had breaks, we could take a few minutes to watch the cheetahs lounging or the red pandas gnawing bamboo. During coffee breaks and check-out-what-the-lemurs-are-doing breaks, I met people from The Netherlands, Scotland, Croatia, Finland, Estonia, the Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Everyone wore nametags stating their home zoo and home city, but Shannon's had been misprinted to read "Magdeburgoo." By the end of the conference, we had received standing invitations to visit zoos in Munich, Duesseldorf, Halle, and Copenhagen.
If my linguistic skills seemed limited in Magdeburg, they were down-right moronic in the company of the European zoo educators. The man I met from Estonia spoke Estonian as his first language, and then subsequently learned Russian, German, Finnish, and English. Not all of the participants at the conference spoke perfect English, but considering they were on their third or fouth or fifth foreign language, I forgave them and just tried harder to understand despite thick accents. One man from Switzerland gave a very entertaining presentation on exhibit design, pointing out that modern zoos should hire smaller companies with more innovative ideas to avoid the current problem of all zoos having exhibits that look exactly the same. His reasoning was sound and his ideas were clever (it's true, why would you want to see another gorilla exhibit in Portland when you know it looks exactly like the one in Seattle? And why would you put up expensive fake rockery in your orangutan exhibit when you know orangutans don't live near giant rockeries?) but he had one slide in his Power Point presentation that read "MONOTOMY!" and I had to keep myself from laughing. Of course he meant "monotony." I can't be too smug about that though, since I made my own very embarrassing mistake while trying to wish my project manager good luck in a meeting. Germans say "I'll press my thumbs" instead of "I'll cross my fingers," but apparently the word for "thumb" is similar to the word for "stupid," so I meant to wish her good luck, but what I actually said was, "I'll press my stupids for you!"
While I enjoyed talking to people from other countries and learning about their zoo programs, I have to admit, the food was also a noteworthy highlight. The Cologne zoo knows how to throw a party. On the first night for the conference's "ice-breaker" event we received a light dinner of cheeses, salads, soup, and traditional German deli-style meats in the zoo restaurant, which has a romanticly lit, warm atmosphere, and of course we were served all the beer and wine we could ever want. The next night the catering team concocted an amazing array of Chinese food (yes, apparently they have that in Germany) including stuffed wontons and several stir-frys. Oh, and of course, all the beer and wine we could ever want. Dessert was one of those fountains which drizzles warm chocolate onto various goodies, and I now vouch for chocolate-covered honeydew melon as the new rival for chocolate-covered strawberries. Also, chocolate-coverd mini-muffins were a new treat that I probably should never enjoy again if I'd like to continue fitting into my jeans. On the last night of the conference our departing dinner was served in the aquarium, another venue with a romantic atmosphere, only this time it included seahorses and damsel fish drifting by while we ate. The menu this evening was another traditional German meal consisting of fried potatoes, salted pork, and fresh tomato basil salad, oh, and don't forget--all the beer and wine we could ever want.
When we weren't being stuffed with gourmet foods, Shannon and I explored a little of Cologne's city center. We had practically been ordered to see the Dom (German word for cathedral) which has rightfully earned its fame by being the largest cathedral in Germany and arguably the most beautiful (Germany's second largest dom is in Magdeburg). Admittedly, if I were to try to describe the dom, it would sound just like every other old church you can think of: stained glass, candles on the alters, high ceilings, paintings of the apostles etc. But I was impressed. This cathedral was absolutely cavernous. If you looked up to see the tops of the stained-glass windows, they were so high you just about fell over backwards, and the organ was so enormous it looked like it might blast a hole right through the stone walls if someone tried to play a hymn. The outer edges of the gigantic rooms were lined with tombs of important men, and if you carefully picked your way down a staircase, part of the crypt that was used hundreds of years ago was open for viewing. My only regret was that our visit was too late in the day for pictures to turn out well, as the cathedral is lit entirely by candles and whatever sunlight can sneak in through the stained glass.
After we experienced the ancient church, we moved on to experience the hip and trendy pedestrian-only shopping strip. There we discovered a Kentucky Fried Chicken (not KFC!) and numerous high-end botiques from various countries. And for our cultural edification we also visited the Cologne city museum to look at the statues of city officials and artifacts from medieval battles. The museum's exhibits also included many artifacts from the world wars, the most memorable of which was a small calandar where a German woman had kept track of every air raid the Allies made on Cologne between 1942 and 1945. June of 1943 was the worst month, with 123 little tally marks.
Now we've returned to Magdeburg and after thirteen days in a row without a break, I finally have a weekend! After I've caught up on all my chores, the plan is to be very German by sitting in a cafe for hours, drinking hot chocolate, reading, and doing crossword puzzles. That's the life.
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