New Bikes

Just a quick post showing you our lovely new (ish) bikes.  Mine is above,  It is second hand, and only cost me 60 euros.  The saddle is so high that I can't touch the ground though, and I can only adjust it with a screw driver.  Finding a screw driver in Germany is proving difficult, so for now I just wobble.  A lot!  I'm in the process of trying to find some plastic flowers for the basket, or some colourful saddle bags, to go with the giant owl bell that I am definitely getting!

Matt's bike is below.  His is a new one, and was 300 euros from Lucky Bike World.  It's a pretty good bike, and is light as a feather compared to mine!

Eindhoven

It's been rather a hectic week and a half, hence why I am only just updating the blog now.  Time seems to move faster here in Duisburg than anywhere else on the planet.  I can't believe it's nearly October, and only two weeks until our first half term of the year!  Time flies when your having fun, and are exhausted running after children all day!

The Sunday before last was where I left you in my last post.  Uncle Chris was over from Switzerland on business and we met up for dinner in the evening.  We went to a lovely Italian restaurant on the inland harbour.  I had pesto gnocci, which was delicious but so huge, I took half of it home and had it for lunch the next day.  It was great to see my uncle and it kept off my homesickness that was just starting to creep in for both of us last week.  Mum is visiting us this weekend, so it kept me going until I see Mum, which I am so excited about!

Last weekend we went to Eindhoven in the Netherlands.  Here in Duisburg we are really close to the border with the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, so it is easy to hop on a train and be in a different country in an hour.  This is a bit of a novelty for us coming from the UK where you have to fly everywhere!  So, on Thursday night we decided that we fancied a weekend away, just the two of us, and on Friday after work we were on a train heading to Eindhoven.  Eindhoven is a historic town that is home to Philips technologies (lightbulbs, rasors, TVs, cutting edge tech, you name it, Philips have something to do with it).  They have a great museum on Philips technologies in Eindhoven, so we headed there on Saturday morning, after a restful night in the lovely Park Inn hotel.  It's not a museum I would have picked myself, but Matt wanted to go there, and I actually learnt a lot and really enjoyed myself.  The giant casette and record are from the museum.

Above in Eindhoven Cathedral and below is a cafe in the middle of an enormous park that we went for a walk in on Sunday.  The weather was beautiful, and perfect for a stroll and a spot of mini golf (or midget golf as it is hilariously called here).  We always have a wager on mini golf, and this time was no different.  I never ever win anything, so my prize was an enormous one.  Matt (far more likely to win) only asked for the new playstation FIFA game if he won.  Suffice to say, the impossible happened, and so I will soon be the proud owner of a brand new sewing machine, courtesy of my lovely husband. :-D

These were the bikes outside Eindhoven station... just some of them.  Everyone has bikes here, and it is even more bike friendly than Germany, which is saying something!

Children, classes and cocktails... but not all together

This week has been quite a long one, despite the days speeding by at their usual quick pace.  Lots of people have got colds, and as the first wave of illness sweeps around lower school, everyone is feeling a bit glum.  Some good things happened this week though.  There is a child in year 6 who has a brother in year 9, who Matt teaches.  Both kids had gone home and told their parents how much they like us, and worked out that we were married.  The year 9 mentioned it to Matt, and said how much his brother likes me.  I was ridiculously pleased that i'd been mentioned at home, and it put a smile on my face all day.  Pretty much all of the year 3-6's know my name now, and say hello to me as we pass in the corridor.  I'm really getting to know the TEP kids that I read with three times a week too.  They are are all very shy children, but their personalities are starting to come out more now.

We were both rather unenthusiastic about going to German lessons this week, since we've both been quite bored by the slow pace of things.  Thursday, the lesson started off really badly.  We learnt words for mother, father, brother, aunt, grandparents etc, and then had to draw our full family trees.  But the family trees only had names on, not mother, father etc.  We spent nearly an hour on them, and we were getting frustrated because we know who our families are, and their names, and it wasn't teaching us any German at all!  Matt almost fell asleep, and the teacher finally cottoned on that we weren't very stimulated.  She asked Matt if he was bored, and he was honest.  I think Matt is probably the best in the class at the moment, and I am at a far more average level, so the teacher asked me too if things were a bit slow.  I said yes, and I think she was using me as a yard stick for the rest of the class, because things really picked up after that, and we learnt LOADS in the last 45 minutes.  I think it is good that the teacher found out, and now hopefully we will get more out of the lessons.

On Friday night we went to a pub near school with some friends, and last night, we went out for one of the Primary girls birthdays.  She wanted us to get dressed up like we do for nights out in the UK, so we all wore dresses and heels.  In Germany, jeans and t-shirts are more the dress code for nights out.  We went to a couple of different cocktail bars, and we had a really good night.  We have such a lovely group of friends here; we've very lucky.  

Today, we are off to meet Uncle Chris in Duisburg for dinner.  He is over from Switzerland on business in the area, and is popping by for a fleeting visit.  I'm really looking forward to our first visitor since we've moved to Germany - a whole month ago now - 

Beer Houses and Bowling

It's been another good but exhausting week!  I got my timetable on Monday, and started on it straight away.  I'm pleased with the classes I have been put with.  6 lessons a week with Year 6, 6 with Year 5, and 6 with Year 3, all the same teacher for each year group (there are three different teachers for each year at the school), plus a few odd lessons with Year 4 and TEP.  The classes are mostly lower set Maths or English, but a couple are second set.  The TEP classes involve me taking 8 kids out of lessons three times a week to read with them,  These are the kids who don't speak much English and spend every morning of school learning English, and then their afternoons back with their usual classes.  I like that I will always have the same kids each session, as I will get to know them really well.  Reading with these kids is a different skill to reading with the kids who speak good English.  Sometimes, they learn the words in a book, but they don't actually understand what has been said.  What I have to do is ask questions about the pictures, make sure they understand every word, and that their pronunciation is correct.  I was a bit rubbish on my first attempt, but I know have the hang of it, and know what questions to ask.  I've found that asking questions actually works really well in with any child, as more often than not, there are words they don't understand, but don't let you know.

On Tuesday, I was given my first class group to run a lesson with, start to finish with no other teacher there.  I had 8 kids in the bottom English set for Year 6.  The class teacher had her own group of kids, who were part of TEP, so the class had been split into those who don't speak good English, and everyone else.  It was the last lesson of the day and their attention spans were not brilliant, plus I was only told that I was doing this 5 minutes before it started, but I survived!  /The kids all did their work, and the only thing wrong was that they were quite noisy.  I hadn't really noticed, because I was so focused on everything else about the lesson!  I think it went OK, and the teacher told me that I did absolutely fine.  I already know how I will improve for next week, and am quite looking forward to it.  I was absolutely exhausted after it though!!!  Just to exhaust me more, the same day was my first after school club.  I am running an art and crafts club for kids in reception to year 3, with one of the Year 5 teachers (who is a really fantastic teacher)  We had 25 kids, and had them colouring in Disney pictures.  Things will get more interesting as we go on, but we wanted to do something easy while we worked out how many we would have, and what ages they were.  It went well, but it's a tiring day on Tuesdays!

Our German language lessons are... OK.  Mondays lesson was good, but on Wednesday I was really bored!  The class took so long to do an exercise in the text book that we didn't have time to start something new like we were meant to, and the rest of the lesson became a 'filler' lesson.  My understanding of written German seems to be quite good, so we worked through the book really fast, then were bored for the rest of the lesson.  Not good when your only 2 weeks in.  At this rate i'm not sure how much we will learn by Christmas.

On Friday night, we went out in Duisburg with a small group of friends.  We went to a German pub which was great, and it had a bowling ally in the basement.  It just has one lane, and the balls don't have holes in them so you have to throw them with two hands.  The photo below is of Matt demonstrating the 'backwards throw' technique.  We had beer cocktails (interesting), and went for some Chinese food after (amazing, and so cheap!).  A good night was had by all, and it wasn't even a late night.  

Today, Matt went to see Duisburg play football with some people from school (friends who play football with Matt after work on Fridays).  I went shopping in Dusseldorf with one of my new pals, and then we had lunch by the Rhine, and a few others came to meet us for a Radler (shandy) and some ice cream.  It was a really nice relaxing day in the sunshine.

We've survived a whole week of school

Our first week at school was exhausting (especially after two very late nights last weekend), but good.  I finally got into the classrooms with the year 3-6 kids, and I had such a good time with them.  The classes are tiny, with only about 15 kids in each.  I was mostly in the bottom sets for maths and English, but that suited me very well.  The kids are getting to know my face and some of the year 3s even remembered my name, even though I had been introduced to them more than 4 days before!  One of the year 6 classes gave me a round of applause when I was introduced, just because I was a visitor in their class.  I've been doing spelling tests, helping out in art classes, ICT classes, doing science experiments, and sewing cotton wool balls to an umbrella to look like snow for a year 5 weather class.  One of the year 3 classes was so funny.  When asked who I was they said 'Miss Harris'.  Their teacher said yes, but it's Mrs, and who knows what the difference between Miss and Mrs is.  One of the girls hands shot up, and she announced that Mrs meant that I 'have a man'.  It was so funny.  

We have started our language classes this week.  The class has about 20 students in it, and we go for 2 and a half hours on Mondays and Wednesdays.  The students are from all over the world, and there is no common language between us.  Not that it matters; the teacher speaks to us in German, and only German, and we pick up some of it as we go along... or not as the case was for me.  Matt picked it up seemingly easily, as he always does with new things.  I was exhausted afterwards, but I did enjoy myself, and I really think this is the best way to learn a new language.

On Friday night after work, I went into Dusseldorf for ;Girls night' with some of the Primary teachers, and Matt had 'chat and chess' evening with a few of the lads.  The above photo is the aftermath of this!

Yesterday we decided to explore a bit more of Duisburg.  The above photo is the largest in land harbour in the world.  It is in a very nice area of Duisburg, and we already want to live there!  Duisburg seems to have quite a lot to offer.  There are several museums and a zoo that has an aquatic center opening in the Spring.  I have also discovered that in the area there is a museum entirely dedicated to the Neanderthal skeletons that were discovered in the area.  I can't wait to see it!

An excellent week, and i'm looking forward to getting my proper timetable on Tuesday.

Our flat

We finally have internet!!!  We have really missed being able to check emails, contact friends on facebook and even look up on google maps where we need to go for various things!  Now that we officially have internet, I can share a few pictures of our flat.  The flat definitely has a 70s vibe about it, but now that we have our own photos up and our own mess everywhere, it's feeling much more like home.  The flat has a lot of character, including very high ceilings and curved arches over each door, as well as the bathroom with the see-through door, and the shower in the middle of the room!  Still, we're getting used to it and settling in very nicely now.