Progress

I'm now half way into Wednesday which pleases me greatly. My heavies working days are MTW, these are the days I spend most of my time teaching or preparing to teach. Thursdays and Fridays I have more time to explore Aachen, shop, etc.

Yesterday and today I've been tutoring this little boy named Achim. A ten year old German whose parents are forcing him to take English lessons. Of course, Germans learn English here at a young age, but its a slow, structured growth. Like most kids his age, he is having trouble grasping the concept of grammar and pronunciation. So his parents, who are way too ambitious for this sweet kid, are forcing him to use his fall break in school. Myself and two other Americans are his teachers. The parents are constantly asking us if we sent him home with vocabulary and homework. They want him to learn all of the sentence structures too...my boss came to our rescue. This is nearly impossible considering his level of English and the time we have with him (just a week). She defended our teaching methods, which are working. Just because your ten year old doesn't have two hours worth of English homework doesn't mean he isn't learning. Thankfully, most of my students are adults or university students, so don't have to deal with parents so much.

My water heater broke on Monday so I've been without hot water for a few days now. I think the pilot light burned out but I have no idea how to light a German water heater and I'm not so keen on exploring the many possibilities. My landlord is out of town. So today I'm going to become rather cozy with my neighbors and see if they can assist me even though we've never met before. Awkward? Probably.

I'm beginning to learn more and more of Aachen. Its actually a nice city. Hopefully this weekend I can spend getting to know it a bit more. Next Wednesday a German holiday. I might take a train to the Netherlands to Maastricht to see whats up there. It's not even an hour ride from what I understand. My friends in Dresden and elsewhere in Germany haven't been able to arrange our rendezvous yet because we're all frightfully busy. I work most Saturday mornings which prohibits me from traveling more than two hours away (like Dresden) for the weekend. Either way, I am meeting people here and getting more and more accustomed to the city and its weather, which is today quite chilly.