You Can Call Me El

Today is a bank holiday (although in German it's more excitingly named: Feiertag , ie. celebrate day!) so there are a number of things I am going to do - write this post, make a start on my Learning log thing, plan a few lessons - and there are a number of things I am not going to do - put on a bra, go outside for any reason. I've decided that I need a relaxing day after the incredibly hectic Monday and Tuesday of this week, which both involved getting up upsettingly early (5.40 and 6.40 respectively) and being constantly with people . I may have mentioned this on here before, but Germans are very tiring to be around. Anyway, enough rambling, and to the point of this post: friends and enemies! Friends In the last few weeks, there has been a lot more general contact between other language assistants in Saxony. First there was the Gluehwein fest that I mentioned last time, which was swiftly followed the next weekend by meeting with David and Verity in Leipzig. I'd gone t...

Last week was the 25th anniversary of the peaceful protests in Germany that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification. To celebrate this, Lichtfest was held, in Leipzig, apparently in Chemnitz also, although none of us knew it was happening, and in other cities in Germany. On Wednesday I went to see a film with Beth and her housemate Susan (who is German and never speaks English - good German practice points!). It was in the absolutely lovely Clubkino Siegmar in Chemnitz, a kind of art-house-y cinema that shows unusual, old, or foreign films. I've been told that the downstairs screen is brilliant and has armchairs, tables, and a bar in the back, while the screen upstairs showing our film was less comfortable but still interesting, with rows of wooden chairs rather than several attached to each other like in a normal cinema, in a tiny, intimate room with mood lighting. The film was a short documentary filmed by some schoolchildren a few years ago about the protests that...