Ein neues Update

What a week it has been! Early this morning I sent a friend off after she stayed with me a few days. We studied together in Dresden this summer, and she comes from Japan and speaks no English, thus requiring a solid weekend of conversation only in German (I've written about her before--we stayed with our friend in Darmstadt back in November). I do just fine speaking in German, but when you spend three days with someone who also does not speak it natively, it can be quite taxing. I think it's also the cultural aspect too--she's never heard of a lot of things that I would reference culturally, that we Westerners just take for granted (that Germans would definitely understand). Anything from politics to TV to religion. Anna and I were talking about how it could be that someone would be so good at German without knowing any English--do you think it's worth it? I think practically speaking, no, but on the other hand, my years of linguistics has caused me to be a bit disapproving of the whole English-as-a-dominant-language thing (although my English as a Global Language seminar this past semester has caused me to rethink my previous positions on a lot of linguistics-related issues--I'll talk about this in a later post).

Regardless, I had a pretty enjoyable time with Yumi, and I think a lot of this actually has to do with the fact that she DOES speak German. We were able to go to a couple museums that are really only accessible to people who speak German, and thus they were new experiences for me. Having visitors can sometimes stink because you have to do the same touristy things with all of them, but with her I could do more. Also, having visitors means spending more money, but I suppose in the end it's all worth it!

We visited a great museum dedicated to people involved in the resistance movement under Nazionalsozialismus, with a couple rooms dedicated to Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who will be the focus of a new Tom Cruise film about a plot to assassinate Hitler (Tom Cruise filming the movie here in Berlin caused quite a stir because Scientology is not officially recognized in Germany as a religion and people are very wary of it). We also visited the Topography of Terror exhibit in the former death strip between the two walls, which provides a great look at the terror that occurred in Nazi times. For the past ten days or so, the Berlinale has been going on, and we wanted to see a participating movie, which proved rather hard to do--the movies sell out right away, it seems--but we got a ticket to see a documentary called East West: Sex and Politics. Sounded pretty interesting, and all I knew was that it was going to be in Russian, English, and German with English subtitles. It ended up being about the fight for a gay pride parade in Moscow in 2007. Would not have been my first choice for a movie, but I did find it really interesting, and I think the mistreatment the gay people in the documentary received was totally unfounded and an affront to democracy (which Russia definitely does not have). Yumi slept through the whole thing, so you can tell how much she liked it--but who can blame her when she doesn't know English?

After seeing the film, we went to the Staatsoper and saw Norma, which is an opera by Bellini. Wikipedia says it's two acts, but there was only one at ours. Anyway, we sat in the second row with great views for only 12 Euro. It was quite good, and thank goodness for the German Obertitel or I wouldn't have had a clue what it was about.

Facebook was quite helpful this week--I saw that a friend from high school had posted pictures from Berlin, and it turns out he was working here for the Berlinale, so I got to meet up with him and reminisce about life at SM. He also updated me on what everyone was up to, which is good because I have barely kept in contact with anyone from high school. But yeah, if it weren't for the wonder that is Facebook I wouldn't have known about him being here. That Facebook is both a blessing and a curse.

This week was the last week of classes at Humboldt. I had to give a presentation in my German class, and I chose the topic of prostitution. I chose it because I live near Oranienburger Strasse, which is quite a nice street with lots of bars and restaurants, but with a ton of prostitutes at night. It's totally not a seedy area, which is what I always thought prostitute areas would be like. Anyway, I learned quite about about prostitution in Germany--for one, it's legal and they pay taxes. In Berlin they pay 30 Euro a day in taxes. There are approximately 400,000 prostitutes in all of Germany, and anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 are illegal and Frauenhandel--I totally forgot the English word for it--forced prostitution? Quite sad. I focused a bit on the World Cup in 2006--"Frauen und Sex gehoeren zusammen"--and also on the legislation that 'legalized" it--I say "legalized" because it wasn't really illegal, it was just considered as immoral and thus there was no state support. But with this law, prostitutes can receive health insurance and social security. Quite a different world than in the U.S.

Also, this week I talked about the election in my after-school English lessons, and one of my students is an Iraqi, and boy does a lot of vitriol spew out of her mouth! It's quite interesting to hear her perspective as an Iraqi, but I hope that is it informative for her to hear MY perspective as an American, because I don't think she has a good opinion of the country, or the government, at the least. She also asked me what I thought of "the Jews," because don't they run the U.S.? She also said that she knows the Holocaust was bad and all, but why doesn't the world focus on all the people dying in the Middle East and in Iraq and Palestine in particular? I was kinda shocked, because she really sorta came across as being anti-Jewish in her tone. But that shouldn't be too surprising, since most of my students have never even met a Jewish person and seem to be wary of Israel and the whole at-odds thing between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East. She also asked me questions about Christianity, such as how people could call God Father when he is not really their father, and why Jesus just didn't get himself down off the cross if he really was God. Kinda caught me off guard, and now I am doing a lesson on religion tomorrow since they seem really interested in learning about it. It's actually a lesson on religion in America, but I imagine I will have to go over the basic tenets of Christianity since they appear to have not a clue about it. I can't blame them, but I sure can lament that fact. And here's to hoping that they learn something tomorrow!

I guess that's all for now. Looking forward to my mom's visit next weekend and starting Alpha course this week! Will try to update again soon!