IMT Start Week

Since my last post I have been extremely busy and at the moment I am pretty tired... therefore, I will try to remember everything but this will probably be more of a highlight post.

My last weekend in Zwickau with verona and her family was spent camping with some of their friends.  It was a very relaxing time just hanging out, going for walks, and swimming in the lake nearby. I wasnt quite sure what to expect, but it was kind of like camping at someones lake house but with the lake not right there.  The food was all really good and their friends were good to try and practice some German with.  I did find out just how unbashful German people are though.  We went swimming with one of the women we were camping with, and instead of changing into a bathing suit she just stripped down in front of us at the lake and jumped in.  There were some other things that I observed or happened on the trip but after this week I cannot remember them at all.

So... Monday morning we drove to Chemnitz and met the rest of the team, except for one girl from Brazil who is coming next week.  There is a girl from Estonia named Mareta. She is 19, has a lot of energy, and is the youngest child in her family.  She has been here the longest of the three new members of the team and can understand the most German although she doesnt like to try and speak it very often.  The next member is Claudia.  She comes from Germany, is the niece of one of our leaders, and is 24.  She can speak a little bit of English and can understand much more, can sing, and has kind of been our front man because she speaks German.  The next member is Raele. She comes from Latvia, is 19, and can also sing very well.  She and the next team member, Snidze, attended Wesley Camp in Latvia and we know several of the same people from Alabama. Sniedze is 24 and was a member of the team last year. She will be working on a little more specialized project than the rest of us so I am not sure as of yet how much we will work with her and the last member, Karen.  Karen is from Brazil and was also on the team last year so she is doing something a little more specialzed as well.  So thats a quick rundown of our team here.

Every morning this week and for the next two weeks, Raele, Mareta, and myself are attending German classes for four hours in the local uni here.  So far I have really enjoyed the classes.  We are in the very lowest begginners class and since Mareta and I have been in Germany for a week or so, we seem to be at the top of the class.  I love meeting the other students and talking with them.  They come from China, Venezuela, Spain, Estonia, India, Turkey, Mongolia, and Romania, but all of them can speak English so its good for me.  There are four students from Turkey and three who came from the same uni there and so I think knew each other beforehand.  In class we split up and talk in German at times.  The other day I was paired with one of the girls from Turkey and she was super interested in who I am and what I did and just everything about me.  She told me that in Turkey they saw people from the US and thought they were not kind, but that I looked kind and was kind.  Im not sure if kind was the exact word she wanted to use, but she doesnt speak English like you and me. Either way I could tell she was really surprised.  I am very interested in talking more with them as well the other students and figuring out just what she meant.  The other thing I have enjoyed about the class is that to learn German our teacher asks us questions about our home country and other historic and geographical questions.  We are all learning about each others countries while we learn German.  I also feel like I have the best education in the class.  Many, many times I am the only one that knows or has heard of some of the people we discuss in relation to German history or even the only other person that knows who someone from that country talks about.  I feel like most of the things we talk about I learned at IB.  Some of the people we talk about I am very surprised that others dont know them at all.  I dont know how prestigious this particular uni is, so that may play a role if these are not the best and brightest from their countries, but I def can see a difference in the level of education as far as history goes.  These students may also be engineers or something like that so they focused on math and science.

Back to IMT... for lunch we come back to the hospital and eat in their cafeteria. The food is not bad, although its nothing special either.  This week we did a lot of start work.. going over rules and what was expected and different forms we needed to fill out, as well as visiting a few of the places we will be working.  It seems from these places and what else they have told me, we will work with one or two different groups each afternoon-night, and what we do differs slightly depending on the group of kids.  With some we will just play and be extra helping hands and with other groups we will be more in charge, planning and leading bible studies and games.  It really kind of feels like some of what I did at BigHouse, just with different kids each day.  So, Micah, Susannah, Danna, and anyone else who works with kids creatively on a regular basis let me know if you have any good ideas for things to do with the kids... please.  This week has been very tiring though.  We have had very little if any free time to ourselves.  To end this week we went camping last night.  It was not so bad, there was a lot of very pretty scenery, but I thought we were going to see an area I was told was forbidden to sleep in and not on the map so that tourists wouldnt flock to it.  We never made it.  We left last night and hiked about an hour to where we slept.  It was a kind of cave.  We slept on the rock there and then this morning hiked some more.  Thats when I was kind of disappointed.  We were all very tired from the week already and hiking and sleeping on rocks the night before didnt make us any less tired.  So when we walked and walked and I thought we were headed to see this really amazing area they were trying to keep from tourists, and it turned out we were just a little bit lost heading back to our car I was kinda disappointed.  Its all good though.  We have had a good bit of free time today and I think we will again tomorrow so I can rest!