Wednesday - 21st March

7 a.m. in the morning - For once I wasn't woken up by the trains.

After photography class (as always, we didn't do anything), we took a small bus to North Elementry School (the elementary school here). We were supposed to give two German lessons in two groups.

The plan was to start with introductions, then play a numbers game and play Fire-Water-Storm, and finally have a Q&A. It worked really well and the kids (4th & 5th grade) were very motivated.

A complete contrast were the kids from the Catholic Saint Louis School. The first group (grades 5-8) barely participated (respect to the teachers who usually teach there). The atmosphere improved slightly when we gave them difficult German words to repeat (squirrel in all variations :)) The 2nd grade there was better, but still very shy.

After a short treasure hunt through the 'downtown' of Nokomis, we drove to Tosetti's. He left everything as it was after his wife's death. You can imagine it like this: a gigantic house with its own wine cellar and bar, nine bathrooms, a 'church' in the attic, huge windows, three shiny cars, and 32 hectares of meadow around the building.

I think the sentence from Felix, 'This is the most American thing I've ever seen!' describes it best.

After an extensive tour of the house, we went to Sabia's, sorry, Tabea's surprise birthday party (what a word?!). There was the 2nd cake (the first one was at Tosetti's) and (hopefully) tears of joy from the birthday girl.

We were all very impressed by Tosetti's house and had various ideas about what we could do with it (if we could ever afford this house). But seeing the other side of daily teaching at school was also very exciting.

Julia M.