Sunday, June 24, 2012

Meet the mayor!

On Friday, June 22nd, we met one of the mayors of Krefeld (their system involves multiple mayors), who invited us for breakfast and told us plenty of interesting things about Krefeld, its art and theater scene, wresting and underwater rugby (which none of us knew existed but all are dying to watch now). Our crowd of extremely well-dressed students had prepared questions for the mayor and - after some initial shyness - interacted on Krefeld's political scene as if they had never done anything else. We teachers were pretty impressed, and, admittedly, quite a bit proud of them! At the end of our visit we got a lovely book about the city, took a picture of the students with the mayor and signed the city's guest book.



Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Rheinfahrt - boat tour on the river Rhine

On Sunday the 17th of June we went on our "Rheinfahrt", a short boat trip on the river Rhine. The slow cruise took us through a breathtakingly beautiful valley with hills covered in wine that grows mostly on slate and is renown for its excellent taste, a landscape dotted (yes, dotted) with castles and ruins. Despite the fact that this sounds very much like a tourist information's advertisement, this is exactly what we saw! After idly cruising on the river for a while we climbed up to the Marksburg, the only castle along the Rhine that has never been destroyed. Here is a link to their website: http://www.marksburg.de/english/frame.htm
After a tour through the castle (complete with a visit to its torture chamber), we managed to not only get a great picture of our students, but also one with (almost all) the host parents. We are still impressed by their patience, since it took quite a while to get everyone into the picture!




Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Germany, here we are!

Germany, here we are!

The first day is over, and we are all slowly starting to figure out Krefeld - on foot, by car, by tram. My lovely colleague has her camera at the ready, and so we already have a group photo. This is at the Volkshochschule (VHS), where we'll spend the academic part of our time here. The students had just finished the first part of their assessment exam, and were taking a break on the third floor balcony. And because we also have great photos from the day of our orientation at IU Bloomington in April, I added one of those, too. Until next time, your

Krefeld team 2012