Being there.

While the world as we knew it seems to be spectacularly going down outside, I, in the meantime, must admit have had one of the best weeks ever, and certainly the best of my teaching career.
After weeks and weeks of preparations that tipped our day-to-day routines into full-blown chaos, on Monday morning Gen Rosso finally came to our school with their huge musical project "Streetlight". And right from the start, effortlessly it seemed, they turned the chaos into an atmosphere buzzing with anticipation and creativity.
For three days our students danced and sweated, acted and sang, built and painted, rehearsed and trained, drummed and played, battled against their short attention spans, mood swings and lack of self-confidence and overcame their shyness and sore muscles.


Yesterday then was the big day of the big night of the big show. It's hard to describe the atmosphere that had the transformed gym humming with excitement all day during the final rehearsals.


I won't pretend that it wasn't also a fair bit exhausting to help coordinate everything and to try and settle down and answer the billions of questions of 400 bubbly, hyper pupils.


Then again, whenever I found a quiet moment I just found myself watching the kids and thinking what a huge, huge pity it is that the school system forces us into such rigid corsets that we hardly ever get a chance to see our pupils behave like this. To see them discover new talents and blossom under the appreciative looks of newly-found role models and friends, to watch them straighten up and broaden their shoulders with a new confidence and happiness they didn't know they possessed.


So, millions and millions of heartfelt thanks to everyone from Gen Rosso for sharing with us your boundless energy, your talent, your kindness, your optimism, your patience, for giving our pupils' faces a glow like this...


...and smiles like these...


...and for giving us teachers the opportunity to see "our" kids...


...in a new light!

The news tonight. And yesterday. And the day before...

Hokuspokus...

...steckt der Krokus
seine Nase schon ans Licht!

Ich finde es ist allerhöchste Zeit für Frühling und Sonne und längere Tage und kürzere Nächte und neues Grün an den kahlen Bäumen und Sitzen im Park und Kaffee unter Sonnenschirmen und Feierabendgetränke im Biergarten und all das. Und wo wir schonmal dabei sind, bin ich auch noch ganz entschieden für Urlaub am Meer. Und zwar dieses Jahr noch. Jawohl. Muss mir dringend mal ein Highlight buchen... Any volunteers?

Melon&Cauli.

Happy endings get me down.
Sad ones, too.
That's why I'm increasingly fond of undemanding, uncomplicated panel shows and quizzes.
No storyline, no emotions, ergo no identification or, worse, dissociation via unelegant, simple jealousy.

Or maybe I'm just totally shallow and can't be bothered.

How do you spell "um-bear-as-sing"?

Apparently, we must have had one of those magical blue moons over the weekend, because, lo and behold!, that most priced, lost-presumed-dead, shrouded-in-legend bloody document has turned up again! Either that, or I simply have the world's most selfless, patient, long-suffering of all friends, who not only insisted on sacrificing a whole Saturday for me to meticulously scrutinize every single piece of paper in my posession in search of the legendary document,
she also found it!!!
Just like that! (Well, after about four hours.)
And she even has the grace to not rub it in (too much) on every conceivable occasion, but to just be happy that "we" found it and that she could be of help!
Incredible.
I know I would never ever shut up about it if I was in her place. What a sad little lunatic I am! (No news there.) Because apparently the papers (not one but, in fact, four of them - my eyewitness accounts obviously aren't worth a farthing!) were, after all, in that most likely of all folders all along. In the one with all the reeeaally important university stuff, in a clear, plastic sleeve, but alas, unfortunately camouflaged as something else.
Well, maybe best not to dwell on this any longer. Suffice to say that the monster has sulkily retreated back into its corner under the bed for now, gnawing at some left-over nightmares of mine.

Oh, while she was at it, my friend also found the original of my leaving certificate. You know, the one that was very, very definitely gone? The one I thought I had forgotten on a photocopier in Leipzig about twelve years ago? The one I caused a minor all-hands-on-deck situation at my old school over about three years ago? The one that provided the infamous precedence for the case above, proving that things can and do, in fact, disappear for good?
Yeah, that one.
(surreptitiously sidling off stage)

Anti-Climax.

After all these weeks of longing for the end of the semester and all that talk of how my resolutions would have to keep until then, of how I would completely start over, reorganize my life, start cooking and eating healthily again, get exercise, all that talk of postponing my real New Year's celebrations until this weekend and after making a big show of how I was going to round up everyone and go out and have the best time ever... I really would have expected to be feeling a lot more upbeat right now than I actually do.
As it is I'm having a hard time simply getting up and dressed, let alone implement any of those big-mouthed plans.
Amongst other things, I totally blame that conducting teacher of mine, who very definitely spoiled my mood by giving me a grade I don't think I deserve. Yes, I passed. And yes, who's gonna want to see that bloody certificate at the end of the day anyway? And yes, it's all water down the drain now, so stop being a sore loser. But I really feel unjustly judged. I truly did fairly well in that exam, not worse than most of the others anyway, so I deserve to get the same grade as they did. But apparently I'm under a misapprehension. I must have developed a sudden, strong case of overestimating my own capabilities.

Well, that's a first.

Anyhow. Following that unnerving and so, so irritating saying of "God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference" I should probably pray for serenity and get started on that second bit, the one I have some power over. Like stopping buying all those deep-freeze pizzas and boldly venture into the fruit-and-veg-section of the supermarket again, now that I've the time again to actually cook something. Maybe energy and good humour will turn up, if I trick them into thinking they're already here.
What a cunning plan!

Lied zur Nacht.