Two [Smart] Idiots Abroad: January 2017

A beer garden at the English Park

It's been snowy here! While we're kind of assuming this is just what Germany must be like in winter, we're told this is actually the coldest and snowiest winter in many years. We're enjoying it nonetheless. It's pretty to watch the snow fall from our giant windows and the last two weekends it's been fun to wake up to a bunch of fresh snow. There are a lot of parks nearby where people go sledding, although here it is "sledging" instead. Actually, Sarah passed a group of school children leaving school with their sleds to go sledding at a nearby park, during school hours. That sounds awesome! Actually, every kindergarten (kindergarten here is like US daycare) requires the kiddos to keep snow pants on hand during winter, and they go sledding and play in the snow all the time.

This is down the street from where we live near a park.

We've enjoyed walking around and taking in the sights. Transportation does not get shut down in the snow here, so everything keeps going as usual. Legally, car owners in Germany are required to have snow tires on their cars, and the buses, trams, and trains seem to run regardless of snow or ice. They treat roads here with salt, sand, and gravel to allow for grip as well. Running in the snow, well, that's been a bit different. We have definitely had to be careful not to slip, or get hit by snowballs that teenagers decide to throw at runners.

In other news, Joe's work in lab is still going well. They're working to get the project up and running and that involves a lot of calibration, trial/error, proving to their professor that various setups will work, etc. Joe works in one of many subgroups in a large group that is split between many projects, so they must be able to demonstrate their work/research to a very busy professor. Joe has already had a positive impact on the lab by providing snack during their lengthy midday group meeting. He asked Sarah if her once a week baking adventures could possible be donated to some "starving" PhD students and Sarah obliged. In reality, Joe just got hungry in the middle of these meetings and thought some cake would be a good addition. Now, all of his coworkers and lab mates are eternally in debt to him and the baked goods for tiding them over until the end of the meeting.

Sarah's been busy looking for work and has finally found some! She is, as of the end of January, actually going to be split between three jobs. The first is substitute teaching at the Munich International School in Starnberg, just south of Munich. It's an internationally recognized school and a huge opportunity to hopefully find a full time position for next year. It's also a prestigious International Baccalaureate school, so it will be interesting to compare with US public school experience! Sarah will be able to work this job as a "minijob" which in Germany is a job that only pays up to a certain amount. That amount is tax free and comes with limited working hours. Due to the daily rate of pay, Sarah will be able to work 3.5 days per month at the MIS as a substitute teacher.

The second two are teaching English classes. In a major international city, everyone assumes they can just "go teach English" but it's actually very tricky to do so and earn worthwhile amounts of money. Since it is such a popular pursuit for people who may not have German skills, it's considered a "freelance" job. This comes with some annoying and tricky tax, insurance, and legal specifics. For example, most language schools require you to have a certificate in teaching your native language as a second language (called ESL in the USA or TESOL here for teaching English). While Sarah has an education degree, this does not qualify. Testing for the TESOL can cost upwards of 1600€ and take up to 6 months of training on how to teach. This is not practical if you already have experience, so it can be frustrating to find work without it. Thankfully, there is a language academy that a) wants to hire Sarah and b) provides the testing materials and study books for this test at a significantly reduced amount (somewhere around 200€ , with an expectation that it will be done on your own time in a year). There is another kids-only English school that teaches classes at local kindergartens which has also offered to hire Sarah. Freelance jobs are take-as-they-come so there are not set classes or hours until someone signs up for them. This is why it's tricky to earn substantial income. However, between the three jobs, we should be able to earn a little travel income to start seeing some more sights around the country!

Here's the link to the Google album with ALL of our snow pictures (there are a lot!)

At a time when everyone in Munich is either traveling out of town or skiing, Joe and I had a good old fashioned quiet Christmas this year. We enjoyed taking lots of walks to see lights and sights, especially Christmas markets, and enjoyed having some quiet time at home. This has been Joe's first "time off" since he started work in September, so he enjoyed watching lots of soccer/football (I don't know what to call it anymore) and practice reading the children's German books we checked out from the library.

A sight we got to see was the Coca Cola Weihnachtstrucks (Christmas trucks) as they drove through the Olympic Park! They stop in each major city in Germany throughout the holiday season, and we really didn't know what to expect except that they were coming. They drove through blasting music and with a parade of dancers, baton twirlers, and followers surrounding the trucks as they processed. We also enjoyed watching all 5 of the trucks struggle to make a fairly tight turn in the route. We watched from the middle of the "big hill" at the Olympic Park in freezing cold weather.

New Years was really entertaining. It's tradition to either go out to a place that launches fireworks or launch your own, and they sell all the big (and small) ones at the GROCERY STORE. They are only on sale for a day or two, but since you pretty much have to grocery shop every other day here, that works out. So, everyone stocks up and then sets them off at midnight. Well, actually they started about 20 minutes before midnight, and kept going for several hours. We watched them for quite some time from our apartment window, and we could barely see the building across the way through all the smoke. Then there was a haze of smoke covering the city for the next 2 days. Talk about starting New Years with a bang!

Here's our favorite snapshots of the 2016 Holiday season! Full album (with more videos) can be found here!