worth it

Student teaching is fantastically exhausting. You teach all day, then stay after to discuss how everything went and where everything is headed (plus prep materials and make displays). When you finally do get out of the building, it's only to go home and spend all night planning the next day. And in this case, it's doing that while adjusting to the ins and outs of a different educational system. In a foreign country.

I need a hug.

But despite feeling a bit like a headless chicken most days (one with its heart on its sleeve, no less), it helps to remember the roomful of reasons that makes it all worth it. That's all it's ever really about, anyway.

last taste of summer

Last week, at the suggestion of my lovely friend Laura V., we spent the day in Friedrichshagen and Koepenick on the Mueggelsee.

I met Laura in 2004 when I was living in Tuebingen (I actually lived with her family for a short time). She is one of the kindest, most genuine people I've ever met, and she happens to be studying law in Berlin at the moment. It's amazing to have a good friend so close. We went to her place in Kreuzberg for brunch today, and it was as cozy and chaotic as ever - exactly the things I love about her.

There are very few people in my life that have ever been in the running for kindred spirit (much as I may have wished otherwise, especially in my early teens), but Laura would certainly be one of them. I'm completely blessed to know her.

The palace at Koepnick

With another Laura - my flatmate and fellow teacher from the States

Palace entrance

Laura V. (right) and her flatmate Katharina