Mort

In a clubby thing near the main station they're putting on a discworld musical: Mort - das Musical, and I only noticed yesterday.

I want to go I want to go I want to gooo.

But since there are only three performances left I doubt I'll get any tickets now. The worst thing: the only evening when I would be able to go I can't because it starts at eight and my course only finishes at a quarter to eight. I'll never make it on time, and I doubt they'd let me in fifteen minutes late.

Life is unfair.

Although I'll try to get tickets, anyway, and see when we finish. We usually finish about thirty minutes early, but there have been exceptions before.

No gay hearts?

"OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada has imposed sweeping restrictions on who can donate organs for transplant -- including a ban on gay men who have been sexually active in the past five years. [...] The restrictions, which also cover drug addicts, prisoners, prostitutes and people who have had tattoos or body piercings in the last 12 months using shared needles, came into effect last month.
"A gay man who had practiced abstinence for the five years prior (to making an organ donation) would be acceptable," said the spokeswoman. "Likewise a heterosexual man who had had a single sexual encounter with a male within the last five years would not be considered acceptable even though he is not gay."

( Canada tightens rules governing organ donations )

Well, let's hope that the situation in Canada has improved so much from 2004 that they don't need additional donors.
Here's an online petition. 

Culture clashes?

So, I want to become a teacher. There are many slightly derisive voices saying that our teachers are only really fit for teaching the middle class population they came from, and they do have a point. Now most of the students in my class have far more experiences with different cultures than I do and radically different backgrounds. Most of them migrated to Germany before they came to school here in Hamburg. I can't imagine what it must be like to be from Turkey, from Albania, from Bolivia - even from Bavaria in Hamburg. Germany must be the most xenophobic country I have ever been to, and living in Willhelmsburg on top of that is not likely to make it any better, as that is one of the areas that other Hamburgians usually tend to look down upon.

I must say that I keep feeling intimidated. How can I, with my rather limited background, be the right teacher for people whose experiences and contexts are so different from mine?
For example. I try and use topics that might interest my students and relate to their world (using popular books, movies, TV shows in my classes), and with my suburban, upper middle-class grammar school classes that usually worked and was not too difficult, as their experiences were very, very similar to mine, but with my current students, I haven't got a clue.

Another example for differences: I looked up some of their favourite artists I didn't know. I didn't have to look up Rihanna or Christina Aguilera, but I'd never even heard of Massiv or Muhabbet. So. Contrasts.

( Read more... )