Ch-ch-ch-Changes!
In the middle of June, the two Stuttgart Berlitz schools officially combined. I was automatically transferred to the new school as a freelance teacher. It's nice to change things up, but there are a few things to get used to, of course.
We moved out of the luxurious location near the main station, but kept the old "Stuttgart 2" office. It has a few classrooms, but it mostly houses the administration - our director, secretary, the supervisor of pedagogy, our materials library, etc. That space is located on the Rotebühlplatz, across from a C&A department store and the Stuttgart Stadtmitte subway stop.
The new space, with about 10 classrooms, is located at Marienstraße 28. Thanks to Google and its ever-increasing creeping skills, I was able to locate a photo of the building for you:
You can see the windows of our new school on the third floor, just above Sophie's Brewery. We keep joking that we'll never get any work done because we'll spend all our time downstairs drinking beer, but as of yet we haven't made an office trip down there. Probably because classes are always so sporadic. You never know when you'll see your fellow teachers, or how long they'll be around on any given day.
At the moment, the entire Marienstraße is a construction site. Not the buildings, but the road itself. To get to the school by foot, you have to scramble over poorly-laid temporary asphalt mounds, squeeze past teenyboppers filling the discount clothing stores, and try to ignore the noise of the diggers scraping chunks of street up from between the trees. Not to mention, a giant new shopping center is going up across the intersection. It's hot in the classrooms, but you have to leave the windows closed because of the noise. Eventually it will be nice area to work. Eventually.
The upside is that I've got a whole herd of new coworkers. Lots of Americans, lots of young people. That helps a bit, since Laura and Amanda have now both moved back to the U.S. for good.
Work is busy but exciting. After eight months I'm starting to come up with my own little tricks for getting people to understand grammar points. I've already had a few of my regular classes reach the end, take their final exams, and leave me. Usually that comes with a mixture of relief and sadness... you look back on their progress and think, "yeah, we did it!" but then you think, "well, I sure hope the next class is a good group."
Even more exciting, though, is the prospect of my upcoming vacation - my first time back in the States since August last year! I can't wait to see friends and family. So if you're reading this, be around the Sullivan/STL area over Labor Day weekend! That will be your best shot at seeing me! Countdown to takeoff: 30 days.
We moved out of the luxurious location near the main station, but kept the old "Stuttgart 2" office. It has a few classrooms, but it mostly houses the administration - our director, secretary, the supervisor of pedagogy, our materials library, etc. That space is located on the Rotebühlplatz, across from a C&A department store and the Stuttgart Stadtmitte subway stop.
The new space, with about 10 classrooms, is located at Marienstraße 28. Thanks to Google and its ever-increasing creeping skills, I was able to locate a photo of the building for you:
You can see the windows of our new school on the third floor, just above Sophie's Brewery. We keep joking that we'll never get any work done because we'll spend all our time downstairs drinking beer, but as of yet we haven't made an office trip down there. Probably because classes are always so sporadic. You never know when you'll see your fellow teachers, or how long they'll be around on any given day.
At the moment, the entire Marienstraße is a construction site. Not the buildings, but the road itself. To get to the school by foot, you have to scramble over poorly-laid temporary asphalt mounds, squeeze past teenyboppers filling the discount clothing stores, and try to ignore the noise of the diggers scraping chunks of street up from between the trees. Not to mention, a giant new shopping center is going up across the intersection. It's hot in the classrooms, but you have to leave the windows closed because of the noise. Eventually it will be nice area to work. Eventually.
The upside is that I've got a whole herd of new coworkers. Lots of Americans, lots of young people. That helps a bit, since Laura and Amanda have now both moved back to the U.S. for good.
Work is busy but exciting. After eight months I'm starting to come up with my own little tricks for getting people to understand grammar points. I've already had a few of my regular classes reach the end, take their final exams, and leave me. Usually that comes with a mixture of relief and sadness... you look back on their progress and think, "yeah, we did it!" but then you think, "well, I sure hope the next class is a good group."
Even more exciting, though, is the prospect of my upcoming vacation - my first time back in the States since August last year! I can't wait to see friends and family. So if you're reading this, be around the Sullivan/STL area over Labor Day weekend! That will be your best shot at seeing me! Countdown to takeoff: 30 days.
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