Saturday, February 12, 2011

My Center :)

The center that I work at is the Grafenwoehr Child Development Center. Me and one of my roommates both work there together. We have to walk about five-ten minutes to get there which is super nice. We get an hour break everyday at twelve and it's nice to be able to live so close so that we can walk home and have some time to just relax.
Every morning before going to our actual rooms we go to take the Kindergarteners to school which is about a five minute walk away. Usually I'm in Room 4 which is the preschoolers. I love them so much. The lead teachers in the room are German which is cool. Out main lead has been working there for about five years. Another one of our teachers is pregnant too, which is exciting. There are so many teachers pregnant there. I can think of at least three right off the top of my head.
There are only five classrooms in our whole center. An infant/pre-toddler room, an hourly infant/pre-toddler/toddler room, a toddler room, a preschool room, and a preschool/Kindergarten (Strong Beginnings) room. We have a break room too but it's super tiny and every time we go to the bathroom we have to get the key from the front desk.
During the day when I get back from taking the Kindergatrners to school we have circle time and then do centers. Centers are basically where the kids can pick a section around the room that they can go to. They have "science," dress up, library, etc. After that sometimes we go outside. Then there is lunch and nap time. After nap time there is a span of time where I don't really know what we do. Snack is at three then they can either pick centers gain or we go outside and my day is done by five :) I'll have to try and take pictures of my center later when I remember.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Pictures from our trips so far

Nuremberg

The Glockenspiel in Munich

View from the top of St. Peter's tower

Our whole Grafenwoehr group

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

I never thought I would look forward to 40 degree weather...

We were able to go to Munich last weekend. It was an awesome trip. The sun was out and the weather was nice. I almost wanted to take off my jacket! It was perfect for our trip. We started out having to take about a 30-45 min walk to the train station which wasn't my favorite part but we were all able to talk and what not. We got to the train station and got our tickets where the lady got mad at me for taking too long. For the train ride we had to take a train up to Nuremberg to transfer to one that went back down to Munich which was weird. The train ride was fun. One of them was a two layer bus and we got to sit on the top. This dude on the train kept asking us if we wanted to buy any food or whatever and was like dancing and stuff. It was kinda weird and funny at the same time. When we got to Munich we first went to our hostel to check in and drop our things off. Then we took a rail down to the main part that was pretty close to the train station. First stop was a church building close to the main center. Then we walked to the Glockenspiel which is in the main plaza part. It was sooooo pretty. I love that building. After that we stopped at St. Peter's church. We were able to go inside and also paid like 1.50 euro to go up to the top of the tower that over looks the city. It was gorgeous! Another stop we made was the beer garden, which was fun. Then some of us split up and I was able to get my first doner kebob and also some gelato. I got some souvenirs too. Then we went to the Hofbrauhaus which is this huge super famous beer hall. That was fun and loud and hot. There are so many people drinking way too much in there. haha! The next day we all went to the Dachau concentration camp. We only got like half an hour there because we had to be back to Grafenwoehr to catch a train back to our side of the base. It was cool to see it though, and depressing. Hopefully this weekend we will be able to take a day trip to Amberg which is pretty close to where we are and we can just have an easy day.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Hello

Well I'm finally better. It's super nice. I think I am finally starting to get used to the cold too which is amazing! It feel so much better not to be shivering the hole time. At work I've mostly been working with the preschoolers and I love them so much! They are adorable. There is this one little girl there, where whenever she gets all dressed up in her snowsuit to go outside, I swear she looks like a little bunny. It's so cute! While I was in the infant room the other day too it was really cute. They have these plastic foods there where the kids can make believe and stuff and there are some in the infant room I guess that they can chew on or whatever. But I was feeding this one baby when all of a sudden I hear, "Friends don't hit friends with celery!" It was super funny :D
I haven't had too much alcohol while I've been here. The first I had was this wine called Franken or something. And the beer we've have is usually Heifenweisen.
Tomorrow we start our adventure to Munich. We have to go to Vilseck, which is on the other side of the Grafenwoehr base. We are spending the night at the girl's house over there and then getting up early to hop on a train heading towards Munich :) Our hostel and everything is all set up already so we should be good to go. I'm super excited. I'll be coming back with tons of pictures and hopefully some souveniers too. I'll have to try and post some picture here on my blog too when I have some time. That's all for now! I'll have lots to report soon :)