For the past two months, I've been teaching English twice a week to two friends from Georgia (the country). Although they can already speak English well, they wanted to improve their fluency, particularly in business English.
It's been a fun challenge in figuring out how to teach the material from the English for German learners book we use, and I have had to figure out how to make homework assignments and write up quizzes. It's also a bit time-consuming, but it's nice to know they feel like they've improved since we started lessons. I certainly can tell that their English has improved.
Tonight, we planned a dinner after English lessons so they could cook up some delicious Georgian food for me. We'd been talking about it for several weeks, so I was super pumped. Tamar and Nino both made some awesome stuff, and I took plenty of pictures. Here's the beer I brought...really strong stuff.
Nino made a potato salad with other goodies mixed in.
'Twas so good!
I don't remember the name anymore, but Tamar made these dumpling-type things that were stuffed with spiced meats. Really good stuff! I took pictures of nearly all the steps. First, some flour.
Then the dough.
After that, roll out the dough and cut out little circles.
Then roll out the little circles into thin round pieces.
Then add the spiced meat...
...and wrap it up.
There are two ways to eat them, apparently: one, you can eat them straight after you boil them. Two, you can boil them, let them cool, and then pan-fry them in some butter (like gyoza).
We had both, and they were delicious! Here are the boiled ones.
Tamar also made a spanakopita-type dish with cheese. I love cheese, so I loved it. It was so fresh out of the oven. Yum.
Tamar and Nino also invited their Italian friend, Sergio, to come over, and he brought his roommate along as well. We had some fun taking pictures in the kitchen.
With the table all set up, we ate like kings. We were all so hungry and then after all that food, we were stuffed!
This is just one of the many plates of food I ate.
We had some of the gyoza-like dumpling things later too. They were also really good!
All in all, we had a great night of excellent food (thanks, Tamar and Nino!) and a fun time of chatting with friends.
This afternoon, I also went to the bank to close my German bank account. I had heard from others that you have to give up your EC Karte when you close your account, so I briefly contemplated telling them I had lost it. But then I worried they'd make me pay for a replacement card, so I just thought I'd ask them straight up if I could keep the card as a souvenir.
Apparently not.
There's a long bureaucratic process for deregistering the card and allowing one to keep it after closing the account. Typical German. Haha. So anticipating this, I took pictures of said card earlier this morning. :)
I will miss it. I'll think about writing about this another time, but the German banking system is actually extremely good. I like it much more than the U.S. banking system. Checks do not exist in Germany, and you can pay for things via automatic bank transfers. It's completely safe to give out your bank account number, since you have to have fifty-bajillion pieces of security information in order to even make it work (it's actually not hard if you own it all).
Anyway, step two of my bureaucratic responsibilities is now checked off my list. Step one was deregistering from the Berlin citizen's office (Bürgeramt?). I thought that was going to be a hassle, but I found out you can do it by mail, so I sent in all my info, and hopefully there will be no problems with it. If there are, I will be long gone and back home in Seattle already anyhow.
Tomorrow, the goodbyes continue as I have lunch with my other Fulbright professor and then will stop by the Fulbright Commission to say goodbye to our wonderful German-American Fulbright Commission team. Then I need to start packing in the afternoon. My attempt at packing today was pathetic, and I failed miserably. I will have tomorrow afternoon mainly because I have dinner with my friend, Henry, in the evening, and almost of all of Saturday will be busy with my farewell grill party in Mauerpark followed by dinner with some good friends and then drinks in the evening. Undoubtedly, I'm going out with a bang. :)
More as the adventures continue,
Sam
It's been a fun challenge in figuring out how to teach the material from the English for German learners book we use, and I have had to figure out how to make homework assignments and write up quizzes. It's also a bit time-consuming, but it's nice to know they feel like they've improved since we started lessons. I certainly can tell that their English has improved.
Tonight, we planned a dinner after English lessons so they could cook up some delicious Georgian food for me. We'd been talking about it for several weeks, so I was super pumped. Tamar and Nino both made some awesome stuff, and I took plenty of pictures. Here's the beer I brought...really strong stuff.
Nino made a potato salad with other goodies mixed in.
'Twas so good!
I don't remember the name anymore, but Tamar made these dumpling-type things that were stuffed with spiced meats. Really good stuff! I took pictures of nearly all the steps. First, some flour.
Then the dough.
After that, roll out the dough and cut out little circles.
Then roll out the little circles into thin round pieces.
Then add the spiced meat...
...and wrap it up.
There are two ways to eat them, apparently: one, you can eat them straight after you boil them. Two, you can boil them, let them cool, and then pan-fry them in some butter (like gyoza).
We had both, and they were delicious! Here are the boiled ones.
Tamar also made a spanakopita-type dish with cheese. I love cheese, so I loved it. It was so fresh out of the oven. Yum.
Tamar and Nino also invited their Italian friend, Sergio, to come over, and he brought his roommate along as well. We had some fun taking pictures in the kitchen.
With the table all set up, we ate like kings. We were all so hungry and then after all that food, we were stuffed!
This is just one of the many plates of food I ate.
We had some of the gyoza-like dumpling things later too. They were also really good!
All in all, we had a great night of excellent food (thanks, Tamar and Nino!) and a fun time of chatting with friends.
This afternoon, I also went to the bank to close my German bank account. I had heard from others that you have to give up your EC Karte when you close your account, so I briefly contemplated telling them I had lost it. But then I worried they'd make me pay for a replacement card, so I just thought I'd ask them straight up if I could keep the card as a souvenir.
Apparently not.
There's a long bureaucratic process for deregistering the card and allowing one to keep it after closing the account. Typical German. Haha. So anticipating this, I took pictures of said card earlier this morning. :)
I will miss it. I'll think about writing about this another time, but the German banking system is actually extremely good. I like it much more than the U.S. banking system. Checks do not exist in Germany, and you can pay for things via automatic bank transfers. It's completely safe to give out your bank account number, since you have to have fifty-bajillion pieces of security information in order to even make it work (it's actually not hard if you own it all).
Anyway, step two of my bureaucratic responsibilities is now checked off my list. Step one was deregistering from the Berlin citizen's office (Bürgeramt?). I thought that was going to be a hassle, but I found out you can do it by mail, so I sent in all my info, and hopefully there will be no problems with it. If there are, I will be long gone and back home in Seattle already anyhow.
Tomorrow, the goodbyes continue as I have lunch with my other Fulbright professor and then will stop by the Fulbright Commission to say goodbye to our wonderful German-American Fulbright Commission team. Then I need to start packing in the afternoon. My attempt at packing today was pathetic, and I failed miserably. I will have tomorrow afternoon mainly because I have dinner with my friend, Henry, in the evening, and almost of all of Saturday will be busy with my farewell grill party in Mauerpark followed by dinner with some good friends and then drinks in the evening. Undoubtedly, I'm going out with a bang. :)
More as the adventures continue,
Sam
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