Next week marks the two-month anniversary of my move to Chemnitz, Germany. It's hard to believe I've already been here for two of my 10 months. Just yesterday, I officially got my Aufenthaltstitel, or residence permit. After two months of filling out endless paperwork, navigating the Chemnitz Foreigners Office's strange opening hours, I finally have my card saying that I live here and I am permitted to stay until the end of June. If there's one thing I learned about Germany that I didn't quite know before, is that it is full of bureaucracy! You can't get anything done without filling out lots of forms (on paper, of course). But alas, now I am officially a part of the Chemnitz community.
My weeks in Chemnitz consist of working as an English Language Teaching Assistant at the Oberschule am Flughafen. An Oberschule has grades five to 10, but I work only with grades six to 10. Two hours a week, I work at the elementary school that is across the street. When I first began my work at the Oberschule, I was truly surprised by how much of a challenge it was for me. I was under the impression that German schools wouldn't be that different from American schools, but I was wrong!
