Monday, Sept. 28---First Day of School for NMU Students

Dana and Nicole have had trouble getting started here, through no fault of their own. First we didn't know until Thursday of the week before that school didn't start here last Monday. Monday through Wednesday were orientation days; their first day would be Thursday. That teacher, however, had oral surgery and couldn't teach. They didn't know that until they went to class. This morning, they got up early expecting a class at 8 a.m. with Professor (Rainer) Lenz. The schedule we'd all been given was wrong; class didn't start until 9:45.

I had lunch with Rainer today and we talked about some issues. Wolfgang's family may Brandi-sit this weekend if Henrich and Ulla won't do it. Rainer was going to but his mother is hospitalized again after hip replacement surgery. Thomas finally got the printer going from my computer; we went through 2 or 3 drivers. I don't have my syllabi printed off for tomorrow but can do that in the morning. Stefanie, my work student, created a letter which Henrich edited a bit tonight, to one of our relatives near Flensburg. I'll mail it tomorrow. We haven't been able to reach any of the relatives by phone.

My bank system is also messed up. Two separate times, supposedly, the bank has mailed PIN numbers here for my ATM card, and they haven't gotten here though the card did. I stopped on the way to school at a Sparkasse, and that person took my card since two PIN sets have been "lost", so we're starting over. Hopefully by the time I leave, I'll have an account with money in it and can access that rather than paying a high service fee to get money from my Michigan debit card. After that whole deal, which will take at least another week, I worked via e-mail with Deb back at my own bank in Marquette. She e-mailed me a form to have money wired here.

This is the kind of thing that is so wearing. It's wearing when these issues come up for us when we're in the US. It's even more wearing here. Nicole, for example, banks at Wells Fargo. She's been told by our int'l department that she wouldn't have an account here, wouldn't need to wire money, or some such. Meanwhile, one of the benefits of this site is that they help us set up bank accounts. That way, we can wire money once (my fee is $55 regardless of amount wired, while getting 300 euros would cost $32), and be done with it and not have to pay exchange fees. However, Wells Fargo now won't let her wire money because she's not physicall there in the US. For Pete's sakes, this is insane.

There's one young man from Italy whose German is about at my level, and he's signed up to take an economics course taught in German. The people here told me, when I asked about this because there's some kind of thing about European transfer credits involved, that he should go talk to them. On the other hand, they feel it's his choice and that's that, though being able to take a final (many courses just have finals, which are sometimes oral, at or after the end of the semester) and pass it given the language limitation is almost impossible. The attitude is just different----really sink or swim.

Tomorrow I finally get to teach. We have no idea how many students will take the course; they don't have to sign up and the flip side is that they can sign up, never show up, and take the final. The HR prof here, and Rainer, have decided that I can teach the way I normally do because it will be a good experience for the students to have a course or two taught in "the American style". I'm not sure I'm an example of "THE" American style, but the format of my course is very different than the European format. So, tomorrow is 3 hours of HR with a 2 hour break in the middle, and Wednesday is OB with a similar schedule. I know what I plan to do, but I'd bet heavily that something won't work, will have to be changed, whatever. This is another one of those deals where you can't quantify what a person learns by what they do on a sabbatical! I've always said you can't explain what doing a dissertation is like to someone who has never done one. This is probably very much the same way.