My Sugarlumps and Life in Poverty

So if you have any good taste at all in this world, and judging by how many people still watch 'American Idol', many of you don't, then I'm sure by now you've joined the cult following that has surrounded the HBO series "Flight of the Conchords". I first watched this guys when I was a senior in college when a friend of mine showed me some Youtube clips of them from a stand-up show they had done a few years prior. Absolutely hilarious bunch. Their humor doesn't always reach everyone. Their show's success is based dry, very ironic sense of humor. One of those quirky, awkward kind of shows which is guaranteed to make some laugh their asses off and others turn away to find solace in token sitcoms like "Will and Grace". If you've never watched, the show is about two New Zealanders named Bret and Jemaine as they try to make it big in the music industry in New York City, along with their manager Murray who works for the New Zealand consulate, which in the show is a one-floor office in a small, cramped building.

The latest episode deals with the band being dirt poor. They have no money, and are late on paying their bills, so they turn to prostitution to try and make a buck. Jemaine explains to Bret that women dig him because of his 'Sugarlumps' and what follows is a fucking funny song that is classic FOTC.



Watching that episode made me think about my post-college life in (relative) poverty. No, I haven't turned to prostitution just yet I do already have a gigolo name lined up: "Tommy Magnum". So if a guy in Berlin named Tommy asks you if you like what you see, just know that I expended all of my options before that moment and that I more than likely will give you some sort of discounted rate.

No, my life, while it has been an amazing experience this past year or two, has albeit been one in which I have lived with little or no money at all. Now, there's nothing to say that being poor will not allow you to have fun, because as I stand here today 3,500 miles from where I previously lived, I am a bit of a contradiction to that notion. But suffice to say, having money definitely makes living a helluva lot easier.

Now, from a 24 year old's perspective, let's clear up what exactly it means to be poor. Obviously my level or poorness cannot even begin to match what many Americans face or what many people around the world face on an everyday basis. I am fortunate enough to have a roof over my head and for the most part, eat. The type of poor we'll talk about is how young people view poverty. Now, when you grow up, and this is especially in the case in high school, other kids would look at 'wealthy' kids and often say "oh, that kid is rich" or "that kid has a lot of money" Bullshit. They aren't rich. Their parents are rich. They are simply living off their parents wealth, or as I like to say "sucking on the golden teet". Those were the kids who, with a few notable exceptions, were born with silver spoons in their mouths and never worked a day in their lives. Never was this more true than when I attended high school in Boca Raton, FL, where kids drove to school in BMWs and Lexus IS 300s. (I would have taken my 1996 Jeep Cherokee over any of those cars anyday) When you get to college, this perception of wealth starts to change a little bit.

College begins, and you immediately realize that to an extent, you aren't living with your parents anymore and you're somewhat on your own. When I was in college, obviously, I didn't have a lot of money, but technically, I wasn't exactly "poor". I won the a scholarship from the state of Florida which paid 75% of my college tuition, so that was never a huge problem. My parents were kind enough to pay for my rent, food, and books while I was there, so those were never worries as well. I was what you called "College Poor". Not exactly worrying about eating, but not exactly "making it rain" as the kids call it nowadays. You had money for the bare essentials, which in no particular order, were as follows:

a) beer

b) beer

c) beer

d) beer

e) beer

Now occasionally, you have to throw in a road trip or two into those experiences, such as my two trips to Panama City for Spring Break or my memorable trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 07'., but even in those cases, my limited funds were going towards beer purchases. What other money I had went to paying all the f'ing towing tickets I accumulated over my 4 years in Tally. (5 in all, burn in hell tow-truck services!) How my car and liver survived Florida State is to this day, a mystery.

No, my first experience with life on my own and what it meant to have little money at all came right after I graduated from college. At the time, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I mean, I did..to an extent. I knew I wanted to work for the U.S. State Department at some point. I knew I wanted to attend graduate school at some point. But those were things that weren't going to happen immediately. No one just waltzes into a govt. job right out of college. So, looking over my options, I chose a job as a Career Adviser with the University of Michigan.

The job was a one year gig, so it was great in that it gave me enough time to figure out what I wanted to do in the next couple of years and how I wanted to get there (i.e. come to Europe) But the job was also one of the most low-paying jobs I probably could have taken. Every two weeks, I pulled in 820 dollars a paycheck. Not incredibly bad, yes. $1620 a month. But if Ann Arbor is anything, cheap it isn't. Subtract from that $850 in rent, a cell phone bill, a utilities bill, TV bill, car insurance, and other things and that money disappears pretty quickly. So for most of my year with U-M, I probably didn't have any more than $400 in the bank account to last through the month. This meant that I was covering my bare essentials, but was doing very little else besides staying home or finding free activities on U-M campus.

It sucked. A great deal. But it wasn't completely bad. I learned a thing or two about budgeting, and more importantly, that if I didn't need something, I really didn't need to buy it (something a lot of people seem to have trouble with).

Over the following summer, I was able to recoup my money a bit, working two jobs over the summer and pulling in over $6000 to bring to Europe.

That money has lasted me a good 4 1/2 months now, and through food, travelling, and other expenses, it is finally starting to dry up. As of this moment, I currently have about 300 Euro in the bank left. So after enjoying the freedom of travelling with relative ease, I am back to being frugal and back to budgeting. Right now, I'm working a teaching job that pays me 980 Euro a month, and chances are, I will end up taking a second job at some point to make some more money. It seems kind of ironic that I have repeatedly worked two jobs at a time since college, and probably will so again. But now, I understand that sometimes, for some people, you have to work twice as hard just to get by. You also have to work twice as hard to get what you want out of life.

I, like many people our age, was sometimes guilty of looking at people with little to no money through a jaded lens. Obviously, they didn't work hard enough or fucked up their lives somehow, many of us thought.. But now I realize that so many of these people do in fact work harder than most. Many are working 70 hours a week, or two jobs, or sometimes even 3 jobs just to earn a living, provide for their family, or work their way to their dream jobs. It makes you appreciate the sort of self-sacrifice and determination many have, even if deep down, you know some of them might never get out of that position again.

I didn't necessarily have to be in the position I'm in. I could have taken safe jobs right out of college, and I could have easily worked in positions that would have put me in a stable financial situation. But coming to Europe and teaching was my choice, and one I knew I made with the understanding that the next couple of years weren't going to be incredibly fulfilling financially. To get to where you want in life, you need to be willing to go through an incredible amount of shit to get to it. That time for me is now, and, considering the experiences I have had so far, I wouldn't have it any other way.

My First Official Cap

Since I arrived in Berlin in November, I have been fortunate enough to have started training with my friend Travis' Football team, British Lions FC. The team is a collection of Germans, Brits, Americans, and Canadians playing in a low-tier German league (I wouldn't call it a rec league, but I wouldn't call it a beer league either) here in Berlin. I had been anxious to get involved in something when I got into Berlin, both as a chance to exercise and as a chance to meet some people.

Growing up, I was never much of a Football player. I played a few seasons of indoor football in the winter, mostly as something to do while I wasn't playing Baseball, and mostly because my family couldn't afford to let me play Hockey. When I got to Florida State, however, I started to get back into the game. I was never very good at shooting, or dribbling, or running for that matter. But some friends I had needed a goalkeeper for their intramural squad. So I figured, why the hell not?

Turns out, I had was a half-decent goalkeeper. The position seemed simple enough for me. All I have to do is throw myself in front of the ball. I did the same playing Catcher in baseball all those years. Besides, most people usually don't want to play keeper, so it was the best way for me, as a shitty football player, to get some playing time. Maybe that's why I was halfway decent at it. I started to get more and more interested in playing, and as a result, began to have a bigger appreciation of the sport as a whole.

Which leads us back to now. Travis' told me that his team was in need for a goalie, so it seemed like the perfect chance to play and enjoy myself. I've been training since the end of November/early December with the guys. A good bunch of guys they all are, and some good players too.

Now the funniest part about trying to play in a German rec league is that as an American, you actually have to apply for a player pass (or transfer) from the U.S. Soccer Federation to play. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, especially for someone who never even sniffed an organized league. But in a way, it for some reason also feels pretty badass when your transfer comes through, because you almost feel like some sort of important player that the U.S. Soccer Fed has to push through (Not that they would throw me on the MNT anyway). It took all the way up to last week for me to get my player pass in and approved. So after practicing for that amount of time and not being able to play in actual games, I finally had a chance to play in an official game with the team.

That first game was last Saturday, and I'm happy to say that in my first official cap with the team, we emerged victorious 3-2. A crazy game at that, albeit a very sloppy one. I did alright in my first game. Made a few mistakes, including one which ended up becoming a goal for the other team, but as they say, you live and you learn, and in the end all that mattered was that we won. The pitch was slippery and wet as hell, so it wreaked havoc trying to field the ball, but for the most part, I was able to get some control of the ball. I also managed to get shoulder checked by a 250lb. guy on the other team while going for a ball, so my shoulder was killing me for a while.

All in all, It was fun getting out there and playing with the guys, and luckily, it will be something I get to look forward to now for the rest of the year.

If They're Not Throwing Shoes at You, You're Not Trying Hard Enough...

Let me start off this epic blog entry (and recap my day today) by playing a scene for you, courtesy of our friends at Youtube and some bored 39-year old male sitting at home who took the time to load it online (Go you!)

In this scene, I (Played handsomely by Arnold Schwarzenegger)am driven to near insanity by a legion of 4 year old kids and finally let loose on all of them.

(The quality of the video is crap, but it's the only video I could find of the scene)




Kintergarden is like the ocean. Really?


Funny eh? Get a good laugh because that is almost exactly what happened to me today while teaching my Wednesday classes.

Now I have the vast majority of my classes on Monday and Tuesday, and about 95% of those kids in the classes are great, well-behaved kids. Wednesday, is a completely different story. On Wednesdays, I have 4 classes running from 11:45 to about 4:30. 3 of them are classes consisting of 4-year olds while the other class is a group of 8-year olds.

With the exception of one class, these kids are easily the most misbehaving, possibly psychotic bunch I've seen yet. I don't know if they all collectively were just having a shitty day or perhaps there is some sort of "Hate on a Ginger" Day in Germany that I am unaware of. But for the good chunk of the day, these kids did everything from scream at the top of their lungs to fighting each other to throwing chairs (not the plastic ones, I'm talking the large wooden variety) and altogether just refusing to do what I ask of them.

Now granted, two things have generally kept me from unleashing hell on them. First and foremost, these kids are, as I said before, 4 and 8 years old. At that age, they've got enough energy to power half the continental U.S. and all they want to do is play, eat, and crap their pants. I wouldn't for a second pretend that when I was at that age, I was some sort of saint, because I wasn't. I was usually hyped up on so much sugar that my teacher's probably thought I had ADHD. Secondly, and the thing that I have had the most trouble with since I've started is, I am typically a very laid-back person. It's not easy for me to go off on someone (unless they deserve it), but it's even harder for me to go off on someone when as little as 3 years ago were still getting breast-fed. It would take a lot for me to yell at a little kid, but after suffering through 3 classes of insanity, I was ready to snap. Naturally, it was a girl in my 4th and final class who made it happen.

My last class of the day is a group of 12 4-year olds. They, generally, have been pretty good. A few bad eggs here and there but nothing too bad. I have them all sitting down on the floor and we're going over English flashcards. As I'm talking, a boy takes his shoe off and starts banging it on the cards. The kids start laughing and I go along with it "Ha ha that's good" I say to myself. Just then, I get a glance in my periph to see a girl standing up and unwinding her shoe at me with full force. It was a full on, Nolan Ryan-esque delivery, folks. The shoe ends up hitting me in the shoulder.

As the kids all erupted in laughter, I finally had it. I felt the rage building up inside of me as I stood up and screamed out "You made me angry! You won't like it when I'm angry" Just then, I clothes began to tear apart as I transformed into a gigantic Green Monster. The children screamed and ran and I roared out "HULK SMASH!!" and proceeded to punch holes through the walls and destroy cars in the parking lot.....

......okay, so it didn't happen quite like that. But I did yell at her for throwing the shoe. The kids quickly realized I didn't find it funny and got quiet. Very...quiet. The girl asked for her shoe back. I refused and instead put it on the highest point of the room I could find and told her she would get it back when the class was over with. At that, she remained silent for the rest of the class until she apologized to me as class gave out, and I promptly gave the shoe back.

This had been one of the things I had been worried about when I took this job in December. How much of this is going to be actual teaching and not simply babysitting for 45 minutes? It will be interesting to see how the next 5 months go. I guess the beauty of it is that luckily I have only signed a 6 month contract. So if this continues, by July, I can find another position teaching somewhere else. If I had signed a 1-year contract, I might as well had been signing my last will and testament.

It's amazing what one will do to earn a living. Here I am, 24 years old with a double major in Communications and International Affairs, who just finished training to teach English to adults, but now finds himself teaching Musical Chairs to 4 year olds.

Boo.....ya.

Holy crap that took a while. Whew!

So after a few hours of painstakingly of surfing the net and sort of teaching myself how to do HTML code, I managed to throw together a new template and some extra things onto my blog. Definitely an upgrade I would say over the last one. Blogger doesn't exactly give out the most creative designs for its bloggers. But this one will do just nicely. Thanks to Scott Tsuchiyama for creating a header (which I still need to figure out how to incorporate into this damn thing) In honor of him, I present to you "Africa" by Toto

Sie hat ein poopy!

So this week concluded my first official week working as a English Teacher for the Lichtenberger Sprachinstitut. Over the course of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I taught 16 classes of kids ranging from age 4 with two classes of kids who are 8 years old..or "acht jahre alt" as I would say with my budding German skills. It would probably the most of up and down first week of any kind of job I've ever had. I've had jobs where the first week has been absolute hell (Working at 56 Union in Nantucket) and jobs were I had a good run of things after week one(UofM). But never have I had a job where I was both cursing it and praising it almost every other hour like this one.

If there is one thing that I absolutely hate in this world it is starting a new job. It sucks. It doesn't matter what job I do, I always get that nerve-racking feeling that comes with starting something that you almost have no idea how to do. In this case, I have never taught children. My only experience with kids lately has been my 4 year old Niece, and that's easy. I just play with her and spoil the crap out of her. With these kids, you've got to teach them AND babysit them. Not a good combination for anyone.

The night before I was to work, I was a wreck. My heart was in my throat, and I couldn't fall asleep. I might have managed to fall in that in between period where you know you're supposed to be asleep am somehow still aware of everything. Before I know it, it is 5:30 am and I have to get up to get ready for my first class at 8am. Normally, I would have no business getting up that f'ing early, only my school was nice enough to make my first class AN HOUR AND A HALF AWAY in the small town of Milow.

So already grumpy and hungry from having to rush out on time, I managed to get into my car and get the GPS going. This is the first time I've driven in Germany, so I have no idea what to expect. I think to myself, "Can't be much different than the States". Finally leave Schoenhauser Allee at 6:00am. A good two hours until my first class. Plenty of time to get there, right?

Now, I have to stop this epic story for just a minute. I have been in Europe for close to 3 1/2 months now, two of which have been spent in Germany, and I think I'll take the time to go on my first tirade on the German people. I have found the Germans for the most part, especially Berliners, to be very nice, very gracious people. I have yet to have anyone give me trouble, and it seems like this is one of the few major cities where people don't really have that big city mentality of "if you died tomorrow I wouldn't notice or care". The Germans for sure have their quirks, and over time you do notice them. They are obsessed with punctuality. The trains must always leave precisely when they mean to (Mussolini would have been impressed), and if you ever tell someone you're going to meet them at 4pm, you better damn well be there at 4pm. But ouf course that is not a bad trait to have actually, and from growing up with a dad who stressed professionalism and hard work in whatever you did, I definitely appreciate it. But the thing I have noticed in the last week, and grown increasingly frustrated over, is something that is no different than any other place in the United States:

They are shitty drivers.

I don't know if it's just driving in a big city or just a general lack of that"let's get a move on" mentality that most Americans tend to have, but I found myself screaming inside my car at other drivers for pretty much most of my first week. Taking turns at 2 kpm. Waiting 8 seconds to go through the green light that lasts only 10. (Seriously? 10 second green lights?) For the most part, most drivers I've encountered seemed to have little idea how to drive in snow. But then again, I'm from Michigan, and of the opinion that most people not living in a northern state don't know how to drive anyway. When it's your first week, and your trying to get to schools on time or feel the wrath of your abuse of the punctuality philosophy, it gets to you quick.

So back to the story, I head out for my first class, and of course, I am fortunate enough to be driving there in the middle of a snowstorm that has been going on the better part of two hours. Needless to say, the roads and visibility were a nightmare. I made it to my first class at 8:20, a full two hours and 20 minutes after I had left. It looked light this was going to be a mistake from the get-go.

As I progressed through most of my classes, I found that it wasn't all that bad. The kids, for the most part, are just happy to be there, and give you little to no trouble, as long as long as you are keeping them entertained, which is pretty easy to do. Discipline wise, I never really had too many issues. The 4 year olds for the most part look at you at an authority figure, so they'd often think twice about doing something again once I had asked them to stop it. The 8 year olds, on the other hand, liked to test me. And once they realized how little German I spoke, I think they tried to take advantage of the situation to an extent. But being with someone and showing them you are not happy crosses over into many languages, so for the most part, these kids got the idea and played nice.

The funniest part of the week came on Tuesday, when I was teaching my last class of the day to 12 4-year olds just outside of Berlin. I have them in a circle and going over flashcards when all of a sudden, this girl to the left to me let's out a fart that in terms of loudness probably could only be beaten by a flautulent cow. I could have heard this thing from Denmark. As the class starts cracking up (as children appreciate fart jokes probably more than anyone), the girl next to her turns to the class and screams out "Sie hat ein poopy!" (She has a poopy!) At this point, I f'ing lose it, and for a good 3 minutes, the rest of the class and I are just laughing our asses off.

So much for maintaining that professionalism, but then again, I get paid to sing the Hokey Pokey.

My last class finished on Wednesday, and I felt pretty relieved by it. It didn't go as bad as I thought it would, and it seems like a job that I might actually do well at. I honestly had my doubts as to whether this was the right job for me, or whether I had made the right decision taking it. But I think I have. I don't really have the luxury of being able to pick and choose my jobs anyway. It's pretty simple. Job = Visa. So I'm just grateful to be working after 2 months of being a lazy asshole.

So I get to relax for the weekend. Noel left for the States' today for a week which sucks, but on the flip side, I have friends from Prague coming into town tonight as well as a going away party to attend for a friend who's leaving Berlin for the lovely city of Vancouver.

Great White north, eh?

"It could either be fireworks or artillery rounds..."

I've often wondered what it would have been like to have been in a major city during a bombing raid in World War II. London during the Battle of Britain or when the Allies completely laid waste to Dresden towards the end of the war. This year is my first year in Berlin and my first New Year's in the city, and from the celebrations going on in the city, you could have swore there was some kind of battle raging throughout the city and nobody had bothered to tell me.

Berliners don't believe in any sort of normal American New Year's celebration. No "let's sit our ass on the couch and watch Dick Clark and 1 million more people have more fun than us". No, Germans buy tons of fireworks and proceed to shoot them off anywhere and everywhere. Streets. Sidewalks. Subway cars. On top of Subway cars. I could barely walk a block without some firecrackers whizzing past my head or people launching M-80s into empty streets. Watching all of this made me laugh thinking that as a Michigan resident, I have to drive all the way to Ohio just to buy damn fireworks. I should have just came to Berlin.

Anyways, Myself and Noel got to spend the New Year's together, and luckily we had some of her friends from her program coming into town for the festivities. We decided to meet up at the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) festivities going on downtown. The Brandenburg Gate New Year's is pretty much the equivalent to Time's Square. They had a concert stage set up behind the gate, and on either side of the road that leads out from it were nothing but small tents selling gluhwein, brotwurst, and other things. We met up with the freinds and had a good time there for a bit. We didn't plan on staying there until 12 because we didn't feel like fighting our way through 1.2 million people, and we also had a party we were invited to. On top of all this, there was a awful cover band playing on stage playing some aborted version of Queen's "We Will Rock You" and other shitty 90s American music. They were all dressed up in red leather..and to be quite honest from my viewpoint the lead singer looked like a female..until he started singing and I realized the singer made RuPaul look like Sylvester Stallone.

This night wasn't without its ups and downs of course. While at the Gate, I managed to break Noel's camera. The camera she had for only 4 months. And this was after we had been at the Gate for barely an hour. Needless to say, she wasn't thrilled with me. And I don't blame her. I politely explained that the camera, under a bout of depression, wrote a suicide note and jumped from my hand periously into the ground, but for whatever reason she didn't buy it. I don't know why...solid reason if you ask me.


Around 11:00 and 7 camera breaking apologies later, we made our way to a party that we had been invited to by some friends. Awesome place. Penthouse apartment overlooking much of the city. Great view of the fireworks and festivities. Most of the people were all expats and members of the Toytown germany website (A website for english speakers in Germany) Had a great time and met some really cool people.

Now, coming back to the whole Germans-fireworks thing. So 12 came around and everyone in the apt celebrated. The view outside was absolute insanity. You could hear fireworks going off every couple second for about an 1/2 hour to an hour. Looking out at the buildings and the landscape, you could see nothing but fireworks and clouds of smoke rising from the streets. I thought maybe the Russians had thought "eh...better late than never" and just drove their tanks through to West Berlin and started shooting.

This New Year's was a first for a lot of things...not the least of which was trying to stop a guy from committing suicide. Definitely a first for me. Not that I see a lot of attempted suicides. I've never seen one. Never knew anyone that committed suicide (at least personally) So when I saw a guy climbing the balcony at about 2:30..my first instinct was to just run to the balcony and grab the guy. Myself and a few others managed to grab the guy and yank him back, who was about halfway up the railing when we got him. From what I had heard, at least hearsay, was that the guy's girlfriend had broken up with him that night. Talk about the absolute worst fucking timing in the world to break up with someone. The guy was shitfaced and apparently decided to call it a night by leaping off the ledge. Haven't heard what happened to him after this, but hopefully he's got his head in the right spot now.

So all in all a good time...friends, booze, fireworks..and luckily no foreign invasions..

cheers.