And then the first work week ends...

Wow. I'm fried. Overwhelmed. Stressed. Worried. It's been quite a week. With Saturday morning now here, I have officially survived my first week of work at Munich International. And what a week it was. Mostly filled with meetings and loads of information, by the time Friday hit I was completely spent.

The exhaustion and stress began to start sinking in on Thursday, I think. The first few days of the week were different - new, fun, exciting - but by the time Thursday rolled around, I began feeling overloaded and began to think more about life at school after the kids arrive. It's one thing to sit through a bunch of meetings, it's another thing altogether to begin teaching, to begin having to be that guy in the room who knows what he's doing and who's leading a bunch of students through lessons and units. I won't sugarcoat it. I'm pretty freakin' scared about what's going to happen when those kids first walk through my classroom door.

Thursday also included an evening gathering at the Munich Yacht Club on Starnberg Lake. Along with the exhaustion that comes from constant meetings and new learning, a certain amount of overload has hit me in terms of socializing and meeting new people.

Don't get me wrong. I've been loving getting to know the other new teachers who have come to MIS with me, it's just that I have this tendency to love socializing - to a degree - than love retreating and being by myself. I have a limited capacity for all those things that involve my extroverted side, then I crave and can't wait for a little time either alone or with people very close to me with whom I can totally be myself. And that concept poses a bit of a challenge during an experience like this. When I get overloaded with talking and hanging out with people, I can't go home and just watch TV or go on a walk with Tricia or the kids. My retreat time, at the moment, is solitary. I have been getting to know some of my fellow teachers quite well, but I look forward to getting to the point where I can feel totally natural and comfortable around them. It feels a little like college. We're sizing each other up. We're seeing who we click with the most. It's quite a thing.

At work yesterday I really hit my wall. New information was just not getting in. All I could think about were all the things I don't know and all the reasons why I feel completely inadequate and ill-prepared to begin work a week from now. My job involves teaching English to international students, but it also involves being the head of the EAL department. Neither role right now feels comfortable. My classroom teaching duties will take up about 2-3 hours of each day, with the rest of the time devoted to pushing into classrooms to help my students, 1-on-1 tutoring or Head of Department management duties. Providing instruction in a self-contained classroom, on my own, will be a new experience for me. In my career my teaching duties have almost exclusively involved co-teaching or small group instruction. At MIS I will be the sole provider of English Language Arts for my students, in classes 55 minutes long. I'm going to try and reach back into my memory and my experience working with classroom teachers all these years. I'm going to try and remember back to some of the best things I witnessed them doing in their classes, and try to replicate and model my classroom after that. The other new thing for me, is that it appears as though I'll be teaching 9th and 10th grade. Yikes! At times I wonder why they hired me. I don't have any experience teaching high school EAL. Pray for me everyone!!!

With an experience like this comes a lot of doubt. Am I going to be a good teacher? Do I really have what it takes to lead a group of experienced international teachers? Will life in Bavaria ever become "normal'? Will I ever be able to go to the grocery store and not feel completely stressed out? (The Bavarians race through the checkout process. Everyone's always waiting for me to pay and bag my groceries.) I'm feeling the doubts but doing my best not to focus on them or give them too much time or energy. I knew the doubts would come. And come they have! I'll get through it, and I know life will become easier with each passing week.

Last night my overloaded brain needed some relief, so I did the thing that usually relieves my stress. I took a bike ride through the countryside and had a beer. A couple of weeks ago I discovered a beer garden in the little town of Leutstetten. Last night I discovered a nice 7-mile loop that goes through Leustetten, that passes through forests and fields, and that tops out with an amazing view of Starnberg Lake and the Alps in the distance. It was a clear night last night, so the views were stunning. For an easy, shorter ride, I can see this loop becoming a go-to ride for me while I'm here.

This morning I'm enjoying a waffle and a cappuccino under a canopy while the rain comes down on the plaza in front of me. It's a nice way to start the day. After this I'm going to go bicycle shopping, then later in the day I'm having lunch with my landlords. I'm meeting them for the first time, so this will be my opportunity to ask questions about things I'm totally confused about - like how on Earth I deal with the four different garbage cans outside my door! That's all. Ciao!