Obama, Volleyball, Housewives

First of all, OBAMA IS PRESIDENT. That was just... really nice. Really nice to watch, to be with my host family, and to chat with Isaac and my parents at length on Wednesday about. I did not cry. I liked the color of Michelle Obama's dress. I understood most of Obama's speech, but I would've liked to hear it in english, without the German overdub. I laughed when I saw Dick Cheney in the wheelchair. I think things will get much better. I hope they will. I hope.

Now, more about SCHOOL. Where should I start? Maybe my FAILING CAREER IN VOLLEYBALL. When I was in elementary school, I cried during almost every gym class, except when we were playing soccer. I was scared going into my class here that I would be yet again constantly on the verge of tears, but that luckily wasn't so. Until now. I find I am that person that nobody wants on their team. My gym teacher pulled me out of the game two weeks ago to try (unsuccessfully) to teach me to hit the ball, then I ended up just standing in the corner. Last week, I ended up in a pair with a girl who is especially good at volleyball, with was awful. I have gone back to feeling unathletic and horrible and humiliated. I have found that when someone throws a ball at me, my first instinct is to run away. My second is to catch it. And I have very slow reflexes. Volleyball is just not for me. I don't even take the tests with the class anymore. I sort of doze off and try to think at things I excel in, and I end up failing, and then I think, "Zoe, when you grow up nobody will care that you're terrible at sports, no one will care, no one will care," but then I think, "Perhaps, but then I'll be old and have to have a job and I won't be living in Portland, and I will probably aquire heart problems from my lack of physical exercise and it will be very, very bad." Other times I think of other people who are bad at sports. All of these people live at home. I don't think anyone in the entire country of Germany dislikes sports. Now I am making generalizations about my host country as well as speaking no language and writing boring blog entries.

On Wednesday I spoke to my math teacher for the first time. I said, "I have to speak about the test. I can't do it. I'm sorry. Math is not my subject." He said, "Well, you don't need real notes, do you?" I said, "No, I don't." (Liar.)

On Thursday my math teacher acknowledged my presence in his class. He was talking about a problem in German and then suddenly switched into English, and before I knew it, he was yelling at me all this stuff about "the housewife." The housewife. The housewife makes a certain amount of money each year and then it goes up by six percent increase and then you use a special feature on your calculator and find out how much she's making after 24 years... And, what an idiot, I couldn't even think about the problem. I felt really disoriented and started thinking, Where is all this money coming from? Isn't the definition of a housewife that she doesn't have a job? Is there some benefit for housewives in Germany that I don't know about? How awful to be referred to as a "housewife"! I can imagine, perhaps having an etsy shop and a band and some kids and that being awesome, even if I were filling a traditional female role by staying home while my husband made most of the money, but the word housewife just implies soccer and a minivan and pilates and plastic surgery and... ugh. My math teacher stopped lecturing me in English, turned to the class and said (truly), "She doesn't understand anything, she's so stupid."

I am serious. And this, after running into my host family's cleaning woman on the bus and having her say to me that I can't help being bad at math and physics BECAUSE I'M A GIRL. Okay. Now I'm also an unfair sexist stereotype.

The thing about math in Germany is that the pace is so fast, I can't keep up. I mean, I really can't keep up -- I literally cannot figure all the notes in my binder out and remember them before the teacher has moved onto something completely different. At home, I did well in math and enjoyed it, but I had to stay after school every once in a while and get help. And I have to work a little harder in math than the others. It doesn't "come naturally" to me, but I can figure it out, it just takes me a while. And I love figuring out problems, it's really satisfying. I especially enjoyed the little bit of trigonometry we did last year.

It's frustrating to me how impossible it is to get help from teachers, and how little they seem to care about our well-being. I guess my perspective is a little distorted from Casco Bay, where everyone in my humanties class cries on the same day, usually right before the end of the expedition, and Ms. Carter lectures us on "the amazing journey you've made this year" and then she starts crying too and then we all make posters about the changes we want to see in our school and listen to some kid read emotional poetry.

To close, a quote from Lukas Leonhard: "It's Herr Doktor Meyerstein! Hello, Herr Doktor Meyerstein!" And today = second viewing of Twilight with a girl from my French class. The end.