Field Trip - 1

I spent much of last week watching kids take exams. The fancy British word for it is invigilation. I think it's Latin for boredom.
On Wednesday, though, I didn't invigilate. I chaperoned a field trip.
The word for field trip in German is Ausflug. It comes from the old German word for sneeze as in ah-ah-Ausflug, Gesundheit.
It was the international schools 8th grade walking field trip for geography class. It was led by their geography teachers, one of whom I happen to know very well. The field trip was a tour of the neighborhood of  Linden Sud (Sud = south), led by a pastor from a church in the area. Linden is a part of Hannover that has always been home to working class people who are employed at factories nearby. It has an interesting mix of houses that survived the war, and others that were destroyed and rebuilt. So Linden has buildings from the 1860s next to buildings from the 1960s.  Recently, parts of Linden have been gentrified and filled with loft apartments and little cafes.

Linden also has a lot of the poorer people in Hannover, including recent immigrants and others who have lived on government benefits for generations. The American in me (I guess that's all of me) would think that means the area would look run down, with buildings in disrepair, boarded up windows, litter on the street, etc. What we found instead were tidy little apartment buildings, playgrounds, park benches, and quiet. There was a little graffiti, but in Germany you find that all over. It's not necessarily a sign that there's crime in the area.

Statue of the idealized Nazi worker

Mr. McCarthy did not plan this field trip. Mr. Swift, the other geography teacher, did. Swifty is not nearly as organized as Mr. Mac and the trip was a little chaotic. It started when Swifty decided to lead the group of 30 kids through the fairgrounds rather than on the street. The carnival that had been running for few weeks was just ending and workers were breaking down the rides and the sausage stands and the stages. Brian and I said things like,
"Watch out for those sharp stakes lying on the ground, kids."
"Dont trip on the electrical cords."
"Look up from your iPhone and let that truck get through,"
while Swifty strolled calmly ahead at the front of the line.

Mr. Mac, dressed for safari

The tour went well for the first hour or so. But then Swifty and the pastor got wrapped up in the history of locomotive assembly at the Hannomag factory while the kids' attention spans maxed out, their bellies started to rumble, and they began to act like 13 year olds. The rest of the afternoon was chaotic - stink bombs were launched, we all had to wait 15 minutes for one kid to use the bathroom, we missed a tram and had to wait 15 minutes for another, and then the kids started to cut deals to leave early. If their parents called or texted to give permission, Swifty let them go home directly from the field trip without going back to school first. The American in me would never have let kids take off on their own, but here it's not a big deal.

Hannomag factory building

The Ausflug (bless you) was exhausting. It made me want to take a break and get back to invigilation.