Old Fashioned blog Dec 8

Today was rainy but not too cold - reminded me a lot of Pittsburgh! I had another busy day. Stephanie and Kevin from the LVR museum picked me up. We went to the Heinrich-Boll-Gesamtschule to visit Mrs. Reiber's art class and present them the Greensburg-Salem journals. The school is really big - they have many ties with schools in other countries, which makes them an international school. I met the head of the school Mr. Henn who was really excited about the project. One of the students interviewed me for the school newspaper. As soon as we passed out the Greensburg-Salem journals, the students were pouring through them. They were really curious to see the artwork and poetry the other class had done. During class they passed them around and made comments. Then they started to work in the journals, using watercolors and pastels.
Next we visited Mr. Schleck at the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium. Mr. Schleck told me an interesting story about the school's past. Mr. Schleck will collaborate with other teachers to create short videos that will combine to tell a story of the Ruhr region. He plans on sending the webcams home with the students. We saw an english classroom - the students were beginning to learn to read, write and speak english - they were doing good so far! I also met a Spanish and French teacher who wants to participate in the project. We walked in on a few other classes - the art room had a life size horse statue in it!
After school, I met the director of all the museums. He was very happy to hear that the teachers and students were enthusiastic about the project.
Then we went sightseeing! The gasometer is a huge barn-silo type building that was used to hold gas for the factories. It is now a place where art and science exhibits are held. The gasometer is very high, and you can take an elevator to the top, go out on the roof and look out over all of Oberhausen. It was so cool! I really enjoyed that. We visited St. Antony next. This site was where a very very old steel mill used to be. They're now excavating part of the site, but the building where the owner lived still stands and it houses the artifacts and tells the history.
For dinner we went to Greck (I think that's right?), a Polish restaurant. I was excited to look at the menu and see words I recognized: kielbasa! pierogies! It was all soo delicious, too! The owner of the restaurant is from Poland, he is quite a character - always wears a bowler hat. He didn't believe me that Pittsburgh has a "pierogie race" during ball games. Ha ha! We had a lot of fun tonight.