Posts

Showing posts from November, 2009

German Advent Faux Pas!

Image
A "normal" German Advent's wreath "T he layers of meaning in a new society are never explained explicitly to newcomers and sometimes I wish that I had been handed my bible of In Germany thou shalts and thou shalt nots as I crossed the border. Our first Christmas was one case in point. Christmas is a serious, more contemplative time here and full of old traditions. During the season of Advent, every German family has a pine wreath with four candles on it. On each of the four Sundays in Advent, the family sits down for afternoon tea and Stollen—the traditional fruit loaf, eaten only at Christmas time—and another candle gets lit, until all four are burning on Christmas Eve. It is a wonderful tradition but not mine, and my children have suffered from their non-German mother’s inability to “bastel”—to make things with one’s hands—and to make an Advent wreath ourselves. Our first Christmas here, my husband decided, as the German contingent in our marriage, th

Intercultural Relations Repaired

Image
Seldom before in my life have I experienced how from the depths of despair, life can suddenly turn around into pure joy and pleasure and fresh experiences completely wiping away all bad memories that have gone before. The mayor of Florange and our daughter (in white) laying a wreath in France on Remembrance Day 2009 A n ordinary November week started with A., the French exchange pupil we hosted in September , writing to our daughter, saying she would refuse to have anything to do with our daughter Rose once she came to France. It was only days before Rose had to go and stay with this family. The visit was part of a regional Schumann exchange organised by the Education Departments in the four bordering countries and is meant to foster inter-regional understanding. We were aghast by the turn of events . Even more hurtful was watching the toll it took on our daughter. Both we and her French teacher kept on telling her, not all French are like that. So while all her close friends were p

Intercultural Mis-Communication

Image
W e as a family had to this week painfully experience how an intercultural, inter-regional pupil exchange between our daughter and a pupil in the northern French region of Lorraine, barely 60 kilometres from Trier completely collapsed. For 12 days in September, we played hosts to a homesick 12-year old French pupil from a migrant family in Loraine. We thought we did our best: investing time, energy and money to make her time in Germany special. Every day there was an activity: an outing with French and German pupils or visiting some of our eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One day they had a home-made pizza and film party with 12 French and German girls here in our house. On the Saturday we did a day-trip to Eltz Castle, 100 kilometres away. (c) Anli Serfontein 2009 Eltz Castle After receiving no thank you note from her, she deemed it fit to write my daughter an email this week, less than a week before my daughter was to go to France to tell her how she hated her time with us, that