Snail Week

I'm thinking about getting my TEFL certification (teaching English as a foreign language). I have the experience, but now I'd have the credentials as well which would actually "mean something" in the eyes of society (i.e. various applications). That, and I really enjoy it. The basic class certification starts at $325 (60 hour class) and goes up to $470 (120 hour class). In all truth, I'd like to get the full 120-hour certification since it'd be more complete (not to mention more useful),... but I think that will all depend on funds.

Mom, Scott, and Neila came home from Florida today. I called when they got home only to be cut short by the arrival of the grandkids. If only I were cute, little, and still in preschool... or maybe I could just run around with my mouth open trying to bite one of my siblings (because they do an awful lot of that, too).

It was "Snail Week" at Ostenberg Grundshule this week. I arrived on Monday morning only to find all of the kids running around outside looking for snails and picking grass (Germany has monstrous snails... at least way bigger than anything I ever captured as a kid). Later, after the habitats had been set up, we read from their science book about Schneckekinder (snail babies)... i.e. where baby snails come from. It was then that I realized how much of a prude I am (perhaps the correct term is actually 'puritanical American'). In the biology book, there was a picture of two snails mid-coitus. Of course they're snails - which are roughly 0.0127 points above being asexual - but this was a book for six and seven year olds... and in my "advanced age" I was thought to myself, "When I was your age, we didn't talk about sex in school! And when we did it was purely speculation!" (Thank you public schools for denying your students sex ed. and thank you Christian schools for denying sex entirely [note the sarcasm])
Anyway, this was a fleeting moment of conservative "Oh my!" until I turned the pages to a future chapter with a two page spread titled: "Mädchen oder Junge?" (Girl or Boy?) They were cartoons... but the first page pictured a back view of two naked and rather androgynous children. The text said something about not being able to tell the difference from the back whereas the next page had a front view of both anatomically correct children. In addition, just in case you failed to notice, there were oh-so-conveniently pointing arrows to, you guessed it, a penis and a vagina. I nearly fell off my chair.
The worst part of this whole experience is not that there was animated nudity in these books, it was that I was disappointed in myself for being so shocked by these pictures. You see I realized that I truly am a product of the United States school system, and not that that's completely failed me yet, but obviously the 'nudity-phobe' culture from which I emerged has had a lasting effect. In addition, I felt completely unworthy of calling myself liberal.

On a final note, I've almost completed the hour requirement for my internship. (This is good news.)

Hopefully within coming weeks I'll have something a bit more interesting to write about than snail sex... but just so you don't leave without learning anything... snails lay sixty eggs at a time. Spread the word.