I ask myself why am I still sitting at my laptop at 11.40pm on a Monday evening reading up on english grammar and scouting the web for suitable exercises... oh, because I'm suddently faced with a rather large mountain of preparation for the next weeks' classes and am kind of a... well... perfectionist, as well as a terrible decision maker and top-class procrastinator. Plus, I quite frankly can't say 'no'. Quite possibly the worst combination ever.

Were you always wondering how and when to use that or which in a sentence? Here's the answer (apparently). Riveting stuff, eh.

I'm actually preparing a series of lessons for a student who I've just started giving extra (on-the-quiet) english lessons to who, in a class of 28, doesn't really get the attention she needs in order to improve. It's quite ridiculous really that any class should be so big for a college. I can't help feel it's something that gets overlooked in the media when we hear about Germany. We're always told about how Germany is one of the wealthiest nations in the West, for which reason she is now bailing out half of Europe, and is still 'in there' with regard to industry, technology and car manufacture.

Yet, in a country that so apparently seems to have everything straight, there is so much poverty. Many of the students I help teach are from difficult families, either live on their own or pay a substantial amount of rent to their parents, must work in order to pay for their studies and some are only just beginning to get their mouths and minds around german let alone tackling english. When most of these students leave college I daresay they'll have a better chance at getting a suitable job because they will have had to have worked hard, but for some, especially for those who have given up because they feel it's like flogging a dead horse, what will await them when they leave the relatively safe and encompassing boundaries of state education?

You can see this on the streets here too. Göttingen is a university town. It's brimming with potentially brilliant minds, countless plaques and statues attributed to famous scientists, writers, poets, philosophers, with a huge emphasis on culture as being accessible to all given that there are many free cultural events happening every month. Whatever kind of music you like, you can find it here, whatever politics you're in support of, whatever religion, creed or doctrine you sign up to, you can probably find it here. To the world, Germany has it all. Rich, powerful, making something of itself.

Then you look at it through the gospel lens.

How different it then is... and how much it needs praying for.