If there was one thing these kids DIDN'T do, it was keeping calm and learning German

If you've been following this blog for a while, you might have noticed that I didn't do my monthly College Experience post last month. If you're new here: Hi! Hope you find something interesting to read!
Anyway, I didn't post last month because I didn't have time to write a post. I was also in a state of shock near the end of February. You see, I study German, so I can become a high school teacher. As part of my education, I have to do an eight-week internship during my freshman year, teaching German at a high school. But the school and kids I ended up with...

Before I continue this post, I have to give a short lesson in Dutch history.
When Dutch laborers became spoilt back in the 60s and didn't want to work in factories anymore, my country needed other people to do the crappy jobs. We found these people in Marocco and Turkey. Those people cam to our country, but stuck together. A lot of them didn't become part of the Dutch society and their cultures clashed with ours. They felt safe among their own people and thus certain parts of cities turned Turkish and Maroccan. Flash forward fifty years and we still see this pattern.
My internship school is in the south of Rotterdam, a place where a lot of immigrants from Arabic countries ended up. Most of the kids in my classes had names my western tongue couldn't pronounce, like Kaoutar and Anouar and Berkehan. They had a very particular attitude towards me: I'm a milky white Dutch polder girl. Very definitely not one of them and thus not worthy of respect.
My first day was traumatizing. I came home in a state of shock. All the glares and disrespectful gestures from high school kids had taken their toll on me.
My mom listened to my stories and said: 'Think of it as teaching in a ghetto.' From then on I went to my internship school while humming Elvis Presley's 'In the Ghetto'.

I came across some huge problems. I am fairly short for a Dutch girl. I am also on the skinny side and look a bit breakable. I am kind and have confidence in my students. All those things worked in my disadvantage at this school.
I wasn't able to do anything creative during my classes. I couldn't make the class more fun, because fun led to hyperactivity and fights. I couldn't turn my back for a second. The kids went crazy as soon as I stopped talking and sometimes just laughed at me, straight in my face, when I said they had to do some homework for out next class.
I knew fairly quickly that I loved teaching, but not in the ghetto. The kind, quite patient Envy had to make place for a teacher from Hell. I honestly didn't like myself anymore. It did have some effect: the kids were a little more like kids instead of little monsters when I showed up in killer heels and with a death stare on my face.

It doesn't sound like I had fun teaching, but there were moments when I absolutely loved it. The 8th graders were terrible, but I fell in love with the 10th graders. I couldn't stop laughing when a Maroccan and a Dutch boy in 10th grade ended up having a discussion about the importance of gravy. An girl in 8th grade stole my heart when she had to describe someone in German and said: 'The girl has hair and eyes.' There were some great kids and teaching them was awesome, but even older teachers with tons of experience have a hard time teaching at this school.

As I am typing this, I have four more days of internship to go. I will get through it and one day I'll be a good teacher, but right now I'm very disappointed with my college experience. I'm a confused freshman who's lost a bit of faith in humanity. Next year's internship will be better though. I'm sure of it.

Stay Awesome!

Today I want to introduce you to a new concept here at Picking up the Pieces. No, it's got nothing to do with Thomas Sanders' Story Time Vines. My Story Time originates from my love for mythology. Mythology has this great way of showing us bits and pieces of what society was like and of what people believed and valued back when these stories came to be. 

How is this not weird?! Source

When I turned eighteen last July, I got a little more than a cake, a new stereo and a friendship bracelet. I also received the right to drive a car without an adult in the passenger's seat, the right to drink myself into coma with all the heavy liquor I want and, scariest of all: the right to vote.
Here we are, nine months later, on election day. Today I'll be a first-time voter.

It started a few weeks ago, when a voting-pass came in through the mail. When I was little, this meant my parents would say: 'Oh, voting, again.' In the year 2015, this pass has a different effect. People are reminded to go voting, but what's more important to them is picking the perfect option for their social media addiction. There are three:

1. Take an early votefie (a selfie during election time of you being involved with voting) with your vote pass and post it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, hand them out as flyers, put them on buildings, sell them to a museum, it doesn't matter as long as people click that like-button! #Votefie #Nofilter #Imquitepatheticwhenitcomestovoting
2. Post a picture of the pass on Facebook with the caption 'NOOOOOO'. Because voting is a way of punishment and you shouldn't feel priviliged at all that you even have a vote.
3. Don't post anything at all and try to decide who you're going to vote for.

Either you've lived under a rock for the past three years, or you've heard of Fifty Shades of Grey. With every female on the planet freaking out about it, you're bound to have a conversation about it some time. Even though the movie was realeased just a month ago, I started suffering in November. Some girls in my class were already trying to get tickets for the movie. They were all fangirling, until I said: 'I don't like the books.'
The conversation ended abruptly. After a short silence, one of the girls asked: 'How can you not like Fifty Shades of Grey?!'
'It just wasn't my cup of tea.'
'Did you even read it?!'
'I did.' I wasn't lying. I read bad books so I can give my opinion along with some strong arguments to support it. 'I think it was badly written, the plot was barely worthy of the title 'plot' and the characters were a bit two-dimensional.'
Silence again. Then: 'Maybe you just don't understand it, because you've never been all the way with a guy.'
Excuse me? So my virginity somehow influences my ability to recognize a bad book when I see one? I don't think so. I'm a virgin, I don't mind being a virgin and I don't think it makes a difference when it comes to my taste in books. Even with my virginity intact I can tell you why I hat this book with a passion.

'Oh my. Oh my. Holy crap. Holy cow. Oh my. Holy shit.'
I don't hate characters with a catch phrase. But what Ana has isn't a catch phrase, it's an abundance of random swear words and 'oh my'. Every paragraph seemed to start with 'oh my' at some point. No one talks like that. Ana's use of 'oh my' and 'holy [enter random word]' irritated me beyond measure. I've never seen a fictional character speak so unrealistically. That's just a sign of bad writing. Oh wait, no, that's not true! I just don't understand this literary style that's obviously destined for greatness, because I'm a virgin!

"It's such a beautiful love story"
One of the arguments I hear all the time: 'It's a beautiful story, they both discover a whole new world because of their relationship.'
Are we talking about the same book right now? Because that's not what I read. Even Twilight was a better love story, since Edward didn't abuse Bella! And don't tell me it's not abuse there in that creepy SM dungeon. Even Ana has doubts about wanting to do that stuff. If you're not 100% sure about wanting to get hurt, it's abuse in my book. Besides, Christian may be fond of Ana, but it's not like she's turned him into a better person. Nor does Christian make Ana a better person. They're both exactly the same at the end of the book as the were at the start (minus Ana's virginity). And no, I don't think this story is about how far you'll go for someone you love. I think it's more about Ana being afraid to lose the first man she slept with. But wait, no, I can't say that! I can't know anything about being afraid os losing someone, because I'm a virgin!

"Ana is such a strong character!"
If Ana is strong, then I'll be able to beat the Hulk at armwrestling. Seriously though, it was anice try to have Ana be independent and with a college degree. But the minute she met Christian it all went down the drain. Some people say she's highly intelligent, but I think love made her blind and destroyed her brain cells. And does she do anything, anything at all in that entire book besides saying 'oh my' a thousand times? If that's your definition of 'strong', I recommend you buy a new dictionary.
Oh wait, no, I can't say that! Of course I don't know anything about becoming an independent, strong woman, because I am a virgin!

So you see, even a virgin can find fault with this book. Do me a favor and don't tell me I don't understand. Me and my virginity will get revenge!

Stay Awesome!

You may know her as Catalina Blue, Kanra Khan or @RudikoRain. However, it's the person behind these names that counts and that person is awesome!
Catalina blogs over at The Lunar Descent and is one of my best blog buddies. Back in November she wrote an amazing piece for my writing contest. I feel like I've known her forever and decided she should be the one standing in Picking up the Pieces' spotlights today!

Once upon a time in the dark days of 2012, I started a blog. It's the exact same blog your reading today, but if I showed you a screenshot of what it looked like in December 2012, you wouldn't recognize it. You see, Picking up the Pieces started out as an online diary. I wrote about my very easy high school life and the occasional outbursts of drama and trouble I encountered. I wrote posts about a colorful cast of characters whom I called my friends. Picking up the Pieces was like a soap opera, my friends were the cast. To be honest, it never got really interesting. Sometimes, however, I miss those posts. So in honour of the good old times, I'm going to do one more ridiculous post in which I overshare my life!

In the early days of 2013, I'm having a terrible crush on a guy from school. Exactly two years ago, he dropped a bomb shell on our group of friends. Out of the blue he described what the next generation of our social group would look like. And I wouldn't be Envy if I hadn't written it all down in my diary. Let's just take a look at what he expected to happen and, maybe more interesting, where the original cast of Picking up the Pieces is right now.

"Thursday, March 7th 2013
And then I got to hear I'll have handicapped children. It was... odd.
We were talking about something, can't remember what, during lunch break when all of a sudden E. starts describing a hypothetical next generation. It went like this:
'Well, B. and I. will probably stay together and N. and T.G. will have kids, of course. G. already is A.'s slave, so she'll probably have his children.'
'No, she won't!' G. said.
'Whatever. It'll happen anyway. So, there'll be a terrible break-up between C. and R.A. and then Chubby will be there for R.A. and they'll get together. And we'll have kids.' He pointed at me and himself after saying that.
'What?!' yelled everyone in our group, including me. I mean, out of the blue, after listing all the couples and soon-to-be couples in our social group, he suddenly says something like that.
'I don't want to have kids,' I said.
'Well, we'll have handicapped children, then.'
In what world are handicapped children not children?! I just don't want to think about having kids yet, escpecially not if those kids are 50% E. and 50% me.
E. wanted to tell more about our hypothetical children, but luckily G. interrupted him by saying: 'But I don't want to have children... I want a dog!'"

That was what a normal day in 2013 looked like for me. It was actually a lot of fun to laugh at people's hypothetical children. And looking back on it, I feel really nostalgic.
Before I wrote this post I did some Facebook stalking. The first couple E. listed was a couple I never knew about... I never met the girl called I. and the boy named B. was a guy I barely remembered. Turns out he sent me a Facebook friend request a couple of months ago. He's the person who's been spamming me with Farmville requests since then. Are he and that girl still together? A big NO to that; I even wonder if they were ever together to begin with. E. wasn't very big on accuracy.
The second couple never got together, even though everyone expected them to. I'm in touch with neither of them, though I've heard N. is gay now and goes to the same college as me. He passed me in the hall a few weeks back and smiled. That's all I know about what happened to those two.
C. seems to have fallen of the face of the earth! I haven't seen nor heard from him since May 2013. R.A. has a new boyfriend, though, so I think it's safe to say their relationship didn't last. The new boyfriend, however, is not Chubby. He's still alone, just like he predicted for himself.
And then there was E. and me. I had people rooting for us all over the world, or at least all over school. We never really got together. There was a bunch of weirdness, awkwardness, confusion and a lot of movie watching, then nothing. I liked the person he was, not the person he is now. Though I'm still quite fond of his beard.
My favorite couple from this post was G. and A. because they were both really nice people. Do you think they're still together? Yes? Wrong! They broke up in the spring of 2013, but I suspect G. is still not totally over it. Every time I talk to him he brings A. up. And that dog he wanted? He never got it, so I asked him why not. His answer: 'Did I say that? But I hate dogs!'

It's weird to look back on what you wrote down two years ago and see how much things have changed. When I wrote that entry, my biggest worry was whether or not E. liked me. Right now I couldn't care less, I'm happy as long as I pass all my finals.
At some point all the couples from the prediction broke up, but that doesn't make me sad. I know we've all become our stronger persons through those experiences. We're more ourselves now than we were back then. We might not be together with the people we cared about back then, but we had a great time and we'll always have the memories to look back on. We're all lucky, all of us are in college and live happy lives. Not physically together, but forever connected through the memories.

Stay Awesome, no matter what!

Not too long ago, I posted a first chapter of my story A Vampire's Mistake. I was reluctant to share it, since I wrote it in Dutch, than made a very rough translation. The response was overwhelming, though, and since a lot of people were positive about chapter one, I decided to translate chapter two too. If you haven't read chapter one yet, click HERE, read and hopefully you'll come back to this post for more!