Dienstag, 20. März 2012

no time for blogging

Hi Mrs. Amri's class,

at the moment I have only few time to write. Each day I spend with another student of Mrs. Schicke's class. I have visited Lilli and Lea, Annelie and Jaqueline so far. Be excited for my journal!

I love the video, you made for me. It is marvellous and heartbreaking! I feel to be the only eagle in the world who has so incredible belovable friends on both sides of the ocean.

I miss you!
Be sure, I will come back soon!


Eduardo

Donnerstag, 15. März 2012

New Friends

Hi Mrs. Amri's class!

I have read, you had snow day?
Enjoy your free time! Make snowmans!
Is there enough snow for skiing?
Here spring flowers start blossoming and blue tits are singing.

Guess, where I have been! :) 


I was in the town of donkey, dog, cat, cock and eagle - the five town musicians.


The animals are the landmark of a big town in the north of Germany.
We spent there two and a half days. I got a lot of new things to see and learn.
May I introduce Roland to you?


Roland is a giant. He himself is about 5,5 m high, 
the whole statue about 10 m.
Do you see ME? I am sitting on the fence. 

In the middle ages a lot of towns had a Roland figure on their market place. 
He was the symbol, that this towns were allowed to govern themselves, they were "free" and made their own laws and taxes, independantly from the will of dukes and earls, bishops and abbeys.
The statue you see on the photo was made 1404. It belongs to the world heritage of culture.   



In the city there are a lot of very impressing old churches and houses from the 16th and 17th century, decorated with beautyful sculptures and reliefs, even covered with golden layers. Here you see one of the few conserved streets, which show, how "normal" people lived. In  former times this was the quarter of fishermen and skippers. Nowadays there is a little shop in each of the houses. They sell very exclusive things here and a lot of the wares are handcrafted.    

There is a big river next to this quarter, called Weser. In the middle ages the town had a great harbour for the merchant ships of the hanseatic league. Now the harbour still is very important for Germany (although it looks very different from middleage's harbour now!). Most of the cocoa and coffee beans are handled there.     


I met a friendly alert cock. Do you see the blue light? It is a fire alarm lamp.
Hundred of years ago the country people used to say "the red cock sits on the roof" when they meant that a house was burning down.   
And they spoke of "putting someone the red cock on the roof", when they meant to set a blaze on someone's house. But if there is a red cock already on the roof, noone else can put one on - so the house with a red cock on must be safe from being burned by fire and lightnings! 
And they made red cocks of clay brick and put them on their roofs...
err....maybe no open fire in the houses and a good lightning rod could have helped, but this wasn't invented yet 
(mmh... who invented the lightning rod?? I hope you know!).    



Then I had a boat trip on my very own.







Just fits in size for me!

These old black boats were used to transport turf into the city.
Very poor seddlers lived in the north of the town in everglades. Their job was to drain the moor and to harvest the turf. Turf was very important in the north of Germany as burning material for the households, because there was no black coal or brown coal laying in the ground, just turf (which in some millions of years would become brown coal and black coal - but who wants to wait a million of years, when he is cold now??)  

Ok... the boat was NOT on a river but a model on the pavement.
But I COULD have sailed. I COULD do that, I am sure! Maybe you will take me with you on your next tour with the Kajak?

Then I found a very special shop:


They had oversized lollies with a diameter of more than 20 cm and candies, candies, candies of all tastes and colours, you can imagine.
I liked the Easter Rabbits best:


They are made of - candy!
I suppose, you would LOVE that shop.

I don't.

Mrs. Schicke bought me one of the candies - the bigger ones, because I begged her so much. And then... my beak glued together with the candy!!
I couldn't talk any more, just mumble!!
  
So w' w'nt f'rth'r 'n 'nt' uh str''t. Th'r' y m't th' f''r t'wn m's'c''ns uhguhn.
Th'y w'r' r''d'ng.

Y uhsk'd th'm t' l't m' r''d t'g'th'r w'th th'm.
Y f''nd uh c's' pluhc' t' st'y 'nd s'ck my c'ndy.


  F'nd'ly, 'd''rd' !

Freitag, 9. März 2012

Reading Time

Dear Mrs. Amri's class,

today the 2nd graders had reading time together with the 1st graders from the room next to ours. All students sat in pairs or little groups, chose a book and the elder students read to the younger ones or they helped each other in reading.





I spent my time listening to a book called "The Princess at Super Market".
The princess doesn't like, that everytime she wants to go anywhere she is accompagnied by a great many of servants and minders.
One day she decides to go shopping on their own. She succeeds to escape secretly and enters a super market.


Can you imagine, what happened?

This weekend I change my host.
See you on monday!

Love,
Eduardo

Mittwoch, 7. März 2012

Cubes

Hi Mrs. Amri's class,

today I visited Mrs. Schickes class.
Look what they have built!


Very funny eagle cages!
But I am afraid, they are much too small for ME.
May be, these are egg cages?
It would work well for eggs! They just can't escape!




This is, what the shelf looked like.

Later on, the class went to the computer cabinet and competed on worldmathsday's website.
They played against students from so many countries. Even a student from USA was online.

Sorry for not blogging the last days, but I had a wonderful time with Mrs. Schickes cat, Miss Sophie. We had long chats on the windowsill and one and another cup of tea.


Miss Sophie told me a lot about a cat's life on Langeoog, about tasty mice and that she is afraid of the pheasant in the garden.    
 

Freitag, 2. März 2012

Fog

Hi Mrs. Amri's class!

Yesterday we went back to Langeoog.
Here you see me on the ferry again.


Do you see ME? I hope so.
Do you see anything else except the guard railing and a little bit of water?
No!
Everywhere around there was white fog.
Very thick, white fog.
You didn't see anything farther than 20 meters.
And most of the sound was absorbed.

So - how does the ship find its way when the captain doesn't see anything?
Mrs. Schicke told me, that all of the ships have got a radar system.
The radar system is the big horizontal bar on top of the ferry.

  
It sends a radar beam all around the ship and receives an echo, if the beam strikes something compact like the beach, the coast or another ship.
The captain has got an instrument to see these echoes.


Do you see the coastline and the islands? The little dots are ships!
When the captain notices another ship, he will ask the foghorn to talk to the other ship. The foghorn says: "Hooooooooooooop."
That means: "I am here! Do you hear me? Do you see me? Look out!"
The other ship's foghorn answers: "Hooooooooooooop."
That means: "I am here! I hear you! Do you see me? Look out!"
I don't understand foghorn language very clearly, but most important is, the captain does!

When we came nearer to Langeoog harbour, Mrs. Schicke showed me the foghorn of the harbour. It is the grey square and works just like a big speaker.

   
I wonder, whether you are smart enough to understand, what this foghorn tells you!

Listen carefully!!

Göttingen, Day 2 and 3

Hi Mrs Amri's class!

During the last days I was really VERY busy.
I got to know a ladybug and how to make him search for shamrocks automatically.

 And I met a little cat. It's from Massachusetts Institute of Technology - that means it is as far from home as I am. But it told me, that it were a virtual cat and that it could be on many places of the world at the same time.




After three days of learning I really got my certificate!!


I am very proud of that, because I worked hard for it!

Montag, 27. Februar 2012

Göttingen, Day 1

Hi Mrs. Amri's class!

At the moment I'm studying at the University of Göttingen.
I am there "undercover"  (means: "sacked in") and listening carefully. I'll be a tech savy eagle, when I will be back, I'm sure! And maybe, I 'll have got an Eagle BA degree.

First we had a look at the campus.
These are some of the new buildings.


They have a very old building in the middle of the city as well.
The University of Göttingen is rather old and very famous. Surely you know some of their professors.
You don't??
Do you know Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm?
You don't??
Ah - but you know Little Red Riding Hood.
And you know Cinderella.
And you know Sleeping Beauty.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected all these fairy tales and many, many more from narraters, wrote them down and let them print for the very first time when they worked here in Göttingen, so that everyone could read them and tell them to all children - and especially you.

On one of the new buildings there is a big ball.
"Giants playing basket ball again?", I asked Mrs. Schicke.


"No", she answered. "Looks more like playing golf, this time."
But it is not a giant golf ball, but a real observatory with a big telescope inside.

Then we made a walk, because we had some time left, before our lectures at the university started.
Guess where I am sitting on!





Some stubs?
Might be.
But no! Not exactly.
This is petrified wood of some giant sequoias - up to 40 m high and about 35 000 000 years old.
Now it is stone, which still looks like wood, but it IS stone. 
We found it in  "Geopark" at the university, a geological open air museum.
I never had thought, that stones could be interesting such a lot.
But they had stones coming from vulcanoes and stones, which were catapulted 20 km high, when an asteroid fell on earth during the time of the dinosaurs and pretty marble stones and big stones, which were moved to Germany by ice streams during ice age ....
Stones are SO interesting!
But at last we had to go to the lecture.

There we had a lot of fun, because Mrs. Schicke learned how to write a computer program to control a small lego vehicle.
Can you imagine a whole class of grown ups playing with lego bricks?? 
Crazy university!!