Ich bin ein Gallupian
German instructor offers trip to homeland

UNM-G professor Peter Handleland poses in his office in Gurley Hall Thursday. Handeland teaches German classes and sponsors the German club at UNM-G. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Independent correspondent

GALLUP — Have you often wished you could just take a trip to Germany and not have to pay the flight costs?

If so, Peter Handeland has the answer.

Handeland, an adjunct professor of German and sociology at the University of New Mexico-Gallup branch, along with the school’s German club, is offering $1,000 toward the cost of a trip to Germany to someone who takes the German class during summer school and ends up as the top academic student.

With plane fares for a round-trip now in the area of $800, this would pay for the plane fare and give some lucky and intelligent person a little spending money.

The German 102 classes will begin on Tuesday — the classes are held from 12:30 to 1:45 on Tuesday and Thursday — and are open to both regular students as well as people in the community who want to speak German and learn about the German culture.

Handeland came to America at 17 — and eventually to Gallup — in 1970 from his home in Berlin because of a fascination with the Navajo culture that began when he was in the second grade.

“It’s been quite an adventure to be in Gallup for me, and I would like to make it possible for students to have a cultural experience in Germany,” he said. “I really love the Navajo people.”

After all of these years, he said he continues to be fascinated about the Navajos and their culture, attending cultural events whenever possible and making friends with Navajo families. He is now the godfather to several Navajo children.

He also speaks and understands Navajo, thanks to one of his supervisors who some years ago, as he was preparing to go on summer vacation, gave him a copy of Alan Wilson’s “Breakthrough in Navajo” and told him to start studying it because he was going to be teaching Navajo in the fall.

So he began studying it and had only managed to get a few chapters done when the Navajo classes started.

“I promised my students that I would remain at least a chapter ahead of them and I did,” he said.