A Week of 'Firsts'...

Was für eine Woche! In some respects it’s flown by, and in others, I feel like I’ve been here for aaaages. I hope this is a good thing. My first full week as a teacher is over, I am now officially a fully-registered German citizen, and I’m loving it. It has been manic. That I can say without a shadow of a doubt. There have been so many new opportunities and experiences, I am completely exhausted. But it’s the same type of exhausted you get after walking round Disneyland all day. You’re knackered, but in a I-want-to-go-back-for-more-tomorrow kind-of way!

I’ve completed my first full week working in my new school. I’ve been bombarded with new names to learn, new faces to recognise and it is still beyond me how the students and teachers manage to make it into school for 7.45 am every morning, and still look perky! Despite this, I’m beginning to slowly adjust to life in Germany. Everyone thus far has been so nice and welcoming that I already feel at home there. Having been a student for the last 16 years (my God that makes me feel old!), I’ve obviously always been on the receiving end of teaching, having to absorb every piece of information that is divulged to me. It’s very interesting and rewarding to be on the other side of the teacher’s desk, so to speak, and to be the one that students learn from. I’ve even been asked to help a few foreign exchange students that don’t speak any German, learn to speak it. That could be…interesting!

It’s been a ‘week of firsts’ in other ways, too. I finally have an internet connection that is fast enough for me and my pc (thank you, very nice man in the O2 shop!), a German mobile number, more mugs than you could shake a stick at - for those of you who don’t know, I drink a lot of tea - and thus feel I can finally start to call my little flat home. Perhaps more importantly, however, for the first time since arriving in Germany nearly two weeks ago, I have a fridge!! There was a super-dooper, fancy-nancy, swanky-danky one in my flat…but it doesn’t work. So now I have a smaller, but nevertheless functioning fridge to keep my milk cold. Cereal, or tea for that matter, with luke-warm, long-life milk just isn’t appealing! But who knew I would get so excited about a fridge!! Seriously, I keep putting things in it, leaving it for a while and then squealing with excitement when they get cold. Be warned – this is what happens when you spend too much time in your own company!

I’ve also had my first taste of a German ‘zumba’ class. For anyone who doesn’t know, zumba is a keep-fit class that’s a little bit like aerobics, but with set dance routines, rather than “march-2-3-4-arms-2-3-4” instructions. I do it pretty regularly at home, and I love it, because our instructor very kindly shouts out instructions as we go along. Not here. No, no, no. The instructors very rarely say anything, actually, except to shout out the occasional “schneller!” when the pace slows down. Also, I’m not exactly Miss Hand-Eye-Coordination-2012, so it was a lot more difficult to inconspicuously bumble around at the back, like I normally do at home. I’ll stick with it though. Who knows, by the end of the year I might do it as precisely as the Germans.

So there we have it. It’s been a week of completely new experiences and new people. I think and hope that I’m going to be very happy here over the next 9 months.

Oh, and the wine-festival is still going strong…outside my window. It’s not so bad, in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s quite comforting when you live on your own, to know that civilisation (and food) is just outside. If only they wouldn’t play ABBA all the time!! No word of a lie, they played Mamma Mia a grand total of 5 times the other day. I mean I love ABBA as much of the next person, but I think the phrase ‘you can have too much of a good thing’ has never been more appropriate!

Also, this is what greeted me when my internet was finally good enough for me to skype my family, (note my expression). Now perhaps I know where my eccentricities come from...