The First Month

Today, the 8th October, marks an entire month since I came to live in Germany. This post is a short recap of the story so far, and also a quick look at character development.

This first month has been a rollercoaster and a half. To quickly recap – the course in Cologne, and meeting the other ELAs; the journey to Chemnitz and the debacle with Zietenstraße 70, the flat that was never meant to be; moving from house to house and living out of a suitcase; seeing Dresden and fifth-wheeling with Heike’s family and Marcel; living in Caro’s flat for nearly two weeks and going to McDonald’s every evening to use the wifi, then coming home and reading Tamora Pierce on my laptop before going to sleep to the sounds of the man in the room next door growling and groaning all night; starting school-life and meeting the pupils and teachers; attending the staff meeting and having to do a speech to introduce myself that no one had warned me about; going to Leipzig for the first time and being incredibly over-emotional; beginning to do more in school and having a bit of responsibility; going on a walk to see what Hofer Straße 2 looked like and managing to only see the grim aspects such as the overgrown path and the greenish concrete outside walls; moving in to Hofer Straße 2 and it actually being perfectly fine; getting a bike and with it a sense of freedom; finally getting my EC card (debit card) and being paid my stipendium so I have money to live off now; signing up to a German conversation course and an ‘oriental dance’ course; meeting all the loud children that live in my flat; buying hundreds of things for my room to make me feel at home; getting into a proper routine at last.

Lots seems to have happened in an incredibly short space of time that has gone by very, very quickly, but now that everything is settling down, I've had the opportunity for a bit of self-reflection and introspection.

Firstly, I am definitely becoming more German. I no longer find it weird to eat ham and cheese in a roll for breakfast, rather than toast and Marmite (although this will not stop me attempting to smuggle Marmite back with me when I go home). I've started to not try and convert euros to pounds in my head every time I buy something. The other day, someone bumped into me in the street and I didn't apologise. If someone asks me a question, I will answer it directly and not try and be overly polite about it. I've also stopped saying thank you all the time - Germans don't do it all that much, and definitely not when it's not necessary, and they don't seem to like it particularly when I do it. I've almost started looking left and not right first when crossing the road, although this has led to perhaps more confusion, as that now feels so natural I've started doing the one that feels less natural, which is looking right. Which is of course, ironically, wrong. The other day I saw a bottle of wine in the supermarket for €3.99 and I thought to myself, "that's a bit expensive!" (although this may not be a German so much as a student-completely-without-class-or-standards thing).

Anyway, on this first monthiversary (sorry) I'd like say thank you to the people without out whom I might possibly have made it this far, but only at the cost of my currently still pretty robust mental health: my mentors for being utterly wonderful and at times alarmingly generous; my family, whose Skype conversations always, always make me laugh and leave me with the warm glow that comes only from hearing the (patently untrue) words "Dobby misses you"; Jack, for coping well when I couldn't stop crying for no reason that first weekend (I wasn't even sad), for giving me the support and sometimes help I needed to eat such a huge amount of comfort food in the last month, and for being both so bad and so good at chess that it never gets boring; Zoe, for being just amazingly good at texting and lending a sympathetic ear; the other Chemnitz ELAs, for inviting me to things so I don't feel alone; and the kids in school who make my day by saying hello to me in the corridors and getting excited when I come into the classroom for a lesson. You are all delightful human beings.

Finally, I would like to thank the German language for providing so many opportunities for comedy gold for those of us with the maturity level of an eight-year-old:

Sorry.