You Can Call Me El

I arrived in Germany on 8th September 2014 and will leave on 13th June 2015, making my official time living here just over nine months. A year abroad is often hyped up to be the best year of your life, meaning there's a lot of pressure to not only have a great time but also tell and show everyone how fab it all is. Before you leave for the adventure, people you tell are either thrilled or terrified on your behalf; it's rarely a lukewarm 'oh that sounds nice' reaction when it is revealed that you're moving to a different country for a significant length of time. In my experience this interest peaks just before you depart, then cools massively leading up to your first return home, when it becomes clear that life abroad leaves you looking mostly the same with no immediately obvious scars.  This diminished interest could be partly my fault; I must have made Chemnitz sound very uninspiring, judging by the number of people that still think it is a tiny, rural village (i...

My first post of this name was one of the very first blog posts I ever wrote (the third, in fact. You can have a look at it again, if you want). Cringeworthy though it absolutely is to return to your previous writing - I am still scarred from rereading a diary I wrote when I was about eleven that is just tragically, crippingly boring - it was one of the main reasons I wanted to keep a blog this year; being able to look back and remember the small details of your daily life that you would otherwise have forgotten is really lovely. In terms of life at Georgius-Agricola-Gymnasium - it has been brilliant. Not all the time, obviously, there have been some truly frustrating parts to it too - let me briefly count the ways. The top spot for annoyingness must be occupied by the printer situation: there is one functioning printer in the entire school that is manned by a succession of receptionists of varying levels of helpfulness, ranging from 'yep just use my computer to log into your em...

Good day to you all, and happy weekend! I didn't write a post earlier this week because I had absolutely nothing to write about. Last weekend I had four days off in a row, as Monday was a bank holiday. I had planned to go to Mannheim, but ended up not being able to face the journey; the trains were striking again, and a five and half hour journey could have ended up inestimably longer, as the transfer times were about five minutes for each change. Basically I chickened out of the journey because travelling is very stressful and I am a big baby and also a wet lettuce. I did spend some time this week meeting up with various language assistants; as we officially finished on the 31st May, everyone's last day was on Thursday or Friday. I, on the other hand, stupidly agreed to go in on Monday 1st June as a favour to one of the teachers. This didn't seem like a bad idea at the time, as I do really like this teacher and I knew I'd be hanging around for a while after we offici...

Last weekend I went to BERLIN! We should all take a moment to thank Abbie, whose excellent idea it was to go and see Laura Marling in concert on the Saturday night. This motivated us to schedule the weekend in Berlin which an amazing seven of the eight of us in our house next year were able to attend. I was lucky in that I had the second shortest journey; it only takes two and a half hours or so to get to Berlin from Chemnitz. Poor Dan drew the short straw; his coach from Freiburg to Berlin took eleven hours. GOD. Anyway, after a certain amount of organisation and quite a lot more faffing around and ignoring the fact that we actually had to arrange something at some point, astonishingly all seven of us made it to Berlin by Friday evening. Five of us shared an Airbnb in Schö neberg (again, found by Abbie - THANK YOU) which was a lovely first experience of this setup for me. Airbnb allows people to rent out their rooms for a night, several nights, or an extended period of time, b...

Last week was organised slightly differently from usual, in that I did the interesting things on Thursday and Friday and achieved nothing at all worth writing about on Saturday and Sunday.  Görlitz/ Zgorzelec   In order to say farewell to the language assistants in the Chemnitz area, the town council organised a day trip to Görlitz/Zgorzelec for us on Thursday. This is on the German/Polish border;  Görlitz is the town on the German side, and  Zgorzelec  is across the river on the Polish side. As one of the few remaining towns that survived the wars almost unscathed, it is a popular film set. The Grand Budapest Hotel was filmed in  Görlitz, as was part of Inglourious Basterds and The Reader , among others. We did manage to get a look at the building that was the actual hotel in Grand Budapest Hotel , although in typical style it was being renovated, so pressing our noses against the windows and peering in at the darkened staircase was the best ...

So a bit of a cheat this weekend - I did not, in fact, spend the weekend travelling. HOWEVER, that does not mean it and the week before were not eventful! Last week went very quickly as usual, but was marked firstly by the introduction to a new class. I've agreed to help Caro, the trainee teacher, with a simulation for her 11th grade (English year 12) to help them learn Everyday English. The class will cover topics such as going out to eat, what to do in an emergency, how to apply for jobs, how to return things in shops - all things they've already learnt at some point in their school career but have definitely forgotten. We've also got them to invent roles for themselves (such a huge number of them put 'football' and 'sport'/'keeping fit' as their hobbies that it was sickening) and put them into 'flats' of three, i.e. they sit at tables of three to do the individual tasks.  Although it is rather late to be starting new classes, it's be...

This evening I finally watched The Theory of Everything , the film starring the adorably freckled (and now Oscar-winning) Eddie Redmayne in the role of Professor Stephen Hawking. I'd been putting it off for a while for two reasons: firstly, because I wanted to have the time to be able to appreciate it properly, and secondly, because I knew I would cry a lot throughout the film, partly due to Eddie Redmayne of course, but mostly due to the utterly tragic nature of motor neurone disease, and it therefore had to be watched on an unemotional day. Stephen Hawking's astonishing intellect, global fame, and incredible defeat of predictions made about his life expectancy all combine to make him a truly intriguing person. In terms of his disease, t he concept of the body physically degenerating while the mind remains intact is simultaneously horribly fascinating and the most terrifying thing imaginable. This of course makes him an even more compelling person, as people are who have fac...

Good day to you, dear readers! I hope the weather where you are is better than it is here - pelting rain with a spot of thunder and lightning at frequent intervals. (Although I am actually very much enjoying it as only a warm, safe person who doesn't have to leave the comfort of a roof over their heads again that day can.) Anyway, t his weekend's trip to the Saxon Switzerland with the delightful Sarah was one of the best I've spent in Germany. Let me tell you all about it!! Pirna Our first stop was Pirna, a small town just outside Dresden that's very close to the Saxon Switzerland. Let me state now that I don't know whether it's the Saxon Switzerland or just Saxon Switzerland. The German is no help, and on top of that is much harder to say: Sächsische Schweiz [ zekzisher shv-eye-tz ]. Pirna main square Pirna was tiny and adorable and sunny and full of conveniently located cafes selling ice cream. After a stop to revive ourselves with iced coffee/iced cho...