Its been raining so hard recently I could swear I was
in Lancaster, but the fact being that I can only hear German it stands to reason I
have simply brought the weather with me.
Anyway we left off with my failing to get up. My failing to
get up on my first day of school. After completing my ablutions and having
flung clothes on in the fastest time ever I arrived at school to be instantly the subject of great attention and kidnapped by Herr Steinmayer, because I was just what he needed to terrify his students. Like another great language tutor I know he enjoys torturing his students, but not with Morrissey.
Anyway after 2 lessons it was time to go on the teachers trip. Which started with a picnic lunch. And the most alcohol ever seen before 5pm. In response to my very British confusion as to the consumption of so much booze at lunch time one of the teachers told me "In England you have problems with binge drinking students, here in Germany its the other way round." I think he was kidding. I hope he was.
Anyway after lunch we marched off through the mountains, and I spoke/heard more german than ever before in my life. By 7PM my head had imploded and I was only capable of vaguely English sounding gibberish, which left a large number of teachers as confused as I was, 2 hours later I dragged my carcass off to bed with very little idea of where I was, who I was, what I was doing here, upon which planet I was residing and if in fact this was actually one of my weirder dreams. All on absolutely no alcohol since lunchtime. ("What you have nothing to drink, let me fix that!", I honestly thought they wanted me to crawl up this mountainside!)
I woke up the next morning personality crisis resolved to the extent I spoke to everyone in English because it was far to early for German. Also to the weirdo who left the shower on Arctic Blitzkreig, I will never forgive you. I do not wish to be pummelled by hailstones at 7AM. NO ONE DOES.
Anyway, this is where I stayed:
Yes People, I SLEPT IN CASTLE.
I'm so cool. No. No I'm not I'm a giant nerd but never mind.
I then dragged myself up and down sheer mountain faces again, because apparently this is what German teachers do for fun. How a friend of mine runs up and down these things for fun is beyond me.
Completely and utterly so.
The day didn't finish there though. No by the end of the day that felt like years ago. one bout of crying in O2, a Doner, which by the way in Germany are not only edible but also amazing, further crying because Oh my gosh way too much German, I really need my mummy now, I was off to a house warming party, at which I tried to spend the entirety hiding in the corner avoiding the, "Oh dear your glass is empty we can't be having that", that seems to be endemic, also it meant that I didn't have to think or speak German. My plan failed. But it would seem that I have a great competence than I thought and ended up speaking quite alot, though admittedly some of it did descend in to denglisch. Though that was usually because the Germans wanted to show off, most often when I couldn't remember a word.
The next day I moved in to the place where I'm staying for the rest of the year.
I'm living with a family who are absolutely lovely and are taking great care of me. Even if settling in and adjusting are taking some time.
Seriously, even though I'm in an awesome situation homesickness is still an issue. Seriously, I want English food and I want it now. I want a mummy and a daddy hug and I'd rather like to be in Lancaster. But I'm not and it can be sucky to be reminded of that simply by sitting in the staffroom listening to German, of which you have no comprehension, especially as a large number of people round here speak Schwabisch by default, which sounds about as much like Hochdeutsch as does a particularly drunk Geordie to Standard English. Seriously I could murder bangers, beans and mash about now.
Monday, Tuesday: School. Yr 6/7's are wayyy chattier than those in the years above, who are really just too cool for talking to the English girl. Though the second the essays come out they're all competing for no. 1 Fan. xD
Wednesday for those who are too young to remember/don't study German, was a german bank holiday as they celebrated being a whole country again. Having a bank holiday in the middle of the week turns out be awesome. Why? Because they then think, "Screw it! Lets have a 5 day weekend!" This is a concept behind which, I can FULLY get. So I relaxed Wednesday went to my first basketball game - finally!had a bit of a poke about Stuttgart Thursday before running away to Heidelberg for a few days.
So yes, I ran off to Heidelberg. It started with Chloe Caswell and The Cauldron of Coffee.
Seriously, that mug was at least as big as her face!! The first day we mainly did shopping eating and getting me some form of bedding. We also ran into the lovely Marlen. Its weird seeing her in her native surroundings and me being the one out of context. Anne however was away for the weekend. :( Sad faces. ahh well
there's time yet!!
The second day we did all the touristy things, by a great blessing we ran into the amazing local lady who basically sorted our day for us, by explaining to us that with the €3 mountain train ticket we could get in to all the awesome places in Heidelberg! This brought out a spontaneous burst of positivity from Chloe, who by comparison is really struggling - but then so would I in her situation. Shes all alone, in terrible accommodation, (she doesn't even have her own kitchen), miles from the city and uni and generally rather fed up, though thankfully uni starts next week so hopefully she'll begin to settle and with little bit of Birgit Smith get her accommodation sorted out!
So we visited the Castle where we encountered the worlds largest beer barrel. Which we decided would probably keep Cartmel bar in stock for the next 40 years...
Shot of the castle from the town.
We also found ourselves in the German pharmacy museum which is in castle where we found these:
The Yellow box is "Monday Morning Blues Remedy". We thought they were rather fantastic.
We did various things but mainly we just had an awesome time, eating what can only really be described as our bodyweights in chocolate (Blame the lack of kitchen!), before I headed back on Sunday.
Since then I have been teaching, napping extensively, opening bank accounts (despite forgetting my passport! Mark accused me of flirting my way around it... its a distinct possibility.) and reading Joseph Conrad because that's what the Oberstufe are studying. The English is hard enough for most natives! "Nowither", I kid you not! I'd never seen that word before and some of the structures and words are so archaic as to be museum pieces!! Though it has the distinct advantage over a book we had to read last year in that it adheres to laws of sentence structure and punctuation!
Anyway as I have to prepare myself for another long day tomorrow, I believe Mark has arranged a German/English pub date...
And yet again I've forgotten about the washing I put on 4 hours ago...
So I'll leave you to sort my life out!
Bethxx
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