I arrived in Germany on Saturday morning after a 9 hour flight from Dallas. For the entirety of the 9 hours I had the pleasure of listening to a screaming/crying child. It was joyous. I also got the pleasure of becoming way to familiar with the eyeball of the girl in front of me as she continually peered over her seat to glare at said child. Um, hello! Unless you can stop that kid from their whining hysterics turn around! I don't want to see your ugly peepers every five minutes. Thanks. I didn't sleep very much on the plane, though I did try. That meant that I arrived in Germany quite groggy but determined to stay awake.
One of the other girls in this program was on the same flight as me, so we were both picked up by my mentor teacher and her husband. They took us from Frankfurt to Heidelberg and made sure that we got all settled into our apartment. There are four other girls in the apartment with me, two teach at the high school, and two teach at the elementary school with me! They're all very sweet, and I think these next few months will be good with them! The highlight of Friday was speeding down the Autobahn at 105mph. It actually left me feeling a little dizzy when we'd slow back down, but it was exhilarating! The first night we went into downtown Heidelberg with one of the other mentor teachers. We walked around, saw Heidelberg Castle all lit up, and ate authentic German food. I got brave and tried Saumagen which literally means "stomach of the pig." It just looked like a sausage patty, except pink like ham, and it tasted like ham too. I also had a bratwurst and mashed potatoes! I tried German beer mixed with sprite, which is apparently a rather common drink. It was... alright. I'm still not quite sure how much of a beer person I am, but I'm willing to try more while in Europe seeing as beer and wine are the beverages of choice.
Sunday we went with my mentor teacher and her husband to Ramstein which is the Airforce base. It's about an hour out and has a decent sized shopping mall that we hung out at. Our purchases were exciting things such as a longer shower curtain, a new outlet adapter since I blew mine out trying to use my straightener with it, a new straightener that would work with this voltage, and a shower caddy. Exciting, I know! Most of our shopping has been very practical thus far, but that's alright because we need to take care of the basics. My mentor and her husband have been just FABULOUS! They bought us groceries our first day so that we could make it through the weekend and into the week until we got out ID cards. You can't buy anything on the base without an ID card, and we couldn't get them until Monday.
So, today's adventure was quite the experience! We got to the school at 8 to meet with the principal, but didn't get a chance to meet until 8:30. That was totally fine, principals are very busy, and we had paper work to fill out anyway. So, after the meeting we headed out to get our ID cards. That was the easy part. We went in, got our pictures taken, got our finger prints scanned, got our ID's within maybe 20 minutes. Then, we went to get our pictures taken and get our paperwork turned in. All of that happens on a different base, so we headed to the base next door and went to a photobooth to get these itty bitty pictures taken. You get a sheet of 16, but only one gets used so I now have 15 tiny pictures of myself. Once we got our paperwork and pictures turned in we got the luxury of waiting around for them to call us when they were finished. We initially tried to stay near the base, but it was taking so long that we decided to go drive about and see the city! We were hoping as soon as we left we'd get the call that they were done. Fortunately, we didn't have rotten luck and we got to drive through Heidelberg along the river, drive up into another small town, and then we headed up into the little mountain town where my mentor and her husband live. At the top of the mountain the streets turn to cobblestone, and it is the cutest, most picturesque little German town! Everything was SO cute! There was also a castle ruin that we got to explore in. We weren't really supposed to, but the gate wasn't locked so we headed in. It was fabulous! It was stone and moss and crumbling beautiful history! The view was also breathtaking. We also got to see my mentor's fabulous house! It's, like, six stories, but very compact, so there's kind of one thing per story. The living room and kitchen are through the front door, and then there's a storage room down some stairs, and an exercise room down more stairs. Then, up from the living room, is the master bedroom, and up some more stairs is another bedroom/storage, and then up some more stairs is the loft area. It was really neat and so beautiful! Shortly after we left to head back into town we got the call that our passes would be done in 30 minutes, which was exactly the time that it would take to get back! So, we got our passes so that we can shop and do other stuff... I don't know, but it's basic privileges. The only thing we couldn't do today was get our SOFA stamps, so we'll have to get those done pretty soon.
Tomorrow I get to meet the kiddos! I'm really excited. A little nervous, but what's to fear about 6 year olds? They love you instantly! I feel like I'm settling in pretty well, but I'm still working on fighting some jet lag. So far, I'm looking into trips to Paris, the Black Forest, Amsterdam, etc. I really want to do the Paris trip because it's basically like a one day school trip where you sleep on the bus on the way to Paris, spend the day, then get back in the bus and sleep on the way back! It's dirt cheap since you don't have to pay for a hotel and you get a good chunk of the day to just explore! But, alas, I must budget and choose trips wisely, so we'll see what I decide to do!
That's all for now! I'll update as more happens!
