Monday, July 03, 2006

Wow...we've arrived

I can't believe it...it really is still sinking in the I am in Germany with Jussie. After waiting 20 hours in the toronto airport without sleep, and missing the Germany Argentina football game, we finally borded the plane with many new friends (who were also Dusseldorf bound). A flat tire on the plane and poor PR skills were the cause of the delay. Jussie and I are going to attempt getting some free stuff from Air Lufthansa, and then we swear to never fly with them again!!! In dusseldorf we ran through the airport not being able to read very many of the signs nor being able to ask anyone directions to get our next bording passes, trying to catch our next plane which left 40 minutes after we landed. Mission accomplished...we watched our luggage get loaded onto our plane (VERY reassuring) and borded our second and final plane to Berlin.
Once we arrived, we called our camp coordinator to get directions to her house, we wandered the Berlin Bus-subwaz-train station for about an hour and a half going up and down, and then back and forth before we were on the right track. It was quite the sight to see Jussie and I attempting this only knowing 1-2-3 in German. There was plenty of laughter.
When we got off of our train another counsellor from ESDC noticed us and approached us and showed us the way to Sabine's (the coordinator's) house. Her house has beautiful fruit gardens, much like many of the houses in Berlin.
We then were greeted with our host families, before they arrived, we were told one family would give us a bike and we had to bike to school in the morning, I willingly volunteerd, and the others were glad, as they so foolishly assumed that they would be driven to school in the morning.
My host family for the week are soooo sooo nice and very generous. There is a mother, stepfather, and 2 girls and 2 boys. The girls are only here on the weekend and the boy is here during the week. The father and the oldest girl speak verz good english, and the boy is becoming more fluent as I speak with him. He is in my group in the camp this week.
We are training in a school, I have 6th graders, and Jussie has 3rd graders. They are angels. Very disciplined.
Last night, my host family invited me to go to a Rock concert with them. They asked if Juss wanted to come with me I said yes. So I got Jussie to call me after training and her host spoke with my host as we could not explain what we needed. So we picked Jussie up and went to Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg (the province where we are staying). Training is in Michendorf a small town of 4000 people about 20 minutes outside of Berlin. We will be here until Friday night when we will move into our apartment in Berlin. We have a flat, where all the Berlin counsellors will stay. We are not sure if we will be in the Berlin camp or the Hamburg camps, If we work in Berlin, we will have at least 2 weeks in Hannover, (lower saxony) and if we work in Hamburg, we have the opportunity to teach at a horse camp. They need lifeguards in Berlin though, so we are hoping that we get to stay here and work Hannover.
We are both very excited, and we laugh about everything. There are 3 other counselors who are training with us and they are very strange people. One, is the prime example of the most right wing New Yorker you've ever met (a teacher, 28 years old), one is a snob from New York, one is a student from california, origionallz from somewhere in Africa. There are 2 people that are returning, and they are super cool counselors, one from Scotland and one from Manchester. They are also working in Berlin, and that is why we are hoping that we get to work in Berlin.
I am slowing catching onto the language as it is similar to english. Jussie does a great impression, of just sluring english words together. She sounds very german, but when we try to make the sounds for real...we butcher their language. My host dad and I have words of the day and we quiz eachother. Yesterday his was 'spit the pit' (spitting the pit out of the cherry) and mine was richen which means to smell. Today i learned numbers one through ten.
We also learned that saying I am hot means, I am horny. Jussie learned the hard way!!!hahaha...very funny.
Anyways if I told you all of the embarassing things that have happened to us, we would be here all night, and I have to wake up at 6:45 tomorrow so for both you and I I will stop.
Thanks for reading this far, I will try to stay updated so it is not so long every time. Pictures to come someday...haha...
Gooten Nockt (not the proper spelling but that is how you pronounce goodnight)
Maggie

2 Comments:

At 10:31 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can totally imagine you crazy girls laughing up every situation and person you meet. I excited to hear of your adventures. Miss you girls!

 
At 3:47 a.m., Blogger Brittany said...

sounds so exciting! europe... isn't it great??? ha. so guess what? we may be coming to hamburg for a bit to visit one of her sisters... do you know where you'll be yet?

bxo

 

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