Snow and other weather

It wasn't exactly a white Christmas.. Forabout three days in the week before Christmas, it was snowing and the temperate was generally in the negative teens. Sandy and I created a snow-dwarf. I'd never made a snowman before and Sandy was more interested in throwing snowballs at me and jumping in the giant snow pile we'd created than gently forming snow into a proper snowman. At dinner, after we made the snowman, Sandy christed him "Koffer" which I correctly translated as "Suitcase." He didn't say it in a compliamentry tone. About the 22nd, it stopped snowing and started raining. By the 24th ( which is the day Christmas is celebrated here), snow still remained under trees and on the lawn with grass poking through. Soo, technically, it was a dirty white Christmas! There was still snow about so it counts. Koffer is now the only snow remaining in our backyard. Today was a really nice day. When I went outside for a walk in the nearby forest, I wasn't wearing a jacket and it was pleasant. The sun is setting by 430 so it cooled down as I was walking and parts of the path were still frozen but slightly thawing. These parts were treacherous! I need to significantly improve my balance if I'm going to survive here. On a positive note, the cheap and pretty boots I bought here (exactly three days before everything in store was reduced by 20% for Christmas- bugger) are completely waterproof! They kept my feets dry even when I jumped shin-deep in the snow pile that became Koffer. I'd love for more clear, crisp days like today, but apparently the weather is supposed to be disgusting for the New Year.. At least my feet will be dry.

Germland

Wow, I've already been here a week! After my first day here, during which I struggled to keep my eyes open, I adapted nicely to the time change. Every weekday, I have language school. My bus leaves at 726am, so I have to be ready to go pre-dawn. School starts at 820ish and finishes at 1245, with one half hour break. My bus stops are conveniently seconds from my destinations which is very handy since I'm very average at following directions. There's 15 people in my class from all over the world. The only common language is German, although most of the others speak some varying degrees of English, I'm the only native speaker. All of the teachers' instructions are in German, but they use a lot of sign language so I can generally get the gist. I can barely hold a conversation without a dictionary, but its only been a week and at least I can say some things ..

On my way home from language school one day, I managed to hit myself on a tram. I was running to catch my bus but there were lots of people standing quite close to the edge of the pavement. I really did not want to wait another hour in the icy wind for the next bus helped as I was running riiight on the edge of the pavement when a tram came from behind me and clipped my arm. It was very surprising but I did not even get a bruise.

It hasn't snowed here yet. It snowed today on the mountain above Kassel and this week temperatures are expected to reach -12C. Lovely. The wind is icy and piercing but at least the sun has been out the past couple of days. Apparently, global warming means that a white Christmas is unlikely; the 'real' snow for snowmen is supposed to fall Jan-Feb. =[

The members of the Apell family are: father: Martin, mother: Manu, son: Alexander (Sandy), Martin's sister: Trudy. The previous au pair, Nicola, is also here for another week. We went to the Christmas market, which was amazing. They had a ferris wheel and multiple merry-go-rounds. Every stall was decorated with lights and tinsel, and the air smelt like cinnimon and sugar (also ciggarette smoke ...). I got a giant pretzel which was amazing.

I'm officially here with an awesome sticker in my passport (sometimes known as a visa) to prove it. Let the adventures begin!

Arriving

I've made it to Germany but it was an exciting 20-something hours!

I left Bleheim for Christchurch at 715 am with a party of devoted friends who braved the dawn to wave me off. When I got to ChCh, I discovered that the 3 extra kgs I was carrying would cost me over $ 240! So I ran about the airport for about 40 minutes, stressing and trying to locate the mysterious post office. I managed to find it in the end, and boarded my plane to Singapour with no other dramas.The flightwas very boring, I watched 4.5 movies and did little else. The airport at Singapour is enormous! I walked for over half an hour to get to my terminal. There were three giant shopping areas, which I didn't explore since my body thought it was midnight. When I finally found my terminal, I had three hours to kill and was terrified to fall asleep in case I missed my flight. The plane was delayed, apparently, but I didn't notice because the announcements were made in English as undecipherable to me as the German. The plane had no individual tv screens, which I only realized after I sat in my window seat. I did not want to disturb the two men beside me, so I didn't get up to get the one book I was allowed to bring. During one of my fractured fragments of sleep, my blanket got ninjaed. I was only using it to bulk up my pillow, since the plane was boiling, but it was still upsetting. I ended up craning my head to look out the window at the lights and trying to figure out which country we werre passing over without looking at the flight path on the tv's cabin. When I finally made it to Franfurt, I had to go through a labyrinth to find baggage collection, then another to find the right train stop. Then I had an hour to wait. That hour made me truly appreciate my new puffa jacket. Germany is cold. The train was delayed about 20 minutes and when it did come, the sign on the outside displaying the train number and destination wasn't working but I figured it out. When I got off at the Kassel train station, Manu and Martin only recognized me because of the Lake Chalice falcon screen-printed onto my suitcase, phew. I had arrived in Frankfurt at 7am ish local time, and had to last all day to get used to the new time zone. I started to wilt about 3 pm.

But I survived my big journey and my adventures in Germland just have started!