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!