Touring Before it All Begins

Hey there!  Greetings from Berlin.  My apologies on my neglectfulness.  I promise to keep more regular updates on my blog from now on.  You can hold me accountable to it!

I have been living in Berlin now for almost a full month and am becoming more and more accustomed to life here.  Google translate has become my best friend when making grocery shopping lists, or reading through my mail.  I can't tell you the amount of times I get mail from the bank or gas company thinking it will be something terrible to only find out later that the letter was an advertisement or welcoming me to something. AH!  Google translate seriously makes up for my lack of language skills but at the same time most people here do speak English, even when they say they only speak a little but we always manage to communicate with large hand gestures and simple broken English.  I empathize with immigrants who come to a new country speaking a different language with a completely different alphabet system or those who are illiterate.  How difficult and frustrating it would be to communicate with others and get by day to day.

Since school starts in the beginning of September, this month was dedicated to getting adjusted.... aka being a tourist while I can still pull off being a complete foreigner and have time to do so.  Another new teacher and myself decided to do a two day bus tour (the kind with the headphones to make it extra touristy), where we got a quick glance at the main historical sights and popular areas of Berlin.  We also took a nice boat tour that sails down a canal right through the city.  Berlin is such an internationally diverse city.  You can crush any craving with the many different ethnic restaurants and for cheap too!  Some restaurants that I have tried so far include Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish, Ethiopian and Italian.  Also every area or district you go to has different things to offer.  Charlottenburg, where I live, is quite green and has lots of trails to bike or walk on.  I went to a Sunday fleamarket in Prenzlauer Berg which was HUGE.  I thought Victoria was the hipster-vintage-granola capital and I thought wrong.  The flea-market was filled with some interesting people like hula-hoopers, buskers, jugglers, bearded and dreadlocked hippies.  We witnessed a hilarious and very addictive karaoke in the park near the flea-market.  Needless to say, not everyone who sang would have been successful on "The Voice" but the audience was in good spirits and cheered on all the participants.  Just outside of Berlin is Potsdam, a city that holds the old residence of the Prussian kings.  It reminded me of Banff or Whistler with its shopping streets and the Prussian palace grounds were beautiful to walk around.

Potsdam

 Being extremely touristy!

The colourful people at the karaoke!












Another assignment I made for myself before I got into the routine of school was to find a church to go to.  Before I got here, I got in contact with one English-speaking international church and decided that I would give that a go.  Immediately I felt very welcomed by this diverse church community that hold their services in a movie theatre! I think that's so awesome!  Through this community, I have met people from all over the world (including some who call Watoto Central their home church!) and I have started going to a weekly home group.  So thankful to find a rock solid church community in this corner of the world.

On another note, the countdown to first day of school is approaching promptly.  This last week, I put in some hours at the school to start setting up my room and familiarizing myself with the layout and resources at the school (mostly with the help of the school secretary... they are the secret backbones that make up a school!)  I am getting anxious to begin teaching and just ease into a routine.  The back-to-school teacher nightmares have ranged from not having anything planned, being late to find all the kids with their parents waiting on me, or not finding my classroom at all.  My mother informs me that she still gets back-to-school nightmares and that these are normal.  They still AREN'T FUN!

Anyway that was long-winded and again I promise I will pick up the slack on my blog updates! Song for the day will be No Turning Back by Israel Houghton, which has been a favourite at church lately!

Peace & love

A New Foreign Land

Guten tag!  I write to you from a smokey little grill across the street from my apartment.  The owner is this kind old Turkish man and is letting me borrow his Internet while I wait for mine to be installed in my apartment.  I live on a little street close to the Charlottenburg palace with lots of beautiful trails to walk on and plenty of little shops and cafes.  My apartment is way more than I could ever have asked for with high ceilings, wooden floors, and big windows and is situated in a hundred year old building.  

Let's see... I arrived in Berlin on Sunday.  A woman who works for the school came and picked me up.  As I jumped in the taxi to escape the blistering 40 Celsius weather and head to my flat, Hot in Here by Nelly  was playing on the radio.  How appropriate I thought!! Here is a remake of that song... Hot in here by jenny owen young.  If you do some YouTube stalking, you may find a version of my old band singing it!  Pardon that rabbit trail.  When I got to my apartment, the lady from the relocation service, her husband, and my landlord were there to greet me.  Once I signed all the rental agreements, found some lunch at a bakery down the street, I crashed in my new bed for a good solid fifteen hours.

The last few days have been quite busy getting myself settled in Berlin.  Each day has had an adventure of its own such as getting a bank account, Internet and a phone, navigating through the U bahn stations or clearing my shipment through customs.  I am very thankful that I have had people to go with me to accomplish these tasks and most importantly, translate for me!  I have found it funny and challenging at the same time to have people start speaking to me in German all the time with my polite apology of "I'm so sorry.  I don't speak German" and my deer-in-the-head-lights expression.  In Uganda this wasn't a problem.  I clearly looked like a foreigner and people assumed correctly that I couldn't speak Luganda but here, I look like I could speak German.  It doesn't help that my surname is German either.

On another note of trying to survive in a foreign land, going for groceries has been quite the ordeal!  Thankfully there are two supermarkets in my neighbourhood that I can walk to. The first day I brought my backpack, a huge cloth bag, and a long list of food items fully prepared to stalk up my kitchen cupboard.  Unfortunately, I failed to think that maybe all of the labels of the food would be in German too!  Needless to say, I didn't get everything on my shopping list that day.  I stuck with the things that I knew I was buying.  I wasn't going to attempt buying spices that I couldn't identify for that could end badly.  Unluckily, I bought a jar of sweet pickles thinking they were dill.  GROSS!

Well that has pretty much been it besides having dinner with the assistant head teacher at the primary school and going for countless walks to get myself orientated.  Anyway, lots of new things!  I feel very grateful for how easy the transition has been so far and all the assistance I have had.  I'll keep you posted with my latest adventures, awkward moments, and ramblings.

Peace and love