It's been aaaaages since my last blog post, I think about 2months. Loads has happened between October and now, like travelling to home and back. Here is a piece of what I started writing about my first impressions when I arrived at my family in September:
"After my lovely greeting at the train station, we walked around the harbour and had an icecream on the water’s edge. We then strolled through the city centre before returning home and finally unpacking my bag
for the last time! Greatest feeling when you know you can finally settle in
somewhere and call it home for at least a year. We had a yummy braai
outside that evening, where I realised Germany is a little colder than Italy in
the evenings...haha. We toasted to my arrival and I practised memorising the
kids’ names in my head. They are: Merle (8yrs old), Sinje (7yrs old), Arjen
(5yrs old) and Lenjo (nearly 4yrs old)....not your typical German names! I was also quite nervous that my German
was going to be hideous and that everyone might be super difficult to
understand...complete opposite actually. I understood absolutely everything and
it was a complete breeze with trying to talk, compared to the terrible Italian
I’d been speaking the last 3months. On Sunday we went to Radolfzell, a town
near to Konstanz and we chilled on the lake, canoeing, swimming, tanning etc. The
first week I just spent sorting out admin and getting used to driving on the
right side of the road. The area is really beautiful and safe, the children
play outside in the road and most of their friends live a couple houses away
from each other, there are many parks and pathways to go for runs in the
mornings, the University is around the corner with loads of things to do there
and sport to play, the bus stop is near my house and takes just 20mins to get to
the centre of town."
All of that is still true, except that my town is a lot colder this time round, with it snowing nearly every day now. My kids are still wonderful and we built our first snow man together last week. I have to borrow all my host mom's snow gear since I have nothing of a sort to keep me from freezing to death. Driving is a bit more hazardous as I have to get used to driving on slippery snow and scraping it all off the car before starting. We can also go skiing on a hill round the corner from our house and may even go to a ski resort for a weekend soon.
My frisbee group has gotten bigger since the University term started here and I've found a couple people who have been to Cape Town and some who recognise me from the Worlds tournament in Japan. I've been a bit less motivated to go out and see the town properly and make some new friends, since its seriously too darn cold for me to function outside...but I'm slowly getting over that. I've been knitting (like a typical granny) a couple headbands and scarves for myself this winter and planning mine and Felix's trip to Paris. He arrives in less than 3weeks, so that's kept me pretty busy and excited for the time being. I still miss home quite a bit, since it's Christmas month and I won't be home, but luckily my Christmas plans are pretty darn fun too...(more on that in a future post).
