(First of all an advice for all native and “half-native” speaker: I don’t say sorry for my German-English, I just say: have fun! I hope you understand my lines 😉 )
After my ten month journey, I touched German ground about five weeks ago. Almost everybody knows what happened abroad, but what was going on in my live the last weeks at home?
You find the answer in the following report: 🙂
My parents are living in the outskirt area of Leipzig, in a little and peaceful town with a tiny market and some shops, where you get your daily needed stuff. To be home during summer is great. At the moment all trees and bushes are green, the grain fields are yellow-brownish, birds tweeting everywhere more or less loudly all day long, almost every flower is blooming and from June to August you get different kind of delicious berries.
Since my arrival, my home is a big green tent in my parent’s garden. Living in a tent is quite an adventure. For me especially at night. Last week I woke up around 3 am cause of a strange noise. Something or somebody was rustling in the scrub next to me. I decide to close my eyes and try to fall asleep again. Never would I leave my bed to check what’s going on on the other side of these two thin layers of fabric, the only material that separates you from the “enemy”. 😀 But I think the visitor was just a little curious hedgehog. 🙂
But not joking: It’s quite creepy when the outer layer of your tent is moving and you don’t know exactly why…. My solution: I pretend to sleep, close my eyes and ears and hope that the danger will go away as quickly as it came. 🙂
But there are also really funny situations. For example when birds using the tent as a landing strip and go for a tiny little walk on your “roof”. Their “tap tap tap”-sound while going from one side to the other is really cute. 🙂
And maybe you know, I’m not selfish at all and I like to share. ( 😉 ) In my tent I share my space with different kind of fly, moth, mosquitos, bees, bumblebees, little and medium-size spiders, ants and curious bugs and beetles. The evening before yesterday a medium-size spider crawled in the space left between my face and my book…, arrrgggghhhh…, this was just “medium-size” funny…. 🙂 In the evening my e-book or laptop is the brightest source of light, that means ants, moth and mosquitos come together and using the screen as a party light and dance floor.
But finally, what I’m doing all day long: I enjoy my life…. Hahaha….
But seriously, I have to do some paperwork. I communicate with my bank, my health and other insurances and I did my annual tax declaration. I said “Hi” to my social worker at the job agency. Here you have to fill out a copious amount of forms, file some online applications and discuss what happens the next weeks and month. Then I needed more than a week to solve my phone problems and to understand that my Asian mobile and my German SIM card aren’t compatible (including hours of internet research and going to ask six different sales guys in six different mobile shops for getting six different ideas why it doesn’t work). Furthermore I had my annual check by my dentist and made other medical appointments.
We had a big family party, I visit my grandparents, my grandma, my cousin with her new-born, another cousin’s family, friends and I went to a birthday party. My two years old nephew spent a weekend with us and for next Saturday we organised our annual “baby/toddler party” where all my cousins with family come together for chatting, jumping in the pool and to have a barbecue. And this was not the last family gathering this summer… 🙂
Furthermore I spent some hours to clean my grandma’s attic. I have to remove my boxes filled with my “materialistic life” from my parents place. After cleaning the room of four or five decades of dust, we set up a new wooden floor last Saturday. Most of the time I assisted my cousin, but I also tried to saw, hammer and tighten the srews. 🙂 After checking my stuff again and think about if I could donate a few things, I already started to move the first boxes from one place to the other. Some shelves and pieces of furniture I gave my cousin, so here we had to organise also day and time for the pick-up.
Why I’m doing this and not looking for a nice little flat here in my hometown? Surprise, surprise…. For everybody who don’t know yet, I’m going back to Asia end of September/beginning of October. Yes, it’s already decided. I’ll book the flight next week. There is no fixed plan yet, details are following as soon as they exist.
In my “free time” I try to take interesting and creative pictures from our garden flowers, try to find some time for doing some paintings, reading books, helping my mum to prepare the berries and cherries for her self-made jam, watering the vegetables and plants and once I mowed the lawn. And obviously there was a UEFA European Championship to follow. 🙂 My new idea is to learn how to sew. I already spent some time to understand a sewing machine and surfing in the internet looking for some easy make bags/skirts/etc. for beginners. I was already several times in the city centre of Leipzig and spent some times in the library and a few hours in my favourite bookshop. 🙂
And of course: I try to exercise English every day. Doing some grammar lessons, reading English books, watching English movies and practice to write and talk. I think there is some progress, but it’s still a looooong and sometimes frustrating way for me. But of course I’m still motivated to improve my skills. 😀
No report without some lines about the weather. 😉
It’s the warmest season in Germany at the moment, but unfortunately this doesn’t mean it is warm… The last five weeks we had almost every weather condition you can imagine: Thunderstorm with and without hail. Really cold, normal cold and warm wind – from a gentle to a very strong breeze. Blue, sunny skies without clouds or just a few of them, greyish-blue skies without any sunlight and dark grey skies with no sun at all. We had freezing cold rainy days with 15 degree, warm rainy days with 25 degree and hot sunny days with 30 degree.
And it’s really fascinating: everything can happen every time: you can have the grey-cold-rainy combination on Monday and the hot-sunny-blue sky one on Tuesday. Or the day starts nice warm and sunny and during the afternoon big dark rainy clouds approaching and it starts raining again – like yesterday – or the opposite happens: the weather changes from dark to bright. 🙂 After these month of stable Asian weather conditions I’m not use to have these quick changes anymore. However, the best preparation for these up and downs: count everyday with everything and have always shorts, a rain jacket and socks readily available when you are going out. 🙂
Here is another, for me really interesting fact: Additional to these weather chaos, I’m still “time-confused”. In the evening I have no feeling at all what time it is. For month it was getting dark between 6 and 6:30 pm. Since I’m back it’s still bright between 9 and 10 pm. I mean it’s not really important to know what time it is, but I was often surprise when I thought it’s still afternoon but your watch tells you: No, look, it’s already 8 pm. 🙂
However, I’m coming to the end this time. I still want to say sorry to all guys I didn’t manage to contact yet. You are getting some lines the next days, promised!
Take a peek at the pics if you are in the mood and have some time. They are just showing my living situation at the moment. 🙂
Take care and big hug to everyone!
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