Das Australien

Still no snow, but more and more frost on the ground.. which makes it difficult to walk anywhere without slipping over - annoying and it has no purpose.

Wednesday - My first day of independence since arriving, I took the train or "zug" from Roggentin to the centre of Rostock for my first German lesson. Many Germans starred at me once I was on Roggentin train station, as it is very small and everyone knows everyone in the village, so I was "the other" as my high school English teacher would say. After arriving in Rostock I blended into the morning commotion and seemed like everyone else. The German school is only a 2 minute walk from the station, thank goodness otherwise I would freeze in the sub zero temperatures with my inadequate Australian ski parker - note to self get a warm German coat before it snows!

The German lesson was quite scary at first since my teacher only spoke in German and very quickly might I add.. then he laughed and said "I'm just kidding, you should have seen your face!". I slowly learnt all the alphabet and numbers, then verbs and important words such as hello (guten tag/hallo), bye (tschüs), please/sorry (bitte) and thanks (danke) - which I already knew.

In the evening I went with my host family to a friends house for a warm 
German dinner.We had some weird cheese and meat soup, which tasted amazing,
and thick dark bread, yum. For about 3 hours they spoke in German and occasionally
said a sentence or two in English so I could be involved.. it was very irritating not
being able to just listen and follow the conversation, so I just played with the 
family dog - a massive old English sheep dog.


Thursday - AUSTRALIA DAY - Though it really didn't feel like it with no sun blaring into
my bedroom window like every other 26th of January, this Australia day would be different.
I did my usual routine though, sticking some tacky aussie tattoos on my arms and
being as aussie as possible with limited resourses (shown below). It felt particularly
weird to be learning German on Australia day but I went along with it since I need
to learn to be able to survive a year here. Once home from an intense German lesson
which frustrated the heck out of me, I asked my host parents if I could make them an
aussie dessert (pav). They were very happy for me to and were excited for a little
taste of "Australien". I also taught them the aussie chant; aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi!

Note: Snow predicted for the weeked, yay!
Tschüs :)