Tuesday 7 February 2017

Update on my German life

Hey everyone,

I’ll start off by saying that I am terribly sorry that I haven’t written a post in a few weeks, this is due to being extremely busy! And when I’m not busy I’m sleeping. Time has gone incredibly fast, it is insane that next week on Tuesday (the 14th) marks one month in Germany. However at the same time it feels like I arrived yesterday as everyday I am exposed to more and more new aspects of  German life.

I was thinking about the best way ti describe the last few weeks, and describing the main events in bullet point form would be the best way.

-       New Zealand presentation in English. During my first English lesson, my English teacher asked me if I could prepare a presentation on the ‘Culture Shock’ I encountered when I first arrived in Germany. I described that the windows in Europe are very different to New Zealand (Instead of just opening outwards they tilt outwards as well), this was a shock for me when I first opened the windows in my host families house, the long hours of school (8am-5pm some days) and in Germany many families have their main meal at lunch time and a light meal at night. Howevr the biggest shock I received although I knew it was coming was the driving on the other side of the road!! I have to be extremely careful, as I have caught myself looking the wrong way before I cross. During my presentation I was amazed at how interested people were about New Zealand, it was surprisingly nice to see that people are wanting to find out about a different culture.

-       Aerobics Class (25/01) Katja and I were invited along to an aerobics class. This was very exciting for me, and also awesome to experience. Although I was very bad at the moves because I couldn’t quite understand all of the instructions, it was a lot of fun and really good fitness. I am hoping that we will go again.

-       University Trip to Mainz (26/01) Today with all of the Year 12’s (equivalent to the Year 13’s in New Zealand) travelled to Mainz, a city an hours drive from Landau to attend the unvirsitys open day. It was cool to see how a German university works and what one looks like. It is very similar to a New Zealand university however the buildings are a lot older.

-     Wolfsburg trip with Werner (04/02) The weekend that has just passed, I travelled with my host father Werner up to the North of Germany to a city named Wolfsburg. It was an amazing weekend celebrating Claude (Werner’s girlfriends birthday) and getting to know everybody better. During my time there I went horse riding on Claude’s daughter Stella’s horse and we also visited the Autostadt (Wolfsburg is the home of Volkswagen). I had a terrific time and I will definetly jump at the chance at visiting again in the near future.







In the near future I am also I am also wanting to visit a friend, Laura that lives in Saarbrucken a town that is an hour away from Landau. It would be awesome to see her again, however it would be very weird as our situations have flipped. She was in Queenstown for her exchange last year, and now I’m in Germany for my exchange.

I am also hoping to visit the Landau Zoo this weekend for the first time, in order to meet the director who I have spoken to about completing my Duke of Edinburgh volunteer service. This is a perfect opportunity for me as I love working with or for animals, and while doing this I will be completing my Duke of Edinburgh Award, it’s a win win.

Last thing from me, it is getting a lot warmer! It is no longer -5 to -10 degrees, it has warmed up to at least 5 degrees. I am very happy about this as I can do more outside.

So that’s it for now, hopefully it won’t be too long before my next post so keep checking my blog!!

Jasmine x



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