Actually, it might have said "Welcome in Cologne/Bonn airport." Either way, I thought they needed a different preposition, and was mildly amused at how those crap translations happen in a country where they speak German as well as they do here. But I guess that's why I'm here!
Background: Just graduated from WashU with my degree in German, going to spend a year in Germany assistant teaching English at a Gymnasium (German high-school equivalent, college prep), where my students will all know that you say "Welcome to," before I start a German PhD program at UNC/Duke next fall.
The adventure starts with horrible flights, lots of running through JFK, bursting into tears once I make it on the plane, rushing again through the Paris airport, arriving in Köln to discover my luggage is still in New York (still no idea where it is, the clean laundry is down to 2 shirts, 2 pairs of underwear, and 1 pair of socks eeeeeeek), calling the parents from the Köln airport to cry some more, getting on a train and barely being able to stay awake, being terrified I'm going to miss my connection and wake up in Berlin, blah blah blah but I finally make it to Detmold! And within 24 hours I'm immediately plunged into that "Oh my goodness I love everything about Germany this is great I love everyone how amazing could this be" phase. Susanne (my Betreuungslehrerin, the English teacher at my gymnasium who is like my intro/guide/overall extremely helpful person) picks me up, takes me to my apartment, we meet my roommate, my room is huge and clean, my roommate takes me on a little tour of the city, I go home to "rest" and discover netflix, hulu, and grooveshark don't work in this country (but fratmusic.com does, and has a country section), Susanne picks me up again for dinner at her house, loans me sheets and a towel, takes me back home, and I pass out. Next morning she super-kindly takes me to appointments she's made with the Ausländeramt (office for getting documents for foreign ppl, they fingerprinted me!) and the bank, to open a German account so I can get paid (!!!), and everything is way easier than I expected.
Detmold is not as heinously picturesque and Tübingen was but is still pretty cutesy-German, and there is a Schloss (castle) in which an old Fürst (some sort of nobility, the translations for such words still elude me) still lives! Anyways, I'm in that I-love-Germany-phase probably because I live a stone's throw from the Innenstadt/Füßgängerzone (inner city/pedestrian zone) and have not had to take a bus anywhere yet and have already had delicious Bratwurst for lunch and Susanne is taking me to Ikea tomorrow! Desk lamp here I come.
Language-wise I'm also doing far better than ever before in Germany in terms of listening (duh) but I can't say anything that makes sense! I'll go to say something and a horrible rush of German comes out, some declined/conjugated, some not, verbs everywhere (German is very strict about where you can put it's verbs), my accent all over the place, and I've probably said a lot of dumb anglicisms like "I'm cold" instead of "It's cold to me," the former of which means I'm like a cold/unfeeling person...but better than saying "I'm hot" which roughly translates as "I'm horny" (can you say awkward?).
I was able to chat a little with Susanne today about what the hell I'm actually doing here, it sounds like I will truly be an assistant teacher, which is totally appropriate, doing a lot of small-group work with the kids, and if I have ideas for lessons or whatnot I can work them out with the teachers. So sounds not stressful but hopefully structured enough that I can actually learn a lot!
At the beginning of my attempt at blogging about Tübingen I posted my goals for my time in Germany; I believe they were "wear earrings every day" and "learn German." I'm gonna stick with both of those, perhaps in a month or so I'll add something really exciting like "put on mascara every day"...and now I will sit in my apartment and hope fervently that my doorbell rings soon and some nice man is waiting outside with my luggage!
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen