Finding my Feet

Well I have been here for 10 days now, I would love to tell you that I have done so much, but unfortunately after I arrived and my body realised the stress had disappeared, it decided to let a cold in instead.  I knew it was a good buy picking up extra Lemsips at the airport.  I passed the cold onto Uwe where it mutated into Man-Flu, and as such we didn't get too much done except visit the supermarket a few times, but at least my belongings arrived in one piece.

The view from the supermarket car park is somewhat nicer than that of Tescos in Milton Keynes!

I had my final oral assessment for L193 and got stage fright so not really anticipating a good result there lol.  It only lasted two minutes and consisted mainly of me saying "erm" and "wie, bitte?" which bummed me a bit because as soon as it was over I knew exactly what to say :( I have the L130 assessment tomorrow morning and this one is longer and a group session, I have decided there is no point worrying about it though, what will be , will be.

Uwe went back to work on Wednesday, and I haven't had the confidence to get out on my own yet, but tomorrow we are going to take the bus into town together so that I am familiar with where I am supposed to get off and not get lost, and my Monday challenge is to go buy some groceries.

We have friends birthdays to go to both tonight and tomorrow night which should be fun.

Ich bin hier!!

Well on a very rainy, very English, Tuesday afternoon Uwe and I got on a plane at Birmingham International.  We arrived in Stuttgart a cuplr of hours later and even though it is nearly October it was over 20 degrees at 8pm and hotter than the entire summer in England this year!

Uwe's parents picked us up from the airport and we went back to dinner at their house, where his mother had prepared my favourite Swabian dish of Maultaschen with Kartoffelnsalat accompianied by copious amounts of local white wine.   I was sufficiently tipsy enough to even speak some very bad German, about the above weather situation - no I don't need a passport for someone to tell my nationality - which everyone was suitably impressed with, or at least they seemed to be through my wine goggles.

View from outside the Bürgeramt

Yesterday we headed to the Bürgeramt to register my residency here.  The only bit I understood was really when she asked Uwe if I understood German, lol.  So far so good, but it still doesn't seem quite real yet.

Stresssssssed....

Oh God >.< The hellish few days of nasty stomach bug and sleep depriving migraines have certainly not helped anything, but I did get out the house today for a long walk and a nice lunch with my Mum.

At least I have a passport and I have sorted all the bills and other tedious phonecalls that have had to be made, going to drink a glass of wine, watch something silly and try to relax tonight and then tomorrow I am going to be a whirlwind of industrialism around here!

Time for a small update...

Well it is just under 5 weeks until I move and I have made a start on things, I have been furiously been copying CDs to my PC so that I can sell my collection at the car boot, I really hadn't realised how big my collection was! I estimate it at about 400, so even if I sell them all for 25p each that would be a nice sum.  I still need to sort through my books and I have a mountain of shredding that needs to be done, I could probably keep a hamster in a home for 3 years =P

In other news I got my result for U211 and I managed a Pass 2, which is brilliant for someone that had thoughts of giving up right at the start, so I am feeling quite proud of myself for even making it to the end let alone getting such a good grade, and I wasn't that far off a distinction!  My new course books have arrived for E301: The Art of English which is all about the creativity in the English we use everyday as well as in the more traditional literary sense. The assignment booklet won't be available until the beginning of September but I have looked at last years and they don't look so scary, fingers crossed for this year too then :)

Also a letter turned up yesterday from the Council and my German evening class tutor has nominated me for an Adult Continuing Education learner award! No idea what that actually is but I get to go to an awards ceremony about 10 days before I leave, how exciting!!

Anyways that is it for now, I may write again before I leave but if I remain quiet I hope you'll forgive me :)

The First Goodbye

On Thursday evening as it would have been our normal evening for a German class most of us got together for our usual end of term curry.  The food and conversation were flowing freely and Rosa our teacher managed to charm the waiters into giving her one of the gorgeous wine glasses they had.  At the end of the meal a fuss was made over my leaving, which was quite sad as we have been together learning for about 2 years and these were some of the first people I had social interaction with after my breakdown and they have helped me grow so much.  Oddly the class is pretty much all men apart from Mum and me, I say oddly because I have done quite a number of evening classes over the years and women have always made up the majority.  I'm not sure if that is related but they have also been the best people I have taken classes with, which is why I extended an invitation for them to look me up if they happen to find themselves in Stuttgart and was even more pleased when they immediately started planning a class trip to see me some time next year lol.

I got a lot of hugs goodbye and felt very special... unlike my Mum who spent all of Friday being sick which she is attributing directly to the food she ate =P

Progress Non Update

Well I wanted to be able to come back and tell you all sorts of things I've been up to in preparation for the big move... but well I haven't really done anything.  I spent last weekend in bed feeling sorry for myself having a stomach bug followed by a migraine and decided that as I only have a few days left being 32 that I could spend those wasting time and start properly putting effort in as a 33 year old, as 33 year olds seem much more sensible than 32 year olds!

So instead I have been drinking Mojito's with their minty summer goodness and actually learning some German "einen Mojito, bitte."  I have been going back over some of my earlier German books to give myself a boost in confidence with how much I have actually learnt, in the face of the newer stuff which I am struggling to get to grips with.

One of the multiple choice exercises in the book was a picture of a sign saying "Ausfahrt" (a) excursion, (b) Motorway exit or (c) rude noise.  I must admit to giggling at those signs and couldn't stifle my hysterics when Uwe's Mum asked an innocent "Hattet ihr eine gute Fahrt?" on our arrival back in Esslingen from our long weekend in Munich.  I always have a quick glance around the room when my German teacher says "könnte" for flickers of amusement but it seems just me, although as I sit next to my own Mum during the lessons I have to contain that more for fear of getting smacked and tutted at!

The Final Countdown!

Well you know what it's like when you haven't spoken to a friend for a while when you said you'd call them. The longer it goes on the more you feel bad about it and think they're gonna be annoyed at you for not calling, so you avoid it just that little bit longer. And the silly thing is when you do finally talk it doesn't matter!

So last week I had my U211 exam and I had been quite terrified about it but I came out feeling much better, although now I have had a chance to think about it I have subsequently remembered so many things I forgot to say, but they don't expect TMA quality from a 3 hour exam... I hope...

Then this weekend just gone my Brother got married and it was lovely to catch up with quite a lot of family I haven't seen for a very long time.  Uwe was here and managed to survive the mad pirate (Somerset) relatives, so much so that when he got home we booked my one-way fight to Germany!! Yes it was supposed to be July but now it is 20th September, my course was quite a lot more full on than I had anticipated especially with the revision towards the end and I also needed my passport as ID to be able to sit it. Unfortunately at the point I realised my passport had expired I didn't want to chance sending it off for fear of not having it returned in time.

So that's me pretty much up to date, can't think of anything else much exciting that has occurred.  I have now realised that I have just over 12 weeks to get myself all sorted... oh god!  I need to write myself a big list to tick things off and then just jolly well get on with it... oh god!  Ideally I want to chuck/sell/give away most of my belongings so I can just board the plane with 2 suitcases. Now where's my shredder?!

I shall keep you better informed from here on in! I notice I have a half finished book review for Great Expectations I need to post too lol... ah wells, toodle pip!