I woke up this morning to find it was snowing. Apparently that’s normal for Itzehoe at this time of year. It was also very cold – apparently down to -10 last night!
But Germany doesn’t stop just because it has more snow than usual. I still had to do Work Experience at Tegelhörn, and Arne still had to go to Gymnasium.
I didn’t see Arne this morning though – Frau Carstens explained that he doesn’t start until 11 today, and so he was still “schlafen”!
Work Experience was a bit easier for me today – the Kinder are getting used to the fact that I can’t understand fast German, and I think the staff there are too!
There was no journey down to the sportshall this morning – so I got to learn the normal daily routine for the Kindergarten.
Nothing really much happens for the first hour – the Kinder are playing. They managed to get me playing some sort of game which includes small, wooden mice attached to a piece of string. Each mouse a different colour. There was a dice with different colours on each side. Everyone put their mouse in the middle of the table. Luckily one of the Lehrerins was able to explain to me what was going on, what they were saying to me.
One of the Kinder took charge of the dice
At 9:30ish the staff and Kinder all had Frühstück. Including me. Everyone brings their own (a packed breakfast, not a packed lunch)! Actually, its more of a second breakfast. Then the Kinder continue playing their usual games.
At 10:30, the Kinder gather round the middle of the room and sing a couple of (German) songs, and Frau Rickert gets out the calendar and tells tham that “Gestern war Montag, was kommt nach Montag”. They all shouted… “Dienstag”. Well… some of them did, anyway. Some of them shouted “Mittwoch”, and I also heard “Donnerstag”, “Freitag”, “Samstag”, “Sonntag”, and… “Montag”. So some of them think that Monday is the day after Monday. Great!
At 11, they all go outside to the Spielplatz for an hour. There’s a big sign on the exit to the steps leading up to it – “Achtung. Die Treppe kann glatt sein.” They weren’t that bad… for me!
The Spielplatz was covered in snow and ice – the whole place is, because the snow from last month still hasn’t melted. On top of that there was some snow overnight and it was still snowing at this time.
At 12, everyone goes inside and gets collected by their Eltern. I headed off to meet Arne back at the Gymnasium.
Arne had one lesson left of the day. Today, it was “Biologie”. Not being a biology student, I kept quiet. What also confused me was the reference to “DNS”. I can only assume it to be the German abbreviation for “DNA”. As far as I am concerned, “DNS” stands for “Domain Name Server”, a term which refers to how computers know what the website addresses mean and lead to!
The afternoon, was normal again. I spent it reading. Then, after Abendessen we got in the car and headed for the Bowling center.
There, we did some… bowling. Its a shame Gisela didn’t join in, she just sat, watched and took photos. I decided it would be better to join in. I sat down and waited for the screen to tell me it was my turn. I picked up a ball, and aimlessly aimed it vaguely in the direction of wherever it was supposed to go. It (somehow) worked.
I’m starting to get the hang of hearing German all the time now. I am starting to understand a few more things. My replies are still usually either “Erm” (when I don’t understand), or “Ja” (when I do understand).
Unfortunatley, I have to take twice as long as everyone else to say anything, because for some reason I can think of the Greek for everything that I want to say before I can think of the German. In some cases, I can only think of the Greek for what I want to say but not the German.
Gute nacht!
