After 3 exhaustive flights and nearly 30 hours of travel I have finally made it to Bad Iburg Germany! A small town with a population of approximately 10,000. I arrived quite late at night and very tired but nevertheless, my excitement spurred whatever vigour I had in me and I came out of the arrivals door with a big smile ready to greet my host family and begin my adventure in Deutschland!
Even though it was night time, the town was lit up with a profusion of Christmas lights around the houses. The place I live is incredibly beautiful, surrounded by tall trees and quaint houses, which makes me feel like i'm in some sort of german fairytale. The historical town of Bad Iburg is also very lovely. Simple things like walking around the streets, meeting new people, hearing a completely different language being spoken around me is something i've really come to value in my experience so far. It can be a bit isolating not knowing what people around are saying but i'm slowly getting used to it and as I learn more German hopefully i'll be able to follow at least some, of what I hear.
Last night my host family took me to a small Christmas market in town, which is something i've only seen in films so it was a new experience I thoroughly enjoyed.
I also started school this week. Not going to lie, I was really nervous as I have minimum knowledge of German and I didn't know how people were going to react to me but as it turned out I had nothing to be worried about, and i've already made a lot of new friends who are immensely interested in New Zealand. School has been quite hard in terms of understanding what the teacher is saying but I don't need to do the school work here, or acquire any credits, so my goal is to simply learn more German and converse in the next 3 months! It's very different from my school in New Zealand, which I find really interesting so i'm constantly asking questions about everything. For example, they have 20 minutes break after every class and they don't use technology like laptops or phones. One piece of advice given to me was to simply put myself out there as much as possible especially in school. Talk to new people, converse and learn as much as possible. I think because of my natural curiosity I didn't struggle with this and i'm not scared to go up to people and talk but I really do suggest any exchange student to do this or else you will definitely regret it!
So this has been my life thus far, my host family are so lovely and i'm really grateful for them. My host dad's english is comparable to that of my german ability so on afternoons after school we both sit in the living room and learn english and german respectively!
Christmas and the new year is approaching very soon, which i'm really excited about! I can't wait for Andreas and Elizabeth's family to come and celebrate with us, I think a German christmas will be very, very fun and different from a New Zealand Christmas! I've always wanted to have a white christmas so hopefully it will snow!
As far as the new years, we are going to spend it in Hamburg, which i'm really excited about. In complete honesty, this year has been an absolute rollercoaster for me but I can't think of a better place to welcome the new year than where I am right now...
Until next time!
Alisha x
Until next time!
Alisha x
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