Kieler Woche and apartment ads

Morgen,
***looks like I am writing a personal message to Morgen but I'm pretty sure this is how you say 'good morning' casually***

I accomplished one thing on my list. I got a phone plan! I need to go get more data for it though, 200mb is not going to cut it. That might work once I get an apartment that has internet, but for now, my phone is it! I think I am on a pay-as-you-go type thing for minutes 9cents/minute and free texts to German phone numbers. It seems to be working, but who knows. I'll have to go in today and annoy the salesperson with my lack of german knowledge again. I might be able to whip out the phrase 'I want more data' but probably not.

This weekend was nice, on Friday it was rainy when Malia and I went to watch the Germany vs Greece soccer game, so we ended up inside an italian food place. good gnocchi and it was funny to watch the game and see everyone's reactions to things. The way the cut together the footage is hilarious, a lot of focus goes to the players facial expressions after any play, good or bad. And then they keep replaying them. but, huzzah, Germany won, so maybe it will be nice out for their next game and I can watch it outside/in a bar/with German people.

Saturday, we went to Kieler Woche in Kiel. It was a large street fair/festival thing. There was some damage on the train tracks for the direct route to Kiel from Hamburg, so we went through Lubeck. It was about 2 hours travel time instead of 1 ish. Not too bad, and I love trains so it was fine. Kieler Woche was massive. It had a few rides, power tower type thing, and other carnival games as well as food stalls, beer stalls and these mixed drink stands with bowls of mixed punch things like sangria but all different kinds. They also had tons of cone-fries.  HEAVEN.  I'll post pictures soon, once I get them off my camera.

I have sent out a bunch of emails to people for apartment sublets. I have found some really weird/disturbing things in the posts. Nudists, polyamorous roommates, people desperate for pierced asian roommates, etc. One of the posts was looking for a super liberal, unique, open minded roommate. I said I was finishing art school, no response, apparently not hip enough. I did find one place and the person responded and seems nice, but she is a flight attendant and will rarely be home. I was hoping for some roommates who would be around and want to be my friend, but we'll see.

I think I am going to start playing volleyball on Sundays. there is a sports place that some people at work go to and it is 8 euro a month to join and they have vollleyball and Zumba. I couldn't go yesterday because I wore some new shoes that were super comfortable in the store and then they attacked my ankles. So I'm in healing mode. That was a bad first day, had to buy thick ankle bandaids and hobble around the office. Stupid fake comfortable ballet flats. Couldn't really sleep last night because I accidentally slept for most of the day. oops. It was raining and I think I may be too comfortable with taking my time to explore Hamburg. It feels really different this time because I don't have to cram all my sight-seeing into 4-5 days like last summer. I have six months, so it feels like I can afford to lay around in my giant man-shirt sometimes.

Tasks to complete:

-get more data
-get an apartment
-get a bank account
-get friends
-plan weekend trips

bis später,
michelle

arrival

Hallo,

I arrived safely in Germany. I am typing this on a German keyboard and the z and y are switched, sorry if I type things strangely. (strangelz looks like it would mean something totally different like strangles in internet meme lingo)

I sat next to a German lady on the plane from Cleveland to Newark, she was nice and warned me not to eat any of the German bread, chocolate or cheese because I would become addicted and could never leave. She said she purposefully loses ten pounds before visiting her relatives in Germany for 3 weeks. she says she gains about 3-4 pounds each trip. As I will be here longer than 3 weeks, I can expect to become MASSIVE. I sat in Newark for about 5 hours and then got on the plane to Germany. My luggage and I made it safely to Hamburg and Xenia, a coworker, met me at the airport. We stopped by the Landor office to pick up sheets for my bed and I met a few people. Everyone here is super nice, like alarmingly nice. I will have to become a better person. After we picked up the sheets, we went to Malia's, cincinnati co-worker in Hamburg. I tried to stay up for as long as possible, but ended up napping for a long time after my shower. We went to work together this morning and at my desk there was a bunch of stuff: notebook, headphones, maps and travel info about Hamburg, candy and flowers! woooo swag.

This office is very different from Cincinnati as there are roughly 50 people here compared to the 180 ish in the cincy office. I went around and met everyone, which would have taken foreverrrrr in Cincinnati and promptly forgot everyone's name. I will try again tomorrow, or creepily memorize everyone from their work photos online.

I need to work on my German, seeing as I don't really have any skills right now because pretty much everyone in the office speaks German to one another and I feel stupid not being able to contribute. Plus their English is better than mine, so I am pretty much losing all around with regards to languages.

I am looking for apartments and will try to contact some people today/this weekend about seeing their places and meeting them. I feel weird about that too since the ads are in German and I will probably have to respond in English. Some of the ads specify that they would like a German-speaking roommate. I will have to win them over with my charm and ability to recite German numbers.

Tasks to complete soon:

-figure out how to get a phone plan with data so I can use maps and stuff
-get an address
-get a bank account
-get friends

Auf Wiedersehen
(still had to look that up for spelling)