Anmeldung

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First, I would like to say I am already having difficulties writing this in English after talking the whole day in Germany or ëasy-to-understand, Germa-friendly"English. Sometimes when I'm talking to Germans in English, i purposefully make grammar mistakes or phrase things oddly so that they will understand what I'm talking about.

I am all settled into Braunschweig now. I am staying with the Vollrath family and they live about fifteen minutes outside the city. Their house is quite nice and I have my own room. They have two sons, Jahn and Hannes. Jahn lives elsewhere in Braunschweig, so I'm staying in his room and Hannes attends the University in Hildesheim (about 45 min away). He is the one who picked me up at the train station and showed me the city. For some reason, I really wanted a hamburger, so we went to the Americano restaurant. Afterward, we went for ice cream and mine was marzipan flavored. :o)

More details on the city and the various buildings will come later when I have pictures, but it rained yesterday, and I wanted the pictures to be pretty.

Today I visited the school to start on the various paperwork, but found out that nothing can be done until I have an address (which I do, but it is not official until next Wednesday). Just a little peek into the German bureaucratic system - I have to take my rental agreement to an office in the city and announce that I am living there. They will stamp a paper that I will take to the immigration office, and then the immigration office will perform a background check (since I have previously held a German visa), meaning that they will sometimes call Lüneburg and make sure that I was not in jail or arrested for a crime. Once that is cleared up, they will stamp another paper that I will then take to the bank and open up a checking account. I take the bank number to the school and they sign and stamp another paper and send it to the school board of Lower Saxony. Then I go back to the immigration office to prove that I have a place to live and a way to support myself. THEN, if everything is in order I will get my study visa. Then, i have to come back to the school with my visa and sign paperwork that says I have never been arrested for any crime (everyone working with children has to sign one). But i digress . . .

The school is really nice. The inside has artwork hanging everywhere instead of ugly lockers like american high schools. There are, of course, lots of students and teachers. I met a few of them, one of which tried to talk to me in a southern accent (really amusing!). It will be hard to remember all of their names.

Afterward, we went shopping at their walmart (REDI-Markt) and got some food. Then we went to Aldi because they have balsamic flavored potato chips that I like and guess what i found there. A RICE COOKER!! It was only 14 euro too. I asked Hannes if they had them in Germany, and he had never seen one before. It's absolutely perfect.

Herr Vollrath came home in the afternoon. We drank some tea and talked; i even got to meet some of the neighbors. Tonight I ate dinner with him and his wife. They cooked white sausage, which I was a little nervous about, but it was actually really good! Then we watched a German television show called Krime (Crime) which is like Law and Order.



Things I have seen or liked:

The dead mouse their cat Tiffy brought me this morning
a man carrying a rabbit with him on the train
white sausage
little German children skipping off to school
a pop art building in downtown Braunschweig
German tea
my rice cooker

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Comments

[Lydia]

things I have seen or liked
Ha!! I feel like I'm about to read a Louisa Mae Alcott book. keep it up. More. Need more. Love you, Lydia