73 things I’ve learnt since I’ve been here...

It’s  l o n g  (and not just stuff I’ve learnt, in hindsight), so I’d advise finding sub-headings that interest you. These are, in this order:
What I’m like
Live-ability
Interests, Free time
The cold here
German language (and keyboards)
Culture (clash)
Money
Driving and other Germany bits and bobs
Just for fun
Other very important stuff


It has to be said, I’ve changed somewhat.

What I’m like
1. My family is SOOOO important to me.
2. I have had, am having, and will have a good life.
3. After spending years trying to keep in ‚touch‘ with half the world (whatever that’s worth...?), I’m pretty much all about quality not quantity in my relationships. I can’t and therefore won’t try keeping in touch with everyone, nor expect the same 'in return'. No pressure.
4. I’m keen on honesty in relationships, including about how important a relationship is.
5. If you don’t have time for me, you can just tell me so, I probably won’t be offended.
6. (In my opinion) talking face2face is kilometres better than communicating through pixels (phoning/skype being a convenient middle ground). Seeing smiles, and not smilies, is good for communication!
7. I’d much rather be asked, in future, what presents I would like, if someone wants to give me a present. It being a surprise is not as important to me, I don’t think, as enjoying receiving something very useful or longed-after.
8. I don’t think much of presents at Christmas: What’s a present if you feel you had to give it? (A present, I hear you say...indeed...but I think it would be more appreciated if there weren’t an expectation/pressure to give one in the first place.)
9. I have high standards, but am not a perfectionist – or if I was, that ship is sailing.
10. I like doing things all in one go, particularly big things, and dislike interrupting something before the end.
11. If there’s something more that could be said, I tend to want to say it.
12. I’m not exactly talented at interrupting and/or saying goodbye to people. This is perhaps not that appropriate for the German culture, where interruption seems to me to be more acceptable and widespread.
13. Self-deprecation no longer floats or sinks my boat.
14. I’m a happy kind of guy, optimistic.
15. I now laugh out loud sometimes, particularly at that thing with William and the milk...
16. I don’t think I’d be unhappy working as a cleaner, or postman, or whatever – a job where I have my mind free to think stuff over, pray, do what I like.
17. I don’t understand why Christian songs have minor chords.
18. I like singing songs I spontaneously put my own words to.
19. I don’t dislike simple food.
20. I prefer savoury to sweet food, and don’t really like eating sweet things that much (perhaps a result of eating too many sweets as a child).
21. If I don’t plan to be on the early side of ‚on time,‘ I will be late.
22. That being said, German punctuality is catching.
23. Given my time management (bad) habits (much more than just punctuality), it could’ve been a disaster if I’d gone straight to University after Sixth Form.
24. I have been much too busy in life, and need to learn to rest properly


Live-ability
25. One day my life will be OVER (I’ve not learnt this particularly, but realised a bit more).
26. A lot can happen in a day, but a year is not a long time (in my opinion). Perhaps in ten years I’ll say a decade is not a long time either.
27. Doing your best is not doing the most (especially at the cost of the best and most important). I can’t do everything.
28. One can organise things on a to do list into four boxes: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, neither nor. I found it helps.
29. The tactic of doing less important and/or urgent things first, as I know I’ll have to do the important and urgent things afterwards anyway, is not so great.
30. Don’t just say you’ll do something, do it; don’t do something you said you wouldn’t; think before you say you will or won’t. I’m not great with integrity.
31. Saying no is ok, a lot of the time.
32. Sometimes, you’ve just got to let it go. But sometimes, you’ve just got to stick with it, and be grateful, enjoy it, and feel fulfilled.
33. Self-discipline (this one’s out of a book, had to be) is doing what I can do today, in order to achieve tomorrow, what I couldn’t today.
34. I’m responsible for everything I do; it’s my choice, which advice I follow, and which I ignore.
35. Fear of making mistakes can be a big mistake. AND we’re human!
36. A nap, or even just lying down for 25 minutes after lunch, can do you a lot of good when youfeel tired.


Interests, Free time...
37. I love singing, especially with Tensing! (see post about my weekly routine for more about Tensing)
38. Aged 19 my voice seems to have ‚unbroken‘ – I can hit much higher notes than a year ago, though that may be something to do with having bad singing technique. I enjoy it anyhow...
39. I love playing football, and feel stupid for pretty much stopping in year 7 at Bishop Luffa.
40. I enjoy playing volleyball; thankfully, so do the Germans (more so than the British).
41. I love running, especially not in a straight line, and all the more especially through woods, well good fun.
42. I’m not so passionate about photography/taking photos as I thought (small number of photos on this blog bear witness to the fact).
43. TV can eat up your time like you’re in slow motion (and, er...often you are, or in no motion). I’m glad I was raised without broadcast TV programs at home (I’m having to learn to be disciplined aged 19).

The cold here
44. Heating stays on most of the day here (in the CVJM youth house anyway).
45. When you get ‚used to‘ (or as used to as one can) -20°C for a while, anything around or above 0°C feels warm (perhaps a bit potentially dangerous...)
46. In –20°C, girls‘ hair starts to freeze and go white. Crazy.

German language (and keyboards)
47. <German keyboards have the ° sign on them (perhaps as temperature can be more critical to them). They are qwertz keyboards, with ü, ö and ä, and, to my confusion at times, no pound sign. As the apostrophe is a lot less common in German, you have to use shift to type it, otherwise you can#t make yourself understood.
48. German Inverted commas work „like this,“ if you hadn’t already guessed.
49. In the German language, one says „four-and-twenty“, not „twenty-four“. Although I never experienced this at school, I still have problems with this now I’m in Germany, and have to watch out I don’t misorder numbers and understand 24 as 42.
50. My handwriting has got worse – my r’s and v’s are very similar, and (typical of your average, perhaps somewhat traditional German handwriting too actually) my n’s and u’s are resembling one another more and more.
51. German language has drawn so much influence from English that they now say downloaden („to...download“) and updaten (you’ve guessed it, you’re a language genius!).

Culture (clash)
52. British humour is, as far as I can tell, quite similar to German humour (with sarcasm particularly). French humour, however, is rather different to both – I can now spot French humour when I ‚use‘ it, but not describe exactly what it is. The main difference I found between French and German humour is that I find French humour funnier...which doesn’t help much.
53. The Germans have lots of fancy dress parties, with themes (e.g. for my joint Birthday party, ‚come dressed as twins,‘ or TV shows/Films, and plus the usual dressing up ideas).
54. As a foreigner, it feels like there’s a barrier to feeling perfectly comfortable in understanding what is said in some social situations; as for going to the bank for the first time, or worse still, the pharmacy, you soon realise you would do well to learn all relevant vocab, plus a bit extra, in your own time beforehand.
55. In the German culture, people tend to speak very directly to one another; I sometimes don’t.
56. After 4 or 5 months, the novelty of living somewhere, in a new culture, new wears off, and it doesn’t strike me at all that everyday is not ‚normal‘ (in my opinion, it’s never normal, just we think it is cos we’re used to it!)
57. In the German culture, you’re ‚allowed‘ to be (what in the British culture would be considered almost aggressive and really) critical of how things are done (particularly if there’s a feedback session at some event, also quite a German thing I think). I quite like that. Constructive, like.
58. Germany is coool. I might live here later. (This is no reference to the cold.)

Money
59. Not properly keeping track of how much money you’re spending where is a bad thing.
60. Ebay might just save less money than one can earn in the time spent looking through items, comparing the environmental impact of shipping from Hong Kong or the USA*, watching, bidding, bidding again, and again, and again, on items, paying, and leaving feedback. And that’s the fifth attempt, the first at which you weren’t outbid – simply because the auction ends at 3:46 am. Perfect. (* - I was joking, it’s just I sometimes give shipping's environmental effects a thought.)
61. I have in the past been somewhat alarmingly influenced by a drive to save money, even in very small amounts.
62. This feels (perhaps unnecessarily) rather controversial, but nonetheless: I’m not as Fairtrade as I used to be.


Driving and other Germany bits and bobs
63. It’s legal to drive around without a left wing-mirror in Germany (after perhaps smashing the one off the CVJM minibus whilst reversing out of the (fairly narrow) gate).
64. Should a volunteer smash the left wing-mirror to bits on the gate driving the minibus out, one doesn’t have to pay, thankfully (250€, madness!).
65. Should you be done for speeding in Germany (not deliberately, I just didn’t see the 60 (km/h!) sign, only the 80 beforehand) you pay 10, 15 or 20 € fine, nice and small, compared to the UK. :)
66. One has to pay small library fees in Germany; it’s worth it though, as you get the due date of borrowed items AND total value printed on a receipt you’re given, which makes you pretty grateful you had to pay so little (total value of my last set of loans: 203€). And library loans last 4 weeks.

Just for fun (but ‚truthful‘, I’m afraid)
67. Going five months without a haircut (from very short hair I’ll admit) is fine.
68. Going five months without a comb, also from very short hair, is just about ok.
69. Childhood habits die hard, such as tearing your nails...but I’ll get there one day, nails, you’ll see!
70. It’s great fun jumping from the tall ladder to your bed onto the floor when wearing a green top hat, and you feel it rise up a bit off your head, and then land back in place a split second after you land.
71. German joke: „Mum, what’s for dinner?“ „Mashed potatoes, sprouts and pooh, dear.“ „Eurgh, yuk, SPROUTS!“

Other very important stuff
72. My sister Emily makes awesome cards and calendars and has a creative gift in this area, in my opinion.
73.  I may well have a lot to learn, still.

At last an update! My weekly routine - Week 12

Well, I've had my busiest week yet (worked 63 hours), because of an evangelisation event called Jesus House, which ran Wednesday to Saturday of this week – there’s still a lot to be cleared away, washed up, etc, so I’ll be busy tomorrow...

...although I normally have Mondays free, and would spend the day preparing for and running an English club at the local Christian primary school in the afternoon, 14:40-15:25, for which I get paid a nice sum of 15€ (but I have to do preparation as well, so in the end it evens out at a pretty normal wage for an 18-year old, although I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be earning whilst (hopefully) learning how to teach.

I also have time on Mondays (or at least allegedly) for getting on with my TESOL course, which I’m still about a third of the way through – it seems to drag on for a ridiculously long time.

Tuesdays have typically been ‚cleaner-days‘ up until now, and I’ve often found them the hardest/most tiring, although I’m now more-or-less used to sweeping and cleaning all the floors, emptying bins, cleaning the toilets (which only involves pouring chemicals down the pan, nothing more), sweeping leaves or weeding outside, etc. In fact, I’m starting to enjoy these sorts of practical tasks, where you get on with it and can think things over, pray, or whatever.
As of last week, however, there will be projects run with school pupils in the CVJM (Christlicher Verein Junger Menschen - Young People’s Christian Association) youth house on Tuesdays, so I may have to act the cleaner some other time in the week...

...which would mean working in the office on Tuesdays, which is what I’ve been doing for part of the day from Wednesday to Friday so far, taking phone calls, balancing the books, sorting through paperwork, shoving flyers into envelopes, sticking address labels onto envelopes, popping into town to buy something, running down the road (which I thoroughly enjoy) to the „Copy Shop“ (as the Germans call it themselves) to get something photocopied, etc...I also set up tables and chairs for clubs in the CVJM youth house whenever required, throughout the week.

Wednesday evenings I help with confirmation classes, run by my boss, Frank, the full-time secretary here at the CVJM, and a priest from what is the anglican church or equivalent here in Germany. Though priest sounds rather aloof and robey, he’s very much a normal guy, prefers not to wear his dog collar (if that’s what it’s called)...anyhow, at first I was only really sitting in on the ‚class‘, but now I’m helping, doing the (very short) welcome at the start and leading a song we sing on guitar. There are about a dozen 13-year olds there, of which only two girls. I always enjoy playing pool with two of the boys, brothers, who always come about half an hour early to make the most of the pool table in the basement. And I enjoy the fact that that counts as work...

Thursday evenings is quite different, with Tensing taking place – about thirty 13 to 20 year-olds who put on a performance (or musical, I suppose you can call it) every year with choir, band, drama (obviously) and dance. They also do a few other odd concerts throughout the year.
As a general rule, the Tensingers are pretty wild, but you’ve got to love them. I soon felt like I was one of them at the start of the year (all those weeks ago!) and that helped a lot. They teach me a lot about youth culture I suppose...and it’s simply all great fun. Until now I’ve been in the band, particularly filling gaps when they arise, but I’d like to take part in the Drama workshop more often. And choir is great fun.
Every week, we either all sing in the choir, practising the songs we’ve chosen by vote for this year, or split up into workshops – Dance, Drama, and Band. And there’s always a break with German squash (‚crumb tea‘ translated literally, which you buy as solid granules)

Fridays, I now start a bit earlier than usual, not helping with the school project that takes place in the CVJM youth house from half seven in the morning, but preparing coffee and biscuits for their break, and being there to serve drinks or whatever.
The rest of the day is office work, until 15:15, when I help with Smilies, a club for 8 to 12 year-olds which is always a refreshing, nice end to the week. We play games, often compete against each other for prizes, sing Christian songs, listen to a Bible story, enjoy squash (crumb tea again!) and biscuits in the break, and always have lots of fun. And last week (although I couldn’t be there, unfortunately) they cooked some kind of asian food and then ate it, one time we went to a beautiful spot near the river Oder, where there are sanddunes, and spent the time making tracks to roll balls down as slowly as possible.

So that’s pretty much my average week’s work with the CVJM here in Frankfurt (Oder) (apart from the English club at the primary, that's not CVJM work - just the reason for my day off).

My goal is, by the end of this week, to have properly updated my blog with the reams of things I have to talk about. At least I’ve now made a start! It was about time, having not posted anything in two months apart from a poem or two...