DAY ONE AS AN EDUCATIONAL PROFESSIONAL

TODAY I MADE SEVERAL HUGE STEPS OF PROGRESS: I started my first day at school, I registered at the local town hall and received my “Meldezettel”, I opened a bank account, I bought a wireless-internet-dongle-thing, I continued to be ignored by my parents. BUT the most exciting event of the day: I went to the supermarket again!

On my first day at the supermarket I was just shocked to find a building I could happily describe as big. I was over-excited, overwhelmed and over-tired. Muddled, frightened and half-blind I lurched through the aisles like the drunk man in that youtube video.

Today was so different. Having learnt from previous mistakes, I made a list before arriving to try and help me focus. First stop was the vegetable aisle. I was so amazed at the vegetable aisle I almost failed to complete any other purchases. I did three circuits of it (I kid you not) and picked up all the different pumpkin/squashes in complete amazement. They have pumpkins here that look like octopuses. They have eight little legs, like octopuses. They have so many different types of pumpkins!! If you thought Butternut Squash was exotic (I did.) then prepare yourself for whole new world of wonder! Every shape, size, colour and pattern. Within seconds I was making a mental list of all the people I knew who I just had to bring to the vegetable aisle! (Be warned: your name may well be on that list!) About 35 minutes later I dragged myself away with a 2 kilo red cabbage in one hand and a bag of onions in the other, wistfully gazing back at the pumpkins. Then I found the cheese aisle. I could now list all the different types of cheeses, milk and creams available, but I think it would be easier to list what wasn’t there: cheddar. Now imagine every other kind of cheese you can: THEY HAD IT! This was pretty mind-blowing, but I kind of really wanted cheddar, so I didn’t buy any cheese. I then continued around the shop in complete bemusement and wonder until I stumbled upon the checkout and left, cabbage in one hand and a 500g pot of cranberry sauce in the other. (Breakfast tomorrow is going to be very weird.)

There is an Aldi (actually called Hoffer here) a little further down the road, I may well go there tomorrow, because I just find Merkur so incredible that I can’t get anything done! It’s like trying to do an exam in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory – there are too many distractions to make any sensible decisions!

Other interesting things that happened to me today:

I met all the other teachers and students, and all the teachers were very friendly and a lot of them had heard of Wolves. All the students looked at me fearfully, like they didn’t really know what ‘England’ was. The more frightened they looked, the more I tried to smile (to appear friendly!) and the more frightened they looked…and then the more I tried to smile… it was a vicious cycle that taught me one important life lesson: my smile is not reassuring :-S

Over and out xx