Friends!... and language barriers

Although I love the little town that I live in- 2 minute walk to the grocery store, 10 minute bike ride to the kindergarten, 20 minutes to the volleyball courts- there isn't much to do around here during the day without Mimi to keep me occupied. So this past week I've ventured into the city four times, and I plan to go again tonight to meet some friends. Yes! I made friends! Which is actually an interesting topic...

Meeting people organically here is VERY difficult as an au pair, particularly in between semesters (like now) when you can't go to a language course to make new friends. And even then, there is usually an impossible language barrier between the girls in the language courses, because many of them can barely speak German or English. And although all the women on my volleyball team are really friendly and welcoming, they are all in their 30s and 40s with children. SO, luckily, there are a few easy ways to make friends online, especially for English speakers in Munich. At first I was hesitant to go this route, but seeing as my birthday is next Friday and I'll want people to go out with, I figured making friends ASAP was the best choice. On Saturday afternoon I joined a new group on facebook called "au pairs in Munich 2012," and I met up with a bunch of the girls in that group on Saturday night at the Hofbräuhaus. So that was 8 new friends automatically! I now understand why people choose to do online dating. We had a fantastic and hilarious time, and I was happy that it felt a little bit like going out with friends at home/school.

There is another AWESOME online network of English speakers in Munich called Toytown. Within this website there are hundreds of different discussion topics, a calendar of events for Toytown participants, and just lots of really helpful things for English speakers living in Munich.  There is a group on Toytown that meets on Thursdays at various bars around Munich called "meet-ups for indecisive 20-somethings..." and seeing as I would definitely qualify as an "indecisive 20-something," I will be attending this "meet-up" tonight with a few other au pairs.

Although I love meeting other English speaking people here, I am really excited to make friends with some native German speakers.  I still get very nervous to speak German, and having German speaking friends would help me a lot! And it would just be cool in general to be friends with natives.  I walked around the grocery store for 5 entire minutes yesterday looking for bread because I was too afraid to ask someone where it was and make a grammatical error. Silly. One of the women on my volleyball team picked me up to take me to practice last night, and I realized that conversation does not happen unless if someone else initiates it with me. I sat there and nervously formulated simple questions in my head, such as "how many kids do you have?" or "How long have you been playing volleyball?" And I recited them over and over to myself until I had the guts to say it out loud, and by the time I was ready to say it, she would ask ME a question. And then I would be totally frazzled and take forever to respond! Blah. Oh well. It's funny, because, as you know, I'm not really a quiet person at home and making conversation is always super easy for me.  So I just smile and laugh a lot here. I'll improve with time!

Daily Life...and Other Observations

So I just finished my first week as an au pair for Mimi, and I cannot believe I am actually getting paid for this.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I attend a language class in Starnberg, which is a tourist destination about 10 minutes from Stockdorf (where I live) with a GORGEOUS lake behind which you can see the Bavarian Alps.  Please open a new tab right now and google-image Starnberger See if you haven't already seen my facebook pictures. It's really breathtaking on clear, sunny days.  This class is from 8:30 til 10:30am, but the semester is almost over and I will likely be in a class that goes from 10:30 til 12:30 next semester. After language class I have a few hours to relax, then I go to pick up Mimi at Kindergarten at 2pm.  Stef, the mother, gets home between 5 and 6pm normally, aside from Thursdays, when she doesn't get home until 9pm. OH and she doesn't work on Tuesdays.  THOSE ARE MY ONLY HOURS. Of course, not every week will be identical, but that is a standard week. And Mimi is so adorable it doesn't even feel like work. She has the wildest imagination and could entertain herself for hours.  She repeats these phrases all the time and it's so cute coming from her high pitched German voice:

"Oh dear!" "Yyyup!" "Look it!" and "Much better!"

There are plenty more but these are just the most common.  She’s obsessed with trucks/construction/cars, but she also has a really cute girly voice and loves playing with dolls.  I think she does this to defy gender stereotypes, but I haven’t asked her.  Now let's discuss food. I haven't actually eaten a meal outside of their house yet, so I'll write more about eating out in a few weeks when I've actually done so.  But in the meantime, I'll tell you about what we have in the kitchen.

Contents in fridge: Like 6 different kinds of cheese, 1 pack of cold cuts, 2 or 3 German sausages, weird spreads that I cannot identify and therefore do not eat, a random variety of vegetables, 4 cans of jam, can of mustard
(If you haven't already deduced this, it is a pretty bare fridge. I have no idea if that is typical, or if it’s just because the parents work a lot and don’t eat most of their meals at home)
Contents on counter next to fridge: Various types of bread
Contents in freezer:  Frozen meat, Frozen spinach
Contents in pantry:  They don't have a pantry! Doesn't exist!
Contents in sweets drawer: Delicious German cookies that I strategically eat one of every day from a different container so that it appears as if none were taken…. Even though they said I could help myself to anything, I think they might find it odd if an entire row of cookies was gone just a few days after my arrival.
So to give you an idea of what my daily eating schedule looks like since I got here...
Breakfast: Bread with jam
Lunch: Sandwich with cheese, lettuce, mustard
Dinner: Sandwich with cheese, lettuce, mustard
Snacks: Cookie, cheese, bread
I can't wait to go grocery shopping this week! 


On an unrelated note, I also added volleyball to my weekly schedule. I joined a team that practices on Wednesday nights from 8-10pm and goes to tournaments on some Saturdays. Also unrelated, I want to quickly return to the business of picking up Mimi from Kindergarten, because I laugh out loud when I think about it.  On Wednesday and Thursday, Opa (Mimi's grandfather) picked me up and drove me to Mimi's Kindergarten to pick her up. Painless. Today, however, I decided it was time for me to find my way by myself and pick her up by bike. 
http://www.berensundreus.de/bilder/kinderanhaenger/chariot-im-einsatz-2.jpg
I bike 15 minutes to her Kindergarten with a Kinderanhänger (link above) attached to the back of my bike, which has a 6 foot high yellow flag on it to alert anything and everything that I have a child in tow.  It. is. so. funny. I have to ride down very busy main roads with this thing- it's serious. As I was writing all of this down on paper earlier, I was sitting on a chair in the bathroom while Mimi took a bath, and she was singing the phrase "DRAGON INSIDE A BOX WITH A WALLY DANCE" over and over and over while swimming in a circle with a pig bath toy. It was so funny I could barely write. I have off all next week because Stef has a medical conference in France. I decided to stay home and explore, so hopefully I'll have plenty of adventures to write about!

Flight and Arrival

I'm in Munich!! After an incredibly long commute, I am finally here! I flew from the Philadelphia int'l airport, to Newark int'l airport, to Munich.  I had a 5 hour layover in Newark, which may seem silly to you, because it is.  Thankfully I have my nook so I decided to purchase one of Chelsea Handler's books while I still had free wifi in the Philadelphia airport, and that kept me occupied on both flights as well as during the layover.  I'm sure my uncontrollable loling didn't disturb neighboring passengers...?  

You would think with a 5 hour layover that I should have had ample time to figure out what gate my next flight was leaving from since it wasn't printed on my original boarding pass... not so.  The gate for my flight was not listed on any of the departure screens. SO, at 7:30 (which is when people were supposed to start boarding the plane), I went to a customer service desk to see what the deal was. Turns out my flight was leaving from terminal B, not terminal C (which is where I was), and I needed to take the airtran to the correct terminal.  It also turns out that once I got to terminal B, I needed to go through security AGAIN, and then board the plane.  Hyperventilating, I jogged to the airtran, got to security, begged the priority security line guy to let me through, succeeded, and got to my gate around 8:05, only to realize that there were still about 1,000 people waiting at the gate to board. Mind you, I was sweating through my shirt at this point, so I looked really dumb.  It was pretty funny.

I can't sleep on planes, so I read my nook and watched Crazy, Stupid, Love, which I recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it. Once I got to Munich, Mimi and her Mom, Stefanie, were waiting for me with a rose! It was really sweet. We got in their car and drove to Stockdorf, which is just 15 minutes southwest of center city Munich.  Mimi is the cutest thing in the whole world, and I instantly clicked with her.  She has several different identities- dog, kitty, tiger, snail.  Most of the time she is a Rettungshund (dog who saves people) named Schnuffi.  It's hilarious. Mimi/Schnuffi was helping me unpack but would only remove things from my bag with her teeth. Obviously. Then she found the frisbee that I packed and made me toss it onto my bed so that she could retrieve it with her teeth and bring it back to me like a real dog.  She speaks the cutest mix of German and English, and her German is about the same level as mine. It's perfect.  Stefanie is very talkative and speaks almost perfect English, so conversing with her is really easy.  Her husband, Matthias, speaks very little English, so I'll have to speak German with him.  Stefanie's parents live around the corner and we went to see them last night after taking Mimi to open gym "gymnastics."  We spoke German the whole time, and although I was kind of afraid to speak, I understood almost everything they were saying! It was pretty exciting, considering my first opportunity to speak German on the plane went miserably.  The stewardess asked me what I wanted to drink, and after reciting the word "Orangensaft" (orange juice) over and over in my head, what came out of my mouth sounded something more like "Oranzentaft." You do not need to speak German to recognize that those are two very different sounding words. Also, Orangensaft is one of the first things you learn to say when learning German in school. I laughed a little bit afterwards. I was just nervous.

My room here is perfect.  It has everything I need as well as a HUGE bookcase along the wall with every kind of book imaginable, including about 30 travel books and at least 15 art history books. I'm obsessed. There is also a full length mirror on the back of the door, which any girl can appreciate.  The bathroom is huge and it's right next to my room. All four of us share it, which I don't think will be much of an issue since we all have different schedules.  

I am so excited to start exploring and finding my way around here, and I can't wait to go into Munich soon!