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!
No comments:
Post a Comment