Countdown

I fly to Germany in less than a month.

Yikes.

I've been to Europe before, but I was coddled and cared-for during that trip. I arrived to a house already set up for me, I was over-oriented to everything you could imagine about a new city, and I was there with a bunch of other Americans. Plus, it was England. The only difficult part about the language in England was fighting to keep the dreamy expression off my face every time someone spoke. When I visited my great-grandmother's family in Germany I went to bed at eight every night, worn out by the constant mental translation. I don't want to be a ninety-year-old woman this time around.

I'm training to avoid the fatigue by watching Disney(ish) movies dubbed in German. The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Emperor's New Groove, and Beauty and the Beast are fabulous. Pocahontas is a little bit of a historical mind-game and Aladdin isn't funny at all. Robin Williams makes that movie. Dialogue tends to be a direct translation, but the songs are very different to fit the meter and rhyme of Disney tunes. Armed with a childhood knowledge of the music in English, I muddle through and understand the whole thing far better on the fourth repeat.

Some song differences:
"I'll fight this into order, straw into gold" instead of "we're gonna turn this sow's ear into a silk purse" (Mulan)
"I'd like to mention, I'm not just talking lion-Latin" instead of "but thick as you are pay attention, my words are a matter of pride" (The Lion King)
"In my world" instead of "a whole new world" (Aladdin)
"Time writes the myth" instead of "tale as old as time" (Beauty and the Beast)

And possibly my favorite translation: The Emperor's New Groove is called A Kingship for a Llama

Ah-hah! Oh...

I figured out a possible answer to the mystery of no returned emails from prospective apartments. Most people plan to be in one place for a least a few years, whether for work or school. I'll be in Germany for ten months. It's not worth the stress of getting used to me and then having to play the roommate-finding game all over again in a year (I'm looking at you, college dorms). One of the people I emailed told me as much when he apologized for having to refuse me a place in his apartment.

Hopefully his excuse is the real answer. It would be nice to know that my current lack of housing is the Fulbright program's problem, not mine. Fingers crossed on that one.

Picky picky picky

Exciting July 4th news - this morning I found an email containing a reply from one of the apartments in a non-sketchy area! To be fair, I've received seven emails from non-sketchy apartments thus far, but all the rest said "sorry, the room has already been rented". I don't think that counts. It is entirely possible that I can celebrate my country's independence and my own lack of future homelessness on the same day. Plus, this place has a puppy named Fox.

Of course there's a catch. The room I asked about has already been rented, but there's another room that will be free starting September 1. This one is "a little smaller" but still very livable, according to the email. Pictures attached show a tiny (11 square meters) room that barely fits a bed and has three hooks on the wall for all clothing. Four years of dorm life have ensured my acceptance of any size living quarters, so this shouldn't be a problem, right? But then the email included pictures of the rest of the house, and I'm not sure I can do it.

The hallway looks like someone lives in it (park bench, dresser, and assorted chairs all along it). The kitchen is tiny and dirty. The bathroom looks nice, but the email mentioned that the shower doesn't always work. Where many postings note that the apartment will often cook together and relax together in the evenings, the email noted that the most important thing for this one is that we all accept one another and give one another space. As an introvert, this expectation is fabulous and ensures that I will not make any friends while in Germany. I'm not sure what the "accepting one another" refers to: does someone refuse to shower? Will everyone shun me if I don't eat sausage?

So I can't decide. Apartments seem to go fast (I email one day and am told the next day that the room is taken: truth or convenient lie), but this doesn't seem like a match. Then again, no one else has emailed me. It's a quandary. My generous teacher-contact at the school has offered to let me stay with her for a little while and search for an apartment once I've arrived. That may have to become my default instead of my last resort.

Hello!

Hi, I’m Jessica. I’ll be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Germany next year, which is quite possibly the most exciting and most frightening thing I’ve ever done. Somehow my native language has become my ticket to spend ten months living in another country. I’m still in the preparation stages of finding housing and returning paperwork, but my plane flight has been booked and there’s no going back.

I studied English literature in college, with a German minor. Notably missing from both those fields is any formal training in education. Unlike several of my former apartment-mates, I’ve never been a student teacher or worked in a high-school classroom. I’ve done English tutoring and I’ve helped in adult ESL classes, but I feel woefully unprepared for my new job. Thankfully the Fulbright Commission knows they’re not getting education majors and offers a three-day orientation and practice time, where I’m told we split up into groups of four or so and give a mini lesson. I’ve warned the butterflies in my stomach to watch out for that and maybe pack up before they’re kicked out, but they’ve been blithely ignoring me.

My current project is sending a bunch of emails out to prospective landlords and apartment-mates, in the hopes that one of them will want me to live in their apartment. As is true everywhere, the city I’ll be living in has some good places and some bad places. Prior to a warning from a (very helpful) former Fulbright ETA, I was looking for housing in the bad part of town. Now I’m not anymore, which is unfortunate because most of the cheap housing is there. I imagine not getting mugged is worth fifty euro or so, but no one from the nice neighborhoods is returning my emails.

Maybe I seem shady.