For my family, birthday celebrations have never been a big deal. When I was a kid my parents would always organise a party for me to celebrate with my little friends and have very good memories of that. Last time I celebrated myself getting older together with many other people was at 17, few months before I left my birth country for my school year abroad. After that, I have always been somewhere else, travelling and treating myself (instead of treating others!).
As far as I have noticed, for my German host family birthdays are very important. My host mother has got a calendar where she has written the birthdays of literally all the people she knows. She even has your year of birth, so you can’t lie to her about your age! Almost every day she phones a different person to wish them happy birthday and to the her close dears she also writes letters. I think she is almost obsessed with it, it’s some kind of hobby of hers. Heart of the matter, this year my birthday didn’t go unnoticed. Both my host parents asked me months ago how I wanted to celebrate it and they were almost shocked when I answered I wanted to go for a day-trip to meet a friend of mine who lives in Hannover on the weekend after. Not only were they stunned because I would have done nothing on the day itself (on Thursday), but especially because I would have not celebrated together with “many” other people. At the end I felt quite pressured to do more and ended up having the longest birthday celebration ever. Honestly, it was very pleasant to receive so many attentions. The day before getting officially older I received some “birthday post” from my host-relatives, it was the first time in my life to receive it and I loved it! (How they knew when my birthday was is a mystery I’ll let you solve). In the afternoon of my natal day I made a cake and a liquor and cooked a delicious dinner with my host mother. After that, we ate, of course! In short, I made something different, with different people on 5 different days. New country, new habits! I highly recommend living together with other people, like in a host family, during your year abroad. It really gives you a distinct, more complete perspective of the place where you are, the culture, the traditions, the habits and the things to do.
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ELA in Germany Hello from Bremen and Loxstedt! My name is Meghan and I am currently in my 3rd Year of my MA German and Mathematics degree. For my year abroad, I chose to do an English Language Assistantship as I am considering Teaching once I graduate. However, there are many more benefits to the ELA programme, even if Teaching is not a career goal you have in mind. For example, the range of locations!! One of the benefits of this programme is that you can end up anywhere in Germany; from a tiny country town to the centre of the capital. I know how daunting this may sound… (as it certainly did to me at the time) but I found a whole area of Germany I most likely would not have explored because I didn’t really know about it before living here. You can, of course, list a preference of location on your application, but there is not a guarantee you will end up there. However, the icing on the cake is you can still travel to all of the locations you’ve been dreaming about. It’s the best of both worlds :D Following on from travelling, I would like to highlight the free time you get as an ELA. Despite working, you have plenty of free time/days off to get exploring and immersing yourself in the local culture and beyond! In Germany, you are contracted to a 12-hour week which can be easily covered even over 3 days (if your school allows it) which allows you to have a mega long weekend for adventuring :D My Mentor Teacher actually recommended I do this to give me more time to get out and about as you are speaking mainly English while you are in school. This is also a great option if you choose to not live nearby to your school which is something I did. My placement is in Loxstedt but I am living in Bremen under recommendation from my teachers. Condensing your school days in this case is great for limiting the amount of time you are commuting and again is perfect for long weekend breaks away! Something else you may want to consider is your income while living in Germany. This could differ by your Bundesland, but for Niedersachsen in the academic year 2021/2022 we are receiving a monthly bursary of 850€. This is usually a suitable amount of money to fund your rent, your weekly shop and hopefully some travelling too :D If not, there is always your SAAS loan and other bursaries to keep you feeling comfortable with your finances! Finally and most importantly, I cannot forget to mention the incredible experiences in and out of school! This is an incredible addition to your CV and is a totally different vibe to studying abroad as you’re the one helping to plan classes instead of attending them yourself :P One of my favourite parts of the ELA programme is that you are given the contacts of other assistants in your area from the UK and Internationally. I strongly recommend that if you are on the programme, to make the effort in your first few weeks to reach out to these people and even do a meet-up :) Naturally, you may not vibe with everybody but I can guarantee you will find a wee group of people you can relate to and share the experience of the year abroad together. This especially helped me when I was feeling a little homesick or when things got difficult from time to time as these are the people that are going to be able to relate to your situation the most <3 Weihnachten in Deutschland
Albeit belated, I thought I would share my experience of Germany during the Christmas period in the Covid-19 Pandemic! Unfortunately, in true Covid style, the cases in Germany began to skyrocket around the opening of the markets and many were cancelled before they even begun. However, I was really fortunate to be living in Bremen as this was the only market in my area (to my knowledge) that managed to stay open right up until Christmas Eve! So this is all from the perspective of only visiting one market, but an amazing one at that. The Bremer Weihnachtsmarkt was everything I could have dreamed of and more. If I am being totally honest, I spent almost every evening there for over a month collecting a variety of Christmas themed mugs from the Glühwein stalls and sampling the variety of cuisine. It was hard to resist! Because of covid, the market was spread all across the centre of town, so you could constantly smell, see and hear everything that was going on. It was such an incredible atmosphere. Another wonderful surprise for me was the range of independent stalls selling such amazing little gifts and Christmas mementos. I had quite the experience packing to come back to Scotland for the holidays with my suitcase packed full of glass ornaments, sweet treats and handmade gifts for myself, my friends and my family. As gutted as I was that I did not get to visit more markets this time round, I look forward to having an excuse to come back and visit in the near future :) There is at least a dozen of reasons why I am happy to study at the University of Aberdeen. I will share what makes me grateful at the moment.
I am an undergraduate student in French and German Studies and I am currently spending my compulsory year abroad, interning as an English Language Assistant in Germany. I am extremely glad to be able to do this experience although I am not a native speaker – I learned about this opportunity thanks to my amazing teachers at UoA. If I had not known, I would probably be doing an unpaid internship and having hard financial times (my studies are not supported by my family), which is not what you hope while you are in a foreign country. I study German at UoA because I would like to be able to communicate with my relatives who were born in Germany. Due to the language barrier, my family was, unfortunately, losing contact with them, but not anymore thanks to me and to what I have learnt at Uni! In this picture, in fact, I am jumping with my German little cousin in the town where I intern, Bad Salzdetfurth. As an incredible coincidence, the school where I work is the same school where her mum (my father’s cousin) also teaches. We see each other every day and I couldn’t be happier! Before coming to Bad Salzdetfurth I spent three months in Berlin, where I interned for a company that takes care of medicine and bureaucracy for foreigners in Germany, which has been a valuable experience, considering that I would like to work in the field of medical translation and interpreting. While in Berlin, I not only met people from all over the world (that I will visit soon in their home countries!), but I also had the chance to visit some of the most beautiful museums in the world. I love visual art, especially painting and sculpture; every time I see one of the master pieces of my favourite artists I almost cry! During the summer, when I still was in Berlin, I attended two online German language courses, the first one with the university of Dresden and the second with the University of Mainz. This boosted my language skills and prepared me for the wild life outside! Again, I learned about these two courses thanks to my teachers at UoA, and the best part is that I did not have to pay for them as I applied for and won their scholarships. Thank you, University of Aberdeen, for making this possible! |
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