Last week in Scotland...

I've not blogged in so long because year abroad preparations seemed to be very slow and a bit abstract, really. Besides the odd letter or email, there was very little to remind me I'm actually going. The last week has been a blur of goodbye drinks and staring at my suitcase willing it to pack itself, but even now I don't feel like I have to move abroad in a matter of days!

Packing is turning out to be a bit of a chore. I usually enjoy packing for a holiday or weekend away but this is a completely different matter. How do I fit a year's worth of life into a 20kg suitcase and a hand luggage bag? I'm not convinced it's possible despite my friends who have already landed in Germany (lucky ladies) reassuring me otherwise. What do I take to use as teaching materials? What do I wear teaching? What do I wear when I go out? How do I narrow my choices down to four pairs of shoes? Yes, there are shops in Germany. I know this. But how much can I buy over there, considering I have to bring it home?

Needless to say I am a stressed girl. But there are some essentials I have already put in my suitcase, ready to have clothes thrown on top:

1. Boots. Two pairs - ankle boots and knee highs. Ankle for autumn and everyday wear, knee high for snow and more formal wear. It's going to be cold over there, if everything I've read about Germany is true. So I want my feet to be well prepared come rain or shine. Mostly come rain though.

2. My diary. Because I have a feeling some of my worse moments should still be documented somewhere, as an inevitable part of the year abroad experience, but not necessarily on a public blog like this!

3. A camera. I couldn't forgive myself for not documenting the year in pictures as well as words, so both my film camera and a little digital one will be coming with me! Thankfully film seems to be fairly cheap in Germany so I should be able to snap away without the costs piling up too much.

4. A BahnCard. OK, I don't actually have one of these babies yet but I will definitely be purchasing one on arrival. I plan to visit all my friends around Germany while I'm there so getting 25% off my journeys will be pretty handy indeed!

I've been spending a lot of time recently saying goodbye to family and friends which has been a bit overwhelming but great fun too. Elsa came through on Thursday, Friday night I went for a burrito and cocktails with Beth (as she's off to Ayia Napa today!) and on Saturday night my family all came over with food and wine and some lovely presents for me. I've spent today detoxing a little from the huge amounts of food and alcohol I've been stuffing myself with! I'm going to miss everyone so much, I hope they all have skype so I can try and keep in touch a bit better than just facebook allows.

I wish I actually felt a bit more nervous and excited about leaving on Wednesday. I think I've just been waiting so long now it feels like it's never going to actually happen. But I'm sure once I have to say goodbye to my family at the airport it'll all come over me and I'll be crying my eyes out, and everything will feel far too real!

Six weeks to go!

Everything's starting to come together for me now in terms of preparation for the year abroad, both emotionally and in organisation. First of all, I officially have a flat! I'll be living in Halle's Südliche Innenstadt, which I've been assured by my mentor teacher is a nice and cheap area, with two other students. One studies primary teaching so I'm hoping she can give me some tips for work, and the other wrote me an adorable moving-in poem on facebook. For €221 a month, all bills included, I couldn't be happier - I can't wait to move in!

I've also got all my travel booked. Glasgow to Berlin, Berlin to Halle. Probably with many tears in my eyes. Then a few days later, Halle to Cologne to stay in a lovely hotel for the night with Emma before our induction week in the countryside! I can see these being the first of many adventures with Deutsche Bahn... time to buy a BahnCard, maybe!

I'm starting to feel totally ready to go now. I've been working a lot the past few weeks, and every time it gets me down, I remember that my last shift there is in just over a fortnight and my flight to Germany and a new life there is just over a month away! I've no doubt I'll be hiding in the toilets at Glasgow Airport the morning I leave, soggy faced and puffy eyed, terrified of stepping on the plane. And then when I do manage to compose myself, losing it again when the plane takes off. The amount of responsibility and independence I'll have over there is going to be very new to a girl who still lives with her parents. I can't quite believe they're going to let me teach kids. It's daunting. But it's incredibly exciting too.

I don't know anyone in Halle, besides people I've skyped on my flathunt who offered to take me out for drinks when I arrive (!) and my mentor teacher. I haven't met any of them face to face, so naturally I'm quite anxious that I'll arrive, nobody will like me, and it'll be a lonely year. But I've been better recently at telling myself I'm actually ok. I've been standing up for myself more, not wasting time on people who make me feel bad, and remembering how I felt about starting uni and making friends there. My friends are fabulous so I must be doing well, and there's no reason the same shouldn't happen in Germany! This might be a clean sheet, but I'll always be some version of Lauren. And maybe that'll work out just fine.

I'm ready for something new. I love Glasgow and I'll miss it, but I've lived here my whole life and I want to go exploring. I'm 20. There's nothing to keep me here for now. What could be more new than moving to a city I've never even visited before? And if I do get a bit lonely, my friends will only be a train ride away, going through the same stuff. I think we're all going to do great.

Hunting for a Home.

Sometimes I like to be organised. When I have little control over something, I want to throw myself into the things I can change and make sure I do a good job. When it comes to the year abroad, I can do little at the moment besides post forms away, book my flight and train journeys (done, oh my god), and search for a place to live. So in between working a lot in the shop and doing some work experience at a local paper, I've been consumed by finding the perfect Wohngemeinschaft ("living community", a German flatshare) to set myself up in for the year.

Everything I've read on my new favourite website Third Year Abroad and what I've heard from previous Year Abroad-ers at uni has pointed to WG-Gesucht as being the best place to find a flatshare. The university in Halle did send me a link to their residential services but I don't want to go into halls in Germany. I'm too scared of living with loads of other international students - probably a lot of fun, but not fantastic for my German skills as I think I'd be tempted to just speak English all the time. And I definitely don't want (and probably can't afford) a flat to myself. All of the WGs on WG-Gesucht seem to follow the same template: washing machine in the bathroom, and the flatmates like to cook together but also have time to themselves sometimes. Sounds ideal. I'm in.

I actually found the perfect flat very quickly, but it fell through! The room was huge and bright, the flatmates seemed awesome, there were two balconies... what more could I really want? I even started making a Pinterest board of how I was going to make it my own and looked up the best bus routes to Ikea Leipzig (though I hinted to my mentor teacher first, in case I could coerce her into taking me in the car). The flatmates chose me, I was over the moon, and I sent all my forms to the letting agency straight away like a good little slave to bureaucracy, only to receive an email over a week later saying that the owner doesn't want to let me the room. Oh. OK. My would-have-been flatmates were fantastic and tried to do all they could to help, but the new owner of the building won't play along. So it's back to WG-Gesucht and stressing out!

What I will say, though, is that I've found everyone really friendly so far! One girl who I replied to a little too late said that she would put me in touch with a friend of hers who needs a flatmate, and offered to meet up with me when I get to Halle! And a friend of my girl Lara has also passed along the details of someone she knows who has a furnished room to let. Maybe contacts are the way?

Hopefully I'll be back soon with better flat-related news! And despite my lack of success so far, I'm still really excited to move out of my parents' house for the first time. I might be terrified of the year ahead of me, but despite my general uselessness (can't cook, can't fix things, can't do much really) I couldn't feel more ready for this aspect.

Bundesland.

Last week I finally found out which part of Germany I’ll be working in from September! I’ve been placed in Saxony-Anhalt, an eastern but still quite central state. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed, as this was my third choice of Bundesland (Germany’s federal states), and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I had my heart set on NRW in the west. But as the days have passed I’ve become much happier with things, as I’ve remembered some of the reasons I picked this Bundesland in the first place:

1. It’s not far from Berlin
   …Maybe not the best way to start this list. “It’s near another place” probably isn’t a very encouraging thing to say about the area I’ll be living in. Neither is the fact that in my oral exam, when I mentioned to my German tutor/examiner that I’d applied here, it’s the first thing she said about it. But this can only be a positive because I love Berlin, and 2 hours or so away by train is definitely an improvement on my current location in another country. (Also, one of my friends, Erin, has been placed in Berlin, and two hours on a train with a hangover is do-able, if not desirable…)
2. It’s cheap
   The rule in Germany seems to be the further east you go, the cheaper rents become (Berlin being an exception, though it’s still ridiculously cheap for the capital of a western European country). I’ve spent tonight browsing wg-gesucht.de and swooning over the prices of rooms in flatshares. 200 euros a month for a beautiful room, including bills? I’ll take that, thanks very much! For a comparison here, I know people in Glasgow paying £360 a month for a room near the uni, and this isn’t exactly known for being an expensive city.
3. It’s beautiful
   Saxony-Anhalt’s tourism seems to be largely based around the Harz region with its national park, and I’m not exactly a walking-in-the-countryside kind of girl. But for a while now I’ve been wanting to get fit and riding a bike round the beautiful German countryside sounds quite nice, really. Especially since Erin bought me bike stickers for my birthday!

Another great thing about being placed here (though I couldn’t have known it when I applied) is that two of my best friends have been placed nearby: the wonderful Lara is also going to be teaching in Saxony-Anhalt, and my girl Emma will be next door in Saxony proper! So if I’m feeling a bit lonely or homesick I can jump on a train and explore a new place with them and get a bit of Scotland back just by hearing them speak.

I have to say, I think everything’s going to work out just fine. Now I just need to hear from my school and get flat hunting. And learn to cook. Wish me luck!

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