1995 School Magazine

6irlg' @rommer $cl.,ool /Grisbane 1995

GERMANI-Y

f-1ver the Christmas holidays, I was fortunate enough to \-/ travel to Mulheim, a German town in the Ruhr area about thirty minutes from the border between Germany and Holland. After a fairly exhausting journey I arrived in Dusseldorf, excited, but a little apprehensive, to be met by my host family, with whom I would be spending the next eight weeks. I am happy to say that

if she wanted to be a cake when she grew up (I now know the different between cake and cook). Everyone was most he1plul, though, in helping me to improve my German, and I quickly realised that people were laughing at my words, not at my genuine attempt to speak the language!

Rosi and Walter Link, my host parents, and Marion and Petra, my host sisters, proved to be an absolutely lantastic family who really made the effort to make me feel at home. I was absorbed into the family unit at a very speedy rate: for the first couple of days, we were al1 most polite and restrained; by the end of the third day, I found myself a lront row specta- tor to all the family fun,

At the Morsbacb Farmbouse

Kirsty 2ndJiom left) utitb Rosi, Petra Marion and Pino tbe cat.

fights and meiodramas; and within a week, I was usually to be found right in the middle of the said goings on. Althor-rgh it may sound suspiciously similar to the inevitable quote from any number of glossy'Exchange'brochures, it is true that I did come to regard my host family as my second family. Although for the first fewweeks the whole concept of living, sleeping and breathing another language seemed rather daunt- ing, I soon became accustomed to the new tongue, to the extent that it seemed slightly unnatural to speak English. I did, of collrse, make a great number of embarrassing language mis- takes whilst over there - little everyday things that serued to amuse all in the vicinity. At first I was inclined to take this a little personally; it is rather difficult, however, to remain indignant at the accompanying hilarious laughter when you realise that (as but one of many examples) you had just asked your host sister

Staying over the Christmas period was particLllarly reward- ing in that I was able to experience Christmas and New Year's Eve in an entirely different setting. It was breathtaking to celebrate a cold, almost white Christmas, and just as enjoyable

Tbe farmhouse at Morsbacb.

to join in setting off the fireworks that lit up the sky at the beginning of the New Year. Owing to the generosity of my host family, I didn't miss out on any of the atmosphere of a family Christmas simply because I was many thousands of kilometres from my real family. \Thilst in Germany, I also took the opportunity to partake in a little travel: once on a short trip, taking in the Rhine, Nfeilburg and Rothenburg, and later spending a week in a farmhouse near Morsbach with twenty other people my age (now part of my ever-growing penfriend list).

A su.ry)rise uisit on St Nikolaus clay

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