Cooking can be sometimes fun

On Monday afternoon/evening we had planned a special event. We were supposed to go to an international dinner.

Cause we have had something else to do, we were a little late, so we had to take a shorter way across some "better" neighbourhood. Although I had a map, I still wasn't sure if we are taking the right way. Especially when I saw a group of 20 people sitting on some benches and talking to each other. We started to wonder whether that is some kind of birthday party or a barbecue night, when a young girl asked us, what were we looking for. After this she was so nice and informed us that actually was the "dinner thing", but they weren't expecting us at all.

In fact we were the first to arrive, the other got lost, as we found out later. So we talked to the girl a little and she told us the are so HAPPY to have us and after this she started running excitedly around the front garden and shouting for all the others to welcome " the new people:)"

Thanks God, after this came our friends and we were at least sure that we are on the right place. After a few minutes of sitting on the benches with the other students and kids, during which we were told, they were a student organization meeting from time to time/my friend whispered to my ear: " Damn, I thought they were scientologists:)"/, they told us: "So lets cook!"

From the looks on the faces of all the international students/I am sure I had the same/ I saw one word screaming. "WHAT???" The thing our coordinator forgot to tell us when inviting us to the dinner was that we would have to cook it ourselves.
Overcoming the initial shock we chose Mexican cuisine over Jewish and started to make all the sauces and soups and tortillas. And a banana chocolate dessert.;) It was a pretty hard job, because all the recipes were in German, and there were only

I do not have to tell you it was great fun, especially when a Bulgarian girl was stirring meat on the stove and after 10 minutes she asked, why nothing is happening with it. Well, you have to turn on the stove first, sweetie:). Or when a Swedish girl asked: "How much of the spice is supposed to be in the sauce?" And after the answer came only: "ooooops"

So after three hours and half, everything was cooked and we could finally eat. Lets just say, we were hungry enough not to care about little spice mistakes:). AND now I know how make tortillas:))))

One latte is never enough or a trip to the beach

On friday night we met a german guy, a friend of one of my friends:) And he wanted to show us around, so he took us to Wallmart. :)

Well to be fair, we asked him to:) After a shopping spree we went to a beach, on an island called Insel Poel, which is actually about 15 km far from town. To be honest, I didn't expect the beach to be that beautiful. Northern beaches have their own charm. Not crowded, usually quite clean. The northern beaches have kind of a rough look, I always imagine some Northmen/means Viking - I didn't know it myself:)/ standing there looking out at the sea, thinking about next journey. But anyway, we walked a little around the beach, which reminds me, it is not a good thing to walk on the beach in sneakers.

We decided to meet on Sunday and go somewhere. Actually we were going to a beach again, but a nicer one in the words of the German guy. When he came to meet us in the sunday morning, he was with his two friends. I was like: "OK, some new faces, and male ones". I looked at my friends and I knew perfectly, that they were thinking the same.

Because we planed to be outside for a whole day, we stopped by for a coffee. Actually I had a HUGE ice cream thing, but I am never going to do it again, because replace lunch by an ice cream is a really really stupid idea. Trust me, I know what I am talking about, but nevertheless the icecream was really good:) One thing surprised me though. It is not very common for a guy to pick his coffee for 15 minutes and then to decide to have a " Big caffee latte machciatto with almond sirup, touch of milk and cream on the top, thank you very much." Lets just say it took the waitress whole 3 minutes to write that correctly on her notepad. I know, because the second guy was tracking the time:).

After the ice feast we set out on the way to visit the ancient monastery. It took us another 1 hour in car, which was spent answering questions like: " Do you really hate Hungarians, Do you really have that many gypsies?.... /I think you get the picture:)/

After seeing the church, which was really pretty by the way:), it was time for another coffee. I asked: " Another latte?" To which my friend told me: "One latte is never enough." Just for the record, I didn't get another ice cream, although I considered it really much.

On the way back, we were talking about situation of homosexuals in Slovakia and our friend told us, that the two guy were gays as well, which shocked me, because I would have never said it about them. After a whileseconds the bulgarian girl remarked: "This should be explaining the coffee thing, I guess."

It's black. RUN!!!!!!!

Hochschule WismarUniversity of Technology, Business and Design is quite a well known school for it fabulous and quite new after the fall of iron curtain design and machine labs and also for its Super smart professors:)

What is also known about this learning facility is that they have a pretty positive relationship to sports. They have a nice hall with a little fitness centre and a running oval as well.

As the "newcomers" we were kindly invited to come and see. Actually if something is called Sports and Fun, do not go there. Trust me it is bad:)

So in the morning a bigger part of the international group gathered in front of this sport thing and waited for what was to come.

Me personally I expected something like introduction and some information about classes, but when I saw a determined old/he told us he was 74 later, much later/ man, I knew how wrong I was.

I like to be always prepared, so I had my sneakers and T shirt with me, but there were some girls in jeans only. But this didn't stop the old guy. As he told us, you can sport anywhere, anytime, in anything. Well, he knows, after all he is 74:)

He had a special 2 hours prepared for us. We started playing these games, I know from kindergarten. Like jumping with a jumping rope, climbing and making ape carts... I am sure you can imagine. But the best point of the day was playing black and white. He had this little circle, one side black, one side white. He divided us into two groups, one black, one white. Then he did his little speech, like it was really important to catch the other..../bla bla bla/ and then threw the thing into air. And then the people whose colour was the colour on the top had to chase the others. Real fun, of course, no one really remembered which group he was in, or even better which group the others were in, so we were chasing everyone:)

After this wonderful hour of "fun" we could actually do what we wanted. But I have a piece of advice, if you ever see a guy, old one, with a determined look on his face, RUN... And hide well.

PS: I lied, the best part of the day was seeing a Russian girl play volleyball in high shoes and a skirt:)

Some people just do not want to get helped

As you already know I am a chitty-chatty person. And I also know, how does it feel, when you are the "new kid" an nobody wants to talk to you. Of course, sometimes they are even scared to start the conversation first. I can totally understand them and that is why I have no problem to come to someone and introduce myself.

This happened with some Russian girls as well. They were five, so they didn't need my "Help:)"
But I was a little bored, and people from foreign countries fascinate me, so I made my friend to go with me. I came with a smile and introduce myself and my friend.

After a few minutes of conversation, let just say after 3:), I realized something is wrong. They weren't really listening to me. You know when someone is pretending to listen to you. But they weren't even doing that. They were annoyed, which surprised me, but Hey at least I tried.

When I was sitting safely at my room, I found an article about homeless people refusing to move to a better place. The headline of this article was: "Some people just do not want to get helped."

Sometimes it's just that.

How I realized I am too old...

On the fisrt Saturday we had a party at a local student disco club called Mensakeller, whatever that means. It is a nice place, two stages, three or four bars - am not so sure, nice security guys-aren't they always?- and most importantly many many german students:)

Most of my time there was spent talking with my new schoolmates and some of the Germans. I just love learning about new countries, exotic ones, at least for me, like Brazil or Panama. But anyway I was sitting at a table and having a nice and pleasant conversation, when out of nowhere another foreign student appeared. I will state his normal name, just because I think he will never ever read this, the main reason is he can't speak english, the second reason even if he read this he would probably be proud of himself:)

So This Arkadiusz:), right from Poland:), started a nice german/english-he knew some words like Love and all the rude ones:)/slovak/polish conversation. During the 15 minutes we were talking to each other he managed to insult my German pronounciation and grammar - it is only fair to say, that he was right in 95%,but he also managed to tell me how beautiful I was, inteligent ...........(put as much positive adjectives as possible). Then came the BIG question.

He asked me how old I was. I didn't exactly get why was it that important to him, but I am not ashamed of my age in any way, so I told him the truth. He looked a me with horror and fright on his face and told me: "I am sorry, I have something to do."

I told this story to a friend of mine and she started to laugh really hard. I looked blank at her and she told me: " At least he didn't shouted: 'How OLD are YOU????'"

Then I realized the truth, I am not so young anymore. Better to say, for some people I am too old to be considered a possible night fling:).

Thanks God for that:)

The importance of being an international student

After two days I realized, that being an international student is a really hard job in Wismar. We had to do so many things, we even had to meet a mayor of the city in the townhall. He was really nice, telling us about the history of the town - I started to call Wismar its right name - Town, not a city:) - and some other information, which I didn't exactly listened to.

We could and of course did visit many sports and cultural facilities, we had a city tour, which was supposed to be interactive in way, but in the end resulted in copying the answers of the tests from some more hard-working students, which were actually in the minority(understand only two).

The Stadtfuhrung:) was actually pretty fun, with all the english speaking people trying to read german text, and on the other hand I pretty enjoy old citycenters. Sorry towncenters:). And churches, and townhalls and monasteries and parks and fountains and all other old things:)In the end of the tour we visited St.-Nikolai-Kirche and climbed 93 steps of a spiral-staircase, which was pretty challenging for us, but the view of the city was well worth it.

Although a friend of mine said:"I am never going to enter a single church again." Like I said before, being an international student in Wismar is a pretty hard job:).

Sometimes things look better in the morning

My grandmother has always told me, that everything looked better in the morning sun. So when I woke up the following morning and saw the shining sun, I made a promise to myself that no matter what I WILL ENJOY the semester in the beautiful city:) of Wismar.

The fisrt days we went through the formalities, city tour and library tour and actually through introducing everybody.

I am an extrovert person. I would even say SUPERextrovert. I love talking to people and I love actually listening to people as well. That is why I was surprised, there weren't many people who were as talkative and social as I and my other friend from Slovakia.

Of course we talked to many of them in the end and found us some aquitances. I can't say friends, because I do not know them that good yet.

" What have you gotten yourself into again, Jane?"

I have wanted to become an Erasmus student from the moment I entered the door of my university. I loved the idea of living in a different contry from mine.

I have spent last few months after my acceptation to this program imagining how it is going to be. The school, new people, new possible love interests maybe .

So full of expectations I joined a fellow Erazmus student and her dad on our journey to the beautiful city of Wismar.

Altough city is a little exagerating for a town with a population of 46 000 inhabitants . The journey took 12 hours, which were filled with speculations about the city. I am still calling it this name, even when for me city means something totally different.

First pleasant surprise was, when noone was waiting for us at the dorms, but that wasn't so big problem afterall we are big girls already. I actualy had to speak German, which should't have been a problem, but as you may assume, of course was. With a mixture of Greman, English and some more languages we finally got the rooms and could carry our HUGE luggages up to the 3 floor.

After this delightful excercise we said goodbye to my friends dad and decided to go for a short walk. By short I meant walk for like 20 minutes, but of course we got lost, so we came home-understand dorms:)- after 3 hours.

In the end of the day I was sitting on my bed and thinkig: " What have you gotten yourself into again, Jane?"