Can't Say Strawberry

I just booked my flight back home to the U.K for the first of June. My contract ends on the 31st of May, so I’ll have a Monday in school and then I’m back in sunny (apparently it is a good deal sunnier than Germany right now!) Britain! It still hasn’t hit me that I have little under a week left in school. I taught my last Tuesday lessons yesterday, as there’s no school next Monday OR Tuesday because Germany clearly has it a lot better where public holidays are concerned! I’m ridiculously jealous as last Thursday and Friday were also public holidays (though I have no school on Friday anyway). Us Brits have just the one public holiday in May – but we don’t go all out like the Germans and close all the shops and supermarkets, don’t be silly!

The abundance of May public holidays aren’t all that I’ll miss in Germany; it’s odd having built a life here and having to leave it. My (now daily now there’s one at the end of my road) trips to Rewe, Backwerk (bakery) and the Kiosks (especially on Sundays when everything except the Kiosks are closed!) shall be sorely missed, not to mention all the German acquaintances I’ve made, from my housemates, to the teachers to the students at school. I’ll truly miss Team Fabelhaft – a group of people who so often reduce me to tears of laughter – so they can all expect visits when we return to the U.K.

So much has changed since I set off to Cologne at the end of August ‘09 – some changes have been beneficial, others have been regretful, but I wouldn’t change this year abroad for the world. In fact, I’d love to do it all over again.  There’s a scheme in Nordrhein Westfalen which involves native speakers being on payroll as teachers in schools here for contracts lasting a year. So you never know, after I finish my degree I could be back in good old NRW again…