November

November was a whirlwind. It started off pretty chill, I celebrated my birthday quietly. In the middle, I took a test and my phone got stolen and it ended with me cooking a mini thanksgiving dinner.

In true Ryn fashion, I did nothing to commemorate my 22nd birthday. The day simply passed by like any other day. The night before, however, I ended up going to this ‘International Conversation” group/party/thing. I sat at the English speaking table as I had been out all day attempting German and my brain hurt. I was nervous to go at first, but ended up having a really great time. That night ended at around 2am, with two Russians and I splitting a bottle of wine in the middle of Marienplatz.

The next week, it came time for me to take my A1 German test. I had been preparing for this test since summer, kind of. The A1 is the most basic language exam and I was pretty confident that I could pass without any issues. This, however, didn’t stop me from being nervous about the test. After all, it is still a test and my test anxiety is as real as ever. Now, I needed to pass this test in order to get my au pair/work visa, which is my only reason behind taking the test. Going into it, I didn’t even know what minimum I needed to pass (I later found out it was a 60). The test was split into four parts: Hören/Listening, Lesen/Reading, Schreiben/Writing, and Sprächen/Speaking. There was roughly a dozen of us taking the test, some of which were also au pairs from the States - we all got to chatting later on. The first three sections were all easy enough. I ended up being the first finished, so I had to sit and wait for 30min for the time to run out. The last section, speaking, was done in small groups, one at a time. I barely understood what was happening in this section, but I got through it. After exchanging numbers with the other au pairs, I headed off home to prepare for upcoming weekend trip to Amsterdam.

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Before I go off into my tale of Amsterdam, my cousin was in Munich! She was here for a work conference and we were able to meet up just before she headed back home. Much fun, now onto Amsterdam. I think I set myself up for something weird to happen on this trip. I booked overnight busses to and from, and picked one of the cheapest hostels I could find for my time there. It already sounds sketchy. I got into Amsterdam around 9am following a 12 hour bus ride. I spent my weekend exploring the city, taking photos, and probably spending way too much time in the Van Gogh Museum. Most of this time I was on my own, as the people I met up with left earlier than I did, we did end up having a really fun experience ice skating while we were all there. My time in Amsterdam went smoothly, other than catching a cold from some guy in my hostel. It was the bus ride back to Munich were things took a turn. Like I said earlier, another overnight bus. Now I had all bags closed up and under my legs as I tried to get some sleep. My phone however, was on the tray table in front of me as I had been listening to music to aid my sleep. So, my headphones were plugged into it as well as a power bank. You see, my phone was a piece of crap. It would die anytime I tried to use it, unless it was plugged in. I woke up at 6am to find my phone, headphones, and power bank gone. After a moment of panic, I settled back into my seat. As I said the phone was a piece of crap, so the joke's on whoever stole it.

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After returning to Munich I was able to quickly solve my lack of phone issue as I had already been looking into getting a new phone. Also around the time of my return, my A1 test results were ready. I still think it’s a bit odd that I had to physically go in to receive my result, but it gave me a chance to get out of the house. When I arrived, one of the au pairs I met was already there waiting for her own results. We chatted as we waited and watched people scramble around, our nerves were growing. After the scurrying stopped, we got called in one at a time to receive the news. I ended up getting 87/100, much better than I thought I’d do with my lack of studying. My hosts said this was the best any of their au pairs had gotten on the test, so that definitely boosted my confidence.

To round out the end of the month, I made what I called a “Thanksgiving Themed dinner” for my host family. They thought it’d be a good idea to celebrate the holiday in some way. So I made some gluten free dinner rolls, because it’s not Thanksgiving without bread in my book and one of the kids can’t have gluten. The role weren’t great, but they could have been worse, so I’ll still call it a win. We had chicken in place of a turkey, because let’s be real-turkey isn’t great. We also had some classics, mashed potatoes and green beans. Now that Thanksgiving is out of the way I can dive into plenty of German Christmas Markets that have started popping up, but more on those next month!

An extra note regarding mental health:

I skipped over this in the main portion because I wanted to focus on what I’ve been doing rather than how I’ve been feeling, which I will now do here. November has always been a hard month for me, between my birthday, the three year mark of my mom’s death, and a family oriented holiday like Thanksgiving, it’s easy to see why. That being said, on top of all of that, homesickness hit hard. I struggle with calling it homesickness though as the feeling isn’t attached to a place or even a person for me, which makes it all the more difficult to put a name to and cope with. It’s not something I’m over, but I’m working through it, just like I did in college.