My Bag Are (Sort Of) Packed, I'm (Almost) Ready To Go...

 BUT, I am leaving on a jet plane. Tomorrow, in fact.  Surprising how quickly the time passes!  A month ago I was speculating at how I would spend the time before leaving without totally combusting from excitement and now here I am the day before I leave and I am about to combust from stress.

Okay, so that was an exaggeration.  See, there I am calmly packing and pretty close to being done.  There are just odds and ends up finish up, which in my opinion is always the worst.  It's always something you buried deep in your suitcase that you realize you need just hours before you leave.  Hopefully that won't happen!

At this time on Friday I will be in Frankfurt, taking in the sights during my 20-hour layover.  I bet you're thinking, "Wow, 20 hour layover? That sounds brutal." Yes, yes it does.  Or so I thought until I got in contact with some nice people from CouchSurfing who offered to show me around their city, invited me to a concert and offered to put me up for a few hours on their couch for some shut eye before my 7.45am flight on Saturday.  For those who just read that and thought to themselves, "What is this CouchSurfing and how do you get a piece of furniture to float?" let me enlighten you.  

Nope, that's not what I mean. 

  Couchsurfing.org is a network of travelers who live all around the globe.  They have various meet ups (some cities have them weekly), cultural exchanges and of course they are a way to find a host willing to give a weary traveler somewhere to sleep in exchange for some pleasant conversation.  My roommates and I hosted a couple people in Binghamton last summer, but this will be the first time I am actually doing the surfing myself.  Pretty excited to jump in and I'm sure I'll be mentioning the network a lot more over the next few months!

  So ANYWAY, in the wee hours of Saturday morning I will fly from Frankfurt to Skopje, Macedonia.  There I will leap into the waiting arms of Igballe, my dear friend who I met during my study abroad in Austria.  I am excited to discover the Balkans a bit (with an expert guide, no less!) and am really excited for this weather:

Cus goodness knows I love me some hot weather! :)

No seriously, I'm not joking.  I love really hot, sunny weather.  Strange how I am from Binghamton, huh?  Well anyway, I am going to soak up as much Summer as I can because when I move to Kiel in a couple weeks, this is what is in store for me:

Not the most appetizing Summer weather, but its nothing I haven't dealt with before.  I am looking forward to going to Schleswig-Holstein though.  I am been in further contact with the school I'll be working at, and it is making me even more excited!  It is hard for me to even imagine that part of my trip though, since there are so many logistical elements I need to prepare for and be thinking about the in immediate few days.  For now I will try to take it one day at a time and enjoy where I am and whoever I am with.  Right now that happens to be my family, who are having a Goodbye BBQ for me tonight! :) 

See ya on the flip side (of the ocean!),

Chelsea 

Hey Y'all!

Well here I sit, July 18th, my next big adventure looming merely a month away.  The past 9 months have seemed to drag by as I filled out applications, more applications, waited for acceptance letters and placement letters.  But here I am, finally about to embark on my year assistant teaching in Germany as a Fulbright grantee. 

If you know me at all, you know that when I do or think about something I find even marginally exciting, I can usually barely contain myself.  That is probably one reason why I have been researching every minute aspect of the region of Germany I'll be in (Schleswig-Holstein), what the Fulbright program is like, and why I have already started this blog. A month before I even leave.  I also thought that by starting already it would give people time to kind of grasp what is up with me for the next year.  So let's review my tentative schedule for the rest of the summer:

now-August 18: home in NY, working until my fingers bleed and my brain numbs
August 18-September 2: Macedonia to visit my lovely friend Iggy, week at a Greek beach planned as well
September 2-5: stop over in Köln to recuperate
September 5-8: Fulbright orientation in Altenburg, Germany
September 8:  KIEL!

So that's how the next 7.5 weeks look for me.  Pretty exciting!  In case you couldn't gather from the information above, I will be living in Kiel, the capital of the most northern German state Schleswig-Holstein.  I will, however, not be teaching in Kiel, but in a much smaller town about an hour away called Hohenwestedt.  I have been in contact with a few of the teachers there and everyone seems so welcoming and excited to have me coming that I actually can't wait to start my new job!

Upon google-ing the town, I discovered it is famous for its annual "Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum" (aka Middle Ages Fantasy Spectacular).... woah. Kinda random for a town that Wikipedia claims to have a population of only 5,000... but hey, whatever floats your boat.  The area is also known for agriculture, which is opposite of most of Schleswig-Holstein, which sits sandwiched between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and is historically very water oriented.  The region is very flat and has lots of windmills, which result in cool pictures like this:

Kiel on the other hand is situated on the Baltic Sea and is one of Germany's main industrial shipping ports.  Every June the city is host to the world's largest regatta, Kiel Week, when the harbors are overcrowded with boats and people, which probably looks like this:

I am really excited about living in the north and on the water.  Both of my previous experiences living in Europe have been in the Alpine southern regions of Bavaria and Austria.  Though both of those regions will forever be in my heart as where I really feel at home and truly happy, I think they'll soon have to move over and make some room for a completely new place.

So over the next month I will be working 5-6 days a week, having last minute appointments (dentist, hair cut, etc.), spending as much time with my family as I can and mentally preparing for what will probably turn out to be one of the most challenging and rewarding years of my life!