Month 8!

Month 7! (GISHWHES EDITION)

It was a normal July afternoon binge watching supernatural on prime, little did I know, by pressing the "Nächste Folge"button, my summer would be completely different after watching that one episode titled "The French Mistake" The episode basically set in the real world where the actors are playing themselves on the set of supernatural. During the episode Misha Collins tweets constantly, usually really stupid but funny things. This prompted me to follow Misha on Twitter, where he was posting constantly about some strange thing called GISHWHES (Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen) , for a few days I simply ignored it. Then I got curious, then I got really curious and started watching video after video about GISHWHES, but I still didn't understand what it was. I thought it was some kind of fancy dress geocashing. I had some credit left in my uk paypal account so I thought, screw it just sign up and if all else fails you'll just have paid for a signed holiday card from Misha Collins. 
Only after I paid my $45 did I decide that maybe I should look up what happened last year which might give me a better idea as to what I am actually supposed to be doing. That is when I found the list, reading through this list gave me cold sweats and brought me close to tears. What the hell had I let myself in for? This list contained things such as:

"VIDEO: Go order food at your favorite fast-food restaurant. Greet the attendant, explain how hungry you are, what you want to eat, and how good it will make you feel. One thing, you must speak as the Bard wrote. Place your order in Shakespearian verse.42 POINTS"

"IMAGE: You know the expression, “Beefcake?” As in, “He’s such a beefcake!” Have you ever really stopped to think about it? What exactly is a beefcake? It sounds good, right? I think we should have beefcake for dinner. Serve frosted beefcake at a family dinner where at least 3 generations are represented. 39 POINTS"

"IMAGE: You, dressed as The Flash in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) tunnel. If this is too difficult, you will get full credit for dressing as The Flash in any actual, operational particle accelerator. 216 POINTS" 

1) I am in a country where I can barely speak the language, how am I supposed to order something in translated Shakesperian verse? 
2) I am vegetarian and I don't live with my family, and the only family I do have here do not like photographs of them to be online.
3)?!?!?!

That's when the realisation kicked in, we need to create the items we are looking for. What the hell have I signed up for? Over the next several days I was contemplating calling it quits, just ignoring the whole thing pretending I never spent that money and just be happy with a card. After all the teams were made up of 15 people where the hell was I going to find 15 people to help me?! Luckily this was also around the time the pre hunt emails came rolling in.
 

  

 

Now I am not an idiot, I know the e-mails from Misha personally addressed to me, were computer generated. However these combined with the other e-mails written in such a kind and humorous way made me realise this was something I want to be part of. A whole organisation with its core being supporting a charity called Random acts of kindness and putting a smile on people's faces, who wouldn't want to be a part of that? I started spamming madly on facebook trying to get people to sign up. Registration soon closed, and my little team of 5 (two strangers I found on twitter, my friend from England, another au-pair from my town and I) were merged with two other teams bringing members from England, USA and Venezuela. We as a team will not win GISHWHES, as we were mostly a team of first timers, and a few members of the team had last minute commitments which came into play forcing them to not dedicate as much time to the hunt as they wanted. However I grew to love the team, we had so much fun and as cliché as it sounds, I still feel like we won something. I still can't believe what we achieved in that week. I grew closer to the Au-Pair friend I was doing it with as we had to spend so much time together, it reawakened my creativity, my mind was constantly active and I had the most amazing dreams!
 
I loved it so much that when it was all over I was suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms and had this big gaping hole in my life, with no idea how to now spend my days without GISHWHES. Which is why I was so happy when a team mate of mine referred me to the facebook group The GISHWHES Network . Here everyone was sharing their submissions and talking about the hunt, it was incredible to see the variation between submissions especially when one of the rules of the hunt was you could not interpret an item. If the item says stand on top of the Eiffel Tower singing eye of the tiger, you need to be doing exactly that, it can't be photoshopped or a model Eiffel Tower.


In addition to joining the facebook group I have signed up to "FEGVEP program (First Ever Gishwhes Volunteer Extraordinaire Program) – even though it’s technically the “second”? It offers you the chance to review items that might make it into the Gishwhes Coffee Table Book or the Gishwhes Hall of Fame and earn Gishpoints!" The quality of submissions is beyond amazing and have inspired me greatly! Its amazing to still be actively part of GISHWHES and being involved in helping people get recognition for their hard work.


All in all I cannot sing GISHWHES praises enough, I didn't realise just how much it would take over my life and change it for the better. I thought it would cost me lots of money and I would be terrified the whole way through. However the items I am most proud of, I didn't spend a single penny on, and I was exhilarated not terrified of the tasks done in public. I cannot wait for next year! 

Month 7

month 6

Month 5

Month 4!

First things first, MY HAIR IS GROWING BACK!

I've always had a full head of thick curly hair, but somehow in the last 12 months between; the changing to a lower salary, changing my working schedule, changing job title, getting more responsibilities, leaving said job, moving house, moving country, things not working out as planned in new country, my hair started to fall out and dramatically thin. I lost the life in my curls and was feeling generally fed up with it. 

However now that the sun is shining and I am in a really good situation I am finding several 4 or 5 cm strands of hair popping up all around my head bringing the volume back into the mane I am used to! Which has prompted me into restoring the rest of my body into a healthy state. Sitting in an office for 12 hours a day, with every other day being an excuse for someone to bring in a massive pile of chocolate cake, sweeties and other delicious goodies, for two years meant that I really started to pile on the pounds. Now the temptation is gone there is really no reason I should still be holding on to this weight, especially when Bad Homburg has two fantastic swimming centres, the one I go to consists of 8 swimming pools, and thats not including the baby pools and whirlpool. I have started going swimming and loving it, especially as when I get bored I just move to one of the other pools and start again. 

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss home, or when a group of people from Yorkshire sat around me on the U-bahn, I didn't nearly burst with excitement and want to join in with their conversation. However my feelings towards the UK and Germany are inexplicable. I miss the crazy stressful office environment of the call centre, I miss the noisy gym below my flat, I miss seeing the same people everyday that I have seen everyday for my whole life, now if you asked me why I was leaving I would have given you the same list only it would have looked like this. I hate the crazy stressful office environment of the call centre, I hate the noisy gym below my flat, I hate seeing the same people everyday that I have seen everyday for my whole life. I left England with a head full of ideas and a heart full of dreams. I have absolutely no desire to live back in the UK at this moment in time, but I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do in Germany. I originally wanted to go to university and study to be a kindergarten teacher, however I don't think my german language is ever going to be good enough to do that, and especially not after just 1 year.  I always felt very German, like an outsider in England. Now that I am here I realise just how much I didn't know about the country.  I am discovering new things about it everyday and all though I love it here, I am not sure there is a place in German society for someone as scatty minded as me.  But I have until mid April next year to make up my mind, maybe I'll move to Australia after all, at least there I might still stick out like a sore thumb when I speak, I will at least be a grammatically correct sore thumb. Or didn't I hear they have just discovered another earth like planet?  Maybe I will start up there, you never know the aliens might have something for me to do. 

Month 3!

Hello! I was considering doing another video blog, but after two attempts of recording the video with me either completely out of focus, or with my head chopped off I decided the old fashioned route would be easier!
Lots have changed since my last post, for starters I now live here:

A beautiful little city on the outskirts of Frankfurt. I really like it here because it has everything I need within walking distance, it has an amazing pool, night life, shops, u-bahn, s-bahn, bus and train stops.  The cherry on top is of course that my new family are also beyond amazing, I am so lucky to have found them.

After me only being here for two days we went on a mini holiday down south to Hammelburg, while we were there we visited a castle which was built in 1010, it was incredible how big it was. From there you could also see for miles and miles.

I moved out of Bruchsal on the 5th of April and didn't move into my new place (properly) until 21st of April. This meant I was able to spend some time with my aunt, uncle and cousin as I stayed with them in the interim. My aunt and I tried about 10 times to make these stupid string easter decorations, every time we either made the holes too big so the eggs fell out, or used the wrong type of glue so they did not hold their form.  Here are the ones that looked good enough to photo, but nowhere near strong enough to touch! 

and here is what happened the the majority of the others:

Other Easter snaps:

This month also has given me the time to work on my book. Its incredibly frustrating, but also very enjoyable to write freely. I just hope one day I will be able to finish it, I only started it 7 years ago.

So despite the whole - loosing my job - thing, this has actually been a pretty amazing month, which 30 days ago I would have never thought possible. Every cloud really does have it's silver lining, you just need to know where to look!

I hope you all had a lovely easter too, bis Juni, Tschüss!