Bureaucracy - pros and cons. Days two and three.

 Hello hello you beautiful ray of sunshine!

My first full day in Germany started with getting on the bus before 7AM in the morning and going to the suburbs of Cologne to meet teacher D and get my bloodwork done. The bureaucracy here is so strict. The daycare center I'm going to be doing my internship at requested a note from a German doctor that I have the antibodies for measles. My lab results from Finland were not enough.

While it's a hassle to get my bloodwork done again, I do understand the reasoning behind it. We have to have all the correct paperwork done and submitted on time for the system to work. Now there's concrete proof that we followed the protocol to prevent an outbreak.

The needle itself was much bigger than the ones we have in Finland, and because of that it hurt more. I am not afraid of needles and usually not weakened by the sight of blood, but I did get a bit nauseous and had to look away.

I couldn't start my internship until the results were done and sent to the manager at the daycare center. So instead I went to Berufskolleg Bergheim, a vocational school that does international collaboration with Eduko.

I visited a few different lessons during Monday and Tuesday.

I got to participate in lessons and socialize with the students. Many were curious and asked me questions about where I'm from, what am I doing there, how I've liked Bergheim so far, and so on.
It was so cool to notice, that the childcare students get to learn the same things here as we do in Finland. I guess some things are universal.

On both days, after school I went grocery shopping. The first day I tried to go to Aldi, but I didn't know that they don't have shopping baskets. I also didn't have a big enough coin for a shopping cart, so I had to go to Rewe. Bought my food and a reusable shopping bag.

On the second day I was hellbent on seeing what an authentic German Lidl looks like, since we have Lidl in Finland, too.

I also went on a short walk after checking out Lidl. To my surprise, Lidl in Germany seems to be meant for shopping for the whole week, and not for a quick few things like I'm used to. They also don't have shopping baskets, but luckily I did have my reusable bag from Rewe that doubles as a basket in this case.

Going on walks is probably my favourite thing ever. Autumn in Germany is still in full swing and everything looks so pretty and colourful, unlike in Finland, where the leaves fell down in early October and the sun sets before the evening even starts.

While it sucks not being able to start my internship right away and having to have my bloodwork done again, I'm glad I got to see how they do things in a German vocational school compared to a Finnish one.

Anyway, that's all I have to report on for now.

Best regards,

InterReili