The First Day

I have officially been in Germany for 25 hours.  It’s pretty much the exact same experience as when I went to Salzburg. Only exchange the college students for horses, the English for German, and the city for a village. Actually, the horses probably pee in more appropriate places than some of my classmates did at the time.  Okay, okay, it’s not like Salzburg at all.  Fine.  

I left my home in Gladstone at 6:00 am Wednesday morning and arrived in Frankfurt by 3:00 am Pacific time.  I was just a little tired. Then I hopped on a train to Siegburg/Bonn and really hoped that my host, Melanie, would be waiting for me, even though I was an hour later than we agreed to meet.  I came up the stairs to the entrance of the train station and saw a woman standing there… “Sind Sie Melanie?” And just like that, the German speaking began.  We got into her car (which smelled of horses) and started making our way back to her house. 

On the way we stopped at her favorite vegetable store.  It was just a small place with a bunch of fresh vegetables and fruit, a little farmers market.  Everyone knew each other by name.  The owners asked where I was from, and then didn’t believe me when I answered because I don’t have blonde hair and long fingernails...no comment. But I got a free apple.  It was a pretty drive after that, the buildings becoming sparse as we approached farmland.  When we arrived, Melanie’s son, Friederick, came out and took my bags in for me.  He’s got a Jamaican look going on, dreads, baggy clothes, but very, very white.  I met the dog, Leo, and the two cats, Toby and Sam.  (Make new friends? Check.)  Then I met all of the horses.  There are currently nine and they’re all very nice.  Che Gueverra had a nibble on my coat and seemed to think I was okay, and since he’s the head honcho, all the other horses agreed. 

We had some dinner and then did the nightly feeding and watering of the horses and by then it was 7:00 pm and I was exhausted.  I went from understanding half of the German I was hearing, to about a fifth of it.  Yeah, it was time for bed.  I took a shower in my worst nightmare of a shower, the one thing I dislike about Europe.  It’s a bathtub with a showerhead that is stationed by your knees.  So you hold it up and get yourself wet and then when you put it back in the holder to soap yourself up, the water goes everywhere and also your whole upper half is freezing.  But it felt good to get clean. And then I got in bed and passed out within minutes.

Promptly woke up at 4 am this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep.  Once 6:30 hit, there was movement in the house and I heard Friederick in the kitchen with that song playing “You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals…” Laughed.  Melanie and I had some breakfast, bread, meats, cheeses, yum! Then the work began.  I felt like I got a second breakfast with all of the hay that seemed to find its way into my mouth.   I stuffed all of the hay bags for the horses and then shoveled poop and wheelbarrowed it out to the poop pile, more like a poop mountain, and then dumped it out.  Over and over and over again.  I willingly picked up horse poop with bare hands today because I was too lazy to go get the shovel when some fell out of the wheelbarrow.  Don’t worry, it wasn’t warm or anything. 

 For the most part, I can understand Melanie enough to figure out what she wants me to do.  Sometimes she tells stories and I only get bits and pieces, but luckily, I do understand body language, so I know when to laugh at least.  Today she asked me to do something, and then asked if I understood.  I said, we’ll see.  Turned out I didn’t understand, but she is nice enough to just laugh and explain it again.  

Although, this morning, she did tell me that I speak with good grammar.  Score.  Alright, well, we just had lunch and now I am sitting on my bed.  There is more work to be done soon, but I figured I should update the blog, you know, for all of my fans out there (i.e. MOM).  Okay, pictures and more interesting stories to come.