Hello Everyone!
My name is Natalie, and I am a Senior majoring in Elementary Education. I will be graduating from UA in December and have decided to complete my final semester abroad! As an education major, my last semester is known as my teaching internship, where teacher interns teach two different grades, one higher (4-6) and one lower (K-3), pretty much on their own. The College of Education provides the opportunity for teacher interns to complete their internship through a program known as COST or Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching. When I first heard about COST I knew that it was something that I could not pass up. The opportunity sounded to good to be true to be honest, but I decided to take the plunge! After completing the applications and waiting months to hear back, I was finally told that I would be completing my teacher internship in Berlin, Germany! I’ve known since about April that I would be going to Berlin, so the fact that I am leaving TOMORROW does not seem real to me yet! I feel like I have been waiting almost forever and now the time is finally here!
The first question I always get is: “Do you speak German?” and my answer to that would be “No!” . That’s right, I am going to Germany and I don’t know a single word in German! The students I will be teaching can all speak English, so I am not so worried about that but other than that I am hoping that I will pick up the language quick, I’ll be sure to post about how that goes…
I have been doing many things to prepare for my trip. First of all, I booked my flight right away! If you are going to study abroad, I would suggest booking your flight as soon as it is official because flights are expensive! I also did research on Berlin and Germany as a whole. I’ve only been out of the United States once (I went to Spain in high school) so learning about Germany and surrounding areas was very eye opening for me. I am excited to see everything I have researched live and in person. Lots of shopping has also taken place in this last week! From adapters and converters to last minute teaching supplies, I think I have done more shopping to prepare for this trip than I have to prepare for any other trip I’ve ever been on!
Like I mentioned earlier, I leave tomorrow! At this point, I am 90% excited, 10% stressed/terrified, but I know that 10% will change once I have landed in Berlin and my adventure is officially underway! I will be posting again once I am in Berlin and have gotten settled. For now, I will leave you with a picture of my two suitcases and two carry-ons that I packed and repacked about 100 times to make sure that everything fit and was underweight! It’s quite the miracle!
Until next time,
~ Natalie
