Every Abend is Feierabend

I make two euros and 18 cents per hour. I'm happy to be getting that much. In fact, I might go so far as to say that that's pretty good, given that I have absolutely no work permits or German residency papers. While I am currently content, I imagine that this is the last time that my per-hour breakdown is going to be so meager. Well, maybe this is just going to be the last time such a pay rate will be satisfactory. In any case, it's an interesting perspective to think that hour of my time amounts to exactly enough money to buy two packs of German Haribo assorted flavor gummy bears.

Now that my parents are gone and vacation is over, the process of settling in has begun. I'm still not quite sure what exactly that entails or how to complete it, but I'm almost positive that it starts with getting residency and work permits (number one on every To-Do list scattered throughout my room). American citizens, as well as those from several other countries, are permitted to stay in Germany without any visa or official documentation for three months, so technically I'm still legit. To become a resident, one must apply at City Hall and then simply wait to see if the request is accepted. I have two more months to complete said task, but I think the sooner the better.

The other aspects of becoming a settled German are going much better, namely finding somewhere to live and getting a job. As for living arrangements, they were all but organized for me before I arrived (another shout out to the Walter family for hooking me way up). I am living in downtown Würzburg in a three bedroom apartment with a kitchen, a bathroom, a hallway that connects all five rooms, light switches that aren't in the rooms they turn the lights on in, and no laundry facilities (as you can see in the photo, my room is currently doubling as a dryer). The apartment itself is very new, the location is fantastic and rent is cheaper than any equivalent that you'd find in the US (save a room in Montana or Minnesota). My two roommates are both students at Universität Würzburg, the well-known Stefan who studies physics and Viktoria Killian who is a law student finishing up the last of her exams before she enters the world of German Justice (which I can only imagine is extremely convoluted and littered with all kinds of enormous words). I'm still finishing getting all the last little pieces of my room put in place - a laundry basket for the pile of clothes leaking out from behind my door, a makeshift closet where I can actually hang things instead of draping them over the back of a chair, a rug to dampen the amazing echo produced by every sound wave that travels through my room, and a clock so I don't have to go into the kitchen to see what time it is. It's a work in progress, to say the very least.

Life at work is slightly more organized, but only slightly. I currently have a "paid" internship at St. Martin Schule in Kitzingen, a city about 20 kilometers outside of Würzburg. It's a school for mentally and physically disabled children from kindergarten through high school. I'm working virtually full time and it has taken two weeks for them to figure out where they want me, so I've been bouncing around, spending a lot of time wondering what it is I should be doing, occupying myself by playing a game where I trying to translate the nasty Franconian dialect spoken by the teachers. But after two slightly awkward weeks of figuring out my place at St. Martin, I now feel more adjusted and comfortable.

Working with disabled children is something so wildly different than any other job I've had. Communicating with the kids requires a graceful balance, a balance between patience and firmness, between questions and answers, between holding on and letting go, between using your words and using your hands. I joke a little when I say that I did little more than stand around; actually, I'm surprised at the amount of things that I've done in just two weeks. My first week I was filling in for another intern who wasn't able to come and I got the chance to work with the same group of children for several days in a row and see how you can strike this seemingly impossible balance.

One student in the class is Jonathan, an eight year old with severe Autism that has stripped his ability to speak. His condition is such that he requires a personal aide, a role that I was asked to fill. Jonathan experiences the world through his sensory nerves - touching that which has interesting texture, and listening to things that make exciting, often irritating, sounds. At first he was rather wary of me, given that I was a unfamiliar person and he didn't know what to expect. I gave him his space, helped him clean up when he made a mess, pushed him around in his stroller allowing him to drift his hands through the long, wavy blades of grass and sat by his side during meals to make sure that he had everything he needed. We built a trust and a system of communication that was completely independent of words. Jonathan doesn't recognize me through my voice or my appearance, but through the way I feel. He is absolutely fixed on my beard, for example. When we spend time together, he'll give it a rub every few minutes just to make sure that it's still in fact me that he's with. He's also discovered my hands and how they can be used to apply pressure to his body when he craves touch. I spend a lot of time giving him foot massages and scratching his back; that, coupled with touching my beard, seems to calm him down, even in his moments of more severe distress. I spend a lot of time wondering what it is that he's thinking; is his mind quiet, or is it racing? Are his thoughts simple or complex? The answers may never come, but I'm glad that I can at least contribute something positive to his life, a life that he didn't choose, and to a large degree, he cannot control.

The other students I work with, both in Jonathan's class and throughout all the other groups I help, all require separate communication strategies, the assembly thereof having been an exciting process for me. For those who can speak, we talk and oftentimes I am the one who feels hindered given that everything operates in German. We read together, do math, with the older students we play boardgames, build things in woodshop and discuss the latest German soccer matches (I just spend most of the time in these conversations offering various phrases of agreement with whatever point is brought up because I know next to nothing about the trade deal between Schweinsteiger and Müller.) The whole experience of working everyday with the kids has forced my German to improve very quickly, not only to decipher what it is the students are saying, but so that I can respond promptly and accurately. Another benefit is that I now know the words for all things that you would find in a woodshop, like a Bandsägemaschine or a Kreuzschlitzschraubenzieher. It will be interesting to see what my vocabulary looks like at the end of my internship at St. Martins. My time there is going to be challenging, but I have no doubts that it will be one of the most rewarding endeavors of my life.

I get off work everyday at 3:30pm and come back to Würzburg with one of the teachers who lives about a kilometer away from me, a carpool that saves me a boatload on train tickets (a one way fare costs about three hours of work). This leads me into perhaps my favorite part of life in Deutschland: Feierabend. The German language is amazing in that it has a word for almost everything, including, in this case, the part of the day right when you get off work. It literally translates to "Festival Evening," a translation that took me aback when I first heard it. I was at the grocery store picking up some delicious German bread (something so miraculous that deserves its own post all together) and the cashier bade me farewell by commanding me to enjoy my festival evening. Confused, but excited there was a festival on a Tuesday, I asked Viktoria what the woman had meant. Vicky explained that that is what Germans call the evening after a day of work and that, alas, there was no secret Tuesday festival awaiting me in downtown Würzburg. Nevertheless, I find it to be a wonderful word, one that reminds me that work is a means to live, and that life isn't a means to work. And the best thing about my Feierabends is that I have nothing to do. No homework, no studying for the MCAT, no second job to get ready for (yet...). If I feel like reading, cooking, watching a movie, exercising (well, that's more of a personal obligation than a choice), wandering down to the Main River to people watch, I can. These are just some of the endless possibilities of Feierabend. I am going to enjoy very much for the next two years of my life to leave work and take nothing home - my time is my time. Sunday is no longer a frantic scramble to make up for Saturday when I should have been preparing for Monday. I can literally take it one day at a time and there is nothing wrong with going to bed at 9:15pm if I feel like it. I better enjoy it now because I'm pretty sure that there aren't any Feierabends in medical school, or in life as a physician for that matter.

That's a rather thorough summary of my life up to this point. The only other activity that I can think of that I do with frequency is run, something that has done a lot to get me in good shape and also familiarize myself with my new city. We are training for a half marathon in November, and as part of the regiment, Stefan and I took part in a local 1oK race last weekend and did well [42:06 (19th place) and 42:12 (20th place) respectively]. We have plans to do a three more in the upcoming weeks with the lofty goal being to finish in under 40 minutes. Another training run was a 25 kilometer (15.75ish miles) hill run that paralyzed the both of use for two days and gave us due respect for anybody that runs marathons. Good thing I'm only committed to a half...