Take a deep breath…

I’m home from work, have eaten my lunch and soon it will be time to go and view the first flat.
The one Jan is probably not coming to view with me (he has now said he’ll try). the one where I rearranged the appointment so he could come with me.
I currently feel sick with nerves. I don’t want to go and view a flat on my own. Usually I let Jan ask all the questions while I just smile and try to look friendly. I’m useless at talking to people I don’t know – even more useless if they’re German and I need them to be impressed by me so I can have the flat I’m looking at. The person showing me around this one is (I think) the current tenant – I got my current flat because the people who lived here at the time recommended me to the landlady. Jan was with me then and did most of the talking. This time I’ll be all alone…
Cross your fingers for me please.

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Unnecessary interview nerves

I have an interview in an hour.
It’s for a job that I’m not even sure I want. In fact, I’m not even exactly sure what the job is… other than that it involves working in an office and the need to speak English.
Despite that I am nervous enough that my breakfast made me feel sick. Imagine what I’m going to be like if I ever manage to get an interview for a job I actually do want…

Cough, cough

Bleurgh, I feel like crap.

My throat hurts, I haven’t been warm once all day, I’m aching all over and I keep coughing. I feel there’s a slight chance I may be coming down with a cold. Which sucks. I mean, being ill always sucks, but it’s even more sucky right now, because:

1. I have a progress meeting at work tomorrow. I’m very nervous about it. I don’t need a cold to make me feel even worse.
2. I start my Spanish course tomorrow. The lesson is from 6pm – 9pm. Really need the old brain to be working for that, which it won’t be if I have a cold.
3. I have friends coming round for Christmas dinner on Saturday. The boyfriend and I spent 56 euros in the English shop last weekend. I bought crackers, I bought cranberry sauce, I even bought bread pudding mix. I don’t even like bread pudding! And today a bought a turkey. I refuse to cancel this bloody meal! Therefore I am not allowed to be ill.
Grrr.

I think I shall go and make myself some hot lemon. Not sure if it actually does anything against colds, but at least it might warm me up!

This time next week…

Firstly, can someone please tell me a) what webtaskr.com is, b) why it keeps appearing in my incoming links and c) why, when I click on the link to it, do I find a paragraph from one of my blogs there with a link to me at the bottom with “read the original” post. What’s going on??? Answers on the back of a postcard please (or in the comments section if you’d prefer 😉 )

And now back to what I really wanted to talk about.
This time next week I’ll be getting ready for my last day at my current place at work. It’s very scary and also quite sad (as in upsetting, not uncool). How can it have been almost a whole year since I started my internship there? It doesn’t seem like that long. And yet, at the same time, it feels like I’ve been there forever. I love working there. Love the banter (by email) with other English-speaking interns from our branches throughout Germany. Love most of the translations I get to do. Even some of the proofreads are fun (yesterday I was reading a very funny translation about jeans). My colleagues here in Karlsruhe are brilliant – two are pretty much my age and the third is only five years older. It’s great. We can have a laugh together and I don’t feel like the little, inexperienced child amongst all the adults who know exactly what they’re doing.

And now it’s time to leave.

A week on Monday I start my new internship. Between leaving where I am now and starting at the new place I have exactly 3 days to mentally prepare myself. My current mood? Nervous, sad, excited, nostalgic, terrified… it’s an emotional rollercoaster.

Interview time…

I’m currently trying to force myself to eat breakfast while my stomach goes “nooo, don’t want food. I’m too busy twisting myself into nervous knots to eat!” I have to eat though. I know what will happen if I don’t  – I’ll get to my interview and my stomach will suddenly decide that it is hungry after all, then I’ll have to sit through the whole thing with it rumbling. Loudly. Not really the first impression that I want to make! So I’m trying to force myself to eat some toast with jam on. Once that’s gone I’m going to try and force myself to eat a yoghurt. I won’t have time for lunch – I need to leave the house at 12:00, buy credit for my phone, buy a ticket for the journey to Gernsbach, take a tram to the train station. The train to Gernsbach leaves at 12:43 and I arrive at 1:29pm. By the time I’ve got my bearings and walked down to the place it will pretty much be time for the interview, so no time for eating. I suppose I could take some food on the train. Hmm, actually that’s a possibility. I shall think about that. But in the meantime… must… eat… breakfast.

Fortunately the weather has decided to be kind to me today. The current temperature is a quite pleasant 21.7°C. This is good. I just hope it stays that way – I’m paranoid about making sweat marks on my nice blue blouse!

(Hopefully not) baking on the S-Bahn

The weather forecast promised (or perhaps a better word would be “threatened”) highs of 35°C for today. That’s 95°F for all you fahrenheit fans. I checked the online weather reports at 4:30pm and was informed that the temperature at that moment was 36°C/96°F. That’s one degree higher! So the weather forecasters lied! Not that one degree bothers me that much. Anything over about 26°C comes under the heading of “too hot”. Above 30° and it becomes “far too hot”. I’m just glad the weather decided to get the worst bit over with today when I don’t have to travel Gernsbach just when the sun is at its hottest. I’m scared enough of this interview without having to worry about dying of heat stroke before I even get there!

I’ve been looking on the Karlsruhe transport website trying to figure out how to get there. The perfect method would be to take the S-Bahn from Marktplatz. I would just have to walk to the tram stop, board the train and sit down to await Gernsbach. Of course I wouldn’t be me if things worked out that way…
The S-41, the train I would get on at Marktplatz, gets into Gernsbach every hour at 59 minutes past. 12:59, 1:59… my interview is at 2pm. The only way I could get from the train station to the interview in one minute is if someone invents teleportation by tomorrow… not going to happen I feel. I could, of course, get the one that arrives in Gernsbach at 12.59, but what am I going to do in Gernsbach, on my own, for an hour? It’s really not that big a town. So my other option is to take the S-31, which would get me there at 1:30pm. The S-31 goes from Karlsruhe main train station. That means I have to get a tram to the train station first. Not really difficult, but gives me more opportuny to panic. What if I miss the tram from Europaplatz and the S-31 has already left? I’d be late for my interview! Doooooooom!

OK, maybe I’m being slightly over sensitive. What can I say, I’m a worrier. And interviews scare me. A lot! In between worrying about how to get to Gernsbach I’ve been worrying about what I’m going to wear, whether a blue blouse is appropriate, whether it matters that I don’t have a proper suit, what I’m going to say when I get there, whether I’ll be able to answer their question, how badly my German is going to let me down… there are so many things that could go wrong! I’ll be glad when it’s this time tomorrow and the whole ordeal is over with!

Practising

I’ve done the practice translation and the trial proofreads. They’ve been sent back and I’ve had confirmation that they’ve been received. Now it’s time to try and calm myself down. Time to breathe. Time to get over being a nervous wreck.

The work itself wasn’t too bad. The translation was quite nice, about a bar in Berlin. The proofreads were a little more technical but short and well translated. I’ve had worse proofreads during my internship and done harder translations for my Master’s.

I finished the translation half an hour before I needed to, then spent another 20 minutes checking it over and over, making sure there were no silly mistakes, checking Google to see whether those words really can be placed together in that order. I finally sent it back 10 minutes before they had asked for it.

I was then sent two texts to proofread. I had about an hour and 40 minutes to do them. 45 minutes before I was supposed to send them back I had read through both of them, listed all the mistakes and was starting to wonder what I’d missed. Did they really expect it to take that long or were they just making sure I had plenty of time? And if they really did expect it to take all that time I was sure I must have missed something. Some huge, glaringly obvious mistake perhaps. Or maybe I’d managed to overlook a page, somehow thought the texts were shorter than they actually were. I forced myself to move away from the computer, get a drink of water and take some deep breaths. I came back to find that the text really were that long and there really weren’t any more mistakes. I sent it back 20 minutes before they had asked for it.

So that’s it. All done. I guess I’m one step further on the road to finding a job. Now I suppose I just wait and see what happens next.

More good news

It seems to be a week of good news on the jobs front. This morning somebody from Gernsbach called me. Apparantly she sent me something by post but it arrived back on her desk this morning with a stamp saying I don’t exist at that address. Very strange. I can assure you I do exist at my address – and she did have it right. She even read it out to me. Apparantly she had invited me to an interview tomorrow, but obviously I hadn’t got the letter, so we’ve rearranged it for next Thursday. It’s more than a week away and I’m nervous already! Wish me luck please.