Happy 1 year in england

Its after midnight and therefore I've been in this country for exactly a year today. If everything had gone according to my plans I would now probably be saying goodbye to the lovely kids I used to look after (well, probably not exactly right in this moment because its 1 am, not the best time to say goodbye) (the word lovely is to be taken according to the situation, a wishful, emotionloaded looking back kind of thing)

But, heyho, it didnt go according to my plans.

In this last year I've learned loads and loads (and I came here thinking I knew it all!). Somethings I'd rather not have experienced, like the out of sight, out of mind behaviour certain "very close friends" have been showing...or knowing how it feels when you wanna say something and just nobody understands it and it comes out all wrong...and so on.

There were other quite practical things Ive learned, like playing the cornet or the tiny bit of basic drums Wayne was kind enough to teach me or how to tag clothes or what to look for in food if you dont wanna get any heavier and how to blog and download music and how to phone home without spending all my money and which english shampoo is the best for my hair and how to use the tube and how to order at subways and how to pronounce ironing (and how to iron schooluniforms). And all the bad words including instructions which ones are OK to use always, sometimes and never...still some learning to do there!

Troughout all this id say ive changed quite a lot. Ive become a soldier, joined the songsters and the yp band, lost 2.5 st, changed my haircolour from boringbrown to purple-ish to red-ish to darkbrown, changed job and home...quite a lot for one little Anna in one little year :-)

Anyway, the "essence" of this whole post was to say "Thank you" to some great people who didnt drop me in this year. Some people from Switzerland who kept praying and writing and texting from "europe", and mainly those who even came here to see me. You mean quite a lot to me and, although I do miss the mountains and lakes and the cheese and chocolate and being understood by everybody, what i really miss is you guys.

And thank you to some great english people who I would really love if it wasnt for the fact that they drive one the wrong side of the street (as opposed to the RIGHT side). Thank you for supporting me and having me here and trying to include me and driving me around (still, its the wrong side) and explaining, translating and listening.


This was the first picture taken of me in england...

So here we go, starting a second year in southend....

Nightlife in England

Katies telling off has been quite intimidating, thats why Im writing twice in one day! (Or maybe its just that I had too many pictures for 1 single blog???)

Now when my brother was here, I wanted to give him a really great time and I wanted to show him the famous english nightlife...thats how it turned out:

To this last picture I have to say, I didnt actually win, but I wasnt as bad as you would probably believe...OK, I did loose all the games we played...but...I did manage to throw some pins over. Ha, bet you looke quite surprised!

After all that fun we had in the Kursaal we did something even more fun the next day: we went to Tescos after 10 pm...what a feeling! We lived so on the edge that night...because before Tescos we went to the Halfwayhouse for a dietcoke (after finding out they didnt have hot chocolate).

Just in case you didnt know, the Halfwayhouse is pretty much our main Nightlife place in town...heres the proove:

Thats 2 weeks ago, in the Halfwayhouse, after deciding that we were going to give Jazzy an exciting evening out...

Well, thats enough hard blogging work for one day...I shall go to bed now! Sleep thight!

Holiday

OK, so I got this major telling off from Katie because I am a quite bad blogger...but I decided to make some effort today, just specially for Katie :-)

The last few weeks have been great for me, because it was half term in Switzerland and therefore quite a few people had time to come and see me...that was nice. And most of them brought gifts, so that was even better.

The first person to come and spend a weekend here was Jasmin

(Jasmin is the one with the nice tan, the one with red cheeks that looks like Heidi is me...). Anyway, Jazzy is a great person! She's just up to anything anytime...like going out for a drink and ending up having a pierced ear...or going for a walk along a lake and ending up singing tacky love songs on the end of a pier...or coming to England and go to the main event...or going to Spain and buying a gift for me, although i really don't deserve it :-) Its the way coolest apron ever!

I suppose I'm really quite limitedly talented with computers, I'm not even able to turn this pic round, but I'm sure u can see that it is indeed a blue apron with huge red dots on.

The next ones to come were Astrid and Evelyn

They are both part of the army in Thun and just part of the group of worlds greatest people...it was way good to have them because they helped me defending Switzerland (that evening it was "pick on Swiss people day" in our youth fellowship, and just to let u know, the actual president of Switzerland is Micheline Calmy-Rey.

And them too brought great gifts. One of them was chocolate which is good in a bad way, the other was a mug that yodels...they are ever so cool, u cant imagine! But the coolest were the Swiss mint candy, just because of the special box they come in (some people were so amazed about the box that they couldn't stop playing with it!)

We had a short but great time together, and to end up they're stay in England we went to see Mary Poppins...unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures after the lights are turned down in the theater, so we took one before...which is not as interesting, but still quite cute:

As you can see, by the time we went to London, my brother had already arrived in England. He has lost 3 stone since I last saw him and I have to say: My brother is hot! But just before I write more about him, Ill have to mention that, while in London, we met up with my friend Nathalie, who used to studie with me...when we went to college she used to have short purple hair with purple glasses and purple puma trainers, so I had to look twice when this girl started talking to me:

She is working as an Au Pair in Denmark, but seems to have been a bit luckier in her choice of family to work with, she loves the job...I bet shes great with the kids!

Anyway, I was telling you about my brother. He's the bestestest brother in the whole world!

And way i think hat? Because he bought me this:

You may think that I love him just because he bought me an MP3 player, but your wrong...because the real reason of my affection is that he bought me the pink earphones as well :-D

I wanted to show him a bit of England, so I asked Tracy and Andy to take us to Brighton, which they did, and that's why they need to be mentioned as great people too.

Now as the sun goes down tonight, im quite sad because my brother is going home tomorrow, my Holidays are over and tomorrow Ill have to go back to my job and my diet, practising Cornet and speaking proper english...oh well!

Friendz

This is me with my friend John.


As you may have noticed, he has been mentioned on this blog before...one of the reasons is, of course, that hes a very special person...the other reason is that I simply didnt have any other friends to mention :-)

Because I was fed up with this situation, I decided to go out into the great big world and find some new friends. And what better place is there to meet new people than London? So there I went last Saturday. I decided that the best way to meet people in London would be just standing there and asking people if they would mind to be on a picture with me, so my friends in Switzerland would think I was having tons of fun with loads of great people.


The first person that agreed in being pictured with me was Katie. Katie is one of these lucky people who can eat like a pig (in amount that is, not in tablemanners) and still doesnt put on any weight. And she's the only person I've ever met to buy shoes that dont fit her because she likes them so much and they're not available in her size. It was great to meet her, although Im afraid that she now knows that John wasnt actually joking when he warned her about me :-S



This is Ben. It was his 24 birthday on saturday, so hes now a proper person. Which is great because im not the only OAP in the London North -East Division anymore. He's going to be a science teacher and he gave us a little taster of how he's gonna teach his pupils about all sexual matters (us=everyone that happened to be on the train)

And the last person that I happened to meet was Patrick. Hes from Germany and hes rather honest. Which is good. As long as you the proud owner of a vacuum cleaner :-)

After all, it was a great day, and I hope that you can soon read the real story of what happened on John's blog with loads of pictures etc. Just one last little point: If you ever have to decide between buying a pair of lovely warm boots and a pair of not so lovely but comfi trainers, just remember that beauty hurts. A lot. Specialy after hours of walking around...but I suppose everyones feet were hurting in the end, except maybe Patricks coz he is so tall that it must take quite a while for the pain sending messages from his feet to his brain.

here's for switzerland

I'm not quite sure if there are many english people reading this blog, but if you, reader, happen to be english, please forgive me, but this post has to be written in German....Sorry

Also, heute Nachmittag habe ich das ueberraschendste Telefon der Welt erhalten: Nathalie Mueller, BMS 2, hat sich bei mir aus Daenemark gemeldet. Ich war ewig uebberrascht! Hab sogar vergessen zu fragen welche Haarfarbe Sie den im Moment hat! Und was noch cooler ist: Sie will mich besuchen kommen! Das macht dan insgesamt 6 Besucher aus der Schweiz in einem einzigen Monat! Jupie! Da alle anderen ausser den 6 aber immer noch nicht zu viel Ahnung haben wie das hier so aussieht, habe ich ein paar ganz spezielle Bilder fuer euch gemacht..Nun, liebe Kinder, gebt fein acht, ich hab euch etwas mitgebracht:

Das ist mein Bett. Es ist Rosa. Die Wand hinter meinem Bett ist Rosa und so auch die drei anderen Waende. Die Vorhaenge, iher werdet es nicht erraten, sind rosa und der Teppich ist Rosa. Hammer. Ich vermisse mein Orange-Gelb geblumets Zimmer, aber hoffentlich habe ich ja bald meine eigene Wohnung.... (Hoffentlich habt ihr die sehr praktische Fernseh position bemerkt :-))

Das Poster das ihr fuer mich gemacht habt hat einen Ehrenplatz an der Zimmertuer! Mein Lieblingskommentar: Wenn dir die Sch**** bis zum Halse steht, dann lass den Kopf nicht haengen (von meiner Lieblingsschwester).

Das ist mein bester Freund. Er heisst Max und ist leider schon etwas altersschwach und eine der Klappen laesst sich nicht mehr oeffnen und er hat so einige Schrammen und Dellen, aber das tut meiner Liebe keinen Abbruch! Das schwarze Notenbuch ist eigentlich nur Show um euch zu beeindrucken, im Moment gehe ich erst zu den Proben fuer die "Erwachsene" Band, und ich spiele letztes Cornet in der Kinderband...aber es macht mir unheimlich Spass. Schlagzeugunterricht ist aus verschiedenen Gruenden bis auf weiters auf Eis gelegt.

Das ist meine Freundin Danielle mit ihrem Baby Oscar. In einem Monat werde ich Patentante von Oscar.

Das ist meine Freundin Tracy und ihr Mann, Andy. Die beiden sind echt komisch, die bringen mich immer zum lachen! Tracy und ich haben im Moment ein lieblingshobby: Wir sitzen mitten in der Nacht in der eiseskaelte am Strand; Wir haben aber beschlossen das wir so immer die besten Gespraeche haben! Ist wirklich cool, und ich bin ihr sehr dankbar fuer Ihre Freundschaft.

Und das sind John und Paul. Die sind echt cool, oder wie John es nennen wueder: Oberaffengeil!

Naja, das war der langweilige Teil von meinem neuen Leben, fuer die wirklich pikanetn Details muesst ihr schon selber herkommen :-)

Hab euch lieb!

Now that the summer's gone...

When I found out that literaly everyone I know in Southend would be going away on holiday at some stage this summer, I was a bit scared because I thought that I wouldnt know what to do with myself. But it turned out to be quite a good summer. First of all I was invited for dinner at an older Ladies house...now it happens that nature hasnt been very kind in giving this Lady a lack of facial muscels, which makes her look as if she was always angry or upset...well, maybe she is always angry and upset, who knows. Anyway, I found out that this mentioned Lady is actually very cute, she coocked salmon for me because she read somewhere that it is healthy and because she wanted to support my diet (10.5 kg so far, not too bad...only about 25 more to go :-)). Then I got a postcard (yipppiiee, way cool, my first postcard from english people going abroad...) and then I went out with Tracy for dinner. It took us only about 40 Minutes sitting in the car in front of my house to decide where to go and when we finally arrived there, the restaurant was closed. So we drove for another half hour to eat some carvery. The thing is that, due to my weight loss (sorry, just needed to mention it again), I didnt have any clothes that would fit me, so I had to wear my wedding dress to go out (not the dress I wanna wear on my wedding, but a dress I bought to go to Davids wedding). I felt quite stupid, but acctually, I decided that I looked hot (considering its me, daaa)

(nellyta, aqui tienes lo que creo ser la unica foto de pelo curto...y ja esta muy grande!) Unfortunatley Tracy had to go away on holiday as well, which she obviously didnt want to do coz she had to go to Disneyworld and swim with the dolphins and all this boring stuff, and all of it without me. I was allowed to stay here and work loads. So, OK, that part wasnt so cool, but I got a real Mickey from Disney, so thats OK.

There where many cool things this summer, like going to the pictures, getting a comment from Katie, going to the park, being made a songster, start in YP band (which doesnt sound all that cool when your 24, but sitting next to James does make up for it!) and cleaning the stinking minibus.

But what made me really happy was being asked to be a godmother of Oscar, Danielles son. That is really nice and Ill try to be way responsible and teach him some propa english :-)

The pictures you've been waiting for...(trust me, you were)

As there is absolutely nothing going on here at the moment, I've decided to just post some pictures before I get named and shamed!

This first picture is of my enrollment, according to the face im pulling it must have been taken when Francis (Major, the one with the white hair) has called Ann (not in picture) to give me the envelopes so I could finally get started on giving money to the Army (just in case I didnt do it until now!) The nice Lady with the amazing hat is Mrs. Major (in England women officers get trained the same as men, work the same as men, but in the end they dont get pass the Mrs., its a bit like Posh Spice Victoria who will never be more than Mrs. Beckham, but then, she doesnt do anything except being married to David, so thats ok.) The skinny guy behind me is John, whom Im sure did only lose weight to make me look fat in pitures and the only reason he held the flag was to be in all the pictures :-) Not true, obviously, and just a comment to you, I had to show the DVD to Lenn and Marilyn today and Marilyn cried about my little speach and Lenn had to wipe his eyes on your solo, so, well done! Visit: http://www1.salvationarmy.org.uk/uki/www_uki.nsf/vw-sublinks/0C05AB57318A72EF802572A50057318F?openDocument

This second Pic is the one all Ladies have been waiting for: Clickos Backside...and me working hard, but thats just a little extra :-) Anyway, Chrigu, gratuliere ganz herzlich zu dim Geburi!!!! Jupie, 25, scho glii....!!!! Dini Charte get morn ufd Post! Heb Sorg!