Essen: A city to sink your teeth into! My year abroad in Germany

Hi, my name is Molly and I have just finished my third year of my BA German course and for my year abroad I chose to work as an English Language Assistant (ELA) in Germany. My year abroad was something that I had been waiting for years to experience, since I had deeply enjoyed a sort of ‘taster’ when I spent a month studying in Stuttgart at 16. I was so excited to throw myself head-first into living abroad and experiencing the culture firsthand. 

 

 

       

 

 

If, like me before my year abroad, you are not that familiar with the city of Essen, I wouldn’t be too surprised. Although Essen is the second-largest city in the Ruhr-area, it is not exactly a tourist hot-spot and in fact when I first received my placement in the city I was a little disappointed because I had dreamt of a picturesque year abroad surrounded by beautiful architecture or idyllic countryside and Essen’s industrial appearance wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind. However, I came to truly love the city, with its beautiful suburbs such as Werden, Ruttenscheid and Steele (where my school was located), and the great transport links to the wider Ruhr-area which allowed me to easily explore the nearby cities of Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Dortmund. 

 

So, what was it like to be an ELA? Well, as mentioned above I worked in a school in Essen-Steele, a suburb of the city around 25 minutes from the city centre with public transport (get a Deutschland Ticket, I promise it’s worth it!). I worked at the school 4 days a week with varied hours and with at least one class from each grade ranging from ages 10-17. In my first couple of weeks, I did an introduction and a sort of Q+A in each class so that we could get to know each other better. For the majority of my time at the school I was just assisting my teachers in helping them answer questions from the students, checking homework and giving a native speaker’s perspective when needed.

 

I was very lucky that my mentor teacher, with whom I had the most classes, became a very good friend and this allowed me to feel a lot more comfortable and confident. Subsequently I sometimes lead some of my classes through activities, games, or just simple textbook work. I felt the most useful around Christmas when grades 9 and 10 had their oral exams. I would take a small group of students out every lesson to practice speaking together and it was so rewarding to see many students’ confidence grow as they practiced. I also thoroughly enjoyed working with the younger classes for a few reasons: there was more expendable time with the younger classes and that allowed me to play games and lead activities more often; they had such a joy for learning English which was really nice to see; and, as they were much younger, I spoke a lot more German with them which made me feel more confident in my speaking skills.

  

 

              

 

As mentioned above, I only worked 4 days a week, so what did I do with the rest of my time? Well, in the first few months I spent a lot of time getting used to doing things alone and enjoying them. I went to see one of my favourite bands perform in Cologne which was the first time I had attended a concert alone and after getting over some initial hesitation, I had an incredible time. In the October holidays, I travelled independently for the first time, visiting Berlin for a week and getting to see so many famous places such as the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall and many other historical sites. Doing this trip gave me so much more self-confidence and subsequently in the Easter holidays I visited both Amsterdam and Brussels, getting to see two countries that I had previously never travelled to.

 

However, what made the biggest difference to me in enjoying my year abroad was finding the group of friends that I did. I was part of many groupchats with other language assistants in the area but until February I hadn’t had the courage to go to any of the meet-ups. I finally pushed myself to do it and I couldn’t be more glad. I went to dinner and the cinema with two ELAs from the US and knew immediately I had found some good people. After that I started attending a local quiz night in Essen with the same two ELAs and a few others from the US too. It felt so good to finally have a group of people I felt so comfortable with, and it turned out that one of them lived just around the corner from me! Over my last few months we went for days out in Bochum, a birthday picnic in Dortmund and spent afternoons cooling off at the local swimming pool. We even had a movie night at my flat on ‘pi day’ on March the 14th or 3.14 (Americans and their reversed dates!) accompanied of course by a pie that we found after thoroughly searching the aisles of Lidl. I could not be more grateful that I found this group of friends who made me feel so at home despite all of our homes being miles away (theirs a few thousand further than mine!). To future ELAs I would say that it’s okay to take your time to adjust but make sure you reach out and make these connections because it makes a world of difference to have this experience surrounded by great friends. There were ups and downs but I will forever remember this year as an incredible adventure.