I chose to do my internship in Bristol, mainly because I wanted to improve my English skills. But at the time I was in England I have realised, that there were many other reasons to do it in England and not in Germany. I did it, because I stepped out of my comfort zone. I wanted to know how it is to live alone without my parents. Meeting a new culture as well as new people is another big advantage of an internship abroad. Besides that, I was looking forward of being self-employed and trying to live in a foreign country by myself. Experiencing something new, without your parents, just on your own, seeing the new city with your own eyes, without being considerate of others and what they want to do was also an aspect that made me chose to do an internship in Bristol. In addition to that I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to get rid of or trying to improve my social anxiety a bit - having to talk to others, when you need help or socialising with people were some points I was thinking about. Another point that was influencing my decision of going to England was, that I wanted to get out of my everyday life. I wanted to experience my internship in a different economy than my usual one.
My workplace was the “St. Peter´s Charity Shop” in Westbury, a little, silent district in the north-west of Bristol. Noticeable was, that the shop was located next to streets with big houses and wealthy residents. Because of that, the donations were often very valuable, the volunteers had money to spend, and the customers had expectations. The charity shop sold clothes, books, CDs, DVDs, homeware and accessories. It also was a very small shop, and most customers were familiar with the volunteers and the shop manager, because they are almost every week in the shop. Although the shop was one of the smallest, they earned the most money of all St. Peter´s Charity Shops in one year. The manager told me, it happened because she has got a lot of regular customers, and she cannot say no to donations like other shops. She always told me that she always says yes to donations, even if she has no space left, because she wants to give every piece a chance to make money for the hospice. That shows a lot of her character traits. She always wanted to have everything perfect in her shop and that the customers feel as welcomed as possible. She really identified with the shop, and she always wanted everyone to be happy. That is also a reason why so many customers came to the shop again and again, and the reason why she has so many volunteers. The St. Peter´s Hospice in general is a hospital for people who know that they are going to die soon. They can spend their last few weeks on the very modern and calm campus of the Hospice. In addition to that, they can get psychological help, as well as the family of the person that is staying in the hospice. The hospice is focused on offering calm, nice and relaxed last days before death. Almost the whole Hospice is financed by the charity shops and its donations.
I was able to do a lot of different work in my charity shop thanks to my manager. She let me choose if I want to do creative work on one day or if I am feeling more like doing organisation work. For me personally I had the most fun working on the till. But that fun just came after a few days. On the first day, my manager showed me how the till was working. At first, there were many points I had to think of. I was afraid of doing something wrong, so I was very nervous the first time I had to serve someone. But this fear was unfounded. I can remember very well, who my first customer was. It was a very nice young woman with her mom. I supposed they were shopping often in the charity shop, because the manager knew them well. They bought a tennis skirt and some jewellery. I did not make a mistake while serving them and these two ladies were so nice, that I was not afraid anymore of the till. After that experience I loved working at the till. I was improving my English, while being in contact with other people and trying to get over my social anxiety. And it really helped. After the first week, I realised that it was a lot easier talking to and serving the customers in English. It felt more natural than before. I also spoke a lot to the customers I was serving, so I learned more about the English culture and about the people. I can remember one older man asking me where I am from, after my manager told him that I am a volunteer from abroad. I told him that I am from Germany, and he started talking about a former German goalkeeper that played for Manchester City. This old man explained to me that football is his biggest passion and that he is the biggest Manchester City fan since he is a child. So, after I served him, we talked about ten to fifteen minutes about football. I had the whole time the feeling, that he had not so many people to talk to about football, so he was glad that I was interested in it, and he was able to tell me all the stories.
Another interesting job for me was to decorate the shop window and to create bunches of flowers for it. I was able to be creative and to decorate how I liked it. My shop manager gave me a lot of flowers and I created the bunches how I wanted them to be. I liked that they gave me so much free space to let my creativity run free. Because of that I had the feeling, that they trusted me in my decisions. I got the feeling that I was not just a girl that made her internship at this shop, I had the feeling that they respected me and my work and that they were grateful for my work and my efforts. Besides that, it was a good change to do some creative work for a day. I had to adjust my style to the style of the Britain’s, but I did not want to copy them, so I mixed my own style with theirs. They seemed to like it, because I got a lot of compliments for my flowers and the clothing that I put on in the shop window got sold just in the week I was still working there. But there were also negative sides, because for me it was such a big responsibility. I was afraid people would not like my way of decorating the shop. I was afraid they did not want to buy certain products, because I did not present them the right way. I felt the pressure of disappointing my shop manager with my work, but I realised fast, that I did a decent job.
I have also enjoyed organising the bookshelf, because I love to read. I was able to have a look on what kind of books British people are reading. I got to know some British authors, and my manager thought me something about them, as well as giving me some new book recommendation.
One thing I have noticed, were a lot of German speaking volunteers in my charity shop. Even if their German was rusty, they directly spoke to me in German as good as possible, but we switched fast to English. Two elder female volunteers told me that they lived in Germany, because their dads or relationship partners were English soldiers that got transferred to Germany. They told me that they liked the German culture very much in terms of food and the social system, but they did not like the personality from most of the people. In their eyes they were unfriendly, and they had less respect than in Germany. When I think about it again it is clear why these women thought like this about Germany, because for me the people in England were so much friendlier than in Germany.
And this brings me to another point. The people in England are more polite and from my point of view nicer in terms of how they are treating you. For them it was common to call me “love”,” darling” or” sweetheart”, but at first it was unfamiliar to me. It felt wrong, because in Germany you call your romantic partner words like these, but the more often somebody called me like that, the more I got used to it. I have noticed that there are two ways of calling someone with these names. First there is the way of how the people called me. They call you like that, because you are younger than them. It is more the way of how grandparents or parents are calling their children or grandchildren. But there is also the way of calling someone at your age these names in a cheeky way to tease somebody.
One interesting intercultural experience was on my way to work on my first day. I was sitting in the bus and out of nowhere a middle-aged Arabic man talked to me. He asked me if I was from an Arabian country, because my facial features would seem like it. I denied it and thereupon he asked me where I was from. I just told him I was from Germany without mentioning I got my darker skin tone from my Eritrean mother, because I was not even thinking about it. But just when I saw his confused facial expression, I realised that I answered his question “wrong”. If somebody in Germany would ask me where I am from, I would directly say that my dad is from Germany and my mother from Eritrea, but because I was abroad, I was answering the question completely different. That was the moment when I noticed that I am identifying myself more as a German, because this is where I live. So, I have learned that thing about myself in the bus on my way to work in England.
Something I realised was the driving style of Britain. More precisely, when and where they are stopping for you to cross the street. As we know in Germany it is common to stop when you see somebody that wants to cross the road. In England they are not doing it. They stop when they must stop, for example at crosswalks and traffic lights but apart from that they are never going to stop. Even when they saw that somebody was waiting for a long time, they drove by without hesitation.
My host mum always told us to talk to young people, practise our English and to get to know them better and how they think, how their life is and how they are spending their time. On the last day of our work experience in Bristol we all met at College Green to spend the last day together. On this evening, we met a group of approximately five teenagers from London. They told us they were visiting the College in Bristol, because they were thinking about going to school there. I was a bit confused, because they were sixteen, the same age as us, but then one girl explained to me their school-system. She told me, that you are in secondary school from the age of eleven to sixteen an then you can stop or go on in a college. I was thinking about it a lot after our conversation, because I could not imagine moving out at an age of sixteen to go to college, like these teenagers wanted to do it. In the British school-system you are faster independent if you want to. I mean you also can stop going to school at the age of fifteen or sixteen in Germany, but I was just thinking about my class in that moment. Because most of us are going to school until we have our “Abitur”. I could not imagine moving out at the age of sixteen and being not in my usual environment. But I think that is something the school children need to learn very quickly.
All in one I really enjoyed my internship abroad, because I was not just learning new things about a job, but about myself, England and another culture. I learned that I do not need to be afraid to ask somebody a question, that there is no need of being afraid of people and new tasks I have never done before. In addition to that I really improved my English. For me it is now easier to talk to people without being prepared and I am not stressing out anymore if somebody is talking to me in English. I have also realised that these typical British neighbourhoods exist, because I was living in one. You were seeing children playing in the driveway and neighbours sitting outside having a BBQ.
I have also learned to cross the street without getting run over in the two weeks I was living in Bristol, as well as getting the bus in the right direction.
