06. September 2019

First week

Hello there,

I'll translate the german Blog, so here we go:

After the excitement from the first week calmed down I now have the time to write my first entry.

First and foremost I'll have to excuse any spelling weirdness since the Maltese keyboards do not have the letters "ä, ö, ü or ß". (Should be irrelevant for the english readers.)

After getting off the plane I got crushed by the heat first. 32° degree and high humidity.

The next bewilderment happened not soon after. The people drive on the left here! Of course I almost went into the wrong direction by bus >.>

Finally arriving in my resting place I met 2 of my flatmates and we talked about important things like where the kiosk or supermarket are. Another nice surprise was the cool room due to an AC that hit my fatigue just right and I fell asleep right away.

Freshly rested I'm now on the way to the library by bus - it takes around 30 minutes.

After the nice view during the drive I arrived at the bus terminal, where the library is located nearly.

Upon arriving in the library I was first shown around the building and also met many of my new colleagues!

First I'll be in the junior library.

The monthly shelf of the junior library. Summer holidays end soon here (which last a whopping 12 weeks here!), so a lot of "Back to school".

Another thing I observed: the Maltese language sounds like a mix of French, Italian and English. Sounds interesting to be honest :).

I communicate with everyone here in English, this is not a problem, since English is also an official language here.

At work I do the usual library tasks like shelving books, processing donations and arranging the shelves.

Worktime is shortened though due to the regular closing time of 1pm due to the heat and summer holidays.

This means I have a lot of downtime here.. which I of course utilize!

Tuesday I visited Ta Fra Ben Bay, which is named after the watchtower there.

No sand, just stones (hurray for bathing shoes!), but very nice for snorkeling. The water temperature is just lovely with 28° C.

Wednesday I visited Valetta, which is the "tourist area", for a short time since it was very crowded and I was still fatigued by the previous day. I'll explore it a bit more on another day ;)