first week

My first week of living in Germany is officially completed.

Place to stay...
Currently I am staying with another missionary family, but will hopefully be in my own apartment in a week or two. The apartment hunt process has been one of my first cultural lessons. Thankfully a woman from the church here has been helping me; really she has been doing everything for me and I just look at the places and see if I like them or not. I am very thankful for all her help as the apartment hunt would take a lot longer and be a lot harder without her assistance. 

Already learning
Since language school does not begin until March, and I have not had to move in anywhere yet, I have begun some very informal language sessions with a friend of mine. The lessons are very basic German, just enough right now to get me hearing German again and building up my vocabulary. I hope to have another one or two language helpers in the next few weeks. It helps to have two or so helpers as the sessions are very basic and can get very monotonous for the native speaker- though not for me!

During the language learning sessions there is usually at least one cultural lesson I learn too. One small cultural difference I learned this week was about kites. For us (Americans) kites are usually a sign of spring, especially windy March. However here in Germany they are a sign of fall! This difference came up when my friend was using her daughters picture book to teach me seasons and I though she was trying to trick me with the words for fall and spring.

Prayers

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me. My first week was a great one! Current prayer requests are on the side bar.