Germany. Day 1, Part 2

Right now, it is a little after nine p.m. I'm sitting in the living room at my host home listening to a tuba player practicing somewhere outside through the open door. they have a sommerconzert this Sunday with a "brass choir" my host father and host brother are a part of. That should be fun!

This marks the end of day 5 in Germany. it has been a long 5 days, full, fast-paced, and wonderfull! it doesn't look like it's about to slow down either. we were given a very nice schedule to follow...the only problem is it's in German which we do not have quite a good enough grasp on to understand, but it's going fine.

So to continue describing our first day here...Lunch at Jonka's (Yahn-Kah) grandparent's house was a mazing because of the people we met. Feliz and Biette are two girls from here. Megan is and exchange student from Housten, TX who has lived here for the last year. And Agusto is an exchange student from Argentina who has lived in Germany for a few months and this fall will live in Iowa. Around our lunch table we spoke 5 languages altogether! My dream! It felt close to Heaven! Everyone, but Agusto, could speak english. Everyone besides Molly and I could speak German. Jonka, Agusto, and I could speak Portuguese. Agusto and I could speak Spanish with each other...aparently he refused to speak Spanish with anyone else. And I think Molly even used a bit of her French with Feliz. I loved it. I believe it will be one of my favorite times of hte entire trip. flowing in and out of different languages. laughing together. All these kids are our age. we connected immediately.

After lunch we went swimming at the local public pool with our new, international friends. We came home and got ready for our welcome barbeque with the staff at the YMCA...they call it the CVJM here. We went to dinner at Dorothy's home and were joined by Stephan, Julia, Felix, Thorsten, Katia, and Florian. All people who work with the Y in different locations. After the men fought about who would grill the meat (none of them wanted to do it... I thought about offereing, but that probably would not have been appropriate) we sat down to a delicious dinner. It was a good time to get to know them a bit and to laugh at our silly American questions. we have had many embarassing "crazy American" moments since then.

so those are the highlights for day one...wow, if I stay at this pace I might finish describing the trip by Christmastime.

Gutentag!