Saturday, August 8, 2009

the first 4 days

I am safe and sound in Germany! I arrived last Monday night and was welcomed by the rest of the resident life staff! It wasn't too long of a trip with the flight from Seattle to London being between 8-9 hours and then from London to Basel being less than 2 hours. God blessed me greatly by not feeling much of any jet lag! I've been able to sleep each night and make it through each day just fine.

It is VERY beautiful here. Kandern is the town where the actual BFA school is and all of us res. life staff have been staying in one dorm in a village called Holzen. We all needed to stay together because Janz Team has English camps for local kids and they have been using the other dorms.
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As I said, I arrived on Monday night and then jumped right into the schedule on Tuesday. The basic schedule for each day this last week was me and the other new staff went to a German class in the morning, came back to the dorm for lunch @ noon, had devotion time with everyone @ 1, driving practice in the afternoon, then dinner altogether back at the dorm. We then had some down time at night. There are 3 other new RA's, but only 2 of which are here yet. The 3'rd is hopefully coming this weekend. We did not know which dorm we were going to be in until Thursday. The Howe's (a couple who are the head of res. life) sat down and got input from the dorm parents on Wednesday night and then they made the official decision on their own. We were told are dorms then at devotion time on Thursday.


My dorm is.....Wittlingen! The dorm name is the same as the village it is in. It is a very nice and small village and a very easy drive from the school. This is a picture of it >
There is one other RA I will be with who is a returner. She isn't here yet, but I have talked to her before. She will be here on Monday. My dorm parents are a great couple from Texas. There names are Brant and Laura. Brant took me on a tour of the dorm on Thursday afternoon while the kids from the camp were gone. We will be moving into our dorms on Tuesday.

It's been a crazy, but awesome week with lots of new experiences. The German language hasn't been too hard to pick up on because the class we took this last week was very helpful. Please continue to pray as I keep practice driving as I had not been an experienced driver of a manual car before here. I am starting to pick it up and find my way around, but it will still take a little more time for me to get it down. Please also pray that my co-RA, Cara, will arrive safely and that we will bond quickly. I already know she is going to be a wonderful coworker and friend because she had gifts waiting for me before she even knew who would be her new co-RA! (She's pretty great!).
Today we have some down time, so the returner RA's are going to take us to a town nearby to spend the day and hang out there. We were going to go on a field trip, but it is rainy today, so the plans have changed. Last Wednesday night we were able to go into Basel, Switzerland to walk around while the dorm parents met here. It is a very cool town and it was neat to walk around it. I haven't taken pictures yet since it's been so busy, but I'm going to start today! So, I will post a link to them once I get them up and running. That's all for now!

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