I start talking

Day 4 - First new reader

Thanks to my slow day yesterday, I had hardly any paperwork to do, with the exception of an info sheet for my first reader, and a couple items to track in the budget. Yay!!!

I had two readers today. I meant to ask if I could take pictures of both of them, just for the memories, but then I didn't, so I'll have to try again later. I know two is not many but interest seems to be low here, so we are excited about anyone that does decide to come. Mom met with three, so we had five for the day. My first reader came in at 10am. She is a delightful woman, originally an English teacher from the Ukraine, she came to LST to work on the English she feels she has lost in the process of learning German, and to study the Bible. We started by getting to know each other, I shared a few things from home with her, including some candies, and we discovered a mutual love of cooking. She said maybe she would bring me something next time we meet! Then we dove into the actual material.

 Everything moved rather quickly and I realized just as quickly that I need to revamp my material a little. For the most part, I can probably go deeper with most of my readers, asking them and talking to them about more complex subjects, with more varied vocabulary than I could at some of the other LST sites. At the end of the lesson she said she was leaving to visit her family next week but wanted to schedule two more lessons so she could get some more time in before that. I was excited!

I didn't meet with my next reader until 6pm. So I had plenty of time to go to the store, update the budget tracker, work on my material for my next lesson, and visit the bakery which was nice.

Let me introduce you to heaven in a cake. 

Angel-food cake. Raspberry whip. Whipped cream. A touch of chocolate. 

It was so delicious. Almost everything here is delicious. 

American's need to stop being cheap and make good food.

In reality I don't feel like I did much at all during that time, yet it went fast. I think that's going to be the theme of this project.

My next reader was a young lady, still in her last year of what we call high school. She is a fascinating, well-traveled individual that I really enjoy working with. We talked a lot about both the lesson and things apart from the lessons just to practice conversational English and while sometimes we had a hard time finding a topic, we were both eager to learn more about the other person and each others cultures.

If you ever decide to come to Germany for an LST project you need to know one thing: you will not get many, if any, beginning readers. Most German's do speak some English. They will read and speak faster than you are led to believe in training. They have excellent critical thinking skills and once they understand all the words they grasp the main idea of the lessons quickly. You need to understand that your American education is not on par with their education. You need to come prepared with deeper questions then "tell me this story in your own words", as that probably won't take long. I have found a good way to supplement is to read up on the history of any people or places mentioned in the text. For example, I knew that my second reader and I would be talking about the Pharisees, so I brushed up on my knowledge of the Pharisees and the Sadducees so that I could give her some background, which she seemed to appreciate.

Not as many pictures today, but we're going into downtown tomorrow, so more to come!!

P.S. We're biking downtown tomorrow, and my bike is so tall that I can't touch the ground. I haven't ridden any decent distance on a bike since I was a teenager. So please pray for me. I'm stressed. Once I get up and get going I'm fine, but starting back up after stopping (like at a stop light) is a different story. 

Let's Start Talking!

Day 3 - First readers

Our training manual and workbooks

Today, we are excited, nervous and prayerful. We started reading today. Unfortunately the first team that was here had about half of their readers drop out or decide to not be put on the schedule yet. So mom met with two readers, and I didn't have any. But I spent my time setting up our office space, balancing the budget, making a call list so we could contact 4 possibly returning readers, and one new reader, familiarizing myself with the readers we do have, and the readers we hope will return, and praying for previous and hopefully future readers. We did get calls back from the new reader and one of our continuing readers and got them on my schedule, so that was a blessing because it means I get to start actually reading tomorrow!!

At least Pigwidgeon seems excited about the paperwork...

I also completely crashed in the late afternoon. I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. This time zone thing is hard.

Late in the evening we packed up most of our stuff and had it moved to our new sleeping quarters, a house a few minutes walk down the street. We followed later that night. Our hosts seem really nice, and I think I might sleep better tonight than I have been, I've woken up a lot the last two nights. We stayed up and talked with them for awhile and decided to turn in around 10pm.
Suddenly I'm rather awake. I guess I'll read for awhile.
I'm really excited about tomorrow!!

Church, and Adventures in Celle

Day 2 - Sunday

We were so tired last night. The people and the food were both excellent, but we were both so happy to go to bed. Thankfully church didn't start until 10:30am. I slept for a solid 12 hours and am still exhausted. I can't even remember the last time that happened. We were lucky enough to have our first church service be an English service, where everything is in both English and German. The church here is very small, 20 people is a good day. But today there were closer to 40 with guests. That was really nice. I really enjoyed getting to sing in German too, my diction lessons really paid off today. After church we met and talked to a couple people before being whisked away on our first adventure to a very nearby town called Celle. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the house of the people that were hosting us that day.

A river runs through it.

You have to cross here to reach the town :) 

I wish I had moved quickly enough to get the massive swans in this picture. 

We were given two options for getting to the actual town from the house, walk or drive. I chose to walk with one of our host families and the other team, Matt and Michael, they will be leaving Monday and I wanted to get to know them a little before that happens, and see if they have any advice for me. It was about a 15 minute walk into the town and it was completely flat the whole way there. I have noticed that this whole area is flat. It's nice because it makes it ideal for walking and biking. I found that it was very easy to talk to Matt and Michael and they said the only real difficulty they had on the trip was the language barrier. I think I'm going to miss them when they go. It's too bad we only have a couple days of crossover.

This gives you an idea of German streets and buildings.
The red brick indicates bike lanes and crossing areas.

Open fields are really common in this part of Germany.

Most shops and some restaurants are closed on Sunday's in Germany, so we just got a walking tour of the town. It was really cute and looked like there were a lot of things to do. I was surprised by how much English and Italian stuff I saw. It really is very culturally diverse here. 

German on the left, Italian on the right.

We saw the oldest building in Celle...

I think it's an apartment on top, and a shop on bottom.

We also saw horses,

a really cool water feature,

and some other things you just don't really see in the states...

This is Matt on one of the toys we found in the middle of town.

and another one...

There is a huge gnome back there.

Don't ask me why.

We also saw a palace

Inside there is an outdoor theater and a museum. 

At the palace we discussed the difference between a palace and a castle. We decided that Palaces are where royalty live, and castles are fortified for battle and more for the knights. This palace has apparently housed several dukes throughout it's time. 

I don't know what this building is, I just really liked the steeple.

This was probably my favorite find though... 

Me, Matt, and David

The story behind this is they used to put that ring around the necks of men who were caught cheating on their spouses so that they could be publicly shamed. Sounds like a good system to me! 

On the way back I noticed they have a bridge with locks all over it, like the one that just came down in France, but smaller. 

So many locks!

We thought this one was cool because it's really big and looks really old. 

There's a lock in there, if you look hard. 

Love lost?

There are beautiful gardens and areas all over too. 

                Tunnel of trees                                                                           A lovely garden.

All in all it was a beautiful, wonderful day. After we got back we had a meeting with David, Matt, and Michael - the first for us and the last for Matt and Michael. Then we all went to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. Since none of us speak German very well it was quite an experience. The food was good though, as was the company. 

After dinner David went home and Matt and Michael walked us back to the church. They hung out for a little while and we talked before saying goodnight and goodbye. 

I am sad to see them go, I think it would be awesome if we had more overlap. But there isn't really enough work here for four people right now. They had an amazing time and I'm sure that we will too. I hope we meet again one day, until then there is always facebook! :) 

Until next time...

Washington state to Peine, Germany - Getting there.

Guten Tag!
So this first post is going to catch you up on how the process of "getting here" happened,  how we decided to even be here this time and this year in the first place, and where a stuffed owl named "Pigwidgeon" fits into all of this.

March, 2015
We have started communicating with Leslee, our team developer. We know that we have a lot of work and fundraising to do in order to get ready for our 2016 mission, including nailing down who exactly is going to be on our team. Will it be a team of 5, or 2? But at least we are starting plenty early. So time is on our side. We are really excited about the opportunities that await us!

April 7th, 2015
Today we received an email from Leslee asking if we, Denise and Marissa, wanted to do an LST project THIS year, in June! That's really soon. We aren't sure what to do, but we're going to pray about it and give her an answer in the next couple days. We just aren't sure about raising $7,000 in less than 3 months!

April 12th, 2015
We're going to go for it! Let the fund raising and training begin.

April 17th, 2015
We raised our first $1,000!!! This might actually work!

April 27th, 2015
We raised our first $2,000, in 15 days. That's incredible! Things seem to be slowing down a bit but we remain positive, hopeful, and prayerful. :)

April 30th, 2015
Now we're at $3,100, we're up to our elbows in training, and we're getting really excited!! We made it nearly halfway in less than one month. That is nothing short of miraculous.

May 22nd, 2015
Fundraising has slowed way down at this point. We have $3,730 of our $7,000. But that doesn't mean it's over. We're going to keep fundraising, training, and praying. Even if it doesn't work out this year, at least any funds raised will go to next years project!

May 23rd, 2015
Ok, things are picking up again, and looking up. Now we're at $4,780 thanks to some very generous donations. It's pretty incredible if you think about it. That is a lot of money in a very short amount of time.

May 28th, 2015
Thanks to an incredibly generous donation, we are FULLY FUNDED! This is happening! We are going to Germany next month! Hallelujah!

Between May 28th and June 24th we continued to train, pray, and prepare ourselves as best we could. This proved a little tricky as work decided this would be a great time to move me into full time status with some overtime, too. So a little extra challenge, but a welcome one.


June 25th, 2015
I had to work in the morning, 8am-1pm. Then I went home, triple-checked my bags, loaded up the car, and we drove down to my Grandma's house in Washougal. That night we spent time with my Grandma and sisters, and maxed out the sleeping capacity of my Grandma's tiny single-wide.

June 26th, 2015
We got up in the morning, had breakfast, went shopping for some last minute things - which turned into a bit of it's own adventure - decided we would have to live without 3 of the items on our list, and headed off to the Portland International airport!

This is my sister's send-off picture.

Always a character.

At the airport....
Let me begin by saying I am a high stress person.
When we got to the airport with less than 3 hours to spare, I was not happy. I wanted to have 3 hours because I'm weird and I would rather spend extra time hanging out at my gate than I would running to it. Thankfully, my stress was misguided. Once we finished having our passports scanned the process of checking baggage, going through security, and finding our gate happened relatively quickly. I always forget that Portland International Airport is smaller than Seattle. We ended up with extra time as it was. When we boarded our plane we were feeling excited, but nervous. It was really the first time nerves had set in. This was real, it was happening, and we were going to be away from home for almost a month.

Normally I drive a Taurus, 

but my other ride is a T.A.R.D.I.S

It's a shame the Doctor was busy that day...

I was also kind of dreading the 9.5 hour flight with an additional hour at the end. I know it's by far the fastest, most reasonable mode of transportation when traveling across the pond, but I don't like to sit still much. That's just too long to be stuck on a plane.

Pigwidgeon is ready for takeoff!

This is the part when Pigwidgeon comes in. Before we left, we had decided to bring a small stuffed animal, Curious George, as our version of the "roaming gnome". Well, I wanted to get a picture of him before we left, but I couldn't find him. So we went into a little store and found a bunch of different little stuffed animals. I was torn for awhile between an owl and a dragon, but the owl won. Now he's my little traveling companion.

By the time we reached Amsterdam I was excited - not only to be in Amsterdam for the first time, but to get up and move around. There were people on our flight who never moved once, but I was not one of them. Since I also only slept for half an hour I was very thankful for the free movies on the plane. I watched Jupiter Rising before I found the "kids section", which I got way too excited about, and watched Frozen and How to Train Your Dragon.

We made it to Schipol!

When we were planning the travel portion of this project, I had visions of being tired but so excited to be in a new country that I would explore the Amsterdam airport, which I hear has many interesting features, during our 4 hour layover. But after standing and walking around for awhile, exhaustion overcame me and I proceeded to lay flat on the floor for a few hours instead. It may not sound very comfortable, but it was rather warm in the airport and the cool floor felt wonderful, plus I managed to pop my back.

By the time we got on our last flight I was completely over sitting. Thankfully I slept, and it was over all too soon. I knew that I would have to do a lot sitting after that too. It was still a 20-30 minute drive to Peine. That feeling of wanting to do anything but sit did not leave me until today, 4 days later.

Germany at last!

The preacher at the church we are working with, Randy, picked us up at the airport and drove us to Peine. I was surprised to learn that he is originally from the the states, though he and his wife have been here for over 30 years. We spent the rest of the day meeting people, such as the local missionary David, and the team that came before us, we also a wonderful chicken salad dinner, our first introduction German cuisine. The rest was mainly trying to learn names and phrases, and settling in.

Our "home away from home" office and sometimes bedroom.

That's it, that's the story of how we ended up in Germany this year. 

More to come later....