First 24 hours thoughts

*I wrote this out in an email the day after we arrived in Germany - January 9th 2022*

I made it into Germany yesterday morning and have now spent a whole day with my host family here in Bonn! Both Bonn and they are absolutely lovely. The sights of Bonn are fairly typical with the occasional cathedral or two that seem to pop up out of nowhere! I've found that Germany is not nearly as cold as everyone hyped it up to be... but what I will say is while it is cold and I was expecting that, I was not expecting for it to be cold everywhere all the time. Partly because of culture, partly because of old housing with poor insulation and partly because of the energy crisis with the Nord 2 Stream Pipeline and Russia the buildings are just about as cold inside as it is outside! Layers have certainly come in handy!

My host family are incredibly kind people who speak better English than me at times. I have an entire floor of their townhome practically to myself (2 bedrooms, a living room and a small kitchenette). It's Europe so it is smaller than what you would expect, but works out perfectly for me - truly it is both more space than I was anticipating and is even more space than I really need to be honest. My host Mom's youngest daughter Marie (15 years old) lives above me in a small room that is practically a renovated attic. It's a funky room with lots of nooks and crannies perfect for a 15 year old! Marie has been incredible. She is fairly shy but did take me around the city today and showed me how to work their bus system. Every once and awhile she comes down from the 'attic' just to sit and talk with me as does her Mom, Hania, who came up this morning to sit and have breakfast with me and even brought me up some dinner this evening before she left for the night. I want to know them and really get to be involved in their life but my current dilemma is figuring out what the expectation is and what boundaries are. When Hania says "come down to my floor anytime you want, you don't even have to knock"... is that really what she means.

I've surprised myself with how much German I retained from way back in high school but can proudly say that the bilingual flight attendants ONLY spoke German with me - so I guess I faked sounding like a German pretty good!