The World Cup happened. and Germany won it!

Each game either Germany or the USA played in was an excuse to have a game-watching party and hang out with friends. Sometimes it was at someone’s apartment, sometimes it was reserved tables at an outdoor bar with my church, but it was ALWAYS fun. Especially when Germany won the whole thing. It was one of the coolest nights of my life. We joined in the party in the streets with 200,000 others on Leopoldstrasse in Munich, fireworks going off left and right until 3 AM. I will never forget that night!

I turned 26 and celebrated both my birthday and the 4th of July on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, off the coast of Italy, with a group of girlfriends!

8 girls. 1 apartment by the beach. The beautiful Mediterranean. It was an epic. We made American flag shirts to celebrate the 4th, visited beautiful Bombarde Beach for my birthday and had some fantastic Italian dinners and Gelato. It was such a fun weekend and an unforgettable birthday!

I took a weekend trip with Rebecca and Jenny to Budapest!

We took the night train from Munich to Budapest (miserable), arrived in the city realizing we had practically no money (long story, but none of us had been paid yet) but had one of the most fantastic weekends. Thankfully Budapest is a CHEAP city and you can survive on 20 Euros for a weekend (a beer was like .50 cents). We fell in love with the beauty of the city and loved exploring it and spending an afternoon in one of the most famous Hungarian thermal bath houses, Szechenyi. It was an experience! We loved Budapest.

I went back to the US for 3 weeks!

I spent a glorious, sunny week in San Diego with my mom filled with days at the beach, driving the boat on the San Diego Bay, shopping and doing things we love to do together. I then spent another week and a half in Dallas and spent time with my dad, Elisa, brother and all of my extended family, plus got to see all of my friends and meet my best friend Virginia’s baby Campbell for the first time! It was such a wonderful trip home filled with people I love.. and lots of Tex-Mex and BBQ!

I moved into a new apartment in Munich!

After a crazy, hectic apartment search (Munich is VERY difficult city to find housing in), my friend and co-worker Cate and I found a beautiful, newly renovated apartment in a cool location near several of our friends and moved in! We love it! We hosted a house-warming party a couple weeks ago, with a “Chili and Flannel” theme so I could introduce all my German friends to Texas chili. They loved it and we had a fun night with lots of great friends in our flat.

Oktoberfest happened… and we conquered it!

5 Oktoberfest visits during the 16 days it was running. 3 times just with friends, 1 time with reserved tables from work and everything paid for, and 1 time with reserved tables from church (140 of us total!) for the final night, which ended with sparklers and lots of singing and hugging and dancing on tables. I think we all went into a slight post-Oktoberfest depression the following week, but we quickly recovered because life must go on!

I love my church!

I’ve gotten pretty plugged in to my church ICF- International Christian Fellowship, and absolutely love it! I’m serving on the Welcome Team and on the Translations team, helping with text translations for the website, powerpoint slideshows, song lyrics, info for workshops, etc. I’ve made so many friends there and am so thankful to have a wonderful church community. We have a women’s conference coming up in a couple weekends which I’m really excited about!

Oh yeah, and I also work!

I started working full time in September at the bilingual primary school, Jules Verne Campus. I’m co-teaching 1st grade and loving it! I have 24 kids in my class, and about half of them speak English (either as a 1st, 2nd or 3rd language) and about half of them started school with no previous English knowledge! So I’m teaching 2 different levels of English each week, a science lesson/experiment each week, sports and assisting my co-teacher while she teaches the other subjects. I love my little international babies and am loving seeing their progress in English in just the first 6 weeks!

AND MY COUSIN MARGO IS COMING TO VISIT ME TOMORROW!

She arrives tomorrow morning and then we are heading to Prague Wednesday for a few days. I’m so excited to have her here and show her my life in Munich!

So yeah, life in Munich lately has been wonderful, crazy, tiring, hard, fun, exciting, overwhelming and adventurous all at the same time, but it’s my life: my job, my apartment, my friends, my church, my city… and I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now!

So one Saturday my friends and I decided to check out a town none of us had visited yet, Regensburg. Regensburg is a medieval town founded in 1245, but with the first settlements dating back to the Stone Age. One interesting thing about the city is that it was one of the least destroyed cities in Germany during WWII, meaning that most of the buildings are original and the historic town center was untouched, making it now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A site we were all excited to see was the Stone Bridge, built across the Danube River between 1135-1146. It was the first crossing over the Danube at that time, opening up major international trade routes. Unfortunately, as soon as we approached it, we saw part of it is under construction right now and covered by scaffolding. We could still walk across it though, and see the colorful views of the city, and I managed to get a couple shots sans scaffolding.

With no agenda and beautiful weather, the 4 of us spent the day strolling the cute streets of Regensburg, stopping for coffee, cake, gelato, etc along the way and checking out the sites as we passed by them. We had lunch at the Wurstküche, Europe’s oldest “hot dog” stand. Sitting right on the Danube, this sausage house is over 900 years old and is famous for serving bratwursts to the construction workers of the Stone Bridge. They still have an ancient grill and serve bratwursts in a bread roll with sauerkraut and mustard daily. It was delicious and worth the long wait in line!

We all LOVED Regensburg. It has so much charm and character with it’s history, and is still large enough to be a very livable city. Regensburg, I’ll definitely be back!

So what have I been up to lately? Here’s a recap of the past month: 

-Being a tourist in my own city of Munich with my amazing friends. and hanging out with these friends, a lot. Like seriously, could the Lord have provided me with better community here? No. He did awesome.

^running into a British bachelor party in Marienplatz, Munich’s city center. And naturally taking a picture with them, after sadly declining to join them on their beer tour (At noon on a Thursday..) Isn’t Kelsi’s face priceless?? (far right)

^exploring MILKA World.. it’s amazing. and we bought lots of chocolate..

^still watching all the FC Bayern games, of course!

 ^an evening at the Hofbrauhaus because, why not?

-Enjoying the amazing SPRING weather that God has blessed us with in Germany! Whether it’s river side at the Isar, in a park or beer garden, we are not taking this sunshine for granted! Keep it up!

^y’all.. this is 2 BLOCKS from my apartment. COME HANG OUT WITH ME. or COME VISIT ME.

^sunny afternoons on the Isar

^one of my fav areas, Gärtnerplatz

^everything is green! it makes me so happy!

-Attended a US Military Ball with my friend Karl who is stationed in the army here. and explored his cute town of Amberg.

^looking fancy!

^amberg town center

^so cute, right?

-Brunching every Thursday morning with my friends. because we all randomly have Thursday mornings free.. how awesome is that? These mornings with these girls are the highlight of my week and I am so thankful for them.

^and sometimes Brunch turns into drinking a beer before noon..

^freshly squeezed lemonade. and SHORT SLEEVE WEATHER. yum.

^some of our “brunches” look more like grabbing Starbucks and finding a place to LAY IN THE SUN! because, duh.. sunshine.

-Volunteering on the Welcome Team at my Church, ICF. y’all I’m in love with my church. it’s incredible and I’m so excited to continue to serve there.

^welcome team after breaking down the last church service of the evening.

-Volunteering with Young Life Munich, on the University team. So thankful for both the international and German teams that I get to serve alongside in this amazing city.

-and oh yeah, I guess I’m working, too. Haha jk. I am teaching and loving the school and my co-workers. Teaching mostly German kids at a bilingual school where some kids are fluent in English but most are only just learning it is challenging but I’m learning more each week and continuing to grow as a teacher.

So yeah, I guess that’s a wrap for now. I’ll try to keep y’all posted again, soon, but then again who knows, because let’s be honest, sunshine always wins over computer. as it should.

Eric was playing on a Saturday night and the weather was supposed to be beautiful that day so we decided we needed to take advantage and spend the day outside. We headed to my favorite beer garden that afternoon in the English Garden and lucked out with a table right on the lake. We had lots of laughs, soaked up the sunshine (and a maß [1 liter] of beer each) before heading out to the concert.

^ Kelsi, me, Jenny, Rebecca

^ Kelsi and I in the Biergarten

^ Being silly in the subway station on our way to the concert. The stranger taking this pic was pretty entertained

It was general admission, at a venue that holds about 1,000 people. I’m not sure why, but we were thinking we would be the only ones there (what Germans even know who Eric Church is?). So we show up an hour before show time, when the doors were opening, expecting to get right up against the stage and become besties with Eric… but we found ourselves at the very END of the line… surrounded completely by Americans! Americans from all over Germany came in to Munich for this concert… about 50% of them being US Military. Let’s just say that we made a LOT of friends throughout the night… and we didn’t pay for one single beer

^ These girls… no words.

We still managed to weasel our way to the front right by the stage and we all SWEAR that Eric kept looking at us. There were so many cowboy hats and boots, college gear, camo hats… I felt like I was right back at Billy Bobs in Fort Worth, Texas! There were American flags being waved in the air and “USA..USA..” chants going off after almost every song. The 6 of us girls all felt like we were back in our college towns for the night… it was great to have a little bit of “home” in Munich! Eric put on SUCH an amazing show. You could tell he wasn’t used to playing such an intimate crowd; he was so fired up and played a lot of his older stuff… it was awesome. We were all losing our voices by the end of the night!

^ Eric… you’re killing us.

^ Such a great show

That concert was almost 2 weeks ago and we still can’t stop talking about how that was our favorite day ever. I know a lot of Germans (or any other nation for that matter) give Americans a hard time for exaggerating a lot (e.g. that was the BEST day EVER!) and maybe none of us got married or engaged to the loves of our lives or gave birth to a child or won the lottery that Saturday…. But it will still go down in our books as a pretty darn amazing day. And I’m so thankful I have these girls to share it with!

^ a crowded train like this is ONLY enjoyable with good company

I visited Nürnberg for the first time back in December to attend the city’s famous Christmas market and loved it, but didn’t see much of the city since the Christmas market was the main event. So I was excited to get to explore it with my friends, especially since we had our friend Jemine with us, who is from Nürnberg and served as our tour guide for the day! We started by walking around the city and seeing the main sights of the “old town”, the churches, etc. We walked up the huge hill where the fort sits and enjoyed the views looking down into the city.

^ haha Rebecca and Erin were clearly not ready

^ Anna and I

We then went to the Nazi Rally Museum, which sits on the location where the Nazi Rallies took place and learned about the Nürnberg trials. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures from that, but it was interesting being in the spot where all of it took place.  We finished the day by having dinner at Hans im Glück, a delicious burger place and then took the train back to Munich that night (fortunately we had seats on the way back). It was fun getting to see more of Nürnberg and experiencing it with my wonderful friends!

In the past few weeks, I have moved away from Aschau, my first home in Germany of 13-months, finished my job as an Au Pair, left the first group of friends I made in this country and have moved into a new city, started a new job and am living in an apartment with a random roommate. This season of transition is not easy, but it’s good. I’m so excited to be in Munich and it hasn’t taken me long to fall in love with this city and the new adventures that it brings. Although my relationship is over, I’m meeting new people, new relationships and friendships are forming, and new memories and plans are being made.  I’m joining a new church, getting plugged into a Bible study, loving my job, and am so excited to be volunteering with Young Life in Munich.

It’s hard when you start to make plans for your life and then it turns out that God had something else in mind and takes them away, but I am so thankful that I trust in a God who wrote all the days ordained for me in His book before one of them even came to be (Psalm 139:16). I know that through all of these experiences He will continue to teach me, mold me, comfort me and guide me along the path He has planned, and that it will be far better than I could have imagined.

Despite a few days of excruciating back pain and being a little sick, I still love being in they city. I love that it took me a total of 10 minutes to get to my doctor’s office (door to door, taking a tram in between). I love that within 1 block of my apartment there’s a pharmacy, butcher, bakery, post office, fruit & vegetable market, several restaurants, and only a couple blocks further is the larger grocery store. I love that only two blocks away is the Isar River with a park running along side it. I love the old skeleton keys to my apartment building, and I love that my building is over 100 years old, which means that there is a lot of work that could be done to it, but also means it has a lot of character. And I’ve loved setting up my room and making it warm and cozy. Even though I’m just subletting this room and I’ll only be in this apartment 7 months, this is still my first home in Munich and I am loving it so far.

Now I can’t wait to get better and actually get out into the city (as in, further than my doctor’s office) and check out all of the restaurants/cafes I have favorited on my new Spotted By Locals iPhone app!

… and I promise I’ll put up some pics of my room as soon as I finish setting it up!

^standing on the bridge over the Isar by my apartment

^the skeleton keys to my building and apartment… i mean, so cool, right?

This past weekend was great. Friday night I watched FC Bayern defeat Gladbach on TV with Kaya. Saturday morning I played in the snow with the boys. Timo and I built a snowman, and as I was trying to shove rocks in the face to make a mouth, Timo declared that I do not make very great snowmen. He’s right.

My host mom and I spontaneously decided to go skiing that afternoon, no kids, just us! We drove to Hochkössen, a mountain in Austria, just over the border and had a fun (but very cold and snowy) afternoon on the slopes.

Saturday night my friends and I all went to Charly’s, the “American” bar in the next town over (I’m still not sure why they call it an American bar) and had a fun night reminiscing on this past year. Sunday I went to church like usual and said bye to everyone there, although I will still be back often to visit, and then came home and my host dad made his famous pizza that we all love. Once the boys were asleep, I watched Tatort with my host parents, the popular crime-scene investigation show here in Germany that everyone watches on Sunday nights.

This week is filled with the normal Au Pair duties: taking Timo to Kindergarten (he has a ski course every morning this week), a little cleaning, picking the boys up from school and spending the afternoons/evenings with them. In between I’ll be going through all my stuff and packing up my room. Friday will be my last day here and then I’ll officially head into Munich. David will be in town, too, so I’ll get to see him this weekend!

Leaving Aschau is bittersweet. It’s been a really wonderful year and such a fun experience living the small town life in the mountains (although also sometimes frustrating). My Au Pair family has been wonderful to me and I will certainly miss those crazy little boys who I have spent every day of this past year with, as well as all of the friends I have made, of course. But I am also SO excited to live in Munich. I can’t wait to be in a city again, live in an apartment and have a roommate, take public transportation, make new friends and start my job. I am really excited about my job. It’s also nice because I know that Aschau will just be a train ride away and that I can come back and visit anytime I want, so it just doesn’t feel that sad.

In the meantime I am still waiting on approval for my working visa, which means that I technically won’t be able to start my job next week if it doesn’t come through yet, so I would appreciate prayers that this would be a speedy and painless process!

Aschau, you’ve been good to me… thanks for the memories. 

The week following New Years, David and I did a mini-tour of Northern Germany. If you missed Part I: Bremen, Bremerhaven & the North Sea Coast, you can read about it here.

After driving a ways up the North Sea coast and taking the ferry over the Elbe River, we arrived in the city of Lübeck by dinnertime. We walked around the city until we found somewhere nice to eat dinner, ending up at a cute little steakhouse. The two of us enjoyed a great dinner, finishing with coffee and Apfelstrudel for dessert!

^ coffe and apfelstrudel. yum

^ excited for dessert

The next morning, we set out to explore Lübeck. The city itself is actually on an island, surrounded completely by a river that comes in from the Baltic Sea. We checked out the sights in the city, like the town hall and a few churches, and then walked a good ways along the water. I would describe Lübeck as a cute city: small, quaint and easy to get around. It has a medieval feel to it, with some architecture still present from the Middle Ages.

^ lots of cute alleyways in Lübeck

^ the devil and I

^the Marzipan store.. it comes from Lübeck!

^ walking along the water

^ the Medieval entry gate to Lübeck

David and I were pretty much done with Lübeck by lunchtime, so we then drove up about 30 minutes to a ritzy beach town called Timmendorfer Strand, located directly on the Baltic Sea. We walked up and down the promenade admiring the beach houses and of course had to walk down the beach to touch the Baltic Sea. It was a pretty cold, windy day, so we didn’t spend too much time there.

^ excited to be at the beach!

^ Timmendorfer Strand

^ touching the Baltic Sea

Just a short drive down from the beach is a National park called Brodten, famous for their cliffs along the Baltic Coast. We walked along the cliffs for a while before getting back in the car and driving our last stretch of the trip back to David’s apartment in Braunschweig.

^Brodten Coast cliffs

I fortunately had 2 more days in Braunschweig following the trip just to chill before taking the train back to Bavaria. It was a fun little trip and I’m happy to say I have now seen both the North and Baltic Seas, as well as traveled the furthest North in the world that I’ve ever been, Timmendorfer Strand (just barely breaking my previous record of Hamburg)!

David and I both had the week following New Years off, so while we were in Braunschweig we decided to take advantage of the time off to explore some parts of Northern Germany neither of us had visited yet.

We first drove to Bremen, which was just a quick 1.5-hour drive. I had made a list of the must-sees in each city, so we set off to check these out. As far as tourist attractions go, Bremen doesn’t have very many. After about 2 hours of walking around the city, we had pretty much seen all of it. Of course it has beautiful architecture, churches and some very nice quarters along the river and we decided it was a very livable city, but not a huge tourist destination. It was still fun to explore, though, and we were even blessed with a few hours of sunshine although the weather had predicted rain.

^a famous street in Bremen, Böttcherstraße

^Kinda blurry, but the only pic of the 2 of us in Bremen. Enjoying some afternoon coffee and cake

^Cafe Knigge, just about any cake you could imagine!

The most famous thing in Bremen is the statue of the Four City Musicians (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten). There is an old German folktale by the Brothers Grimm about a donkey, dog, cat and rooster who are traveling to Bremen. Along the way, the animals see robbers inside a house and decide to stand on each other’s backs outside a window and perform music in hope of gaining food. The robbers end up getting scared off and the animals take over the house and never actually make it to Bremen. A statue of them was erected in the Bremen town square, became a huge hit and can now be found on every souvenir bought in Bremen. There are also replicas of them in all forms across the city.

^The original statue

^A funny replica we found in a mall

The next day we drove 30 minutes further to Bremerhaven. It was a gray, drizzly day, not ideal conditions to see the coast, but we still wanted to explore the harbor. The city of Bremerhaven doesn’t have much to it, but on the water there are museums, shopping areas, a zoo and aquarium, and most interesting to me was the Deutsches Auswandererhaus, or the German emigrant museum. Bremerhaven was one of the largest emigration harbors in Europe in the 1800s and 1900s. My family (my grandmother, grandfather and uncle) emigrated by ship from Bremerhaven to New York in 1952, and their names can be found in this museum. The port of Bremerhaven is the 4^th largest container port in Europe and 2^nd largest (following Rotterdam) for the import and export of cars. This naturally was exciting for David and we drove along the port awhile and saw all of the thousands of cars to be exported/imported.

^checking out the harbor

^German Emigrant Museum

^Does it get much better than a hot bratwurst for lunch?

^Container Transporters

^Fun times in Bremerhaven!

That afternoon we continued up the North Sea coast, stopping a few times to look at different views and once to get a fish sandwich (for David) and hot chocolate (for me). We had a funny encounter with the man running the fish trailer and proceeded to talk with him for 30 minutes. He gave us some good advice for our journey and we then continued on to arrive in the city of Lübeck. But first we had to cross the Elbe River, so we drove David’s car onto the ferry and had a fun, 30-minute river adventure. That evening we arrived in Lübeck. It was a full day, but we had lots of fun exploring the North Sea coast!

^David with his fish sandwich and car in the background

^My hot chocolate, and our new friend behind the counter

^David’s car on the ferry

^Ferry riding, whoo hoo!

^Titanic, anyone?

Coming Soon: The Northern Germany Tour- Part II: Lübeck & The Baltic Sea