Baby Steps...

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a great Wednesday. I'm currently sitting in McDonald's trying to type up this blog, all the while listening to a group of about 12 very obnoxious preteen boys... Fun, fun!! So, I may have to cut this short today depending on how much more of their yelling and arm wrestling matches I can handle. :)

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, I met up with Eva for coffee again and she introduced me to a friend of hers, Alex, who is the girlfriend of Brian's coworker. Alex seemed very sweet and she also speaks English very well. We all ended up hitting it off and the three of us sat and chatted over coffee for about 3 hours yesterday afternoon. It was very enjoyable! :) Unfortunately, Eva had to head back to her hometown last night... She has to go back to school and start setting up her classroom as school starts for her next week. However, before she left, she mentioned that she will be teaching U.S. History and Geography to her 8th graders this year, and she asked if I would be interested in coming to her school as a guest speaker at some point. As you can guess, I said I would most definately be interested! :) I think it would be a great experience to be able to observe in classrooms here... just to see how similar and/or different they are from schools in the U.S. So, I'll keep you all posted on whether or not I get that opportunity. :)

Oh, I have to tell you how accomplished I felt this morning. We live about a block away from a bakery and Brian and I have recently been craving a bread that they bake there... It's called "selee". It's a long, slender loaf of bread with seasoning on it, and I have to say that it is mighty tasty! :) They also have it with cheese baked into it as well... that's called "kase selee". So, anyways, I decided to test out some of my German skills today. Yes, I haven't started classes yet, but I have been listening and observing and picking up a few words here and there. Well, I walked down to the bakery and after standing around observing customers for a few minutes, I walked up to the woman, and placed my order entirely in German (granted, it was in German, but with a bit of stumbling over some of the words)... and the best part was, that she understood what I said, and I didn't even have to point to the bread for her to understand! :) Woohoo! :) She placed my "selee" bread into the bags and rang it up for me. At that point, I felt like I had made some huge accomplishment and I couldn't stop smiling. I actually paid for my purchase and I'm pretty sure I walked out of the bakery with a little extra bounce in my step. Now, I realize that all I did was simply order two loaves of bread and it may seem a little odd to get so excited about that... But, for those of you that know me, and know how concerned I am about learning the German language, this was a huge step for me. :)

So, over the past couple of days, I've been managing to feel a little more adjusted here, and I was feeling much more positive about everything. That is, until Brian informed me last night that our house in Livonia was broken into... Isn't that something you always want to hear when you're thousands of miles away from home?! Yep, apparently the house was broken into over the weekend... They pushed the side window screen in and climbed in and out through there. The thing that makes me most angry, outside of the fact that they broke into the house, was that when they left, they left the window open, which meant that Riley was able to get out... Luckily, Riley is too scared to go very far from home, so he was still sitting outside the house when our friend Aaron came over and saw what had happened. Riley is a pretty smart cat after all! :)

Being that we brought most of our valuables with us or left them with our families, the thieves did not walk away with too much.... thankfully! But, it's still such a creepy feeling to know that someone was in your house and going through your personal things... and to also think that if they aren't caught, will they try to come back and take more of our things now that they've seen what we have? We talked with a detective from the Livonia Police Department today and they're doing what they can to find the culprits. Let's just hope they find them... Needless to say, this is definitely something that we could have done without... :(

Well, I have to run. Brian and I are having dinner with his coworker and his coworker's girlfriend this evening. Brian seems to think that she and I will hit it off, so I'm looking forward to meeting her. :) I hope you're all doing well! Miss you much!!