First Few Days in Deutschland

We have arrived! We flew in yesterday, after a total of 13 hours flying and arrived in Germany at 9:00 am! It was a totally disorienting experience because I kept looking at the clock, feeling totally exhausted and being shocked that it was only 1:00 pm or 5:00 pm. I'm not sure how to describe it, but those of you who have flown long distances I'm sure will understand. When we arrived we were greeted to a pleasant surprise as one of the professors we are close to at ACU, Dr. Stephen Johnson and his family, had also came to the same campsite on the first leg of their trip to Europe. Crazy coincidence, but it has been enjoyable to have them here, kind of as a primer to help us get adjusted to a new setting. Just as a caution, this may be an extended entry, seeing as it is our first "official" one.

We spent the last two days at a summer camp specifically designed for families. The younger kids from late elementary to high school will spend their days playing soccer (foosball), swimming (schwimmen), basketball (Not sure yet on the German word for that one) or any other variety of recreational activities. They are very friendly and all of them understand and speak at least enough english (if they are not already almost fluent) to carry on a conversation. I am very impressed seeing as how I took three years of spanish in high school and didn't learn to speak or understand it worth anything until I was in college! Anyways, it is a very relaxed camp designed to let families wind down a bit. People come and go, stay for around a week at a time and then others come. Tonight we made "stockbrod" (pronounced: shtokebrote) which is pizza dough cooked over the embers of a fire like you would a marshmallow. Pretty cool.

We are also attempting very hard to learn as much German as possible. Anytime we think of common words or phrases we always ask how to say it in German. Just what comes to mind I can remember "du bist verrucht" (you are crazy), and "gutten nacht" (good night). We've also had other adults speak slowly and repetitively to us and we've attempted very broken exchanges in German. Needless to say we have been laughed at thoroughly but are still excited about learning a new language.

Our task this week connects to our task at large. It is two-fold. First it is to establish relationships with the German people and function as a pseudo-missionary. We teach lessons in the mornings to the younger persons (mentioned above) and we spend our time between playing sports or whatever else with them, and sitting around tables talking to the adults there. The second task is to help those who care to improve their English. Almost everyone here understands English and most speak it (there is even a man from England who speaks almost fluent German, quite a fascination). So we talk in English to them most of the time when we're not making fools of ourselves trying to pronounce anything with an umlaut (the two dots commonly over 'o' and 'u' in German words that makes the pronunciation eleventy-billion times harder!).

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and support for our trip. We are exhausted, but loving it. We have included a few pictures of the camp below, more pictures of the people and whatnot later (we're having some difficulty with the pictures, more later).

Peace,
Brandon and Sierra

These are pictures of the "camp" we've been out. We'll take better pictures tomorrow but, its been really really amazing here