Welcome to Bavaria!

So I've officially been in Germany for 2 weeks now!  Its crazy how much has happened in the short amount of time we've been here.  We just finally got internet today so I'll try to catch up on the past 2 weeks of goings on.  My goal is to be able to post weekly to keep you all updated on what we are doing and where we are going.

So we arrived August 10th at 6:00am.  The 7 hour flight from Boston wasn't that bad but then we had to wait 4 hours for the bus to leave to take us from Frankfurt to our post.  By the time we left it was about 11 and we began what was supposed to be about a 4 hour drive.  Unfortunately there was a STAU (traffic jam...one of the first German words I learned) on the autobahn.  So we didn't end up getting home until around 5pm, which made for a pretty long day of traveling for both us and our puppy Rocco, who did incredible with the whole trip.  Adjusting to the time difference and German life was actually pretty easy.  I was able to rent a car using my American license for a week so I could drive around which helped A LOT for my driving test.  The test here is very difficult.  Its a 100 question test.  75 questions cover the right of way and basic rules of the road which some of are very different from the US.  They have this "right before left" rule here.  Where if you come to an intersection with other cars and there are no signs the car the furthest to the right goes first and then proceeds clockwise.  Its somewhat confusing.  The other 25 questions are road signs, some of which are in German.  Now as a teacher I came up with different mnemonic devices to help me remember :).  I luckily passed the test on the first try so I'm officially a German driver!!

Last week I also had 2 job interviews for special ed aide positions.  Unfortunately I found out that there was a problem with my teaching application that I was just able to fix today so I wasn't getting any calls for classroom teacher jobs.  I was really lucky and got offered BOTH aide positions, but that made for a tough decision.  The jobs were very different.  One was a mild to moderate position where I would be pushing into the classrooms and the other was a moderate to severe self contained classroom.  I was able to confide in some great friends and my amazing husband who were able to help me sort through my decision.  I ended up going with the mild to moderate position because it was more of an inclusion model.  Hopefully this will lead into a classroom teacher position next year.

This past weekend was Shayne's first 4 day weekend since I've been here so obviously it was time for a trip!  We decided to go to Garmisch which is very close to the Austrian border but still in Bavaria.  The purpose of this trip was to go hiking in the German Alps and hike the highest mountain in Germany, the Zugspitze.  We went with another couple, Charles and Danielle, and had a great time.  The boys were in charge of the research and told us it would take about 8 hours to hike to the top and would be about 11 miles.  The plan was then to take the cable car down from the peak.  We started by going through the gorge which was incredible!  After hiking for about 2.5 hours and going about 6 miles we came across an interesting sign that said it would be 8 hours from there to the Zugspitze.  We checked with some other people and they said it would probably only be 6 hours, which still didn't put us in a great position since the last cable car went down the mountain at 5pm.  We then decided it was time to turn around and go see a king's house that was on a different path on the mountain and take the cable car up to the Zugspitze and back down.  Again, the boys did their research and said the house was only 1 mile from the the main trail so on we went.  We soon realized that this trail was much more difficult and much more steep than what we had been doing before.  After hiking 1.5 miles that took us over an hour we found out that the house was still much further away and we needed to turn back in order to get out before the gate was locked at the gorge.  Over the course of the day we hiked about 18 miles, so needless to say I had a pretty good sized blister and was limping a bit when we reached the bottom.  It's been 3 days since the hike and my legs STILL hurt!  The next day we decided to take the cable car up to the Zugspitze and see the view which was amazing!  Shayne and Charles decided to climb to the very top while Danielle and I took pictures from the observation deck.  We were even able to cross into the Austrian border!  We then got to take the cable car to the glacier and check that out.  The trip was wonderful and we all had a great time together!

Sorry for such a long first post!  Now that we have internet I promise to update more regularly and make them a bit shorter :)

Tschüss!