Chad and I had to do a most dreaded grocery trip again this week. Dun dun dun. However we figured out the process for weighing, we brought our own bag (thanks Renee) and we didn’t have a completely mortifying and stupefying experience at the check out counter. Hooray! All joking aside, things are definitely improving, or at least we are. I know HOW to say “excuse me,” “hello,” “thank you” and “I speak NO German,” even if I forget the phrases under pressure. It is really hard to remember those phrases when you need to come up with them quickly. I am not filled to the brim with anxiety and jet lag is almost completely replaced by a healthy sleep pattern.

Our relocation specialist took us around the area to preview different areas. He explained the pros and cons and gave suggestions. It is really exciting for me to start something new with Chad. I was very blessed by his good decisions and planning before we met and got married and now we will be able to do this setting up house thing together. What fun!

Church, as always, was such a needed recharge. We were able to come to the ward this week to familiar friends and one of the classes was even in English. We had dinner and played cards with the couple we traveled to Germany with. This is a challenging, humbling and good experience. I think we are even making more friends here than we had in Seattle! We have a better social life so far.

We took a beautiful, lengthy train ride up to Stuttgart Germany in hopes to pick up our visas. Our new friends Mike and Christina joined us with the same purpose. With our visas in hand we can get permanent housing, banking, phones, and many other necessities. When we arrived we believed we had just under two hours before the Swiss consulate closed. We went straight over only to discover we had misunderstood their hours. They are only open from 9 am to noon and we had left Zürich just after 11 am for the 3 hour train ride. We tried to get help anyway and they were ticked! It turns out we had to have passport photos ready, cash, forms and Chad’s and Christina’s visas both were not there. It was so discouraging. We know better now what to expect and what to bring and WHEN to be there. Hopefully our next trip will prove more successful.

(I don’t speak German)

We had a taste of Jason’s medicine this week. Our week was very long. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to not understand what everyone is saying to you. 🙂 We are looking forward to the time when we can take part in regular life here.

Last week before we left we got to see Jeff and Sarah and Sophia. We went up to Anacortes to deliver some of Sarah’s things, and then we forgot to bring them. 🙂 MaryAnn and Scott were gone most of the time. We played a lot of games with Jeff and Sarah.

All day Wednesday we had to just wait around for our flight time. We tried to stay busy so we wouldn’t get stressed. Elisa saw the entire Pride and Prejudice movie, (the 6-hour one by the BBC). That morning Google finally wrote us to tell us where our temporary housing was. They didn’t write us; they called us at 2 am! Google has been dropping the ball with all our arrangements this month.

The flights over the Atlantic are long and uncomfortable, no matter how you look at it. Ours went about as well as it could have. There were huge winds in London and Zürich though. I’ve never seen a plane shake so much while it was still on the ground. Hundreds of flights got canceled that day. Our luggage got placed on the wrong flight! We had to go all Thursday night and Friday with just the clothes on our backs. We didn’t have a phone either, and there was Internet access in the room but our laptop was slowly running out of batteries. Our only plug adapters were in our lost luggage. We got everything back Friday night, thankfully. The Internet is the only way we have to communicate with people but lately it has only been working for about an hour each day. 🙁

On Friday afternoon we went to the local town hall to register as foreign residents. They told us that we were supposed to already have gotten visas. They kept asking us if we had certain documents and they were all in our luggage that was still lost. Mine was late and Elisa’s hadn’t even been applied for yet. We called Google to get them to start the paperwork. Sometime soon we need to travel to Stuttegart, Germany and back to pick up the visas.

Grocery shopping for the first time was eventful, mostly just because we were proud of ourselves for having done it at all. We walked around the store with our little pocket dictionary and still couldn’t find some of the things. We caused a hold-up at the cashier’s. We didn’t know that you were supposed to weigh the produce beforehand, or that you were supposed to bring your own bags, etc. Another minor victory was that we found some decent not-too-expensive places to eat in Zürich. We were worried that every single place we tried to go to would charge us an arm and a leg.

Jet lag is no fun. We thought we were on schedule when we slept during the night on Friday. We didn’t get up until almost noon though. Then on Saturday night we woke up at 1:30 am and just stayed awake until church in the morning. Our bodies are very confused. 😕

Church surprised me a little because I was expecting some of the meetings to be held in English. All of the meetings are actually in German, but members can do translations for us. Tons of people in the ward speak English really well. Elisa got the phone numbers for some families. A couple from Utah, Tony and Rachel, invited us over for dinner tonight and they were so nice–they let us ask them questions forever so that we would feel at ease.