A Day/Week in Germany

We haven't had time to go sight seeing of late, and nothing out of the ordinary has occurred, so I thought I would give you some insights to day to day life in Germany.  Our weeks are pretty routine.  we get up in the morning, exercise, study, and get dressed to go out by 10:00am.

  Mondays we have a meeting in the morning and FHE in the evening.  We usually ride our bikes to the store to get any last minute things for FHE.  We  have between 10 and 15 YSA's coming to FHE.  It makes for a cozy evening.

Tuesdays would normally be our "P" Day.  We usually end up making a list of groceries needed for Thursday, get on our bikes and off to the grocery store we go. The stores here are small and each store carries different things.  The store with the better prices, Lidl's, doesn't have all the things I need, and the store with the better selection, Kaiser's, is more expensive, but the workers in the store are much friendlier.  We usually end up going to both and making several trips.  We lode up the bike baskets as full as we can and ride slowly to the church to deposit stuff for the week.  There is not much storage at the church or our apartment, so you can't buy a lot of stuff ahead of time.  Some weeks are easier than others depending on what I am cooking.

Wednesdays, we have a meeting with the other missionaries in our district in the morning, go home and study awhile and go back to teach English classes in the evening. 

Thursday is our busiest day.  We make last minute trips to the store in the morning (rain or shine), and then go to the church to start preparing for the evening meal.  I generally cook dessert in the morning and Dan, my sou chef, chops everything I will need for making dinner so that when I come back to the church to cook, it doesn't take quite as long.  I have made more bread rolls here in the last 6 months then I have made in the last 10 years at home.   We usually serve 50 people for dinner and of late there has been no leftovers. Then it is clean up and hopefully home by 10:30 pm.  We usually fall into bed and to sleep right away. 

Fridays, we don't always have YSA activities.  On the Fridays we are free, we have the 4 missionaries to dinner in the evening.  Fridays are spent shopping for us, doing laundry(which takes 1 3/4 hours per wash load and 2 hours for dryer loads), so it takes all day.  Sometimes we will also clean our apartment, it depends on how tired we are.  Thursdays wear us out. 

Saturdays are quiet unless we have an activity.  Sometimes we make the trek to the Metro Store(Cost Co for Germans).  We go by bus and Sban( train).  It will take us 3 hours to complete a shopping trip to Metro.  Sometimes there is building clean up, or a relief society activity.  Each week is different.  This week is a Metro week.

Sundays, we have church meetings, the occasional lunch invite, and occasional misc meetings.  We try to take a walk in Tiergarten Park for a couple of hours, weather permitting. 

Sometime during the week, we try to find a couple of hours to do home visits.  We take a map, get on our bikes and hope we don't get lost.  We try to study German and do scripture study every day.  While things are different here, it feels like home for now and there is comfort in routine. 

Today while walking in the park, we discovered a houseboat community on the canal.  While we didn't see anyone on the houseboats, there were signs that people were indeed living there. 

Does anyone know what type of flowers these are?  I have never seen them before.  Also, congratulations to Bobby Johnson on his baptism Saturday, April 14, 2012.   Wish we could have been there.