Returning to the Regular Schedule

So I had not realized it had been almost a month since I posted on my blog. Oops. Time can speed away from you. So I was sick for a bit there and then I spent a great deal of time helping my family plan their trip to Europe, and once they arrived, I did not have much time for anything. Anyway, here is a short summary (I hope) of what I have been up to the past few weeks.

My mother, brother, and aunt flew into Copenhagen Denmark because we have distant family in that area. It was wonderful to see them and everything was made much smoother by having a place to stay with our relatives. Unfortunately, due to the time it that was spent in Denmark, my family only got to be in Braunschweig for about three days. To top things off, the weather was cold and rainy for all of them. At that point, my brother and Aunt flew back to the US and my girlfriend arrived. Naturally the weather became a thousand times better and we had nothing but sunshine the whole time that she was here. While she was here, we all had a wonderful time exploring Braunschweig together and I was very sad to see them leave.

I am trying to keep this short until I can get back into the swing of blogging. What I really want to relay here is how wonderful it was to have family visit. It really did help me deal with some of the homesickness that I was experiencing and gave me part of my old life back. Also, it was a very helpful reminder of just how much I have learned and how far I have come. I may be far from fluent and even further from professional fluency (Chemistry and Engineering talk), but the extent of my skills really hit me while I was showing my family around, helping them order, and helping the understand random signs around the city and in the parks. They also arrived at the ideal time during my trip, right at the three month mark. I could already tell that I was worn out and that the three month dip was going to be a bad one. My last post was just as I was starting down into it and it would have been much more difficult alone.

If you can manage it. You should find a way to have friends of family visit, and if it comes at the three month mark, all the better. That is all for now. See you next week.