Short Day

Monday was a very short day for me. I slept very little Sunday evening, thanks to lovely nightmares and jetlag. When Nate got up and left for work, I rolled back over and slept until 11am. Bad, bad Stephanie. I'm so mad that we packed the Tylenol PM away. Without it, adjusting to a new time zone has been really hard.

After making myself somewhat presentable, I rolled on over to Cafe 24 for a "toast" and coffee. Basically they call grilled cheese "toast" here. It was actually quite delicious. I had the Hawaii toast... cheese, ham, and pineapple, and probably some sort of unhealthy mayo. And my usual Kaffee Mocha. I finished up my book, and talked to the shop owner for a bit. He asked me if I like the church he had told us about, and I told him about the things we didn't like. He then suggested another church in the downtown Stuttgart area. This is a German speaking church, about 200-300 people, and he assured me that people would speak to us!!! He apparently knows a bit about the Baptist church we tried out on Sunday, as he told me that the whole "warm welcome" thing is a problem for that church. I guess so many military people come and go that they don't know who is new and who is a repeat visitor.

I think we'll check out the new church on Sunday. It seems to be in a good location for the place we plan to live.

I then went into an electronics store I had stumbled upon a few days ago. I was looking for an iron, hair straightener, and alarm clock. A very nice woman walked over to help and spoke about as much English as I did German. I was looking for the alarm clock at the time so I said to her "Haben Sie.... um.... uhr und minuten.... schlafen?" and then started making a beeping noise. (Translation: Do you have a... um... hour and minute... sleep?") then an annoying sound that I was hoping resembled an alarm clock. Despite my poor German her face lit up and she led me to the alarm clock section. I believe that they are called "wecker". Something I won't forget now.

Nate came back to the hotel early as we needed to take a language test to get into German classes at the downtown community college. We got there, and the testing lady didn't even test us. She just smiled and sent us into the beginner classes. Was it that obvious?

For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant recommended by Nate's coworkers. I was getting a bit frustrated as none of the words on the menu were in my German-English dictionary. BUT, my meal ended up being good if overly filling. I had my first stomach ache in Germany last night. The first of what I hope are not many!!! With all of this walking and non-fried food, I'm hoping for only one a week. (Crossing fingers)