Oh Hi, We Moved to Germany

It’s been a while since I’ve done a personal update on our lives. As many of you know, I basically took the last year off from blogging (posts were VERY few and far between).  I have plenty of destinations, pictures, and advice to share, but after moving back to the U.S.A., Derik and I got busy living life outside the internet and blogging took a back-burner.

I’m not sad about it.

Sure my stats have tanked, my Instagram is hanging on by a thread, and half of you are probably wondering who the heck I actually am over here; the simple fact is, Living in Another Language took an overly-long hiatus and I may be starting from scratch again to gain momentum but that’s completely fine with me.

We’ve had a lot going on in our lives the past year including things like a move from Alaska to Texas, and Derik going back to school. I have enjoyed focusing most of my time on Alpine Lane, and couldn’t be happier with being self-employed. I was able to blow my personal and financial goals out of the water with my business last year and look forward to where it will bring me in the future. Our travels were put aside almost completely in 2016 (minus my trip to Germany and Norway to meet my new sweet niece and visit family). Coming from a life of being free as a bird to go where we want whenever we want, we both felt that tiny ping of sadness as Facebook constantly reminded us of the very hectic yet adventurous past four years we had the opportunity to share together.

Were we kidding ourselves? Was it time to ‘give up’ on our past and enjoy the memories but get more serious about settling down? What does ‘settling down’ even mean? For us it meant focusing on Derik’s career and getting him to where he wants to be to continue to do what he loves long-term.

– This is the part of the story that makes me smile – 

As we gave up on our dream to travel full-time and focus on Derik’s career and schooling, albeit a painful sacrifice for us, God knew and understood the desire of our hearts:  we were given an opportunity for Derik to work in Germany for a few years! The sweetest part of this story is the fact that his job took us to the same area my sister and brother-in-law are currently living in — I haven’t lived near my sister in several years, so this surprise is truly a blessing.

We found out about the move early this year and have been counting down the days until our big relocation, which happened at the end of last month. If you’ve been checking up on us via Instagram or Snapchat (@inanotherlangua), you’ve followed along as we have searched for an ideal house to rent and car to buy for our time here. There have been a few bumps in the road, but by the end of this week we should have both (the house won’t be ready to move into for another couple weeks). 

Our new adventure in Germany has so far been really busy as we’re getting this living situation sorted and I don’t think we’ve really had time to note any crazy feelings of culture shock. It’ll come though I’m sure!  I think it helps that we’ve spent 4 months already in the area between our travels in 2015 and 16, but I will say I do need to buckle down and get cracking on my German! I always feel horrible not being able to communicate properly and having to solely rely on someone speaking English to me. Derik however is killing it in speaking German and surprised me the other day when he called someone about a car and almost had an entire conversation in German over the phone. He’s one of those people that has a knack for languages though, and I will forever be jealous of him and his abilities!

Well that’s pretty much all I have for you right now — I’m going to do my best to get back to this blogging thing and keep you in the loop about our adventures here!

I would love to write more helpful posts for you guys, so if you have any suggestions about things I can write about during our time here or our travels in the past, please let me know in the comments or shoot me an email at: livinginanotherlanguage@gmail.com.