Kendra's Thoughts

Our 6-week spring intern, Kendra, has been enjoying her first two weeks with us serving in Austria! We would like to share her recent newsletter, as it provides a great overview of what she is learning and how we've been spending our time the last few weeks. Enjoy!

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First off, THANK YOU for taking the time to follow me along during my time in Vienna. The fact that you wanted to be on this newsletter list really touches my heart. Knowing that I have friends and family across the globe praying for me is the most encouraging thing!

Since Austria is stereotyped as the land of Schnitzel, Lederhosen, Sound of Music, and Mozart, I want to give you guys a deeper look into the needs and culture of this amazing country ;)

As most of you know, I was born in Salzburg, Austria, so the fact that God opened a door to go back to Austria to serve the people in Vienna and practice my German was an absolute dream! I arrived in the city the Saturday before Easter, and since then, it has been a complete adventure with many ups and downs. I have seen beautiful architecture, tried incredible food, and meet such beautiful people...but I have also gotten lost more times than I care to admit (in forests and the city), gotten frustrated with my German language skills, and experienced deep bouts of loneliness and sadness. However, God has been using this time to teach me about REST and what it means to rest in him throughout the day. Even when I am working or volunteering, I am learning that nothing has to be perfect as long as I am trying to do everything for HIS glory...and let me tell you that is the most relieving concept in the world.

My hosts, the Johnsons, are a missionary couple from the US, who have two sweet little girls and a crazy cute pup. They have not only made me feel extremely welcome in their home and community, but they have already taught me so much about what it looks like to serve as a missionary in Austria! In Austrian culture, it takes a long time for people to warm up to new ideas and strangers. Because of this, missionaries might have to live in a community for years before they see progress in their ministry. It was so encouraging to see their perseverance and trust that God had placed them in this culture for a specific purpose, even if some days it seems hopeless.

So much has happened in the short 10 days that I have already been here, but a short list of my activities have included:

• Meeting other Christians in the community
• Working with refugees at a Christian outreach center
• Ministering to prostitutes and their children in the center of Vienna
• Attending German class
• Discovering the city and going on prayer walks
• English tutoring outreach at an international church
• Rediscovering my Austrian roots

Although there is incredible sadness in the stories of the refugees and prostitutes we come in contact with, it is such an honor to be able to be God's hands and feet and serve them in any way possible! 

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Prayer Request:
I want to ask you to please pray for the people of the city of Vienna. Many have completely rejected the idea of religion or are very ingrained in old, cold traditions that are very far from a personal relationship with the Lord. Please pray that they will be open and given the opportunity to see what Christ's love really looks like.

Also, please pray for my emotional health while I am here Austria. Going back to the country I was born in has brought up nostalgic and sad memories I thought I had dealt with long ago. I am so grateful to have the Johnson's to mentor and disciple me during this short time in Vienna, and I have already experienced incredible freedom in understanding what happened in my past to help me learn and grow for the future. 

I hope you all have an amazing rest of the week, and if I can be praying for you in ANY WAY, please send me a message!

Frame of Reference

A few weeks ago, Ellie and I went on our first Austrian camp out. We went with 3 other dads from our colleague's church in the city. All four families are at a similar stage in life. Each family has an oldest daughter with in a one and a half year span. Even though we don't go to their church or see them really often, we have stayed connected with these families throughout our time here in Vienna.

So we all packed up and headed to Neusiedlersee which is on the southern border of Austria and Hungary. Austria is not that big of a country and so it took us about an hour and a half to get there.

We had a really great time. It was Ellie's first time sleeping in a tent and in a sleeping bag. We got to go swimming in the lake, eat some ice cream and relax in the shade. Despite a light case of heat exhaustion (for me) and some car trouble, we had a ton of fun. All the girls did a great job playing together.

One thing I found really interesting after spending the weekend with the guys was how much our up-bringing affects our frame of reference. The first and most obvious example of this was what camping actually means. For me this is camping, and this and this. Camping is calm in the woods, it is cooking out on a fire, it is ready-made adventure. For me growing up, camping was vacation. But here camping is a little more communal. We were all together on a big grassy area with very little shade. It is just a different experience.

Another side of it was spending that much time with the guys and seeing how we each worked with daughters. I think every family is different in how the discipline and help their children. Culture isn't the only thing influencing these decisions. We were also a bunch of Dads that all didn't have to do the rhythms that our wives set up for our families...but that is a different post. It was a small window into these families and how we handle daily chores and tasks.

I was at a small get together recently where they had a cold buffet laid out. One food here that isn't in the U.S. is something called Topfen. It is a form of farmer's cheese similar to the cheese you would have if you took cottage cheese and blended it. They make all kinds of dips and spreads out of it, and I like it very much. I turned to someone in line I was chatting with and mentioned, "You know in the States, we don't have this. I think I would really miss it." He looked at me confused and said something along the lines of "really?" For most of us in the U.S. that sort of spread on bread just isn't a category. It's not something normally put out for cold sandwiches.

I think it is valuable to set aside our frame of reference and seek to see things from someone else's perspective. It gives me the chance to evaluate my preconceived notions about the world; it helps me to see myself more clearly. It holds a mirror up to me as I see different ways of doing things. We continue to unearth small things in this culture that are like that, simply a different way of solving the same sets of problems.

This is why we need each other. This is one of the values of cross-cultural relationships. It is a mirror held up to you where you can see the weaknesses of your decisions, the places where the light of God's glory doesn't shine as bright. This shows us places where others do things better, and it is up to us under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to act on those things.

The great thing about this is you don't have to live 4,700 miles away from home. You have neighbors and friends close by where that same feeling is available. I want to encourage our American friends to seek out a neighbor or co-worker from a different culture and learn something about yourself.

Gospel Reality or Cultural Expectations?

One of the questions we are constantly confronted with here is the interaction between Gospel and Culture. What do I mean by that? There is some percentage of my expectations for "what church is" that is dictated by my cultural background. This can be practical things like, "should we stand up during our singing time?" or "How long is our service?" or "how planned out or spontaneous is our service?". There are theological points to be made as well, but we wouldn't be telling the truth if we said churches express cultural preferences and expectations only in small and subtle ways.

This also moves over into leadership decisions or styles. Many church leaders (and this can be good or bad) take on the leadership values of the culture in which they find themselves. It isn't surprising that many American churches have a CEO-style pastor that manages the ministry. I am not necessarily criticizing this model, but more making the observation: there seems to be a correlation between American cultural leadership values and structures and the churches that exist within that culture. This comes out in how leaders behave, what we expect of leaders, and even churches' attitudes towards larger authority structures like denominations.

This all leads us to an interesting conversation I had with an American church leader here in Austria. He was talking about the many of the young American pastors he has seen coming to Europe, who often see no need for denominational connections. They bring with them their American individualism, but also the recent history of the American church moving away from denominations and towards independent non-denominational churches. Because of that, many of these young pastors arrive in Europe and don't think much of the denomination to which their church belongs.

My friend explained that many of the national pastors he encounters, on the other hand, are so thankful for their denominational support. Many of these leaders grew up in countries and cultures where they were one of the only believers they knew outside of their local church or maybe a local youth event. They often feel isolated or on the margin. In the States, there are many different conference options - smaller local conferences, camping ministries, big national conferences with big name authors and speakers. In the German speaking world, we are blessed with a great deal of opportunities for fellowship and encouragement, but much less than in America. There are many other places in the world where those denominational structures that many Americans have moved away from are a critical lifeline for the local church to stay connected and find accountability.

I found a few things fascinating about this conversation. I often encounter situations living and working cross-culturally that I could have never expected or seen beforehand. This is one of those things. I am not sure I could have ever expected such a tension to exist. Now that I see it, I completely understand how it could come to be, but before moving here I would have had no idea.

The second thing is the continual push back that some of these American pastors give towards something that is a positive thing for their national colleagues. This is a key point here: there are many times in cross-cultural ministry when we have to set aside our personal cultural preferences or expectations for the sake of someone else. I have to ask myself, "is this a gospel reality or a cultural expectation?" This question is key in helping me understand a situation. Another key question is, "what are the cultural values undergirding this decision?" Often with enough patience and the right line of questions, it is possible to acquire the cultural value behind a decision.

Can you think of an example of something in your church has primarily cultural roots? 

A Long Term Focus

There are parts of life that are easier to assent to intellectually than they are to experience. Simple statements with a great deal of meaning behind them, like "early parenthood is hard" or "moving is usually stressful" are true by themselves, but fail to encapsulate the difficulty of the actual experience. The simple question "how?" unlocks so much of what is hidden behind one of these statement. For example, if you ask the question "How is early parenting hard?" one way you can simply answer that question is with one word: SLEEP.

The same has been true for us with church planting. We came to Austria with some very key values and things we didn't want to be. We value partnership and submission to national churches and leadership. We are not the solo rogues out on the end doing whatever we want to do. We are not the people that come in with money and say that it is "our way or the highway" just because we can fund our own work. We also value team and want to see a church planting effort here in Austria that is not just German and American missionaries running the show, but is truly a partnership, a cooperation between churches across borders and continents. Additionally, we know that we have to have a long-term focus in this culture. Austria is a history-focused culture (compared to American forward thinking - When's the next iPhone coming out?). So we know that we have to maintain a long-term focus.

It is this last statement, this "long-term focus", that we have started to realize is different to pay lip service to versus actually living it out. We have started to ask the question, "what does it mean to have a long-term focus?" or simply "how?". We are realizing it is easier to say it than it is to be in the middle of it. We are living this out and experiencing it in an existential way, which is far more complicated than simply saying that it is true. We know it objectively, but the subjective experience is different and difficult.

The short answer to the "how" question is: "slower". Slower than it would probably go in the States. Slower because relationships take time. This doesn't mean that things are on pause, but simply that we aren't starting tomorrow or the next day. We know that this process will take time and we accept that. We live in this tension of wanting things to move faster but knowing that there are no short cuts. We know that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing deliberately and in God's timing and not our own.

This leads the second answer which is, it may be slower, but it is also in God's timing. We have seen God on the move and we are continuing to pray that he will reveal himself and his timing. We know that our desire to "get things moving" can move us outside of God's timing. Our desire is not to run out ahead of God.

Ultimately, we continue to seek God and work towards the church planting project, but we recognize that it will happen in His timing and at His pace. It can be hard to wait, but we eagerly await God's work and are excited for how He will move in our community. The church here was founded as a prayer movement, and we want to see another generation of young people encounter God in prayer and in His word.

Our First Intern Experience

This summer marks the first time we have hosted WorldVenture interns. In fact, it has been many years since anyone from Team Austria has hosted interns for the summer. In truth, it seemed a little intimidating to us when to consider hosting interns after just 3 years on the field. We still feel like missionary babies in many ways...are we ready to oversee college students here in Austria? Do we know enough about ministry and the culture here to guide them through a cross-cultural experience? What do we have to offer?

God placed three wonderful female interns on our team this summer. I'm pretty sure going in, they knew they were our "guinea pigs" in this process. We are all just figuring things out as we go along and enjoying the journey together!

Having the interns arrive here just a few days after we did was definitely a bit exhausting. We were still settling in to life here when they joined us, and it was a busy first two weeks with them. However, it has also brought us so much joy to watch them learn and process their experience here, to see them offering valuable assistance in a variety of ministries, and to discuss all of their learning with them. I have especially enjoyed meeting with them once a week to do a bible study together and check in about what they are learning and how they are doing.

We knew this summer would not be perfect and that we would likely tweak the intern program after our first time through. It has been hard to watch them struggle at times and to wonder if we should have done things differently. On the one hand, cross-cultural living and language learning naturally comes with some struggle. If they weren't being challenged, they wouldn't learn as much. But we also don't want them to flounder, feel overwhelmed or come away from their summer experience feeling negatively about the time and resources they invested in their time here. 

Their biggest area of struggle has definitely been learning German. Because of the calendar, they unfortunately had to start in German class a week later than the rest of the students. Most of the other students in their class had already lived in Vienna for awhile, so they naturally had more language understanding than our interns, and the girls were frustrated with feeling behind and incompetent in the classroom. That was hard to watch, and I wondered if we should have done things differently. At the same time, seeing them struggle reminded me how hard language learning is at the beginning, no matter how many advantages you have going in. Perhaps struggling a bit was a valuable experience for them in understanding missionary life and cultural assimilation. And sure enough, the class did get a bit easier as they caught up and got more experience and time with the language.

We are excited to see what God does through this summer experience in each of their lives. And may He continue to guide us as we guide them!

Making fresh pasta in our kitchen

Dinner with the interns

Kylee on the team scavenger hunt

The Meat Counter

We are coming up on the 2-year anniversary of being in Austria. In some ways, that seems and sounds like a long time; we feel very at home here and have learned so much in terms of the language and culture. We have found friends and a community of both German and English speakers. We are in the midst of serving and done with our official language study phase. Our life in the States before this feels like a long way away.

And yet, we are still babies, learning how to crawl. As I watch Ellie figure out her body and how to move around, I see a lot of similarities with our journey. Each opportunity to learn how to live and serve here builds on the previous one, much like a baby strengthens her muscles and learns how to put movements together. Before we know it, we will be full-out walking!

Sometimes, it feels like I am walking already...but then I have an experience that reminds me that I'm still learning and I'm still reaching new milestones. This week's success: the meat counter.

When we first moved here, everyone would tell us hilarious and embarrassing stories about trying to order meat at the supermarket. Not only are you attempting to use your new language skills to order food, but you are also figuring out how much to order in kilograms instead of pounds. This makes for some entertaining accidental mix-ups. (Similar to the time I tried to order 100 Kilos of dried cranberries at the market. That's 200 pounds, people.)

In an attempt to avoid making some of these same mistakes, I have been avoiding the meat counter. Today's supermarkets have plenty of pre-packaged meat options, so it hasn't been difficult for me to just look at a package and decide if it's the right kind and amount of meat that I need. But this week, I took a sample of a new lunch meat at the counter and really wanted to order some. Thankfully, the man asked me how many slices I wanted. Now, slices are something I understand! I ordered 15 slices and felt accomplished. That gave me the confidence 2 days later to order ground beef from the counter. I wasn't sure how much I needed, so I asked her, "Can I see how much 250 g is?" And that was a good way for me to judge if the amount was right for my chili recipe.

Even after two years, I am still experiencing small little victories like this. They remind me how far we've come but also how far we still have to go. We are always learning and with God's grace, we hope to keep a learner's attitude the whole way through.

[Side Note: sorry for the slow down in our blog posting lately! Life has been chugging along and keeping us busy. We will try to post more often in the weeks to come!]

Photo credit: Seemann from morguefile.com

The Importance of Status

We are constantly learning about cultural difference between the U.S. and Austria. Sure, there are obvious things; traditional dress and food are the easiest ones to spot. But it's the subtle differences that involve cultural values and ways of thinking that are more difficult to learn and that take time to understand deeply. The longer we live here, the more we learn to recognize cultural values that affect multiple areas of Austrian life and culture.

One of those values is respect and status. In Austria, respecting your elders and those "above you" is highly valued. The most obvious way this is demonstrated is through the language. When you are speaking to someone and you want to show respect, you use the formal "you", rather than the informal. (I wrote more about this here.) But the importance of status comes out in many other ways in the culture. For example, if you have earned a university degree or certificate of any kind, you often communicate this after your name in emails you write, documents you sign, etc. It demonstrates to others the status you have and the respect you should receive. In the U.S., there are many people who have masters degrees but never put "MA" after their name. However, here, this would be common and accepted.

Another place I noticed this cultural difference recently was, of all places, at the card store. Closely connected to this concept of status is achievement. When someone achieves a new level of status, this is celebrated and highly respected. I was walking past the greeting cards the other day and happened to look through the different categories of cards available to purchase. They were definitely different than what I have seen in the U.S. and reflect this cultural difference. The cards you could purchase related to status and achievement (pictured to the left in purple) included:

• Master's degree
• Promotion at work
• Passing an exam
• Getting your driver's license
• Passing your final high school comprehensive exams

Many of these cards were for things that might hardly be celebrated in the U.S.! But here, achieving these things is praised and earns you the respect of your family, friends and colleagues. They give you one more "notch in your belt".

Noticing this difference encourages me to keep my eyes and ears open. Subtle cultural difference can sometimes be difficult to spot. But if we are aware and observant, we can notice how cultural values impact nearly every aspect of daily life in a foreign culture. It's these little things that we will slowly come to understand and internalize as we acclimate to the culture here.

Learning About Train Tickets

I had an interesting experience on Saturday. I spent 5 hours in total at the airport waiting for some people that were flying in to do a short term trip...but that is a story of delayed flights and lost baggage, not the story I want to tell today.  No, the story I have today is about riding the train and continually learning.

Up to this point, we haven't needed to buy a car. We can use public transit to get most places that we need to go. To be honest, it is really great most of the time. Unlike transit systems in other cities, there is no pass to scan or long lines to wait in. With our year long rail pass, we can simply go to the platform, get on the train and ride. It is really slick. Every now and then, you get randomly checked by a person in plain clothes that shows you a badge, but since we never "ride black", this is not a problem. It is usually a stroke of my rule-following ego that I in fact follow the rules, unlike those other miscreants. 

Another thing you need to know is that our year-long passes are good for all the bus, tram, and train rides we can handle (and here comes the important part) inside the city limits of Vienna. The airport is outside these city limits by only 2 stops (come on people, really?!). So we need to use another ticket to supplement these rides.  For this, we usually buy these tickets that have spaces numbered 1 - 8 with a small machine at the entrance to the train that stamps one of the spaces.

Ok so here is my story. I was riding along listening to my podcast and enjoying the time. The checker came by to look at my ticket and so I produced a ticket and my year-long pass, as I usually do. He looked at it for a second and then looked at it for a few more seconds. I was a little confused, but he told me that there was something wrong. At this point, I was glad for my language skills because I could A: understand what he was saying and what he meant, and B: explain to him that I had never heard what he was explaining to me before. I was also glad for point C: I sound like a foreigner so that it is plausable that I made an honest mistake. Basically, he told me that you have to punch the ticket in number order from 1 to 8 and not just any given point on the ticket that you feel like. For some reason I had punched 1-4 and then on another day some time in the past I had punched 8, before going back to punch 7 today. He said that because 8 had been punched before 7, technically when I punched 8, I had also punched 5-7 along with it. This actually makes a lot of sense because sometimes, you travel through multiple zones which each require their own punch, but I had no idea this was really a thing.

Looking back on it, because I hadn't left the city limits (there was still one more stop until then), I could have gotten off the train, got a fresh ticket, and caught the next one. And because the flight of the guys I was picking up was delayed, it would have meant waiting for the same amount of time in two different places instead of just at the airport. The ticket checker let me go because he recognized an honest mistake, and I am still out those few Euros for the ride that I accidentally overpaid for.

I think oftentimes it is easy to say, "language and culture learning time was the first section of our time here in Vienna and now we've moved on," which is a very results-oriented (and frankly, American) way of thinking. The reality is we will continue to learn for as long as we live here. I hear stories all the time from people that have been here 30 + years that still learn a new piece of language or a cultural nuance. It is humbling to know I will never truly finish this stage, but it is also the joy and challenge. Experiences like this reinforce my need to be a learner in this adopted home of ours.

1 Cor. 3:18-19a "Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God."  (ESV)

This May Never Change

Yesterday, Nate stayed home with Ellie while I spent a couple hours sitting at a coffee shop by myself. Having the chance to get some things done at my own pace was a refreshing change to most days, spent caring for Ellie and Mozzy (yes, Mozzy makes my life difficult, too!). Ironically, I was seated at a table in the coffee shop next to a screaming baby...but at least I didn't have to do anything about it! But I digress...

At the end of my few hours, I asked the waiter to pay. (You always need to ask here. It's their way of respecting your opportunity to stay as long as you want.) The waiter told me the total for my latte would be $4.10. Typically here, very little tip is given in a restaurant and costs are usually rounded up, so the waiter was expecting me to give him $4.50 or $5 for the drink. However, I was in a good mood and he gave good service, so I handed him 6 euros and told him he could keep the extra. This decision I made was completely intentional - I understood how much the drink cost, but wanted to give more.

He looked at me oddly and said again, more slowly "$4.10". I said, "Yes, I know." He said, "No, $4.10" and handed me back the extra euro I had given him, assuming I had not understood him correctly. It was awkward. I said to him, "Well, I wanted to give you more, but ok." and the conversation ended.

This may not sound like anything significant, but the situation frustrated me. The reality is that no matter how fluent I become in the language or how well I understand the culture, these situations will continue to happen. Someone will hear my accent and make assumptions about my lack of understanding. They will try to clarify, attempting to be helpful, but only reminding me that I am an outsider. They will hear my accent and switch to speaking English, thinking they are making my life easier, when they are actually making me self-conscious about my German.

This may never change. In fact, our colleagues here in Vienna who have been here for 30 years have said this still happens to them sometimes. The real challenge is just letting these situations roll off your back and giving someone the benefit of the doubt...praying for patience once more and for God to give you the strength to accept that, yes, you are an outsider and yes, this is where you are meant to be...allowing these situations to remind you that, in reality, we are all outsiders in this world, bound for a much better place.

Drilling In

One thing that is completely different about living in Austria is the walls. Most homes I have seen in the US have sheet rock walls. They tend to be relatively thin and require a nail, a sticky hook thing, or maybe a picture hanger like this. Hanging pictures and curtain rods isn't that big of a deal.

Here, most things are made of concrete or really thick sheet rock. So we need to use these to anchor things to the wall. They are little plastic wall anchors. But first you have to drill a hole. To get through the concrete, you need a special masonry bit and a hammer drill. We had a teammate that was given an extra hammer drill that he gave to me when we arrived. That tool has been a wonderful help! It is an intense process drilling holes here, full of tons of measuring just to be sure you don't make a mistake.  The great thing is once most things are attached to the wall, they aren't coming down anytime soon!

As I have drilled all these holes, I have been processing what it means to settle. Bethany and I moved a lot when we were first married. As we look forward to our 4th anniversary, I realized that much of our marriage has been focused on getting to Vienna. Just as it was challenging for us to lift up our roots in the States, we are feeling the tension of putting roots down here.

The first thing I realized is that drilling into concrete takes time. If you try to drill the holes all at once, your drill bit will get hot and burn out. In the same way, connecting to a new neighborhood and city takes time. Building new relationships, getting to know a new church and even figuring out how to go to the doctor (they actually make house calls here!) are all things that take time to figure out. It has been helpful to remind myself that even if we just moved across the country, we would still have some of these same challenges. Culture and language differences make this a bit more complicated, but it is the same basic principle.

The second thing I have realized is we can't rush through any of this. We have to experience the highs and the lows of this process as they come. I made this mistake with my first masonry drill bit. I wanted to get the holes drilled fast and get things done. I didn't pay attention to the tell tail signs of stress on the bit. When metal gets really hot, it starts to turn a shade of blue. From then on the metal becomes weaker and effectiveness slowly decreases until the bit is completely spent.

In our training in Colorado, we talked about the process of learning a new culture. It takes 1,000,000 mistakes to successfully cross cultural barriers. If we try to go too fast, we'll make 100,000 point mistakes instead of the normal 2 or 5 pointers. And we can also burn out ourselves and not be useful anymore, just like the drill bit.

This process hasn't been easy, and there have been many instance these past few weeks that made us feel like this final leg has been the hardest. In the face of all of this, we have hope that God will continue to walk with us and guide us.

Photo credit: mconnors from morguefile.com

Speaking Like a Child

Last Friday marked the end of our first level of German classes. Here they call it the A1 level (here is an explanation of the language levels we plan to go through). We were really happy to hit this milestone. It is amazing how much you absorb in the beginning. It feels like you learn so much each day. Every night we go to bed very tired.  

I am sure I sound like my nephew. The last time we visited, he was learning how to use the phrase "of course." He said that phrase every few moments as he learned when how it fit into normal speech. From directly translated English expressions to odd word combinations, I am walking a child-like path of language learning.

We talked a lot in our training about a loss of competency. It is not as though I am mentally back on the same plane as a little child, but in terms of words, expressions, and nuances of meaning, I am on the level of a first or second grader.

I have felt this most acutely in our language classes. It is our teacher's job to take us into new territory. I feel often that we wander back and forth across the imaginary line of my personal competency in German. This "fish out of water" experience is a source of stress for living here. Even when I was in college, I rarely felt as though I needed to intensely concentrate on the class to track along with the professor. Some of this is my slightly ADD personality, but also we rarely covered ideas that we hadn't read about the night before. Even when the ideas were new, there was a familiar framework to work through and a common language in which things could be explained. It is an interesting paradox; our brains are designed to absorb language, but it also is such an emotionally resource-intensive experience.

It is a humbling feeling to be on the end of competency. Our whole class is feeling it in one way or another. We have many professionals and educated people in our class, and we are talking about the simplest things and forming the simplest sentences imaginable. It is a huge test of humility and one I hope I am able to meet head on. It gives me so much respect for the foreigners I have encountered in my own country and those that have earned degrees in a second language.

Question: When have you felt a loss of competency in your life? Birth of a child? New job? Moving to a new area?

Photo credit farmer64 from morguefile.com

Photo Journal

Today after class, I went on a walking tour in the main part of Vienna with our German teacher. She is very knowledgeable and pointed out a lot of information about the areas we went to. We saw Judenplatz, Maria am Gestade, Schottenkirche, and quite a few other places along the way. Some were streets that I had walked before and never knew the history of and other places I had walked near but never seen. Maria am Gestade is a church that used to be on the bank of the Danube. During the Napoleonic wars, it was used as a horse stable and armory by the government.  Here are some photos from the adventure.

Schottenkirche was pretty stunning inside

The ceiling of  Schottenkirche

A Holocaust memorial in Judenplatz

Judenplatz facing the other way

Maria am Gestade (a church that used to be on the bank of the Danube)

This is a bust of a saint that is venerated in Maria am Gestade

A "Classic" Cross-Cultural Experience

So far, we've been here for a week and a half. Time flies! We've been spending most of our time acclimating to life here, by exploring different parts of the city, purchasing household goods, figuring out where to buy toiletries and certain kinds of food... things like that. We have also had to accomplish a few more "official" tasks like getting cell phones, visiting government offices and opening an Austrian Bank account. We are slowly whittling away at the list!

One of the tasks, however, has taken us much longer than expected. We went out earlier this week to obtain international driver's licenses and, let's just say, things didn't go as planned. Here are a few "highlights" from our adventure:

• We found out that we could have done this at a AAA in the States (would have much been easier...but not as exciting!)
• We tried to find the Austrian auto club and got lost because Google didn't know where it was
• We found help at a Hilton Hotel and then walked half an hour in the rain to finally arrive at the auto club 
• After all this, we came home empty handed! 

We filled out paperwork and communicated in broken German to the receptionist (successfully!) and at the end of the appointment, we were handed documents and told to visit another office to the get licenses. This is very Austrian - lots of paperwork, offices and bureaucracy.

The whole time, we maintained a positive attitude, mostly because it was exactly what we had been told to expect. The task took MUCH longer than we expected, we got lost, we had trouble communicating and in the end, we did not even accomplish our goal. A classic cross-cultural experience!

As we continue to cross the bridge from one culture to another through experiences like this, we hope we can continue to laugh and enjoy the adventure. We hope to continue finding the positive in these situations, like the fact that we were able to communicate with the receptionist or that we are now one step closer to  our goal. There is always a silver lining and out of every experience, we learn something new.

Photo credit: MetalliX from morguefile.com