New experiences

When I signed up to move to Switzerland I had no idea the hardships that were coming my way. I am pretty positive that God just wanted to give me peace at the moment. God allowed for me to be so excited to move here that I wasn't thinking about all the things it takes to actually "move." No offense but moving within the States is a piece of CAKE compared to moving to a foreign country. If you need something in the states then you go somewhere and speak in English. Switzerland is a German speaking country and is very set in all of its rules....

We have to buy bebbi saggs at the Grocery. These are 24 Francs which is about 30 U.S. dollars. You only get about 10 at a time, and they are pretty small. Trash is Tuesday and Friday and you set it out the night before on the sidewalk.

We have so much IKEA cardboard but that can only be bundled ONCE A MONTH. Holy cow this is hard. Our whole apartment is full sometimes of it.

No laundry on Sundays and no laundry on holidays. Well in Switzerland there are a lot of holidays :) Cannot make noise on Sundays. Meaning no vacuuming, and well just zero noise.

Everything is closed on Sundays. Everything. Meaning anytime we need to run an errand together it has to be Saturday. This has lead to me doing a lot on my own and just figuring stuff out.

I didn't even think about the fact that we would have to buy all of our furniture for our apartment. Not only did we buy it but we went to IKEA and had to assemble all of it. 3 huge closets, a bookshelf, out door furniture, 2 kitchen tables and a huge closet in our foyer. Let's just say this was a very stressful time in our relationship. 2 people trying to put together furniture is not something you want to try your first year of marriage. If I felt like Andy was talking to me in a mean way I would freak out. If he thought I wasn't working hard enough he would ask if I was mad. During this whole process I was so mad. I asked God why we had to put all of this together. Why couldn't we just have moved into a furnished apartment like other people I know. It would have saved us such us weeks of turmoil. God, like always, gave me the answer. He gave us this obstacle because we grew so much during it. Throughout these past 2 months we have had to work together on everything. Not one thing was easy here in Switzerland. Nothing worked as planned. Nothing. In our first year of marriage we have tackled more then most people have in their whole life. So many things I used to think were such a big deal are a joke to me now. I look back at life in the U.S. and see how simple people have it. The hardest months have come and gone. The homesick months, trying to set a routine, keep a good marriage, meeting people, finding a church, setting up house. It feels as if from now on we can sit back and admire all of the growth that has occurred.