All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go....

Tucson "International" Airport

Hello friends!

Today's the day! I'm currently sitting in the Tucson Int'l Airport at 4 am waiting to board my first flight (we will be boarding soon, actually) on my journey practically across the globe. I'm excited and nervous. I am also dreading the long day I have ahead of me. 17 hours from now, when I step into the Hamburg airport--for the first time in 14 years--it will be TOMORROW. (It will be 10pm in Tucson and 1am in NY).

I thought I'd give a brief history on how I know Anne (for those of you that have no clue). When I was in high school my German class had an exchange program with a Hauptschule (High School) in Neu Wulmstorf, Germany (a western suburb of Hamburg). In 1996 I begged my parents to host a student and they agreed. I was matched with Anne who is two years older than I. She and the other 20 students stayed for about 3 weeks and it was a tearful goodbye. The following year it was our turn to go to Germany and I again begged to go. My parents complied and in February of 1997 I was one of 25 students and one teacher to visit Germany. Not such a great time of year to go, it was rather gloomy...we saw the sun for less than 3 hours the entire month. But we had a wonderful time. We visited Berlin, Luneburg (sorry, the umlaut's missing!), Hamburg, Bremen, and Buxteheude. I took a side trip with Anne to visit her family in Bonn and I had the opportunity to visit Beethoven's birthplace. We went to some classes, reveled in the fact that 16 yr olds could drink there legally (I had maybe two sips of whatever...I wasn't much of a rebel as a teen), and we just enjoyed the experience. Since then, Anne has retuned to visit for summer vacations with my family. We took her to visit Grandma in Florida, we went to Washington DC the summer of 2001, and I even drove down to Baltimore to pick her up and bring her to Long Island for a weekend in 2007. I met up with Anne and her (then) new husband Peter in Los Angeles in March of 2010 for a few days during a layover they had from returning from their wedding/honeymoon in Hawaii. That was the last time we have seen one another. Over the course of 14 years we have kept in constant contact. She's called to surprise me for birthdays. It's been a wonderful friendship, I always cry when we have to part. :)

Last spring she kept trying to get a hold of me and I kept missing her calls. One day she finally caught up with me and she told me she was having a baby. I was so happy. Then she asked if I would be one of the Godmother's to this baby....and I cried. :) And she laughed at me. haha.  I was so touched and honored. The Godmothers are myself, her sister Sonja and her husband's sister. Of course I had to be there for the christening! Henry just turned 7 months last week and Anne tells me he has started to crawl. I am so very excited to meet him!

And here we are today...in the Tucson Airport getting ready to say goodbye to the heat of the desert and hello to the "cool" 70 degree temps of northern Europe for two weeks.

I will be staying in several places these next few days. I will be at Anne & Peter's apartment for a night or two, then in an apartment in a retirement complex for a week's time, we will visit Peter's sister in Rostok (Eastern portion of Germany on the Baltic coast), and I will possibly spend an evening or two with Anne's parents in Neu Wulmstorf. Anne told me that there is no internet access in the apartment I will be staying in (apparently retired Germans don't surf Facebook like some retired Americans I know!). I will be bringing my laptop to Anne & Peter's apartment every morning to update the blog and check my email (unless I pick up some free wifi haha) while I am in that location. It's a great excuse for me to focus more on the material for my comps, that's for sure! Gosh.

My phone will accept calls should anyone wish to call me. Please be advised that Hamburg is 9 hours ahead of Tucson, and 6 hours ahead of the East Coast. So if you call me at 4am, I'm not answering! haha. NO TEXTS please!

I should get this computer put away so I can board my flight. Keep an eye on my Facebook status as it should update as I travel! My layovers are not very long today, so you may not see a post on here until "tomorrow."

Adios for now Tucson, see you in two weeks! To my Tucson gang, see you in less than a month when class start! Where has the summer gone?!

To my NY friends and family, keep an eye to the sky around 5:45-6pm and wave to me as I take off from Newark! I promise to wave back! :)

I sure hope the years (5th-12th grade) of German will come back to me. I was semi-fluent when I graduated high school, but now I have a better listening and reading comprehension than anything. But Frau Hershey taught us well and I am very thankful for that! Vielen Dank! :)

Bye for now! :) I leave you with the weather for Hamburg for the next week.