Honeymoons

David & Wendy Bosch and James & Lisa Kopitzke (pictured) ... welcome back from your honeymoons! We hope you are enjoying newlywed life! We're so thankful that God has brought these two couples together!

Speaking of honeymoons, they say that when entering a new culture, you may experience a "honeymoon phase" with it. I'm not sure we've hit a "honeymoon phase" ourselves but we are certainly getting into a routine here and beginning to learn how to live day-to-day.

Obviously, our world was turned upside down the moment we landed here. Not only are we transitioning ... but the country itself is undergoing a few changes. They've changed all the street names (and though my map has the new names, taxi drivers often only know the old names) ... they're changing the currency system so I am paying with 2 different types of currency (until they completely weed out the old bills come January) ... and they've changed the alphabet from using Cyrillic letters to Latin letters. And for some reason, in our apartment ... you have to turn the faucet handle to the right to get hot water and flip the light switch down to turn it ON.

And of course, I'm adjusting to doing daily life without a few conveniences I had in the States ... dishwasher, clothes dryer, car, large grocery stores (where I can get everything in one stop), etc.

Basically, I feel like everything about my life here is different. To add to the package, I began studying the language with an in-home tutor last week. After our sessions, my brain is fried! I am excited & eager to be able to speak this beautiful language fluently someday but right now, I am struggling during each lesson.

My tutor teaches me how to speak this new language using Russian (since she knows very little English). She will ask me to translate a sentence into the new language which she first says in Russian ... which I then translate (silently in my mind) into English ... and THEN into Korean (since the grammatical structure of this new language is similar to Korean) ... and then FINALLY into the new language, which I attempt to say out loud. I think there is too much floating around in my head at once.

No, we are not experiencing the honeymoon phase right now but before I give you a negative impression of our lives here, we are actually doing pretty well and adjusting slowly but surely. We have DAILY seen the fingerprints of God in our lives here and we do feel abundantly blessed. Our team. Our housing. Our girls adjusting so well. Verity loving her preschool. The hospitable people of this country. We are thankful!