Rolling on the Rhine: January 2015

The winters in Cologne are typically nothing compared to the snow-ridden, polar vortexed winters of Pittsburgh, so we have been fortunate in that regard. Instead of being snowy, the days are usually grey, rainy, and short, with only about 8ish hours of daylight and little real sunshine. However, since we've been back, things have been a bit unusual and we've been on a climatic roller coaster. The first weekend of January it was warm enough to go walking on the river trail and then yesterday it snowed for the first time! The days have also started getting noticeably longer and the sun is now setting around 4:30pm. I think that means there is light (literally) at the end of this tunnel!

First weekend of January

Second weekend of January

First snow during the third weekend of January

Happy New Year, everyone! I know my Christmas post is long overdue, but we have been so busy for the past several weeks that I haven’t been able to get anything put together about our trip back to the US. Things are starting to slow down (before picking back up later), so I had some time to get all of my pictures organized and some updates written down.

I flew to Pittsburgh in the middle of December and then Will followed a couple days later. It was so nice to be back at home and see all of our friends and family…not to mention being able to speak English to everyone. :) We were extremely busy as we tried to make time to visit with everyone and do all of the things that we had missed. It was also a chance to gorge ourselves on all of the American foods that we have been missing. I think I went to Qdoba five times! We flew back to Germany on New Year’s Eve, taking off at midnight German-time and landing at midnight Pittsburgh-time. The flight attendants even passed out mini glasses of champagne to celebrate.

Since we’ve been back, we’ve been getting back in to our regular routine and getting re-settled back in. I have one more month of German (language) class and then I will take my official exam. After that, I’ll have one month of a German culture/history class to finish up my visa requirements. Then we’ll have a fairly constant stream of visitors through the middle of May to keep us busy!