I'm only like two months late.

Hello friends! Here is the blog I've been promising everyone for about... two or three months?  My apologies for my lateness. I would have gotten this up earlier except I literally have no idea what I'm doing. I'm typing this into what looks like a word document right now and hoping when I hit the publish button everything will look more blog like.

Somewhere this morning the conviction to finally put this thing up struck me, so I rushed to the computer, thinking this would take 15 minutes, and started clicking all the make blog buttons. But then it wanted me to name the thing. Then I drank three cups of coffee and texted everyone who would be awake stateside that early (hiiiiiii Elise and Emily!) while contemplating.  And my decided upon title (which Elise assures me is not stupid. If you think the title is stupid, it's Elise's fault) requires some explanation!

I arrived in Germany a little over two months ago knowing approximately 99% less German than I should have known with the kind of warning I had that moving here would someday be a possibility.  I've sense concluded learning language by immersion is not all it's cracked up to be.  Of course it's much easier to learn a language if you're immersed in it, and it's vastly better than classroom learning, but you have to make some effort. Lots of effort. As an adult it's not just going to magically start to infiltrate your brain unless you're actively studying. Very rarely do I have an "aha! That's what that word means!" moment just from hearing something repeatedly until it finally clicks.

On the rare occasion that I do figure out a word just by context, it's usually because someone was talking about me so I was extra motivated to pay attention.  And so after several trips to government offices getting various affairs in order, I realized that the word "Ausländer" was in reference to me.  It means foreigner, or outsider, and as German is conveniently made up of small words smashed together to to make big words, it's very useful to me. Ausländerbehörde is where I go to sort out all the legaleese of legally residing here, for example.

And so Auslandering- I've left off an umlaut because it would make searching for this blog more difficult in the US and I wanted to make it as easy as possible just in case I get really famous. Also, "Auslander" pronounced as you would assume it's pronounced in English is the same "Ausländer" is pronounced in German. I've also made a noun a verb and Englishified a German word, both things I have a habit of doing.

And so here's my blog! Where you will soon be able to find all the thoughts that I start to write on Facebook but then delete because no one wants to read a thousand word status update.  Enjoy!