So, after my first official week of living in Hamburg, here is what I have to say:

* I still kind of feel like I am borrowing someone else’s life.  Maybe that has a little to do with the fact that I did not take any time to settle in before I started work.Meaning that many of my things are still strewn around the apartment without a proper resting place.This will of course be remedied as soon as we can manage to get some shopping done, which is made a little more difficult by the fact that everything is closed on Sundays and that mein Schatz is in the long-run phase of his marathon training (hey, you try maneuvering through Ikea after running three hours and see how much you like it).

* Somehow I managed to convince my supervisors and colleagues at work that my German is good enough to be my working language (let’s see how long that lasts).This is going to be challenging, but will hopefully pay off.At the moment, everyone is completely supportive of my language learning and seems to find it rather endearing.I know that eventually there will be situations where I just will not be able to get my ideas across in German, and then I know I can fall back into English if necessary.Even so, I continue to be amazed by how many people here — who speak much better English than I speak German — would still rather listen to me massacre their mother tongue than speak English themselves.A fascinating concept, and one that will hopefully benefit my language learning.So I think that for now, I can gain a few more points for trying than I would for sounding eloquent in English.

* And speaking of, I started my language lessons again, only this time it will be just one night a week.There are nine people in the course and we come from eight different countries (USA, Serbia, Hungary, Iran, South Korea, Ukraine, Switzerland, and Mexico) and have lived in Germany ranging from two months to 12 years.Which makes this class much more interesting than my evening classes in New York.Plus, I find it helpful to compare myself to other language learners — so that I can put my own progress into perspective and not feel too frustrated by it all.And since all of us live our daily lives here, my classmates are much more conversational in German and not so painful to listen to (as compared to previous courses I have taken).

Anyway, that is probably too much information for now, but you get the picture.Tomorrow we celebrate the reunification of Germany with a day off (woohoo, three-day weekend in October!) and hopefully a little time to sleep and relax.

Bis später!

P.S. Anyone else looking forward to the Palin-Biden debate?It is shown here on CNN, but in the middle of the night.So I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to check out the coverage.For some Schadenfreude-type reason, I can’t wait!