What were you grateful for this week?
The understanding nature of my host mom.
 

What was the most difficult or challenging part of this week?
My host mom went out of town for the last half of the week and I was left with [my host family’s] oldest boy.

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week.
I went to the park with Nonna (Grandma) and [my host family’s youngest son], and we spent two hours there. Although the language barrier between me and Nonna is hard, it didn’t feel like we struggled at all. 

 

Tell us about your week! 
This week was difficult and I was very stressed because I was anticipating [my host mom] going out of town, and [her older son] has very intense separation anxiety. He also hadn’t quite learned to trust me yet because we hadn’t had a lot of chances to really spend time together without someone else around that he was comfortable with. 

 

One night, he wouldn’t allow me to come downstairs or he would start screaming at me to leave. Which didn’t make me feel very good about myself at all. But, the next morning, he came into my room to wake me up and play with him. Which he has never done before. And when he came home from school, he still wanted to spend time with me. So that was a huge feeling of progress.

I went to Oktoberfest over the weekend with C. We lived with a German girl in Australia and she offered to let us stay in her flat with her, which was amazing because the flight there was a bit more expensive than we were anticipating. So we flew to Munich very early on Saturday morning, and got there around 10 am. 

 

Lydia had borrowed outfits for us from her friends, so we looked fully German. We had SO much fun. It was something I didn’t think I would ever get to do and I’m so happy that we did. It was a really nice feeling getting home this morning though, I didn’t realize how much of a home this house had become.