by Victoria K.

Created on: March 03, 2009

"We're moving to Germany!" These were the words my husband uttered that made my heart stop. The words hit me like a Mack truck. So many thoughts rushed through my mind; I can't speak German, what about my family, what about our stuff, where the heck is Germany?

I was 19 years old and a newly married Army wife when we packed up all of our belongings to prepare for our overseas move. I had barely been outside of Florida, much less outside of the United States. My husband had to fly ahead of me to arrange housing and get started with his deployment training. On April 17th my mom drove me to the airport 2 hours away in Atlanta so I could catch a 17 hour flight into Frankfurt, Germany. I remember her walking me to the checkpoint, slipping my carry on bag onto my shoulder, throwing her arms around me, kissing my cheek and running away crying. This all happened in a matter of seconds. I didn't even get to say goodbye before I embarked on this terrifying adventure on my own.

The flight left at 7pm, not on time might I add, and I was glad it was an evening flight. I had hoped I could sleep, but I had too many things going on inside of my head. I was terrified of the long flight, I didn't know what to expect when I got there, I missed my mom already and I was scared of starting over in a foreign land. A land I knew nothing about besides what I had Google'd about our new city, Wiesbaden.

Two teenage soldiers sat in the row in front of me. I was on a military flight full of soldiers, family members and civilian personnel. About half way through the flight the two soldiers in front of me exclaimed, "Oh my God, we are completely over water. If we were to crash right now, it would be right into the ocean!" This didn't help my nerves but I was more than grateful that we had made it over international waters because when the flight attendant offered me an "adult beverage" I felt the need to buy two just to keep my sanity and keep from hitting the two soldiers in the head with my serving tray.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much. I was ecstatic when we finally landed and I was so excited to see my husband and this new world I was about to encounter. We flew into a military airport and I stepped off the plane to see so much green. I had never see so much green. I ran inside, quickly swept through customs and ran towards the baggage area to claim my baggage and hope that my husband would claim me.

As we pulled out of the airport and onto the Autobahn (Germany's interstate) the cars

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