8 months!

Can you believe it, Mike and I have been living in Germany for 8 months already! I am really starting to feel settled, especially because I finally got a job doing Occupational Therapy, see details below :)
So as many of you already know, I am currently as substitute teacher and while I do enjoy it, the constant changing schedule and not knowing if you are going to get a call to work and having to jump into someone else's shoes, is exhausting. But, I will say that because of substitute teaching I made enough connections to find an OT job here in Germany! Hooray! Let me tell you how it happened. I was subbing for a special education teacher for a while and one of his aides and I became friendly. She started going to a PT for an orthopedic issue in a German therapy clinic. One day the PT told  her that he would like more English speaking therapists because he sees so many Americans at his clinic. She got in touch with me through the secretary at school and told me about the opportunity. Well, after a meeting with the PT and his OT co-owner, they decided to hire me!

It wasn't as easy as "you're hired", and through some mis-communication due to language barriers there was a lot of stress involved, but at this point, I am hired! We are still working on getting the tax documentation so they can properly pay me, but that is the last hurdle to jump.

I have learned a lot in this process about how the healthcare system works in Germany, the crazy amount of taxes that employees and employers pay here, and how little therapists are paid. So, while it will be awesome to be paid in Euros vs Dollars (because of the exchange rate), I won't be getting paid nearly as much as in the States. Regardless, I made the decision to take this job because of the experience. I mean really, did I move to another country to work on a military base, be surrounded by Americans all day and never learn German?! NO! While I will start out treating only Americans at the clinic, I will be working part-time so I can go to language school and hopefully become fluent in German. If I become fluent, I will start working with German patients as well and then I could work as many hours as I want because they need so much help at the clinic.

I am excited, but have so much to learn. The clients I will have at the German clinic will be mostly children with Autism, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, etc and some adults with orthopedic issues. All of my professional experience is with adults with traumatic brain injuires - hence the "I have a lot to learn". It will be good and I will move back to the states with a very well-rounded resume of experience.

So right now, I have three jobs - substitute teaching, volunteering to see patients on base, and the German clinic - making my life a bit busy. Luckily on June 14th substitute teaching will be finished and I will have a set schedule for the German clinic and volunteering. I am going to keep volunteering because it will allow me to keep working with people with traumatic brain injuries, which I love.

So that is the big news. Very exciting and overwhelming at the same time. But I think that is the way it goes for any big change, right?

Anyway, Mike has been super busy with work, but we were able to fit in a short 4-day vacation to Croatia this past weekend. It was beautiful there but still not quite warm enough to go swimming. I will post more on our vacation next week.

We were teased with Spring weather a few weeks ago but now it is rainy and cold again. The one good thing is that when it is sunny, we have sunlight from 4am to 10pm pretty much. Hopefully the weather will start to get better soon because I have a lot more gardening to do and lots of fests I want to attend this summer!

HOp

~ Katie and Mike