Last week we finally met Sherrie.  We were put in touch with her by someone at the church who knew she lived in St. Augustin, though she and her family do not attend APC Bonn.  Sherrie is from Texas, but moved to Europe to pursue a career in opera.  When she got to Germany, she fell in love with the trumpeter in the orchestra, and has lived here for fifteen years now.  She has two kids and is very friendly and eager to help us get acclimated.  

Sherrie’s first task was to help us track down some English books.  We’ve been going a bit batty and getting desperate: starting to read the labels on our clothes, old research papers on our laptop, and the copyright pages of the books we did bring.  The St. Augustin public library has come to the rescue.  For 18 euros a year, we now have access to two whole bookshelves of English reading.  The collection(around 200 books, I’d guess) includes a Shakespeare collection, some D.H. Lawrence and Hemingway, and a whole lot of popular fiction paperbacks.  By March, I plan to be a Danielle Steele expert, while Amber will handle the Nora Roberts catalogue.  I turned my nose at Nicholas Sparks in favor of some gritty John Grisham.  

But English books they are, and the library also subscribes to Time magazine.  We’re extremely pleased to have reading material, and thoroughly grateful for Sherrie’s help.