Wienke and I first met when I visited Ben in Germany in 2006. But we really hit it off when she traveled to The States in 2010 for a mutual friend’s wedding. While the boys were off doing boy things- like shooting off potato guns and ravaging the nearby Chipotle, Wienke and I played games and got to know each other. Turned out that we both work in the medical field, ride horseback, and love a challenge. That last bit made us determined to hold a conversation- even though it involved a lot of miming and looking up translations. It also led us to play Bananagrams… our own Deutsch-Espanol-English version!

We kept in touch with hand-written letters over the past year. This past May, Ben and I had the amazing opportunity to travel  to Wienke and Ole’s wedding in Ahrensburg, Germany. When Wienke and I met once again in person, our big smiles and bear hugs didn’t need a translation.