Inaugural Post!

Hello and welcome! (Hallo und willkommen!)

This blog is going to be my motivational tool, as well as helping hold me accountable, for the goals that I have over the next 10-12 months.  I'm a generally happy person but a lot of things have happened recently that make me realize that I need some big changes in my life.  Unfortunately, most things don't happen overnight and two of the three things I really want to achieve will take a significant amount of time.  But you never get anywhere without starting, so that's where I am now.

I have three big goals to achieve:

1. Lose weight and get healthy
• I have been overweight basically my whole life and have struggled with it a lot, especially recently.  After visiting Austria in October, I came to the conclusion that I'm never going to be the person I really want to be if I'm living this incredibly unhealthy lifestyle.  I want to eat better (cutting out almost all fast food, soda, and junk food), get more (or really any) exercise, and be much more informed about the things that I put in my body.  America is pretty notorious for all of the processed EVERYTHING we have available, and I want to become more informed about how it affects me.
2. Learn fluent German
• In July of 2006, I met several Austrians (and a couple Germans) who were studying abroad at my home in Omaha, Nebraska.  After spending much time with them, they convinced me to change my language class for my first semester of college from Latin to German.  I was determined then to learn German fluently, and I was very good at it when I started.  Unfortunately, my second semester professor ruined the whole experience for me and I pretty much gave up.  Since then, I've forgotten most of what I learned and my efforts to get back to it have been futile.
  On my recent trip to Vienna, one of my good friends made a comment that basically implied he didn't think I'd ever actually learn the language.  Since I am stubborn as all hell and enjoy proving people wrong, I'm bound and determined to learn fluent German.  There's also something to be said for the fact that my friends have been speaking to me in my native language for 5 and a half years now, and I really do want to be able to speak to them in theirs.
3. Move back home
• Since deciding to go to college out of state, my plan was always to return to Omaha to live.  Of course, once I got to college, life got in the way and I met my future (now current) husband and we ended up moving to Peoria, IL (his hometown) for his job.  We both feel that we've stayed past our time here, and we are ready for a move.  This one will probably (hopefully?) happen more quickly than the other two, but we'll just go with the flow on this one because we really have no other option.

So that is the rundown of what I'll be talking about.  I hope to update weekly (if not more frequently) with my progress, things that I've found useful when it comes to losing weight and learning a new language, and general stories about my life.  If you're reading this and want to leave me a message, idea, hint, suggestion, hate mail (but hopefully not), or anything else, please feel free!

Tschüss!