Annette Gelbrich:  

Met my husband in a bar, took him home for two weeks - 31 years ago. A German engineering/professional exchange participant, my husband Frank came to Atlanta to spend a quarter at Georgia Tech and then look for a job with an 18-month work permit. I had friends at GA Tech in the International Students group, so I temporarily housed Frank until he found an apartment on campus. The story is not SO exciting as in the first sentence, because the director of the exchange program let him in my apartment while I was still at work. We met at the local bar/restaurant Little Five Points Pub, with neighbors for dinner, after they registered and toured GA Tech. Thanks to my French teacher, Marilyn Phillips (now Carpenter), the French I learned in high school (and then later in college) came in useful. I spoke no German, Frank sometimes couldn't find the right word in English, so some parts of our initial conversations had some French words thrown in. Frank accompanied me on several outings, just as a friend, to international folk dancing nights (also, thanks to Marilyn Phillips / Carpenter) and to the symphony and other outings (I was a volunteer driver to older residents of a Senior Citizen high rise, who got free tickets to all sorts of concerts, opera, ballet, etc. - they just needed rides.) Somehow a relationship developed, and about five months later we married, I moved with him to New Orleans, we had two children, and I took a couple evening classes to learn German, "for self-defense purposes" to be able to communicate with my in-laws. By 1987 we moved back to the Atlanta area. We were lucky that Atlanta has a German School. Every Saturday morning, September through May, since they were four years old until they were sixteen, our children studied German. They are now both truly bilingual. Our son Peter studied and is now working in Germany as an industrial engineer/lean manufacturing consultant. Our daughter Anna has opted to stay in the US. She received her Master's in Kinesiology/Exercise Science, and is now working toward being ...Expand for more