We Have Internet! 1

We have internet again! But it's really slow, so the only way I can get clear pictures downloaded is by using Picasa, and Picasa only allows me to download four pictures per post. There's probably a better way to do this but I'm so anxious to get out a post I'm just going ahead this way.

So, here we go! There are some pictures from the Berlin Zoo, the new house, etc. I couldn't get the pictures on in the correct order without taking an inordinate amount of time, so I'll put the text here (wrote it last night) and you'll see the pictures on this and the following posts.

So the last time I wrote was after we had gotten back from Berlin (pictures below from the zoo and other places). Since then, we have gotten thoroughly moved into our house, not just furniture, but clothes, books, and everything else! The coolest room in the house is the living room/dining room/reading nook. The bathroom and kitchen are a close second, and third place (fourth place, for those who are picky about placing) is the guest bedroom. The furniture for the living room was almost entirely provided for by my parents, those wonderful people who so very luckily for me moved from a larger house to a smaller house, leaving Matt and me with a lot of nice furniture, some antiques even. Somehow, the furniture fit perfectly in this space and I can’t wait for people to come visit.

The bathroom and kitchen are so cool because they are so clean and new. They contrast very well with some of the older furniture we have in the house. To outfit these two rooms we became good patrons of IKEA, the wonderful Swedish furniture/everything store. The guest bedroom has a place dear to my heart because it is full of antiques, and because it is the furniture that I have slept on most of my life. It’s a mess right now because that’s where I put all the decorations and everything else that doesn’t have a place.

Though the place still feels like it needs a lot of work done, I just have to remember where all of it started. When the movers brought our stuff in, they are required to empty the boxes so I am not left with a whole bunch of boxes and paper to deal with once I’m done unpacking. But their method of unpacking a box is turning it upside down on the floor. There were books, CD’s, DVD’s, clothes and everything else just lying on beds and on the floor. One good thing about that was that it made me pick up everything quickly because I didn’t want to live in a disaster, but nevertheless, it was certainly a messy process!

This last week Matt was at something called IRT- Individual Readiness Training. Before a deployment, the unit that’s going down usually takes 2 months to do training as a unit to prepare for the deployment. Because Matt isn’t going down with the unit, he’s just going to meet them down there, he only had to go for a condensed version of the course. I was very glad to have him gone for only a week, instead of two months. Though we have a lovely place, it’s very quiet. I’m used to college where there’s always a noise somewhere, and a wonderful roommate waiting for me to come home.

In case I forgot to mention it, Matt’s car did arrive. It almost passed inspection, but his tires are getting a little bald.

Remember how I said that we’d have free phone calls to the US and Canada? Well, after one of the biggest headaches I’ve ever had with any corporation, we are no longer going with that company, and think we’ll have to stick with skype. I would go into detail about how painful it has been, but I’ll just say that we learned some very important lessons about German customer service: it doesn’t exist. If something is going wrong, they don’t really care. If you’re about to sign up for a two-year contract for a phone line, they get annoyed when you start to ask questions about what comes with the contract. If they don’t give you the necessary information to get something done, it’s your fault because you didn’t ask any questions, no matter if you had no concept that a question like this needed to be asked. I am very good at asking questions and figuring out how a system works, they are just so stubborn!

I’ll give a short example (the home phone line example was too difficult). Matt and I had just bought Vodafone phones and our voicemails weren’t set up. To be able to set them up though, we had to get the prompting language changed from German to English. An easy task, we thought, just go to the Vodafone store and ask them to change it. We hand our phones over, the girl makes a call, says a few things to the other line, hangs up, and then tells us she can’t do it. Matt and I look at each other, and then ask her why not. She said someone else controls it and it is impossible for her to change it. Who controls it? Headquarters. Who is headquarters? At this point she looks at us as if we’re idiots and says something that the military has a contract with blah blah blah, and she can’t do anything about it. Can we call headquarters? Again, apparently we’re idiots, and no you can’t call them. So you’re saying there is no way for us to ever get our voicemails set up? Yes. Unless you have a code that came with your phone, but no, I can’t change it. Matt and I look at each other again, knowing that we both have the codes for our respective phones back at the hotel, and that this answer was such an easy one. Why she didn’t mention this to begin with, we don’t have a clue.

Basically, they don’t help you try and solve the problem, you have to drag them through the conversation, the whole time they’re getting frustrated with you, and can’t understand why you don’t already know everything they know. They will also get very uppity with you, and will very easily act insulted. Perhaps I’m overstating some things, but Matt and I have both experienced this on probably 10 occasions or more. The only place we got good customer service was with a nice older woman who works for the housing office, and she herself is an anomaly in that office.

So, we think we’ve made some progress on my job. After many conversations, we’ve decided that it might be best for me to get a fun part-time job that would enable me to get some income, and still have fun. I’ve played around with the idea of working at the framing shop or the outdoor recreation center, both of which would enable me to interact with cool people (especially the latter), learn new things, and encourage me to either frame everything in my house or go on lots of adventures. I’m thinking that working for the outdoor rec would be the most fun, and there are in facet 3 job openings there. The only drawback is that both of these jobs would be about 40 minutes away from here and possibly work until 6.00 at night, getting home around 7.00. But, these sound interesting and get me excited, so I’m going to check them out.

This was one of the coolest animals at the zoo We were able to see them swimming underwater, and they were just huge!

Matt in front of the Brandenburg Gate

Brandenburg Gate on a beautiful day

The line between old East and West Germany

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I had so much fun with this awesome lens my brothers gave me for graduation



I knew this one was going to be a great shot when I saw it :)

Again, such a fun shot!

Aint he cute?

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This old cathedral was magnificent. Broken, but magnificent and in the middle of the city

Again, he's adorable

He posed for me!

The Reichstag. Matt "stormed" this in a video game once. Said the video game was pretty accurate

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Reading Nook!

Living room

Dining room

Rachel playing dress-up

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Kitchen

Our Bedroom- kinda lame because it's all government furniture, but the coverlet (bedspread) is still awesome!



Guest Bedroom, still a mess because this is the "storage" room until we figure out where everything goes



Bathroom

A short ditty

I'm sitting in the Education Center at Vilseck Post. I don't think I'm really supposed to be here, but I'm going to try and write a quick blog nevertheless. I doubt many people will be reading it since my last blog said I won't be writing for a while, but a lot of things have happened. Maybe if I put it in bullet points that'll be easier for everyone to read :).

Hightlights
- We went to Berlin this last weekend
- The rest of our household goods arrived today (earlier than projected) and will be delivered to us on Friday
- Matt's car arrived today (also earlier than projected) and will be ready for pickup tomorrow
- All of the furniture my parents gave us fits perfectly in our house, and when I can hook my computer up to the internet, I'll upload pictures
- It sleeted a little on our car as we drove from Berlin to Vilseck

Detail
Berlin was cool and clean. The first thing I noticed when I got out of the car was the temperature though. It got down to around 50 at some points, and I had to wear a jacket anytime we were outside.

Our hotel was right on the major shopping road in the city (Kurfurstendamm) and within walking distance to a lot of cool sights (Matt did a great job finding the place). We saw a lot of ridiculously expensive shops like Chanel and Gucci, as well as 3 H&M's within a tenth of a mile of each other. For those unfamiliar with H&M, it's a great European store that has good fashion and really cheap prices. They have them in a few large cities in the states. We walked around this area on Saturday afternoon/evening enjoying the sites, went back to our place, changed, and then had a Mexican dinner right next to our hotel for about 3 hours.

Sunday morning we went to the Berlin Zoo, and I must say, they have the friendliest and most photogenic animals! They all sit in great places for everyone to see them, they'll approach the tourists, and are generally pretty active. Sunday afternoon we went to the Mitte, which is the middle of the city where Museum Island, the Brandenberg Gate and the Reichstag are located. Museum Island is just uber cool, and beautiful to boot. We got to go in the Pergamon Museum, which is a museum of architecture...kinda. It had rooms with entire bits of temples, streets and large floor mosaics. We got in for pretty cheap, and the headsets were free. It was great to finally be able to walk around all of these Roman statues and have someone explain the myth or story that goes with them. Highly educational.

As far as East vs. West Berlin, the parts of east Berlin we saw were very clean, and very nice looking. I couldn't tell you if it was new or not, but I couldn't see any remnant of the east/west-ness of the Soviet Union era. I guess they've done a good job of moving forward.

A few nights ago Matt and I watched High Society with Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Louis Armstrong, and Bing Crosby. An all-star cast if ever I saw one! We found out at the end that it was the last movie Grace made before she married the Prince of Monaco and became a real live princess! I didn't know that happened anymore! Monaco sounds so romantic, especially after seeing it in the latest Bond movie. It's definitely on our places-to-visit list.

I think that's all I should write for now. I'd love to hear how you're doing, so keep in touch!

Joys and Frustrations

So, I had a nice long blog mentally planned, inclusive of pictures of beautiful Bavaria, and guess what? My computer with all the pictures is at our new house and I am at our hotel room. So, you're going to get the abridged version of my post, minus the pictures. And be patient, because pictures may not come for a while.

The most pressing thing on our plates right now is moving in. The government furniture arrived at our place today (extra dressers and bedside tables we didn't have), and our furniture will arrive tomorrow. So basically, we move in tomorrow. Woot! Now, we will only have our furniture, no plates/bowls/pans/utensils, but we will have a bed, bookshelves, dining room set and a few other very cool items.

For the government furniture to be delivered, I had to be available to be at the house from 8-5. Because I couldn't leave, I asked my friends Krista and Veronica if they wanted to come over and entertain me. They very kindly obliged, and even brought a delicious crab salad w/ pita bread lunch, complete with Kashi crackers, fruit salad, and banana bread for dessert! You should see these ladies with their little girls though, they're incredible! They are always completely equipped for any emergency, any cry, or just with a blanket to plop their kids on with a bucket of toys handy with which to entertain them. I am always amazed at the never-ending display of kiddie technology, and how well these ladies have utilized them!

I told you last time about this great phone rate that we'll be getting. Well, there's some bad news to go with that as well. When we went to ask when everything was going to be connected, they told us that there was no DSL (fast internet) available in the area. Meaning we would have to use dial-up for the low low rate of 5 EU a month base rate and 1 EU per hour of internet use. WHAT?! That's an awful rate! For someone who is used to being able to plop down anywhere on campus, open my computer, and get some of the fastest wireless available, going back to dial-up would be a 11-year digression in technology, and a multiplier of 10 in frustration.

Matt and I couldn't believe that an upscale neighborhood the size of ours would not have DSL, but the lady swore to us up and down that it didn't. So this morning when I was talking with my landlord, I asked him what he used for his business (his business is located 50 yards down the street), and what did he say? DSL of course. So, we're going to go back to the phone/internet people and tell them they're lying SOB's and we want them to check it out again. It's not the price that necessarily gets to us, it's the fact that the service is so awful. It wouldn't be so bad for Matt because he'll have a computer at work, but there he's not even allowed to check personal email accounts or other fun distractions like that.

The job search for me is going interestingly. I tried to get in touch with the Army Corps of Engineers in Graf (nearby post), but the old guy who answered the phone sounding a little confused said there were no jobs. Well, more precisely, he asked me if I saw any jobs on the internet, and I said no, so he said "well then we have no positions available." He wouldn't even give me a chance to send my resume. So I think I'm going to hunt their office down, walk down, hand them my resume and walk around the office to see if it even looks interesting enough to pursue. The guy asked me if I wanted an administrative job, and, trying not to smart from the blow to my dignity, I politely said I that the reason I called them was that I wanted an engineering job, and that I would be able to get an administrative job at other places if need be. Call me prideful, but I'd like to work in my degree, not for the people with my degree.

I had originally mentioned that I'd like to pursue a master's, but the degree that I wanted (International Relations) isn't offered here. Of course it said it was online, but when I went to the education building, they told me the internet lied and they would fix the problem promptly. So, I might become a substitute high school teacher when school starts up in late August, or perhaps I'll work for very little money at the framing shop on Graf's post. I'm a little exasperated to say the least with my options. I wanted to be settled with some job prospect before Matt left for Iraq, but that doesn't look like it'll happen. Who knows, the medical records technician looks like it pays well, but other than that it's only food/store jobs that are available.

So, because I think I said this very obscurely earlier, I will not have internet connection after tomorrow morning because we will be (finally) out of the hotel. Our house won't have internet until next week at the earliest. If you don't hear from me in a couple of weeks, then I might start worrying, but other than that, I'm sure we're fine.

We might go to Berlin this weekend, I'm not sure. I've taken two classes of spin recently, and I really enjoy it. Next week I'm going to be taking a class that will teach me more about the military, my role in it, and how to maneuver within the lingo/bureaucracy/ranks/etc. Um...other than that, things are pretty normal. The memorial service was poignant, and anything but contrived. Taps is one of the most mournful songs I've ever heard, and I definitely cried when it started playing. The poor widow was a high school graduate with a baby. Man, God's plans are definitely mysteries to me.

I think that's it. I'll try to write and have pictures as soon as I can. Trust me, it's not fun for me to be out of contact either! Miss you all.

Inverse Culture Shock

You've heard many times about people getting "culture shock" when they go to a place where the culture is different than what they're used to. According to dictionary.com, culture shock is "a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment."

Being in Germany has hardly caused me to be in a state of bewilderment, and certainly not distress, and in fact, I am quite enjoying many of the changes that I'm experiencing. I think I'm experience something akin to inverse culture shock. Especially with driving. Before I took the driver's exam, people told me that it was the hardest written driver's exam I would ever take, and that things over here are just confusing. But when I went in to take the prep course for the exam, I was rather pleased. Things are definitely run differently here, and there are about 4-5 times as many signs as in the states, but it makes much more sense to me.

First, they have this concept of a priority road. If you are on the priority road (designated so by a yellow diamond), you don't have to stop for anyone, unless instructed to do so by a traffic signal (light). Now this may not sound like much because America is run entirely by traffic signals, stop signs, and yield signs, but in Germany, many intersections have no such signs, just a sign designating who has priority. There are also many intersections that simply do not have any signs, and at that point, you just go by the simple rule "right to left," which means the person furthest to the right goes first. The Germans think having a green arrow to designate that we can go right is dangerous because there is no thinking involved.

To Americans this might seem like senselessly dangerous, but as I'm driving around Europe, I'm seeing that it actually produces better drivers. The onus is no longer on the traffic engineers to try and prevent stupid drivers from hurting themselves, but on the drivers themselves to not be stupid. They also have a rule here where the left lane is designated as the passing lane...and the Germans actually use it as such. The traffic flow on the Autobahn is incredible, and so wonderful! I have driven many hours between Nashville and Ft. Benning, Georgia, when I went to go visit Matt, and I cannot tell you how many times I have been stuck behind someone in the left lane going the exact same speed as the person in the right lane. So aggravating! That NEVER happens here and I love it.

Perhaps I like it because I was taught to drive by my father, a very good defensive driver, yet not afraid to be aggressive when the time calls for it. I've always tried to use my brain while driving, and I think that is finally paying off.

Something else that I love? They use much less electricity than we do. They were kinda forced to use less because electricity is so expensive here, but they know that an appliance still uses electricity when it is plugged in, so they unplug things they're not using. They also bring their own bags to the grocery store so they don't have waste.

There are definitely things here that are different in a "negative" way, like the impossible-to-see traffic lights, or that they closed down part of a major highway for a roller-blading competition, but I was prepared to be blown totally off guard, and was very pleasantly surprised to be doing quite well and rather enjoying myself.

Every Day Life
Since I wrote so much about the inverse culture shock I'll try to be quick about our goings on here.

We went through a very long day two days ago trying to figure out when we could move into our house. After going to a few different offices and filling out many forms, we finally figured out that we will be moving into our new house on June 12th, Matt's birthday! We did a walk-through on Monday and the place looks absolutely amazing. The place looks like a completely new house, not just one that was renovated. We found out that our landlord is a head carpenter who works a couple hundred yards up the street from our house, which might explain why everything looks so amazing.

As we were walking through, I asked if I was allowed to put up curtains, and Mr. Kohl (said "cool") said that he would put up the rods for me. Wow! About a week earlier we had been there and asked if we could have a car port for two cars since the other tenant had the garage. When we saw it on Monday we couldn't believe our eyes: it was a beautiful structure that looked more like a beautiful bright yellow gazebo with fancy brickwork laid in the bottom than a car port. Our realtor Burger suggested that we could use it for picnics and parties, and I would heartily agree. Because we were on a roll, we later asked if we could have a door put in upstairs to designate a third closed-off bedroom, and he agreed. Man, we seriously have the best landlord ever...if only he spoke English!

Other small news: I got to make cookies with my friends Krista and Veronica. Matt's CO took us out to this ridiculously cool restaurant where you cook your own meat on a rock. They served regular beef, lamb, shrimp, as well as crocodile, kangaroo and ostrich! Such a treat. We heard about a castle that's about 30 minutes from post where you eat in the middle of the courtyard, so we're going to check that out this weekend. We war daily with the cleaning ladies who think that coming to clean our room during the hour and a half that Matt has to shower and eat in the morning is a brilliant idea. I tried a spin class for the first time today! For those who don't know, spinning isn't just a bunch of people turning in circles in a room, it's getting on a stationary bike and doing some pretty hard stuff. I haven't sweat that hard since I was running!

For those who don't know, I had to stop running a while back due to achilles tendonitis in both achilles. I was kicking butt while training for the Nashville Country Music 1/2 Marathon, and around 8 miles my achilles just started hurting. Since I've tried staying off them and tried steroids without any improvement, it might be something else, but for now I call it achilles tendonitis.

Ooh! In really good news (kinda menial, but great news nevertheless), we signed up for a plan that allows us to talk for FREE any time to any phone in the United States and Canada! There are other perks as well, and it's not the cheapest plan ever, but it is ridiculously good. So if you don't have skype and want to chat with me, let me know when a good time to call you is, give me your number, and I'll give you a holler! But don't forget that we're 6 hours ahead of Eastern and 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time. Oh, and this won't start for another couple of weeks, so start the emails then.

In more somber news, I received an email reporting that one of our soldiers from 1st Squadron died in Iraq (there are 6 squadrons located in Vilseck, Matt is with 1st). This is my first experience with anything like this, and there will be a memorial service held tomorrow for him. I don't know any details on how he died, but this is a dose of reality to me. This is a war our soldiers are fighting, it's dangerous, and some don't come back.

I guess I'll end here. There's loads more that I forgot to tell you about, but I suppose I can't keep you up to date on ever little thing in my life, though I might like that. I know the lack of pictures made this post difficult, so I'll try to work on that before my next post.