The First Visitors!

This is an absolutely delicious dish that looks rather unfortunate on camera. It's fried bananas with honey! We had it in Bamberg at the first Chinese restaurant we found in Germany.

A typical German square while any kind of fest is going on. This fest was in Bamberg, though I'm not certain that this doesn't happen every weekend there.

Those houses are in the middle of the river! And the clouds just look great. (photo taken in Bamberg)

In about twenty minutes, I'm going to leave here to go pick up the Troxels. (Dr.) Lori Troxel was one of my professors in school and ended up becoming a good friend and encouragement in the halls of Featheringill. She, her husband and two kids spent the last couple of weeks in Ireland on a missionary trip so I can't wait to hear their tales. They'll be with me for two nights, and then I'm driving them over to Prague where they'll spend two nights, and then catch their flight home.

I'm excited to have visitors! They'll be our first overnight visitors and I've finally got the house pretty much where I want it. Everything is beginning to be put away, almost all the important papers are filed, the car is cleaned out, and I think we've finally figured out the trash system (trash every other week, paper once a month, and plastic/aluminum I have to take to the recycling center myself). I even got to fiddle around on my dollhouse a bit! I can't wait to start working on that again, it is such a nice distraction.

I'm sure you're thinking "oh no, has she given up on the job search?" Of course not! I handed in my application for the framing job yesterday, and I'm sprucing up my resume so it has the exact words it needs for the engineering job. My contact is gone all August though, so I don't think that will head anywhere fast. Oh, and no news on the puppy, you will all know if a little bundle of joy enters my life as soon as or even before it happens.

News from Matt: I've gotten to talk to him again! It's so wonderful getting an unknown phone number on my phone, because I'm pretty certain who it is. He told me that he got to do some pretty cool stuff the other day. Apparently, the Army brought in some contractors (people not associated with the Army but getting paid big bucks to be there) to teach the soldiers about IED's (improvised explosive devices). They taught the soldiers some of the basics and then let them loose on a house that was "booby-trapped." This was all of course in training and nobody would have really gotten hurt. Apparently, Matt's team found a passageway that went under the house, through a secret passageway and chamber, and came up somewhere else...all because a few screws didn't look right on a shelf.

Also, a few months ago Matt had missed the chance to take some medical training that he had really wanted, but just a few days ago he was able to get some of the best training he's ever gotten. The Army has these ridiculously high-tech dummies that blink, breathe, and spew blood from different parts of their bodies (okay, not nice to visualize, but just think in terms of training). The soldiers were split up into teams, sent into a room of hurting "people," and told to try and help their dummy. Matt's team had the dummy that was bleeding from that large artery in the leg, so their dummy died, but not without some theatrics which ended up all over the team. You should have heard him, he was so pumped.

And just in case you wanted to send me something (a few wonderful people already have), here's our address:

CMR 411 Box 2299
APO AE 09112

If you send a package, please be warned that it could take a while to get here. But let me know it's coming so I can keep an eye out for it. Letters seem to get here within the week, which is great.

Okay, I'm off to pick up the Troxels!