As I Am

Anybody out there?

2010-06-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

So, after almost a year's break, I have gotten a new computer (21" iMac that is simply GORGEOUS) and new photo-editing program that should make posting a WHOLE lot easier. But, since it's been so long, I'm sure nobody is reading this anymore, so before I start putting up the final pictures to our Mediterranean trip last year and everything that's happened since (Norway, Christmas, Rome, Tuscany, Cinque Terre, etc), I thought I'd just put up some pictures from our garden. We just weeded this today and planted a few more corn, pumpkins and sunflowers, so I thought I'd take some pictures. Enjoy!

This is a view of onions (foreground), strawberries and corn (background).

This is a bell pepper plant! We cheated with this one and didn't start with the seed because we had planted all of our seeded bell peppers right before a late frost. The little sphere that looks like a green berry is the very beginning of a pepper!

I was told that if you plant lettuce with onions that it'll keep them safe. Totally true! There's not a bite on this or our other heads of romaine.

This is called Kohlrabi. We don't have it in the states, but it's a cabbage-like plant that ends up looking like some kind of space probe when it's full-grown. We bought it on accident because the sign said it was broccoli. Oops.

Here is one of our three pumpkin plants. They got a late start, as did most of our garden, because of the late frosts. But you can see where the little flowers are forming, at the base of which some pumpkins will be growing shortly!

Here's our experimental banana plant. We gave it up for dead after the first few late frosts hit, but it's coming back! Even if it doesn't bare fruit this year, it'll still be a beautiful green plant.

Everyone loves strawberries! These got an early start last year, surprisingly made it through the frigid winter, and are now thriving as they produce the most mouth-watering strawberries imaginable.

Just some flowers growing in one of our planters. They're really more of a weed most of the time, but these few weeks are worth the weediness of the rest of the year!

THE Adventure - Santorini

2009-08-09T06:41:00.001-07:00

From Heraklion we took the big red Vodafone boat to get to Santorini. I remembered seeing these the last time I was in Greece with Jonathan, and since they were the fast boats, assumed they were better.

I didn't know how wrong I was until about 10 minutes into the ride. We had the first class cabin because that was all that was available, so our seats were pretty cushy, but once we hit open waters, I knew I was not going to keep my breakfast. When the boat started rocking, it kept on rocking (+/- 2 feet from where it should have been) until we hit Santorini. So, of course, the first thing we do when we get there is get this wonderful drug called Dramamine. It really is a beautiful thing.

When we hit the dock we got tickets to Oia (pronounced "EE-uh"), and after a couple of hours (layover at the main city of Thira), we were at the idyllic mediterranean city famous for its blue-domed roofs. Our directions to our "hotel" were basically to ask around for Restaurant Lotza, and from there they would take us to our house. We found this place from oldoiahouses.gr, and it's a group of 15 or so old houses--the old-syle cave houses--that are rented out for days or even weeks at a time. It was facing in towards the center of the caldera so we had an excellent view of Thira and the active part of the volcano.

Our porch for the evening.

After showering we went to explore our little village.

Mini photo-shoot of Matt

In Oia, there is only one place to be at sunset, so of course all of the tourists from the island come here to watch.

It took a few tries to get the flash and shutter speed to cooperate and get the correct exposure

View of Thira from our window

A picture of the sunset point during the day

Yes, the city is THAT beautiful

A random doorway

We ran into a couple other photographers and they were kind enough to take our picture

Since the whole island of Santorini is a caldera, the cities are set at the top of the island, but to get to the ports you have to walk down a stepped path with lots of switchbacks.

A look back up at Oia from one of the switchbacks

The dock at the bottom of Oia

You'd think they just put this stuff here for tourists, but no, everything is just that colorful

A classic blue dome

A delicious restaurant with a great view, though it's hard to NOT have a great view here!

Santorini was just a time for us to relax, take pictures, get a little base tan, and just take in the beauty. Our only night there, instead of going out to eat, we got sausage, pasta and tomato sauce and made our own dinner after sunset, and it was just what we needed. The following day we were able to hang out at the house for a while until we had to make our way back to the port and catch our boat (before which we were sure to take our dramamine) to go to Athens.

So next stop, Athens!

THE Adventure - Crete

2009-07-21T11:53:00.001-07:00

THE Adventure began at Vilseck train station. If you've visited me, you have most likely been to this very simple train station. At this point, it was hard to imagine the places that were ahead of us, and that in 16 days we would be back at the exact same spot having visited the countries that make up the cradle of life on this planet.

Since there are so many pictures, and I don't have uber amounts of time, this will ACTUALLY be mainly pictures. (yes I know you're breathing a sigh of relief)

Here is us, with no idea of what adventures await.

We took a train to Nuernberg --> Munich --> Munich airport, and then flew directly to Chania. We were the only ones on our flight that didn't get off and get onto a tour bus, other than another German family, so we shared a cab into town.

Our goal for Crete was to experience Greek culture and hike the Samaria Gorge, so our first day we got up bright and early, and made the incredibly sicky drive up to the top of the gorge.

View from the top

The fearless travelers!

The hike ended up being Matt's favorite hike, ever. It was all down-hill through beautiful landscape and quite a pleasant temperature somewhere just below room temperature. The bottom was also filled with these purple/pink desert flower.

The flowers that filled the gorge's ravine

View of the bottom

We got to the bottom before everyone else and ate this interesting-looking hot-dog (it's INSIDE the roll, there is no slice in the roll).

This hot-dog is special

When we got to the town at the bottom of the gorge we were met by the most incredibly blue sea that we have ever seen. Matt said that he felt that if he dipped a white shirt into the water it would come out blue.

After admiring the view and asking casually for the bus stop (for which we had bought tickets), we found out there WAS no bus, only boats, and the next one was in 6 hours. In the midst of our despair, a girl came up to us (she looked like she could have been Ilse's--bridesmaid--sister) and suggested we and two other boys hire a boat taxi. As we waited for the overly-expensive-yet-perfectly-timed taxi we found out they were Dutch military, hence the semblance to Ilse, who is also Dutch! What a fun group of people they were.

Shot of me in front of the south coast of Crete

Matt being his always handsome self

The first couple minutes were fine, but then the waves hit. Though it was a beautiful day, the wind was strong and in a direction such that each crest would launch us high only to slam into the next crest. My new Dutch friend later claimed she was going to have back problems from it. I didn't mind that part, but for the second part, the wind had kicked up the ocean spray as well, so we all just got completely soaked and could hardly see the coast for the brine. But all in all, it was an incredible experience that we reminisced about the rest of the trip.

View right outside our hotel

Downtown Chania - watch out for the restaurant hosts, they're so aggressive they'll step right in front of you to get your attention whilst saying "Please look at the menu I am SURE I have what you want"

Other side of downtown Chania

From Chania we took a bus to Heraklion. I didn't feel good from the bus so when we got to the hotel I let Matt go check out the palace of Knossos on his own. He said he would definitely not recommend it, especially not after experiencing Petra, Jordan later in the trip.

Some cool pots from Knossos

Next issue, Santorini!

THE Adventure

2009-07-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Matt and I just got back from the adventure of a lifetime. Here's the preview:

Stats: 11 cities, 4 countries, 3 continents, 17 days.

Modes of transportation: Airplane, taxi, water taxi, bus, camel, horse, ferry, train, 4x4, and our own two legs.

Cities: Chania, Hiraklion, Santorini, Athens, Cairo, Nuweiba, Aqaba, Wadi Rum, Petra, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv.

Pictures taken: 1147

I'll be writing over the next few weeks, so come back and check it out as our adventure unfolds!

P.S.- sorry for the long hiatus. I'll try to not let hit happen again ;).

Baden-Baden and Surprise!

2008-12-13T08:37:00.000-08:00

The snow has been falling here in Bavaria pretty thickly which makes for interesting driving, fun in the snow, and lots of brownies. Here at the Melone house we're doing the last few loads of laundry so we can start packing to head out the door at 0300 (that's 3 am) on Monday morning to catch our flight. But! As I promised, I wanted to do a couple of more updates on the trips we've had. I realize that this has kinda become a travel blog, but I feel that it's appropriate because some of the things that we do--mainly the hiking--isn't talked about in any English travel book or website. Plus, I want to encourage everyone to take a trip to Europe and visit us in Germany sometime while we're here. So start saving to come and visit!

Baden-Baden
One Thursday mid-morning while Matt is at work, I get a text from him asking for the address of a hotel that we'll be staying at that weekend. Now, that's a completely normal request if you've talked about going on a trip and decided on a hotel, but we hadn't. That text was my notification that we had a 4-day weekend, so in about 3 minutes, after looking in a Rick Steves guide to Germany, I decided that this city called Baden-Baden (literally Baths-Baths) in the Black Forest sounded cool. I looked up on Venere.com some hotels, got the cheapest good-looking one, and sent that address. Yes, this is how our vacation planning usually goes.

So after I sent the address I did a little bit of research, trying to find out if we could hike through the Black Forest and such. Of course, there are loads of trails, but probably the coolest part of Baden-Baden is that it has two public baths. One is a modern "bath" where people walk around in bathing-suites and such, and the other is an Roman-Irish bath where people walk around without their bathing-suits. Well, according to Rick Steves, the nude bath was the awesomer of the two, so naturally, we decided, hesitantly, to do that one.

With this little bit of planning, we leave on Saturday morning for Baden-Baden, armed with my computer and our portable internet to make the final tweeks on our trip after we got there. We got to our hotel, which happened to be the 4-star Batschari Hotel for ridiculously cheap, and were so excited when we saw that it really WAS a 4-star hotel (unlike other "4-star" hotels)! The only hitch was that it was all under construction, but what did we care when our room was completely intact and came with an apologetic basket of fruit and bottle of Champagne? What a deal!

We spent the first evening in and got some good sleep. The next day we got our hiking clothes on and went to the information center to try and get a map of the trails. We saw a great map on the wall, and the same was for sale for only 2 EUR, but of course nobody was working the desk. So, I took a picture of the map and we used that as our guideline for the rest of the trip. We saw a picture of castle ruines on the map and decided that we'd try to make our way towards them.

On our way to the Information Center. Such an adorable little town!

This gorgeous building is the Tourist Information Center.

A gate along the way. You can imagine it in a Harry Potter movie where the flower might shrink back into itself to unlock the gate and open, and then grow again to lock it after you passed through.

Baden-Baden, because it is so close to the French border, has architecture that is more French than German. We enjoyed the change of pace as we walked through the city to get to the outskirts where the trails started.

A great time of year for a hike. We thought a medieval horse and carriage might come up that right trail at any moment.

The Castle Yburg ruins.

It got really windy and cold as we got to the top, so we just snapped a few pictures and started hiking back. After getting caught in the rain, and taking a much longer way back than we thought, we finally got back to our room, showered, and made our way to the baths.

The baths are absolutely wonderful. It's a 3-hour experience with about 18 different stages of showers, pools of all temperature, dry saunas, hot saunas, brush massages to slough the last 5 years of dead skin off, a lotion station, resting rooms (where it's dark, warm, and they wrap you in blankets!), and lastly, a reading room full of National Geographic magazines. Ah, it was so amazing and we just can't wait to get back. Oh, and about the nudity...everyone was completely normal. Though there were an unbalanced amount of overweight older men there. But everyone kept their eyes to themselves which made for a very peaceful and enjoyable experience.

Surprise!
So, I told you I had a surprise, and you might have already scrolled down far enough to see it, but with a new job, we need a new car. We looked around for a while, but all in all, with the incredible deals we get because we're military and in Europe, the best deal just seemed to be to buy a MINI Cooper for me. Woot! I am so uber excited and can't wait until it comes. I designed it on miniusa.com, and this is the graphic that it came up with:

My beautiful car!

It should be getting here sometime in February, so I'll be sure to post pictures when it gets here. Vroom Vroom!

Travels and Parties!

2008-12-11T02:14:00.000-08:00

So...how's everyone doing? I hope great! And me? Well, let's just pretend I somehow was unable to get on blogger to post what's been going on these last couple of months. But now I'm back! I'll give you the quick and dirty right here: Matt's back, he's wonderful, we love to cook delicious things together, he'll likely be home for around two years before the next deployment, it's snowed a couple of times, my job starts January 19th (woot!), we'll be in Orlando from the 15th to the 26th, and then in San Francisco from the 26th to the 1st, we've had three overnight trips to different places, been to a few Christmas Markets (Weinachtmaerkte), we threw an early Christmas feast for our friends that are PCSing (moving) soon, a Thanksgiving feast for some of Matt's single friends, and a little surprise that I'm going to share later.

All of this is very interesting, but of course, the bits that require photos are the snow, trips, parties, and the surprise. Alas, somehow the pictures I took of the parties got lost. I have no idea and am in fact quite stumped as to where they could have gone, so at least for these parties you won't get to see the wonderful fun and decorations we had. And since there’s a lot of pictures, and stories to go with all of them, I’m going to split this up into a few posts so you don’t have as much to read all at once, and so I don’t go mad trying to organize a huge post.

Snow

Since our little town isn’t as exotic as, say, Cinderella’s castle, I decided to put these pictures first. The town is absolutely gorgeous when it’s all white, and it really feels like a winter wonderland here. The first day of the snow we went on a run (Jonathan, Trent & Nat, you know which one I’m talking about) and just felt like we were in a magical land. Honestly, I thought Mr. Tumnus would come running along any second with his packages and umbrella.

View from our upstairs window

Of course, the Glockenturm. All beautiful with snow!

Leuchtenberg
All overe Germany on the Autobahns, there are these brown attraction signs. Most of these signs describe something in the area that takes 10-30 minutes to get to. One in particular had caught my eye on my few trips to Prague. In the picture was this idyllic castle sitting on top of a hill. But more than that, after you saw the sign and thought it very idyllic, you would look to your left (if traveling east) and see exactly what was pictured on the sign. It was the proverbial City on a Hill! Luckily, I had my parents with me on one of these drives and she was able to write down the name of the place so I could go look it up later.

When Matt got back from Iraq, we got all excited about exploring and traveling, and I thought of this place and another castle as an easy trip because they're just about an hour away. So, we went off to visit Leuchtenberg (the "eu" in it is said like the "oi" in "oil," and the "ch" said like a "k," so it's said "LOIK-ten-berg").

View from right off the Autobahn 6.

We had to drive and walk around a little bit before it opened, but when it did, it was so much to walk around the inside. The castle is in ruins, not in a bad way, I just mean that some of the stories/floors are missing, and other than the chapel, all of the original roofs are gone. One part in particular that I enjoyed was that from the bolts you could see in the walls and ground, you could see that it was set up to host modern-day parties. Wouldn't it be great to have a cocktail party or benefit in a castle?

This is us at the top of the castle (see Matt's cool new leather jacket!)

Füssen, Neuschwanstein, etc.

Neuschwanstein has made it onto this blog before when I visited there with Jonathan and some of his friends, so I don't need to explain again the history of the castle. What is more relevant this time is simply that it is situated at the edge of the alps just a few miles from the Austrian border. Since we are likely going to visit this magnificent castle again when Matt's family comes to visit, instead of taking the tour of the castle, we decided to hike some of the mountains behind it.

The place to stay when visiting Neuschwanstein is Füssen, the town just a few minutes away from the castle. We got a great rate for a 4-star hotel called the Hotel Hirsch right in the middle of the town, and across the street from "old town." Füssen is really a beautiful town in and of itself, and had I known that to begin with we might have spent more time there, but we had a plan to go hiking. Since we couldn't really get a good map of the trails online or in Füssen, we decided to just go to the info center at the bottom of the castle and start asking questions.

View of Neuschwanstein in the Alps on the way to Hohenschwangau

So we got our camera, food, water, and started walking from Füssen to Hohenschwangau, where Neuschwanstein is located. When we got there and asked someone for a hiking map, they gave us a cartoon map that looked like it was designed to show ski slopes, i.e., absolutely awful for hiking because it's not to scale and doesn't show elevation or distances well. But, with that we were off!

Just outside the information center with the castle in the background

To get to the trails we went past the castle. You can even go inside the courtyard without paying any money.

I knew there were some trails on the other side of Marienbrücke, so we headed there with our cartoon map and looked for signs. We decided to take the trail that led to the highest peak in the area: Saüling (kinda reminds you of Sauron doesn't it?). At the trail haid the estimated time to get to the peak was 4 hours. Matt and I looked at each other, not expecting to do a hike like this when we started our day, but decided that it'd be fun. The first part of the trail was ridiculously easy: we just walked along a gravel road.

Gorgeous day for a hike. This was the only sun we got because for the rest of the hike we were on the north side of the mountain.

After about 45 minutes we paused to take a break, and we saw this guy walk past us, off the road, and upsome mucky trail. We just thought he was crazy until we got closer and realized that was our trail. So no more of this pansy road stuff, we started to hike up the muck and into the forest for real.

See what I'm pointing at?

This beautiful view is what I'm pointing at!

A couple hours into the hike. The town you see by the lake is a little closer than Füssen, from which we had walked that morning.

After about two and a half hours we encountered a ladder. We should have known at that point, and from looking at the rocks what would come after, but we didn't think about that. After the ladder everything was just scrambling upwards. You used your hands for almost every step and just kept going upwards. Since this was a lot more than we had bargained for it stopped being as much fun as the beginning. So instead of just pushing through for another 45 minutes or so of scrambling, we decided to just make our way down while we were still happy.

We took a different way down than we had coming up, got lost in the process, but finally made it to a lodge/restaurant called Bleckenau. By how everyone was looking at us I think we were the first Americans to make it that way. Sadly, the bus we were expecting at Bleckenau wouldn't be coming for another hour and a half, so we decided to just walk the three miles back to Neuschwanstein and take the bus from there.

Cool tree I fit inside in Bleckenau

View of Neuschwanstein and the plane from Marienbrücke while waiting for the bus

Eisenberg and Ehrenberg Castles
That night, after hiking some 12+ miles or so, we went to an amazing Italian place and stuffed our faces. The next day, on the way home, we stopped at a couple of castle ruins just because they were nearby. These castles, Eisenberg and Ehrenberg, were I think the last castles built Germany. So, with these castles, you are seeing an end of an age.

We got so lucky with the weather. This is on the walk up to Eisenberg Castle

Looking from Eisenberg to Ehrenberg

A tower inside Ehrenberg castle

And this is the end of this part of the saga! I'll try to get our other trips up sometime before we head to the states on Monday.

Fall-ing in Edelsfeld

2008-10-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

Two Sunday's ago, after I got out of church, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, so I decided to take a walk. And considering this time of year is just so colorful, I decided to take my camera along as company. The following pictures are around our little village of Edelsfeld. Enjoy!

Sometimes go running out this direction. Recently the fog has been so thick that you'd think only you, the road and the fog ever existed.

It was just a cute wagon, it needed to be photographed!

Bavaria is mostly agrarian, creating such beautiful landscapes as these.

Typical of Europe, there are lots of little stone places like this to be found in the side of a hill. I wonder what it once was.

It's apple season! I'm going to try my hand at making some apple butter within the next few days.

The main road we drive in and out of every day. This direction is coming from the post and going towards our house.

Just a couple minutes down the road from the last picture (walking). The white building on the left is the Getränke, where we go and get our crates of beer :).

A little walking path right behind the red building with the red ivy. There's a little sign to the right that tells you that you can buy honey from the man that lives in that house.

The Glockenturm! Meaning, the bell tower! I look at it every day, and every day I think it's picture worthy. I'll probably have about 50 pictures of that bell tower before I leave Germany. I really do have to restrain myself!

Etcetera

The big news: Matt's coming home! I can't say when, but very very soon. Right now he's in Kuwait just waiting to catch a flight. But! Some day soon I'll get the 48 hour email notice. Then when they leave Kuwait, I'll get a phone call saying they'll be here in so-many hours. The last notice I get will be a phone call saying I just have a couple of hours before we meet them in the gym. At that phone call, I get all dolled up, frantically straighten up the house, put a few special touches here and there for Matt to notice when he gets home, and then head to the gym. At the gym we wait for who knows how long, and then finally the boys come in formation, some guy gives a speech (I hope he knows that if it's longer than 2 minutes he's gonna be mauled by every wife here), and then we have our men back! He'll have to go back to work every day for the next seven days after he gets back. The rationale behind that is to kinda soften the shock of going from a war zone to a place with lots of kids and wives. But, it will suck.

What will I be doing with those days? Well, I hope to hear in the next week or so if I got the job with the Army Corps of Engineers. It'll be so nice to finally post on here that I have a job and am not longer in the process of finding one. This is decidedly the longest job search I've ever had, by like 3 months, but, if it produces a job, then I won't complain! What will my title be? Civil Engineer. How cool is that?

We're also doing an extensive car search as well. I've done so much research on cars it's ridiculous, I just hope we find one within our price range, that will last for a while, is a car that we'll both like, and that we can get before I need to start my job! I'll let you know how this all comes together. But in the meantime, pray that Matt comes home on the first flight he can!!

Prague, Parents & Possibilities

2008-09-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since I've written, hasn't it? Well, technically, we're still in September, but still, it's been a month! A bit has happened, and I'd love to tell it all in detail, but lucky for you, since we're far away from the events now, I'm just going to give the highlights.

Last post I told you I was going something called a Spur Ride. Well let me tell you, it was such a blast. I got to change a tire of a tactical vehicle, eat an MRE, put on the full gas suit, mask and all, get turned upside down in a hummer simulation, practice with a rifle at the firing range, and take a modified PT test. Oh goodness, we had so much fun. There were a few stations that we went to, one in particular, that they tried to kick our butts (and tried to give me a hard time for "being" an officer), but I just laughed my way through it all. I actually got the only individual award that was given out for getting the best PT score out of all the women that were there. Let's just say I kick butt at pushups (real ones) and flutter kicks.Me in Matt's uniform for the Spur Ride. Yes, that is a broomstick. It was our "mount" for the day. And yes, I had to take him everywhere we went that day.

After the Spur Ride I came back home, showered, and then drove to Prague. You know, I think it's easily becoming my favorite city, and I am slightly, ever so slightly, learning the roads there. If you've ever been to Prague, and taken a taxi around Zone 1, you know that the roads are absurd, as are the drivers. But, I got safely to the hotel, and just had a wonderful time with my parents. I don't know when I've been that spoiled. We got to go to pretty much the nicest restaurants in Prague because they were on a business trip. I got to meet a lot of people my parents have known for years, and who have apparently known me since I was a wee one. They've all seen me grow up through pictures over the years, so it was nice to put names to faces.

Prague is ridiculously beautiful, so I've put some photos up of some of the typical sights you'd see while there.

Gorgeous building at the east side of Old Town Square. The clouds were just perfect behind it.

Great bridge with copper accents

Yes, more bridges. Took this while on a boat cruise

The castle and its cathedral, set up on the hill

At one of our lovely dinners.

After Prague, my parents came back to my place to hang for about a week. Now, I had every intention of showing them a good time, taking to some of my favorite spots, but they really just insisted on helping me get my place more set up. And oh my goodness, I am so glad they did. My place looked good before, and was relatively functional, but now, it is so much cooler looking and a heck of a lot more functional. The first thing we changed was to move a piece of furniture I had gotten from a friend from the hallway into the living room to act as a bar. Prior to the bar we just had all our alcohol sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Though it wasn't much, when it's all in one place just out in the open, it looks a lot less modest than when it's in a nice bar. And for the area, I happened to have a great Guinness clock my brother had given me.

Bar in living room

An area that needed work for functionality and decor was the entryway. It was pretty much empty save for a little table I had hidden in a nook (see one leg in the bottom right of the picture below). So, we decided to get a nice entry-way table over which we'd hang decorations, and to install an exposed closet underneath the stairs (much sweat and brain power went into making that closet work, thanks so much Dad, could not have done it without you!).

Front entry way

To decorate the hallway, I had a few random frames for which my mom found good pictures, and a few other items. My favorite thing on wall is the set of candles. Mom had just gotten back from Guatemala and was so kind to bring me a beautiful set of candles, amongst other colorful cloth placemats and gifts from my grandmother. Now, for you to fully appreciate what it took to get this display up, you must understand that that wall is solid cinder block. This house is not a wood house, so for each hole we made we actually had to use a masonry drill bit to get the holes in. And you see the letters and the "London" sign? Yeah, they had two holes a piece.

Front entry way display

Now, before my parents came, the upstairs was completely lacking. A beautiful lit area, but completely lacking. The only piece of furniture up there was an antique table. But now, with my parents help and a little investment on our part, we furnished the upstairs! We got the couch for a ridiculously good price, and the rug too. And the entertainment center too, now that I think about it, so this whole room is such a blessing. From the picture of the front hallway, you can see how tiny the stairwell is to get upstairs, so we actually had to bring the boxes up piece by piece, and assemble it upstairs.

Entertainment Room

And because I do a bit of crafty stuff, and at least have a lot of crafty items that needed a space (got loads of scrapbooking stuff for my birthday, thanks ladies!), we decided to make the back room a craft room. Once Matt gets back it'll be a workout room too, and perhaps a bit of a reading room if we can find a comfortable chair for upstairs. I love how the table came together, because we bought the legs and the top separately. I chose these legs because I can choose to sit or stand, or even to tilt the table-top towards me like a drafting desk (Esther, you gotta visit). The table-top is actually a door from Ikea that was damaged on one side. So for just 5 EUR we bought it, and you can't tell at all that it's damaged because we just put the undamaged side face up.

So now I feel really good about my house, and can't wait for Matt to come home and live in it with me. We think he's going to be coming before the end of October. I'll only know a few hours before he lands that he'll be arriving, so I won't be able to put any more detailed information on here (nor would I be able to even if I could for OPSEC reasons). But clearly, I'll let you know when he's home, safe and sound.

Of course, there is the question of the job. Yes, I'm still hoping for the one with the Army Corps of Engineers, it's just taking forever. They have finally established a position for me, but now I have to go through the application process. The position hasn't come online yet so I haven't been able to apply, but the guy I've been talking to sounds really confident that I'm the one who will get the job...whenever that is.

As for Christmas vacation, we're going home! Yup, our first time back to the state since early May. We won't be coming back very often because flights are just awfully expensive. So, you really gotta get over here and see us :-D. We'll be in Orlando for about a week and a half before Christmas and for Christmas day, and the next day we fly out to San Francisco for the traditional Lipps New Year's party. I'd love to see whoever I can while I'm in Orlando and San Francisco, so let me know if you're going to be home or in the area.

That's it for now. Oh, and I think we found a good church and I'm going to be on the worship team there. NOW I think that's about it. Thanks for keeping up!

The End of Summer

2008-09-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but August is definitely the last month of the summer. When you were still of school age, if you were in the month of September, you were definitely in class, which means no summer.

Today is the first day of September, meaning that in my school-girl heart, summer has officially ended. It was a good summer if I may say so. It was the longest Matt and I have been able to be together in our relationship, so we really had a blast. I moved to Germany, got a house, got some cool friends, and figured out this whole house-wife thing pretty well. But what else does September mean? It means that next month my husband comes home. The boys were scheduled to come home in November, but we heard that the Boots On Ground (BOG) date is November 25th, meaning that most of the guys have to be back by that date. And there is rumor (as always) that the boys will be coming back sooner than that. SO, next month is when my husband comes home!

He's been doing pretty well in Iraq. He just signed up for wireless internet in his bunk so we are finally able to have a long conversation at least over gmail chat in the evenings. We have fun bantering back and forth talking nonsense, but it's so comforting to be able to do that. If we can't do that life just gets to serious! His men have apparently really taken to him and show this by hazing him. Some of the things he tells me are just incredible and I cannot imagine them actually happening because it just tells like a movie. He sent me a picture of him in his uniform though and that's below. Gosh, he is such a stud!

For my birthday Sarah (my aunt) sent me a buttload of scrapbooking stuff, so now, I actually have to get down to it. I had about 3-4 boxes of stuff that I wanted to scrapbook, but it was in no order whatsoever, so today, my project was to make a dent in organizing it. It took most of my day, but I have almost everything in piles according to the year. I probably need to go back and organize it according to the school year instead of the calendar year, but heck, at least it's in like 10 different piles instead of just one! I also threw a bunch of stuff away that I just had no need for anymore.

During my organization I came across a load of letters. I guess I kept all of my birthday/Christmas/valentine's day cards for the past 10 years or so, and it was so much fun to go through them all. I even had notes that my friends would pass me inbetween classes. It's incredible to see how those friendships develop over the years. I even found a $20 bill in birthday letter from someone! Glad I looked through it! I'll consider that my pay for the day.

Apparently, over the years, two people in particular have written me loads of letters. I guess it would make sense, but I was just astonished at the mass of letters I had acquired from them! Both my mother and my grandmother (Lipps) have just sent me tons of letters. Grandma always writes these lengthy letters in her beautiful handwriting, never forgetting any holiday. And mom, she writes me tons of just "I love you!" and "I'm thinking about you!" notes. I guess whenever she finds a cute card or a postcard she just sends me stuff. I can't tell you how loved I felt from these two women. So, to you to ladies, thank you for your love and for always thinking about me! Forgive me if I haven't replied as often as I should, but I have made a plan to get better at it :).

Speaking of my mother, she and my father are going to be arriving in Prague this Friday for "business"--meaning some meetings and lots of play time--and I'm going to be joining them! Then on Wednesday or Thursday I'm going to drive them back here to hang out with me until the 18th. I am so excited to have my family visiting me! And for such a long time too! I love that they can see my house and my life, so they can better understand when I talk to them on the phone and say "I'm in the kitchen," and things like that. Dad and I plan on changing the brake pads on the car, along with the warped front rotors, and we plan to watch the Die Hard trilogy. My mom and I will be spending time scrapbooking, as she has to catch up on the last 23 years. Well, she'll do the first however many and I'll pick up where she leaves off.

Ah, but before my trip to Prague, this Friday there is an event called a Spur Ride. This is where the spouses get to dress up in their soldier's uniform and basically take a day in his shoes. We're going to have a (modified) P.T. test in the morning, move on to first aid, then NBC (eh?), a flat tire change, weapons training, and a mystery event. At the end of the day there's going to be an awards ceremony. I would clearly love to get an award, but I'm really just doing this for fun, to see what Matt goes through, and to join the other women.

Hopefully I'll have pictures to put up on the next post. And hopefully they're not of me getting my butt kicked on Friday!

23: Tea and NyQuil

2008-08-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

I turned 23 yesterday, and that was my greeting to start my 24th year: tea and NyQuil.

I had just finished watching some Grey's Anatomy and was heading to bed and everything was, well, normal. I was alone, turned off the light, and crawled towards my pillow in darkness. Since there's no real reason to get out of bed in the mornings, I've gotten a lot of sleep lately, which, unfortunately makes going to sleep much more difficult. Those of you who know me well will know that I can fall asleep anytime and anywhere in just about five minutes. Not recently, which is a new phenomenon for me and rather frustrating, because it leaves me alone with my mind.

So the night of the 25th, what was there to think about? Oh, the usual, that my husband was at war in Iraq and that the other side of the bed was and would be cold for the next couple of months, and that there was nobody else in the house. That I have no job and am continuing to get bored with the little projects I've made for myself. But then there was the fact that the next day was my birthday. I didn't want it to be my birthday, because the person I wanted to celebrate it with wouldn't be there. No matter how badly I wanted him there, he wouldn't be there. And people would be calling me, wishing me happy birthday, and I wouldn't have the heart to tell them that it wasn't a happy birthday, and that I wish I had just slept through the whole day because there was nothing I wanted to celebrate.

Somewhere along the line, these thoughts got to me and I started crying. I'm not a big crier, but when I do cry, it's usually just a few tears and then the moment is gone. Not tonight. Tonight the pain just grew and grew, as did my tears. My nose got clogged, my throat was sore from trying to extricate my pain by using my vocal chords, and from the heavy breathing. I kept on turning in bed waiting to go to sleep, but my system had just had too much.

After about half an hour of this, my heart just couldn't take it anymore; it couldn't be alone. I got out of bed and went to the computer to try to Skype my mom. Well, that failed, but she heard enough to be able to call my cell phone. I don't think she could understand me for the first five minutes or so, but over the next half hour she was able to calm me down. She was sitting in the Admiral's Club in Dallas with my grandma on her way to Guatemala. Thank goodness she wasn't on the plane or already there, because that would have just hurt too much to finally reach out to someone and have them not be there.

At the end of our...conversation, she told me to go have some tea, and that it would be okay to take something that would help me sleep. I laughed at that, and the clock struck midnight as I started to heat the water for my tea and grab the NyQuil from the medicine cabinet. What a great way to start my birthday.

Mom had to catch her plane, so I asked her to call Sarah (my aunt) and ask if she could give me a call. Sarah called and we were able to chat for a little; my darling little cousin piped into the phone that he loved me and that made me smile. I was able to talk to my uncle for a bit too, which I haven't done in a while, and it was just good to hear from a whole family who loved me.

So, I finished my tea, took my NyQuil, and went to bed.

The next morning was fine. Not good, but fine. I got up late, did some yoga, ran for a mile (still experimenting with running since I'm unsure about my achilles), and had two very short phone calls with Matt that got cut off shortly after the hello. I also met my new neighbor. The couple that lives downstairs hadn't been there since we had been here because he is in Iraq and she was state-side. She got back on my birthday, and, because she didn't have a car, I took her with me to the Commissary so she could get some food and cleaning supplies to put her house back together.

For dinner, Krista came over and we made filet mignon wrapped in bacon (Veronica would have been there too but she was traveling with her sister). You can see a picture of it below, topped with a yummy butter concoction, served with a basil parmesan rice and a dry red wine. Very nice! She also showered me with many lovely gifts, my favorites of which are the first season of Friends (never seen it before!) and an orchid! It'll be my first plant. I'm excited to see if I can actually keep it alive and get it to re-bloom. Such a beautiful flower.

We ended the evening by making some brownies from my grandma's recipe and watching The Count of Monte Cristo.

So, how was my birthday? It was okay. But this year, I shouldn't think of my birthday as just one day, simply because I got to experience bits of it on other days as well. When Jonathan visited me he brought me a little something from my parents. Just last week I got a package in the mail from the Melone family containing lovely letters from them all, making me feel so special that my new family cares for me and remembers my birthday. Esther made a beautiful watercolor of our wedding and sent that to me a few days ago, and so many people emailed, sent cards/letters, and sent messages on facebook. Krista did a wonderful job of making me feel special.

Though my birthday may have started out rather...terrible, I have no doubt that I am loved. I know that I feel pain because I love and am loved in return, and that is wonderful. I also know that the pain isn't going to go away, and I will hurt again. And it's okay to hurt, and it's okay that knowing that doesn't make it hurt less. But the important thing is that I am loved. Thanks for keeping track of me during this journey and keeping us in your prayers. They are indeed appreciated.

Second and Third Visitors!

2008-08-14T05:34:00.000-07:00

Apparently some of the pictures I tried to upload on my last post actually got on, but since I didn't see them, I couldn't put captions on them. If you check them out again you'll see that I've told you what they are.

This post will be full of pictures because I have had ample opportunity to use my camera over the last couple of weeks. In fact, I'm going to do a lot less talking here and let my pictures tell the stories. Yay for a lazy post! But first, let me update you about Matt.

Matt

There has been a lot of angst, frustration and joy over the last three weeks, but the good news is that we have ended on "joy." Matt was in Kuwait for a few days where he got to sit around, then he was sent to Baghdad where he got to sit around and work out, and then was sent to Mosul where he got to sit around and work out. I'm sure he did more than that, but that was the general jist of how things were going...until his unit arrived.

When his unit got there, since they didn't know what they wanted to do with him, they put him with the Headquarters company. While with them he did a lot of office work, which he didn't expect, so that was frustrating.

But the joyful part? Just yesterday he got assigned to a company and a platoon. He's uber excited to have something to do and to finally have a weapon. This is what he's been training for over the past three years. It is going to be more dangerous for him now because he'll be going on operations (don't ask what that means because I don't really know), so pray that he stays safe, that he is given the chance to show how great of a leader he is, and that he is able to enjoy his time there as much as possible.

On a more personal note, I just want to say that I have the most amazing husband. We get to email or talk almost every day, and I can't even tell you the wonderful things he says. He knows exactly the right thing to say at exactly the right moment and it just makes me love him all the more. God certainly did match us up well!

The Troxels

My time with the Troxels was great. We got to make egg-in-the-eye (yummy breakfast consisting of a fried egg cooked into the middle of a piece of bread with a hole in the middle). Their daughter Bea (short for Beatrice) has a love for cameras so I lent her the camera/lenses my parents and brothers gave me for graduation, and she just went to town. The first three here are hers.

This is Lori, my professor/friend from Vanderbilt, and Bea's mom

Bea's self-portrait

A shot she took while we were at lunch. I found a little worm in my salad...after I had finished eating it.

THIS is the infamous Spaghetti Eis (Eis = ice cream!). It may look like a typical plate of spaghetti, but it's actually ice cream with strawberry sauce. The white stuff is grated white chocolate. Ooh, so good.

Munich

Jonathan decided to come and visit me for a couple of weeks, and he and I went to Munich this past weekend to meet up with his girlfriend Jessica and two friends from his community back in San Francisco, the Wiesens. The first two stops in Munich? The Beer Museum and the largest beer hall in Germany.

This was taken inside the beer museum. These are old-school steins, and I so wish I could find some like these. The ones we can buy these days are just too decorative for me.

Jonathan, Jessica and I inside the beer hall. Isn't she cute?

Marienplatz. We think this gigantic building used to be the old town hall. Absolutely beautiful!

Just a statue in the middle of the square. Good photo-op.

We never figured out which church was. My guess was the Frauenkirche, but I wouldn't bet on it. The church was massive, and this was just the front. The color really was that good that day, no saturation needed.

Neuschwanstein Castle- a.k.a Cinderella's Castle

From Munich the five of us decided to take a day-trip down to Neuschwanstein Castle. This is the castle that inspired Disney's Cinderella's Castle. As you can see from the pictures, it's not your standard castle, but very mystical and, well, kinda pointless other than being majestic/impressive/beautiful. I'm sure it could be defended well, but it wasn't built for that purpose. King Ludwig, the guy who owned the place, grew up not a mile from this castle (seen below in some other pictures). But, he went kinda crazy and wanted to build a bigger and better castle than his parents.

The quick and dirty version of the story: Ludwig was a huge fan of Wagner, and we think that he really liked Wagner. Because of that, most of the rooms in the castle are the visual representation of some of Wagner's songs. To prove that Ludwig was crazy, there is a room in the castle that looks like a cave. It's not one of the lower rooms and it wasn't dug out of rock; someone was called in to design the room right next to his dressing room to look exactly like a cave, with stalactites and everything. Right next to that was his Zhen garden. Anyway, I'll stop talking and get back to the visual tour.

There is a pretty steep 1.5 mile hike to the castle, and this shot is from the road we walked up. Anybody thinking Cinderella?

A cool shot of the ceiling right after the cave room. No pictures were actually allowed of the inside, but hey, it looked cool and it was light enough to take the picture quickly and without a flash.

This is one of the many gorgeous views from the castle. At the bottom right you can see his parents' castle. I'd say he kinda out-did them.

There is a bridge that you can hike to that will give you t his view of the castle. From here you can see part of the castle and another of its amazing views. I cropped the castle because the rest of it was under construction from this vantage point.Me on the bridge! You can see the construction that was going on.

Back in Munich

The next day the Wiesens left Munich to go travel the rest of Europe and Jonathan, Jessica and I went to a museum called the Alte Pinakotek. I really enjoyed all of the paintings they had, but the most picture-worthy thing was the building itself. I just loved this stairwell. When I walked into it the first time, I just stared at it and thought "wow."

The "wow" stairwell in the Alte Pinakotek

After the museum, we went to hang out at a park. There was a river running through the park, and there were guys surfing in it. Way cool.

Well, that is my last two weeks in picture form! What you can't see is that Jonathan and I have made lots of food together. Most of it has been yummy Indian curry, but we've also made cookies, pancakes and banana-bread muffins. He's been great to have around, even if he does like to steal my internet. He's taken me out to eat a couple of times, and last night he took me out for my birthday, and then to see The Black Knight. Very good movie.

Since he leaves tomorrow morning, I thought I was going to be all alone, but I just got an email from the Wiesens asking if they could spend the night here tomorrow night (the third visitors, in case you weren't tracking).

And for now, that's it!

The First Visitors!

2008-07-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

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!

The Solo Melones

2008-07-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a few days since Matt left and the world doesn't seem to have fallen apart, which makes me think we might actually make it through this whole "being apart" business. My first night I spent at Veronica's place, nursing a cup of hot chocolate spiked with Bailey's while watching Little Women. Oh yes, and cried myself to sleep (I haven't not done that yet, but tonight might be a winner).

The next day I woke up late and Veronica made me a scrumptious breakfast. Sometime in the afternoon, I decided I needed to get back to our house to face the loneliness and take a shower. Walking in the door was an experience because so much of Matt was still in the house: his flip-flops by the couch, his bible on the coffee table, his ACU backpack, towel in the bathroom...those kinds of things. My heart didn't quite know what to do with everything. Once I finally made it into the house, I just focused on making it to the shower. Once I was clean things were more manageable and I was able to pick some stuff up around the house. Though I will say that the clothes he wore on his last day here are still on the bed so I can smell them.

Later that day Veronica picked me up to go run an errand with her, and that evening we went to Krista's to eat some delicious goulash, peach cobbler, and to watch a couple of movies. When that was done I reluctantly came home to face the lonely bed. Let me tell you, that was not fun.

I won't give you a play-by-play, but the general gist is that I've tried to keep myself busy by talking to people on the phone (those who called, you don't know how much I appreciate that!), reading some from this Army book Matt wanted me to read, organizing the house, and watching episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

BUT! I have gotten two emails and a phone call from Matt! I didn't expect to hear from him for a couple of weeks, but I'll insert some excerpts from what he wrote:

"I'm situated here for a few days before moving to the next place. It's hot here... No, I mean
like really hot... No, I don't think you're understanding how hot it is here. Imagine someone with four blow dryers blasting all over your body all the time.
...

There's really nothing new to report. I'm just enjoying taking advantage of having access to computers right now because in a few days I'll be somewhere new and probably won't have this luxury anymore.

Today dust blots out the sky. It's 121 degrees and the worse part is the fierce winds. You have to wear sunglasses everywhere. At least three guys, including myself, have commented on how the sunsets remind us of the ones from Star Wars. On the up side, I do get to wear a sweet boonie cap here.

The days are long and lame. Rachel, you should know that I'm doing quite well in Monkey Island 2. I rarely have to cheat now and look at the walkthrough. There's a starbucks here and two other generic 24 hour a day coffee houses that have plush seats, books and sweet smoothies. Today we lounged for hours drinking icy cappucinos. Last night I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall at a movie theatre here.

So, as you can imagine, I'm in no danger right now and am taking it quite easy. Hope you're all well."

I think that says it well! I'm trying to download some pictures we took before Matt left, but the internet is being especially slow tonight, so if there are no pictures, I just couldn't get Vodafone to behave.

Just a few more hours...

2008-07-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

...to spend with my husband. He's just grabbing his uniform out of the laundry and getting ready to put his bags in the car for bag drop-off. So to keep myself distracted I decided to write a little and explain some of what's going on. Mind you, this is just what I understand of the situation and of technical terms. If I get something a little wrong, you'll have to give me a little grace.

Matt has bag drop-off at 1800. After that, he has off until 2100, during which time we are going to come back home and make some pancakes for dinner. At 2100 he is going to be locked in the gym for the final manifest check. After that, they go to a nearby Air Force Base and wait for their plane. For all they know, it could be a couple of hours or a couple of days. From there they take a commercial airliner (yay!) to Kuwait where they train for an unknown amount of time (days? weeks?) and then head to Iraq. I don't know if they fly, drive or skip their way there, so don't ask.

Once in Iraq he expects to sit around for a while until he gets attached to his specific company. After that, he's hoping to get a platoon of men (35-45 guys in this case) that he can command. He's not sure, but he doesn't expect to be going on raids, he will more likely be doing check-points and cordons (something quasi like a raid but nobody can tell me the real difference).

I, on the other hand, am applying for a framing job at the arts and crafts center in case this Corps of Engineers thing falls though (email correspondence makes it look very positive though). I'm spending tonight at Veronica's place so I don't have to spend my first night alone...alone. I think we've planned to have hot chocolate, cheesecake and a movie. At home I have stocked TV dinners and checked out chick flicks from the library so I'll be set for the next few days. Oh, and we're also looking into asking our landlord if we can get a puppy. I'm really hoping the answer is yes, because then there would be something else in the house that makes noise, but I'm not hopeful.

The house is mostly put together now, other than a few bits here and there. The Troxels are coming on the 29th so I had to clean out the guest room, and I've set up a really cute temporary area for their two kids upstairs. If I still like it in a few days I'll take some pictures.

Other than that, things are pretty quiet. I've been getting emails and messages from people who love me encouraging me, and it really does make me feel loved and like I'm not alone. These next few days will be hard, so I certainly welcome emails or phone calls, but can't promise to write back with any expediency. Oh, and if you have gmail, google talk (just a quick download) works much better than skype. If I'm online, you'll be able to call me.

The last few days

2008-07-19T01:49:00.000-07:00

So, we've hit about the 1-week mark before Matt has to leave for Iraq. I know it's probably a sad note to start out on, but I know that's why everyone is reading this blog (other than the really awesome pictures ;). What have our lives been like recently? Well, the rear detatchment (Rear-D) commander just changed to a new guy named Captain Anderson, a high-speed infantry-man that Matt really likes. I've come to really like him as well, because as of a week and a half ago, Matt didn't have to go in for anything at work other than morning PT (which is from 0630-0800). And what'd we do with the rest of that time? Had fun! We had such a lazy last week and a half, half-heartedly cleaning up the house, making gourmet dinners every night, driving around our area, getting packages from the CMR (Central Mail Room). Speaking of which, I just got our pots and pans a day ago, and they're beautiful!

What's the schedule from here? More of the same. Matt only has to go in for PT in the morning, so we might actually start taking day trips to cities within the 2-hour driving distance. Bavaria is really the best part of this country. In the north part of Germany, the landscape and architecture are just not as interesting. The south is cool, and we haven't visited the west, but Bavaria is where all the cute little towns are, and more importantly, where they make all the beer. Beer here is only allowed to contain four ingredients, so a lot of it tastes similar, but every now and again, you get a real gem. One such gem is found at the brewery located about 200 yards from our house. Yes, we're ridiculously lucky.

As for a specific day that he's leaving, we don't know. He has a flight window of about 4-5 days. There's a possibility that the flight might not go at all. This window was originally scheduled to go at the early-mid month mark, but has already been pushed back a few times. But, the likelihood of it not going is small enough that I'm not considering it.

How am I doing? Well, I've not let myself dwell on it too much. The hardest times are in the evening, after we've finished watching a movie. I got a glimpse of what this upcoming time would be like when he was on a 1-week training exercise, and that memory and anticipation of much more of it is just very sad. One thing that doesn't help is that I found out yesterday that a soldier that went to Iraq just over a month ago was killed in action. This soldier was the husband of someone I was familiar with, and a friend to one of my best friends here. I scowl at Matt every now and again for leaving me here to just think about these things, but I know that's not productive, so I try to control it.

We've had so much fun these last few months together, and that really does help the situation. I would hate for him to go to war and for us to only have been arguing all this time. He also encourages me by saying that he'll be in a "safe" area most of the time because he'll be training for a few weeks or so, then meeting the guys, and then a couple of months after that, they have to start packing up. He's basically saying that his window of time to see action is pretty small.

What's going to keep me distracted while Matt's gone? Well, I had planned on working at the outdoor rec (ODR) in Grafenwoehr, but that didn't work out. I had visited the ODR in Vilseck, and the people that worked there were cool, and it was in a good building/location. Assuming things would be the same in Graf, I applied for the open position there. A few days later I decided to stop by myself and see what it was like. The building it was in was sketchy, and it was in a tiny room, instead of a whole stand-alone building like in Vilseck. Instead of seeing 3-4 young-looking people behind the counter, I see one middle-aged man with long greasy hair. After talking there for a bit, he said I wouldn't want to work there because he was an ass-hole, and good luck with the job. In the middle of this, Matt walked in and just walked right out. When we got back in the car, we looked at each other, and agreed that I'd withdraw my application.

After that scary incident, I went over to the framing shop to see if the job was still available there. Turns out it was! The guy I talked to really wants me to work there, so I picked up an application.

A few days later, Matt and I had gotten a map of Graf post (something for which we had been looking for a long while). On it had a building marked "Department of Public Works." On a whim, we went over there to ask if there were any jobs available and to ask where the Army Corps of Engineers were located. The German guy we were talking to looked confused, said there were no jobs, and pointed us in the direction of the Corps office...out in an area not shown on our map that I didn't know even existed. We drove by, eyed the building, and said I'd come back the next day with a resume and cover letter and see what I could find.

The next day, dressed all snazy and with a ridiculously well-written resume and cover letter printed on resume paper, I made my way to the Corps office. I walked in, not knowing what would come of this endeavor, and somehow found my way to a gentleman in his late 40's who, though he worked in a Corps office, still looked very alive, intelligent and engaging. It would take too long to explain exactly what happened, but the whole conversation we had was very witty. He had on his desk at that moment resumes that he was looking through to fill three available positions. I handed him my resume, explained my situation, he looked at me, and basically said he wanted to hire me. Woot! He didn't know if he could, thought there might be some red tape, but would contact me later about it. But part of his incentive to help me was that he had gotten his start the same way, just walking into someone's office. And he had a pained look on his face when I mentioned that my only other option was to work at the arts and crafts store doing framing.

He called me later that day, very hopeful, and said that he'd send me a copy of the job announcement and description for the job he was trying to fill, and told me to adjust my resume to include as many of the underlined words as possible. I said I'd get right on it.

About an hour later he called again, and then he told me that there was no way I could ever get the job. He had talked to the people who actually appoint people for the job (not engineers, and nobody I'd be working with), and they said that the job announcement calls for 1 year of experience. With my internships, I'd only have about 9-10 months, and that would never cut it. I was currently at a level of GS-5, and the position he was trying to fill was a GS-12 (I don't know what GS means, this is just what he told me). So, he told me that 3 more months of experience would take me from a GS-5 to a GS-12, which is ridiculous in my opinion, and in his as well. I offered to volunteer for the office for 3 months to get that extra time, but he didn't like that option. So we hung up the phone and I was depressed, again.

The next morning, he called me saying that he was going to try to create a position for me that would be a quasi internship position. My impression was that it would have to pay a lot less because of my experience, but he just really wanted to see me start my career. So how this last scenario would work is that it would take him about half a month to create the description for said position, then he's gone all of August, then after that he could submit the position to the lame people in the states that make all the important decisions, it would take a month for them to decide to publish it or not. If they liked it, they'd publish the description online, then I'd have to compete for it, the people in the states would have to like my resume enough to send it back to my friend in Germany, and then he'd make the final decision.

That's where we are today. I'll have to wait until early October to know if I have a job or not. Very aggravating, but at least there's hope. Everyone who's supposed to know about jobs around here was not helpful. They all tried to send me to the unit of engineers in Graf, where I'm pretty sure civilians don't work. Finally, I had to just go do the research in person around Graf (the information could NOT be found online, frustratingly enough), found the office, and just walked in. So pray that the people in the states view this idea favorably, view my resume favorably, and that this situation can work out well for me. I'd really like to start my career, and not just put it on hold for 3 years. I mean, how could we plan for kids if I was just starting my career at 26?

Enough about all that! I've included some pictures below that I took a while ago and just haven't had an excuse to put up yet.

This is Veldenstein Castle. Just half an hour from our place. We had planned to have dinner there the night this was taken, but there was a wedding going on that interrupted our plans.

This little empty church is about 2 kilometers from our house. So sad that nobody uses it anymore!

Ah, the beloved Smart car! The church is in the background, and my very handsome groom is in the driver's seat.

This is me just goofing around at a castle/manor in a city about an hour and 15 minutes away. Nobody was here, and the place was completely free to get into. Man I love Europe!

Prague and Beyond

2008-07-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was Matt's last four-day weekend before he leaves for Iraq so we wanted to take a vacation. Considering we'd taken two other vacations in the past two months, we thought it might be a good idea to head to eastern Europe to see if we could cut down on costs. And where is the closest eastern European city? Prague! Though certainly not the cheapest of cities, it promised to be cheaper to get to and most likely cheaper to travel around.

July 3rd Matt got online and booked a hotel for the following evening...I still can't believe we are able to do this. We are going to be ridiculously spoiled after living here. It is certainly not fair that we can plan our trip to Prague one day in advance when others plan months in advance, but knowing that, we are taking as much advantage of our situation as possible. Now is the time to have adventures like this, so we're diving right in!

July 4th (a 1-year anniversary of our engagement!) we made it to Prague. We got an incredible rate on a place right in old town, just a 5-minute walk from Old Town Square. The first afternoon/evening there we meandered around the square, across the Charles Bridge, and then back to square for dinner. Oh, and in the middle of that, my parents were able to call and wish us a happy 4th, and it didn't cost us a cent! How awesome is that? It costs an incredible amount to make phone calls, but to receive them is free, no matter if we're roaming or not, apparently.

The Old Town Square

Matt in front of the Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square

Prague Castle from Charles Bridge

The next day we walked back the same route and headed to the castle. The path from the square, over the bridge, and to the castle was just lined with shops, pubs, cafes and restaurants of every kind and color. Everything along this path seemed fun, beautiful, safe, and very clean. Once we got to the top of the castle the view was incredible. We wanted to go inside the cathedral which was inside the castle walls, but the line looked ridiculously long, so we just enjoyed it thoroughly. We promised ourselves that the next time we have visitors in town for a while (most likely the Melone family) we'll have a look inside.

Cathedral inside Prague Castle

We received complaints that we were never in photos together...this is the view from Prague Castle

The sun sets on Old Town Square

That evening we decided to do a pub crawl. Sadly there are no pictures of the crawl because I didn't think it wise to carry the camera around while we were imbibing potentially large amounts of alcohol. Nevertheless, we had an amazing time! The first pub was really the place to get all the drinks in...they gave you three shots as you walked in the door, and then randomly came around later to hand out more. You also got as much beer or wine as you could handle, and even offered a beer bong if you wanted it.

The second place we went to had a normal pub upstairs, but downstairs had quite a few rooms for the club they had going on. We took a shot at the door and immediately went downstairs to the loud music and bar. Matt and I got some drinks and sat down near the dancing area. My oh my, we were not prepared for the kind of dancing we would see on the dance floor. Don't worry, it wasn't lewd or anything, it was just ridiculous. It looked more like the chicken dance (or the rabid chicken dance for some) than anything else. Finally, Matt and I took the floor, and once other people realized that there were some people on the floor that weren't crazy, they joined as well. So we felt really cool after that, because we got the night started :).

We followed our guide to the next pub, which was this ridiculously awesome...cellar. I can't explain it better than opulent stone rooms underground. Candles on all the tables, wonderful nooks and crannies, circular stair cases leading up to upper levels...so fantastic! Great pub crawl!

The last pub was more like a club than any of the other ones. I won't say much, but the bouncers at the door definitely found Matt's "insurance" (read: knife) he had in his pocked and kicked him out to go "hide" his weapon. We didn't stay there for long, but all in all, the evening was a great hit and we're so glad we did it!

All in all, this is probably our favorite city that we've seen so far. Venice might be arguably more beautiful, but there were hardly any Venetians there, only tourists. In Prague, though the tourists are a huge part of the economy, it's not the only thing sustaining it. It was a real city.

The next day we packed up, bought some yummy chocolates, and headed on our way. On our drive back we saw a sign for a very cool-looking castle, so we followed the signs off the highway for 16 kilometers on country roads. What we found is in the picture below. So cool! It was Charles V castle, built in 17 years in 14--. It was beautiful and commanding.

We got home that afternoon (yesterday) and just crashed. Earlier today we went to get some food and on the way back decided it was high time we invest in some beer. We had seen a little store in our village that said "getranke" (un-elegantly put: booze) on the side, and had also seen people walking out with cases of beer, so we decided to check it out. We have found a gold mine! We got about 14 different kinds of beer, and 20 bottles total. And what was the cost of it all, including a deposit for the bottles and case? About 16 EUR! For a variation of the best beer in Germany! Yeah, we live in an awesome village.

Job for Rachel? I applied to work at the outdoor rec. Hopefully I'll find out in the next day or so if I got the job. I wouldn't imagine too many people would apply for it, but all I need is one woman whose husband has been with the military longer than mine and the job is hers.

I know you all want to hear about when Matt is leaving, but all I can say is sometime at the end of July. There's something called OPSEC, which stands for Operation Security. This security is mainly for intel like troop movements and other kinds of information that might be valuable to the enemy. It's probably not AS big a deal to know about a couple of new guys (which is who will be on Matt's flight), but if a unit of 6,000 men were about to enter or leave hostile territory, that kind of information could cause a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

There are more pictures that I want to share just from the area, but I'll get to those at a later post.

We Have Internet! 1

2008-06-30T06:57:00.000-07:00

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

We Have Internet! 2

2008-06-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

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?

We Have Internet! 3

2008-06-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

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

We Have Internet! 4

2008-06-30T06:45:00.000-07:00

Reading Nook!

Living room

Dining room

Rachel playing dress-up

We Have Internet! 5

2008-06-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T05:47:00.000-07:00

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.

General update

2008-05-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

Well, nothing as exciting as falling into a canal in Venice has happened in the last few days, but I do have some more pictures to put up from that trip. You can find them here.

House & Associates
I found out a few days ago that our second shipment of stuff is going to arrive on June 20th, a lot later than we thought. We sent it April 21st and two months was the absolute longest it was going to take. Such good luck!

But, we have some good news, just with some awkward timing. Our house is going to be available this coming Saturday or Sunday. We cannot move in yet because we haven't scheduled a time for the movers to move our stuff from storage to our house, but we might be moving in sometime this next week. We won't have a bedroom set for us, but we will have at least a mattress, and some other random items. It will almost feel like a house. I'm still missing pots and pans, silverware, and the normal stuff, but we can borrow those items from the lending closet until I buy them and until our registry items get here.

We are getting the key from Burger today to go check things out just to make sure everything is in order. I am getting really excited and can't wait to move everything in and start setting up our home!

Visitors!
Four (sets of) people have already told me that they are going to come visit me, and I am terribly excited. My mom is going to come just after Matt leaves in early July, a family from Nashville that I love is coming late July, and my brother is coming for the first half of August. Then both my parents are going to be coming again in mid-September because they will already be in Prague, which is just a couple of hours away. That said, I love visitors, and would definitely enjoy you coming. If you come, you can fly into Frankfurt, Nurnberg, or Prague. So be checking out those ticket prices and let me know when you're coming!

I know that I mentioned that Matt and I don't have a bedroom set, but we do have a bedroom set for the guest room, so don't think you'll have to sleep on the sofa or an air mattress. You'll probably have the most put-together room in the house!

Vilseck Rose Barracks Organization
Vilseck is the name of the town just south of the military installation. The name of the actual installation is the Rose Barracks, but it is everywhere referred to as Vilseck. Inside of Vilseck is the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment. There are six squadrons that are associated with the Regiment. Matt is in 1st squadron, so when people around post ask me who my husband works for (instead of saying "the Army" like I would to normal civilians), I say 1-2 SCR, or just first squadron.

The regiment is traditionally for armor soldiers because they're dealing with strykers (like tanks, but smaller and more mobile), but recently they have realized that high-speed infantry-men work very well with strykers. For this reason, Matt and a lot of other of his lieutenant friends, all infantry-men, have been recruited for this regiment.

Because there are six squadrons on post, each squadron has its own personality. I'm not quite sure what the other squadrons' personalities are, but 1st squadron has a reputation for being the most intense. I would usually say this is a bad thing, but while Matt is being productive (as much as possible with the regiment down-range), his buddies in other squadrons are sitting alone in their hotel rooms watching military television. His CO (commanding officer) is a very cool guy and is all about giving the new lieutenants and the current NCO's as much experience as possible.

Around Post
We had a town hall meeting yesterday with the first squadron where people got to ask a lot of questions and air a lot of rumors to the squadron's leader who is back for a couple of weeks from Iraq for R&R (rest and relaxation, though I hope you already knew that one). One thing that was very valuable to me to hear was the history of the squadron over this past deployment. Like I said before, the 1st squadron has a reputation for being, um, awesome, they are the squadron that is being used for tactical missions in Iraq. They were actually separated from the rest of the regiment and were involved in some of the toughest firefights since the war started.

I'm sure that because my husband is in 1st squadron I hear a lot of biased opinions, but they have indeed been in some of the hardest places at the hardest time, and keep getting put back there because they have proved themselves. I felt very proud of our squadron, though a bit nervous to be sending my husband there. Praise God it will just be for a few months.

Post has a movie theater that shows one movie a day on Thursdays-Sundays. I think we get two movies on Saturdays. Because of that, and because we're all the way over in Europe, we don't get new releases, and when the movie is playing that you want to see, you have only one option. Matt and I have been wanting to see Prince Caspian for a while now, and it is playing tonight, and only tonight, so we cleared our schedules to have a date.

I think that's about it for now. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but that will leave something to blog later.

Unbelievable, at least in part

2008-05-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

After doing a play-by-play of our first few days, I got a little bored with the format, so I'm just going to give you general updates on life. We'll try putting headings to them, because these are the general items people are interested in. If you're not interested in that topic, you don't have to read! Easy as pie. Or schnitzel.

The House
My last entry introduced you to the house that we are planning on getting. I know it's been about a week since I last wrote about it, so you would think that more would have developed, but apparently not. For some reason, there has been a large influx of lieutenants to Vilseck, and the name of our realtor (who could forget a name like Burger?) got around to pretty much everyone. Because of this, he has been very busy and has recently taken to not returning phone calls, emails, or getting the contracts ready. Luckily for us, he's still answering our phone calls because we were one of the first couples to contact him.

Matt just got the contract from Burger into the housing office today, so we should be able to start moving forward on things shortly. We don't really need to go anywhere soon because not all of our stuff has arrived yet. We shipped the furniture that my parents very generously gave us a couple of months ago, and that arrived yesterday. All of the wedding presents and day-to-day items were shipped just over a month ago, and will be arriving in about a week and a half.

So, since the house we're moving into is not completely renovated yet, and all of our household goods have yet to arrive, we have tried not to pester Burger too much. Not to mention that since we have no kitchen in our little hotel room, we are getting paid a very nice sum every day we stay here.

Cars
We are still driving around in our little Smart car, and we've really begun to love it. We drove it all the way to Italy this past weekend on our way to Venice (will talk about that later), and you can see from the picture just how fast it goes, and just how fast I drove it on the Autobahn (155kph = 96 mph).

Matt's car should arrive in a few weeks, and we'll have the rental car for a few days after that. Two cars will be nice. Because Matt is scheduled to leave in early/mid-July for 5 months, we're just going to keep one car until he gets back. When the men get back, a lot of them will be PCSing (Permanent Change of Station, i.e. moving to another post, likely back in the states), and therefore trying to sell their cars. At that point, we'll look at buying a cheap car for me to have while we save up for a new car (BMW??).

Rachel's Job Search
I don't know what I want to do. I haven't heard of a single other spouse who works for an engineering firm, and the employment office gave me the number for the military unit of engineers...not very helpful to me. I've thought about teaching, but that doesn't start until school starts in August, or about going back to school to get my master's, but they don't have the degree I want here. Just the other day I was with some girls to the craft store to get a picture framed, and the guy there offered me a job simply because I knew how to use a computer. Very nice of you, but no thanks.

I'm looking up the information for the Army Corps of Engineers, and I'm just going to have to send a cold email. I think this is anything but standard, and I'm not even certain if they would have a job for me, but it is definitely worth the try. Two incomes and no children is a very sweet deal indeed.

Culture Experiences & Friends
Matt's CO (Commanding Officer) took us and a few other lieutenants and their spouses out to a tapas (Spanish hors d'oeuvres) place, and then out salsa dancing. The food and the dancing was amazing, and not at all what we expected to find in Germany. As the evening of dancing wore on, they did the electric slide, and then another line dance I wasn't familiar with. Of course, because I love dancing, I was out on the floor trying to learn it, and I had the instructor yelling at me over the music to tell me the steps...all in German. Very interesting! Oh, and the menu items had the titles in Spanish, and the description in German. Language overload!

One evening last week I found a little restaurant online that was in a little town of no more than 20 acres and the same number of houses, so Matt and I decided to try it. We drove there, missed it by driving past it, drove back to it, parked and went in. No cars were parked outside, but there were a couple of other tables taken. The odd part here? Everyone was American. VERY disappointing! I don't know how a little German restaurant in the middle of a very German village could contain all Americans, but apparently it happens. Next time I'll look for a restaurant that is further away from post.

Because Matt and I are living out of a hotel room, we are getting very bored of frozen meals, Subway (on post), and eating incredibly rich German dinners at German restaurants every lunch/dinner. When I mentioned this to one of my friends here, Veronica, she just solved all my problems by giving me a couple of plates, some silverware, a few glass mixing bowls, and her crock pot. Then she even took me to the grocery store and helped me buy the right food for making meals in the crock pot. Man, I can't believe the generosity of the people here. She and Krista specifically have gone out of their ways to make me as at home here as possible. And they're really cool too.

Matt is getting to know the guys in his squadron pretty well and is enjoying interacting with the NCO's (Non-Commissioned Officers, enlisted guys who have been given authority; sergeant is an example), since prior to Germany, he had interacted mostly with officers. Almost every morning the squadron does PT (physical training), but Matt's squadron likes to change things up a bit. On Thursday morning they got to play football, which Matt found to be an awesome exercise. Then yesterday morning they played paintball (so cool), which he also found to be great tactical training and practice. Basically, he's really enjoying it here, and we're loving all the time we get to spend together.

Vacation in Venice

Goodness me, I've already written a lot and there's so much I could write about still. If you want to stop reading and come back later, now is probably a good time. I just promised a few people I'd get this out tonight, hence the huge brain dump all at once.

So, Memorial Day was this past Monday, which means we got a holiday! For his first trip in Europe, Matt wanted to go to Venice. Venice has always seemed ridiculously gorgeous to me and I've always wanted to go, so I spent some time the week before figuring out how we were going to get there and where we were going to stay. Trains and planes were too expensive, so we decided to drive.

We couldn't leave until Friday evening, and we didn't want to make the 7+ hour drive at night, we drove to Innsbruck, Austria, to split up the drive. We stayed at Binders Hotel, which was very nice, and comparable to the Czech Inn in Prague (for those of you who know it), except with a private bathroom.

Innsbruck, just outside Binders Hotel

Saturday morning, we got up early and started making our way to Vicenza, Italy, where a US Army post was located. Through an interesting series of events and with the help of a very nice old man, we ended up parking about 2 hours outside of Venice and taking the train in. After we got there, the first thing we did was get gelato.

Since the city is small and totally walkable, we decided to get a map and make our way to our hotel. Matt got the good map of the city from the tourist office, we sat on the steps of the train station looking out at Venice, oriented ourselves, and took off. I was the official navigator for the trip and got pretty good at reading the map. For those of you who have been to Venice, you have an idea how ridiculous the streets are, and how there is absolutely no semblance of a grid. I didn't really go by street names, my mental directions were generally as follows:

Go straight until the square with the church ("straight" being very relative)
cross to the opposite side of the square and continue until you hit the bridge
cross the bridge and make your second right
etc.

There would be about 5-10 turns within 1/10-1/4 mile. Craziness I tell you! Navigating the canals was interesting, but admiring all the bridges was definitely fun.

Just off the train, walking through the city to our hotel

The hotel we stayed in was just two "blocks" from the Plaza San Marco, which is the big tourist attraction in Venice. Sadly, the quality of the hotel was as bad as the location was good. I'll just say that you could hardly stand at the sink without sitting on the bed, and our full private bathroom was across the hall. BUT, the breakfasts were great and we had a fantastic time nevertheless.

Everything was beautiful, a very common thing in Venice

Every street looked like this, and better

Another one of my favorites

That day, we walked around a lot, took loads of pictures, had a delicious dinner, more gelato, and
then a gondola ride. I had heard how expensive gondola rides were, but I couldn't believe my ears when we actually walked up to a gondolier and asked how much it was. Matt was set on going on a gondola ride, but I was more than hesitant to spend so much on a 20 minute outing. In the end, Matt won the debate, because "who goes to Venice and doesn't ride a gondola?"

The token gondola ride. We saw the house from Casino Royale

The ride ended up being pretty cool, even though it was short. Those boats are so ridiculously long, I don't know how they manage to steer them around the tiny canals, sharp turns, and low arched bridges. I was amazed. Oh, and another thing about gondolas: they're all unique, not a single one is the same.

That night we went back to the hotel, slept very soundly, and woke up the next morning with barely enough time for breakfast. We spent the whole day meandering around the city checking out "Points of Interest" on our map. My parents had just given me a new camera for graduation, (digital SLR for camera lovers, and thanks Heather for the great suggestion!), so we spent a lot of the day taking photos as well. We walked away with about 300 photos from the whole trip, which is a lot for a day and a half! Most of the rest of the trip can go without narration, and I'll just let you enjoy the photos.

Big door. Small Rachel
Clearly, they love Civil Engineers...;). We saw this nebulous "CE" all over the city

Venice- the Unbelievable Part
Where to start? It was Monday morning and Matt and I had packed everything up and were making the trek back to the train station. To mix things up a bit, we decided to go a different route back to the station than we had come (I marked where we walked both days on a map). Now, the map we had was awesome, but I had seen at least two points where it had been wrong (a bridge where there was none indicated, or no walkway where it said there was). On our trek, we came upon a canal with no bridge across it, and no walkway where it was indicated on the map. Just for kicks, I wanted to see if the supposed path was just under the water, so I took a few steps down towards the canal to have a peek around the corner.

Around step three, my foot slips on some icky mud that was stone-colored and therefore camouflaged against the steps. I promptly land on my bum, and then slip down another step. Because of the ickiness, another step goes by. After passing the next step my foot is in the water and I know all is lost. I fall full-body into the canal (save my head, thank God), holding my backpack, purse, and new oil painting we just bought. Thankfully the bag holding my purse and oil painting had landed on muddy on the steps, instead of drenched in the water with me. So yes, I have fallen into a canal in Venice.

While this happened, Matt saw that I had slipped, and being the gentleman he is, he tried to step down to save me from going fully into the water. He himself ended up slipping. Luckily for him (and for my camera that he was carrying), once I was in the water, he kinda kicked me to prevent himself from entering the water. But even though he wasn't wet, he was still muddy with the icky mud.

Picture taken for your entertainment. At least we could laugh about it :)

Well, I was able to crawl out of the canal, and after rudely being refused help by the nuns and the public restroom attendant, I ended up washing off in the middle of the street. I had one clean dress in my bag so I was able to put that on (they let me in the bathroom to do that), and Matt ended up changing on the train.

Overall, nothing got damaged, so what we're left with is an incredible story and some very interesting photos of me wet and muddy. And that was Venice!

Phones, house, and more

2008-05-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

For the first few days at least, significant events and connections are happening every day, so for that time, I’ll try to report on each consecutive day so you can “experience” things as we’ve experienced them.

Germany, Day 2- Thursday 15MAY08
As usual, Matt woke up early to go to formation at 0630. Because we had moved into a larger room from the day before, I spent the morning unpacking…again, and then went to a class called Battlemind Training. This class consists of introducing spouses to the dynamics that go on with them and their soldiers when the soldiers are deployed (also called “down-range”). From what I heard about military courses, I didn’t expect anything amazing, but the woman who taught the course was great. The biggest benefit for me taking that class is that all the other women there have husbands that have been down-range for the last nine months (Matt is going to join the crew that has been there since August), and/or have been through 5 other deployments.

Some things they mentioned is to not change the house completely before your husband gets home, or else they might feel like they don’t belong there anymore. They also might not stand in doorways or feel like being around crowds, because that puts them in a vulnerable position. Another dynamic I didn’t think of was that when Matt leaves, I will be taking care of everything, and when he comes back, we’ll have to figure out our roles in the marriage again: who does the finances, who does what chores, etc.

After the class I was introduced to two other women that are around my age whose husbands are already deployed. These women, named Veronica and Krista, are so ridiculously nice. When they offered to drive me back to my hotel, I invited myself to lunch so I didn’t have to have another microwave lunch, and they gladly had me over to their houses. For the next two and a half hours we got to know each other and they gave me an incredible introduction to Army life in general and Vilseck specifically. It was really great that they liked talking because I learned so much. At the end of lunch they offered to take me to Grafenwoehr (Graf for short), the neighboring training post, and to arrange everything, Krista lent me her cell phone…whoah!

They took me back to my room so I could meet Matt and they could do errands, and when I got back, I heard some very good news. Matt had gone to take the infamously hard driver’s exam that morning, and he only got one question wrong! Meaning, he now has a USAREUR (military) license. He had also already gone to Sixt Car Rental and gotten a Smart car for us to use. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Smart cars, the picture is below. It’s basically an enclosed golf cart that can go 100 mph.

So instead of the girls just taking me to Graf, we drove behind the girls so we could see how to get there. At Graf they have a larger PX and Commissary than they do in Vilseck, so it was fun seeing what was available. After grabbing a few items, we went back to the hotel, put some work-out clothes on, went to the gym, and then had Mexican food at the on-post Mexican restaurant. Such a great day!

Day 3- Friday 18MAY08
For the last few days we had been talking to people about how to find housing. We’ve talked to about 15 different people, and gotten about 10 different opinions and experiences. Most people say go with non-government private rental. Matt’s CO (Commanding Officer) said they live in an awesome government rental about 30-45 minutes away and that a place just opened up, the same place that the housing office wanted to set us up with. Much discussion had ensued about this location because it was where all the officers lived, and therefore where their wives lived (so I’m not alone when Matt gets deployed).

So, this morning, when Matt got off work early, we took our car and decided to drive by the government rental. Just for posterity’s sake, I got on the internet to try to find any other towns of significance in the area, and wrote down the name of Edelsfeld so we could check it out on the way back from the government rental.

We drove to the rental, loved the area as we were driving into the town, and then got back to these small unkempt-looking townhouses all on one street. To try and be fair, Matt and I got out of the car and walked around to see if we were missing something. What little yards people had were not very well mowed, and had bad patio furniture. In a few cases, there were even pink flamingos in the yard. Matt and I totally don’t understand that. Apparently everyone who lives in these houses loves them, and they ARE 3-story 4-bedroom houses, but we just didn’t really like the area.

Disappointed, we drove back towards Vilseck and stopped in at Edelsfeld. The drive was just so ridiculously gorgeous, and the town seemed like an up-scale town, so already we were impressed. They have a little meat deli, a couple of hotels, a café, and probably some places hidden where we couldn’t see them. Altogether it looked very modest, quaint, and just generally beautiful.

Matt gave me the number of a realtor that his friend had given him and we called to ask for an appointment to try and get a better feel of what was available in the area. We decided to meet Saturday morning just outside of post.

After Edelsfeld, we went to Graf again, and after some long conversations and some painful interactions, we finally got cell phones! So now, we both have phones. I don’t understand the phone numbers, because they are nothing alike. Matt’s number has 12 digits and mine has 11, yet we have the exact same phone and both go through Vodafone as our provider.

We both had a few other appointments that day, and we are learning so much as we just walk around and talk to people. I finally met my sponsor yesterday! Apparently, every soldier and every spouse is supposed to have someone around their rank and age to guide them through this learning time. Her name is Erin, and I can’t wait to spend some time with her. She’s the first officer’s wife I’ve been introduced to other than those who work in offices, so I’m interested to hear her perspective on everything.

That night we went to the Vilseck Volksfest (Vilseck the town is separate from Vilseck the military community, I’ll try to distinguish between the two as best I can), which is basically a carnival with some rides, lots of food, and lots of beer. The carnival itself was very cool, but to Matt’s surprise, his CO prohibited him from drinking beer, which clearly put him in a very bad mood, since he hadn’t yet had German beer. Needless to say, we left there before the party got started and just went back home for a good night’s sleep.

Day 4- Saturday 17MAY08
This morning we woke up nice and late, had breakfast, and went to our appointment with the realtor, whose last name is Burger :). He was five minutes late, which is strange for Germans, so we gave him a call. Apparently, he had forgotten about us. Nice. He told us that the place was in Edelsfeld, which got me excited, so he instructed us to drive to the main hotel and wait for either the hotel owner or his wife to come meet us…a little odd, but okay. On our way there, he called us back and said he’d meet us in ten minutes.

He met us at the hotel, and took us to the house. And let me tell you, wow! If I could just to stream of consciousness right now, I’d give you a better idea of how it looked, but perhaps pictures would be better.

We'd have the top two stories, and the basement of this place.

This is the view when you go up the stairs and walk in the front door.

This is one of the bedrooms downstairs. Love the amount of light that comes in.

This is the large living room. There's also an area to the left that could be made into a reading nook/library.

A view from the upstairs window

A small part of the upstairs room.

We played it a little hardball with the guy, but we’d basically have three rooms, a bathroom, a large living room, a kitchen, a basement, and perhaps even our own garage and car port. The whole place has been entirely redone with hard wood floors, slate floors in the bathroom, large windows, and just beautifully clean everything. The owner came out as we were about to leave, and we communicated with him using sign language, but overall he seemed quite amiable, and that he liked to keep his place clean.

As Matt and I got in the car, we looked at each other, and just smiled. We totally want it! We drove around the area, fell in love with it even more, and then called the realtor to let him know that we wanted it. He said he get back with us on Monday. Woot! Man, we are just so extremely excited, already planning what rooms will serve as what, where we’ll put our furniture, and planning parties for when our friends come to visit. I want everyone to see it!

Tonight we’re going to go to Graf, have some dinner, and then come back to the room and watch a movie. So a productive day!

Germany: The Beginning

2008-05-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

Germany- Day 0, 13MAY08
I wake up at 0400 Central Europe time on a plane with people on either side of me, and my husband sitting in the seat behind me. I can't go back to sleep so I decide to just watch a movie. Breakfast is delicious at 0600. When we land, and Matt steps onto European soil for the first time in his life. I'm so glad to be a part of that moment! Sadly, no stamps in the passport because he's traveling on orders, and my new No-Fee passport already has the visa stamped inside.

Outside immigration we meet up with an enlisted guy, get our bags, are hustled about the airport to different rooms, fill out paperwork, and finally get on a bus to begin the four and a half hour trek to Vilseck. Matt, I, and two other officers are the only four passengers on this large tour bus, and as we are Americans, the driver decides to give us a real treat for lunch: Burger King. Apparently at Burger King, McDonald's, and who knows where else, you can pay with American dollars no matter what country you're in. But watch out, with the exchange rate, your innocent burger, fries, salad and a drink might cost you $16.

From the tour bus, we switch over to a 7-passenger van and make our way on the smaller roads through the most idyllic villages to the military post of Vilseck. We get to post and meet our "sponsor," the captain (two ranks above Matt's rank of 2nd Lieutenant), who takes us around the whole post--considering the circumference is about six miles, it didn't take long. We stopped at the commissary to get some groceries, and the PX to see what kind of furniture, cell phones, bikes, etc. they have available.

After sponging up all of this information, we go to dinner at the DFAC (Dining Facility and Containment...nobody can tell me what "containment" means. Oh the acronyms are going to be the end of me!). Luckily for me, that evening there is an FRG (Family Readiness Group) meeting. This is one venue for the wives to gather and see what's going on around post. There were about 8 of us there, so I got introduced to come cool women and got my first way to get connected here on post.

From there, Matt and I went back to our hotel, the Kristall Inn, unpack a little--we could be here for up to four months--and hit the hay. We made it through day zero!

Vilseck, Day 1- 14MAY08, first full day on Post
Matt wakes up at 0610 for his 0630 formation (what they do at these formations, I don't know, they just gather and...do important stuff), and comes back around 0700 to have breakfast with me, and than is off to his 0800 class. While he's gone, I unpack some more, and then head over to the ACS (Army Community Service) building. This is apparently the place for the spouses to go. They have all sorts of classes that they offer, outings, gatherings, etc., and I was able to get the schedule for the rest of the summer. My schedule is now filling up with useful things.

I do some other random errands--get my ID card activated, make sure I'm on healthcare here, make a dental appointment, drop by the automobile testing site--and then head to my one appointment of the day: Fuel Card Rationing seminar. We get a pretty sweet deal abroad in that we get to pay American prices for gas instead of European prices, saving us around $6.00/gallon (yes, they pay $9-11/gallon over here), and we can get these prices at select gas stations all around the country. The hitch is that the fuel is rationed, with each car getting around 100 gallons/month. For the last 49 years the method of keeping track of this ration was inadequate, so people were getting away with not adhering to the rules. Of course, the day we arrive, they start being strict about everything, hence the seminar telling everyone how to switch from using coupons to a ration credit card. The whole thing was unnecessarily long for what I deemed a simple explanation, but I guess if you're use to a system then you need a lot of training to get untrained from it.

From there Matt and I went to check out cell phones and nearly cried when we saw how expensive it would be. They charge 30 euros for 50 minutes a month. BLEH! We couldn't make a decision because our sticker shock was so extensive, so we're going to check on that tomorrow or the next day. Oh, and if you want to talk to Matt and me, get skype. My username is rachel.melone.

As for news about housing, we think we might have found a place that we like. Someone at the FRG meeting told us about a government rental that is off-post and that is going to be completely renovated and ready in about 2-3 weeks. When Matt went to the housing office today they told him there was a place that just came available and will be ready in 2-3 weeks. The really really sucky part was when they told us that if they gave us the keys to go look at the place, we had 48 hours to decide if we liked it. And if we refused to take it, then our housing allowance (the money that is keeping us in this hotel while we search for a place) will be revoked. Entirely. So basically, even to go and check out a place, we're saying that we're going to take it, or pay with our own money to stay in this hotel. Crappy? Yes, but we're trying to work with it. We think we know which place it is, so we're going to go check out the area first (Auerbach in der Oberpfalz). Hopefully the area is good, and hopefully this is the rental the housing office was talking about.

Well, it is quite late here, and I am pooped from the day, my workout, and the mexican food dinner we had tonight. No promises of writing again soon, but I'll try to keep this updated! Thanks for reading!