Move in day

Today was the BIG move in day! Although we've had the keys to the house since friday, and the air shipment was delivered there on Monday, today was the day we got all of our things. It's always so exciting...almost a bit like Christmas! The moving trucks here don't have sides, they have tarps that they untie and flip over to the other side of the truck. That way they can park infront of your drive way, on the street, and unload your things from the side. Although the trucks are a bit smaller, our's still blocked traffic on our street for a good part of the day. Many people honked and yelled some german things, to which our movers responded to and they turned around mad. The painter chose today to come finish painting the entryway and sand and stain the front and basement doors! Yeah, that was such a pleasant suprise for everyone envolved!
All in all the day went great. The movers showed up around 8am and left by noon! We spent the remainder of the day unpacking. I'd say the house is 1/2 way to liveable. We had a few things broken, a wheel here, desk tray there...and an entire 8ft chrome shelving unit on wheels from Sam's club just decided to dissapear! Bummer, since that's where all my dishes and kitchen things were to go. Crossing my fingers they find it and call me tomorow!!
J fought off his frustrations about moving all day, at one point Sweet Pea was beautifully positive when she said, "don't worry daddy, we'll make it work, it'll be just fine"! Such a trooper these wonderful children of mine are!
Tomorrow we will check out of the hotel and take all of our things (a mini move in itself mind you!) to the house. I will have to get up at 5am to get the things packed into the car, take J to work and be at the house by 7am. The base is delivering a new dryer, fridge, and microwave to the house for us to borrow while we are here. They schedule your day like all other movers "anytime from 7am-4pm", which means they will only show up during the 5 minutes you run down the street for something! I will be without the internet for a while, a real bummer, but I won't lack for things to keep me busy!

The First Week

The 1st week you are in a new country is filled with challenges. Some people handle them gracefully, others...hhmmmmm, NOT so gracefully! The 1st 2 days we really didn't do much, other than walk around the base, watch tv and sleep. But on the 26th Boss drove us over to pick up our car and register it in Germany. I promise to never ever complain about a DMV office in the states ever again! We got to the office at 2pm and didn't leave until after they had closed at 5pm! It was insane! A big shout out to my kids...they were fantastic! We were totally unprepared and they sat in the chairs there, sweat pouring down them, and barely complained at all! How did I get so lucky? Boss drove us there, took us inside and explained the process and then he left to pick up a freezer at a nearby store. He came back in an hour and then waited there with us. I have never had people help us like this during any of our moves, I actually felt very bad for him.

At this point, only Big J had his German driver's license so he drove us back to the hotel. There are so many signs to pay attention to that you have a hard time remembering to pay attention to where you need to drive to! There are signs that tell you that you are on a priority road and everyone else has to yield to you, that's probably the easiest street to drive on. But when you're coming up on an intersection you have to remember to look for signs because if there are no signs at all you have to yield to the person on the right! My point here is that driving is no longer an automatic thing!

On the 28th I went and took my German driver's test and passed with a 90! (J got an 85, have to make sure to note the difference here!!!) Now that I am driving too I have found myself turning the music off because driving takes so much of my concentration I can't even have other noise in the car!! That is just craziness to me, I live for music..."music is the background to our lives!"...and here I am turning it off?!

On the 29th we noted 4 houses, called on them and only got an appointment to go see one, so I wrote down directions from yahoo maps. I was told by another landlord that they would call me back today, so I wrote the directions down for that house too. Off we went, out of the base gate, away from our security blanket of the american style base, out and about in the "real" Germany for the 1st time. Let me tell you, this was not a pretty sight! We decided to drive to our 4pm appointment, even though it was only 1pm to make sure we could get there on time. Let me preface this adventure with the fact that J is not happy about being pulled so quickly and violently outside of his box! Even though I wrote the directions down exactly as stated on yahoo maps, we had a really difficult time following them. When you approach an intersection, there may or may not be a street sign. In fact on some corners, there will be about 20 signs pointing in every direction (just imagine the post MASH had up that listed the towns and miles that everyone was from) and it is physically impossible to read all those signs going 50-70 km! There was one street that we couldn't locate to save our lives! We drove back and forth thru the town at least 4 times, I finally found a tiny sign with the street name we needed. The house wasn't really that nice on the outside, but most European houses are old on the outside and refurnished when you get inside. Now that we new where this house was, tried to find a house I really wanted to see...but after nothing but yelling and screaming we got a call from a landlord who tried to tell us over the phone how to get to a Netto shop for her to let us follow her to the house. Well after 30 min. of not being able comprehend enuf of her conversation to find the Netto shop, we had to give up and drive to our appt. The house wasn't that nice on the inside either. Then we got another call to meet at another house. I wanted to go home and look up directions, J thought we'd be able to find it; I won't embarrass him with details here but it was definately not his finest hour! Finally found the house and it was much nicer than the 1st one. We said we would like to rent the house and they said they would call.

We had heard multiple horror stories about looking for a house for a month or more, people said that landlords will show it to many people and then pick the one they want to rent to. Everyone we met suggested we take the 1st house we were offered because of this competition. So I felt very lucky when then next morning we got a call offering us the house. It's closer to the base than I would have liked, but we only had one awful day of house hunting instead of weeks and weeks of it. They had to get the painter in to paint the inside, but we could have the house next week.

After a trip to the landlord's house in Homburg to sign the contract (he's a pastor btw, and we had another horrid moment in the car lost. Couldn't call them because I didn't have the unlock code memorized on my phone yet!), and test driving an old BMW we purchased a Honda ! We had to go thru the DMV event again, but at least this time it was only 2 1/2 hours! Life is good!

The 1st day in Germany

The family touched down at Ramstein AB in Germany on June 24th around 10:30am local time. After driving from Ohio to Baltimore (we stopped for a night in Morgantown, WV), we got on the flight at 7pm. I could not sleep a wink. It might have had something to do with having Sweet Pea on my left, and some Delta Force guy on my right that had held up the plane. He was Mr. talkative at 1st; I learned all about his wife never getting to move from NC, his small son and his newborn daughter. Then he passed out, I mean dead. The flight attendant and I had to manuver him back into his seat many times so she didn't ram into his head with the drink cart!

The girls did really well, sleeping most of the time, although it was apparent they were uncomfortable. Big J slept on and off as well. We finally got off the plane and were met by the new boss and some guy named Keith? They were very nice, staying with us while we went thru customs, giving us a packet of information, chatting about what we would need to do. It all pretty much went in one ear and out the other, but they were nice to try! They stamped our passports, we got our luggage, passed thru customs, and got to see our old neighbor who was waiting for some other people on the plane. Boy was it nice to see a familiar face right off the bat! The boss drove us to our room (they had already registered us, got the key and put groceries in the room [from a small list I sent them earlier]). We ate some PB&J and then took a 2 hour nap! We set the alarm for an hour, I never heard it go off and Big J just reset it for another hour. Not having a car yet, I had noticed that there was a pizza place in the community center, we set off walking in the direction the simple map indicated. We ate pizza, played a little ping pong, explored what was available at the community center, and had a visit from J's boss when we got back into the room. Boss and his wife, came by to chat for a bit about how we felt, what we'd have to do, etc. They are very nice people, and I so enjoyed getting a chance to be a little social! It was hard to get the girls to go to sleep, and for us to sleep. I probably could have slept thru the night if no one had woke me. But those of you that really know us, know that no one in my house thinks I need to sleep thru the nite!

I know, this is thrilling stuff rite? The 1st day of the next 3 years is never very amazing I have found. This is especially true when you must fly thru multiple time changes for 8 hours, while managing your family's physical needs, as well as managing everyone's emotional needs. You are on auto pilot, only reacting to what is in front of you instead of thinking ahead. Even the week that follows is a reaction week...go here, do this, now go there and get this, now drive over here, but wait to drive here you must look up directions and still get lost for an hour anyway, etc. There is an adventure here somewhere, I believe the adventure will start tomorrow though.