Wedding!!

Saturday, July 3, 2010 Kristi and Dave got married!! It was a fantastic wedding...more specifically the reception was awesome. We danced like crazy! Of course towards the end the DJ played "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey and everyone linked arms and sang together. I think it was the DJ's fantasy. He was ecstatic. He had his little video camera out and was passing the microphone around to random people. He immediately transitioned into the last song which was "I've had the time of my life...." Kristi and Dave stepped into the circle of people as we swayed back and forth to the song. It sounds like a scene from a cheesy movie, but it was fantastic! Everyone was feeling the moment, and possibly a couple of beers at that point but it was surreal. So fun! It was awesome to see everything culminate after helping Kristi prep all week. We ran crazy errands all week long, tying together all of the loose ends. I think I could throw down a wedding if need be. I got to see all of the good stuff... the inside scoop you could say. For instance, the priest brought the spanish version of the mass. He had to translate on the spot as he was reading the sermon. Awesome. Next weekend my mom and I will fly to California for my aunt Lindsay's wedding. I am so excited!! My mom will be standing up as the matron of honor, which is fantastic! Goodness all around.

Now my mission is to find a job before school starts, (cross your fingers for that) and tutor Miss Jordan before school starts. She is doing so good! School was really tough for her last year with everything that was going on, so she fell behind a bit. She has been seeing a tutor and she has done a fantastic job! Jordan is reading on level and she is not getting as frustrated with math. It is a good thing!

Confiscated ID card

So we went to go eat Greek, and we just happened to go on the only day they are closed. Go figure. We hopped back onto the train and went to Vapianos. I had a large salad with lots of yummy veggies. The Germans know how to do a salad. They pick up tons of random veggies, throw them into the bowl, and mix it all up. Soooo goood!! I am going to miss those.

Anywho...

Monday we did the weinstrasse and it was gorgeous! The road creeps through rolling hills filled with rows of grapes. Then, nestled in the vineyard is a beautiful golf course. I should have taken a picture of that just for my dad. He would have loved it.

Then tuesday all of the girls loaded up in the car and went shopping in the Heidelberg walking district. I didn't buy much, but it was fun to walk around. We met Ms. Cathy Sterling for dinner (the dentist at the clinic on post) at a Turkish restaurant. It was delicious. She ordered lots of appetizers... olives, eggplant salad, cucumber spread, and grape leaves filled with lamb. So yummy! Most of the main dishes were kebaps, with a scoop of rice, and grilled veggies. I ordered the Antep Kebap which came with lamb and mixed veggies from the grill covered in a tomato and yogurt paste similar to the consitancy of feta. Mouth watering. :) I came home and packed up everything. I have decided to leave behind some of the black and white pictures Paul and Lenea bought to decorate my room. They are going to keep it decorated for a guest room. I filled my two suitcases and two boxes with goodies.

Today we did laundry, which I will have to somehow find space for in my overloaded suitcases. I am sure I will be paying for weight charges for my bag. There is no way that one or both of my bags are under 50 pounds. Oh the joys of flying. We shipped both of my boxes for $65. Ridiculous. Tomorrow I leave. I will miss Germany, but I feel like Texas is where I need to be right now.

I am going to keep up with my blog. Life is just one adventure after the other.

Coming home!

Wow. My last post was incredibly depressing. Since then, I have taken a few deep breaths and have tried to look at things in a new light. I would not trade my time in Germany for the world. I have learned a lot about myself and political mumbo jumbo. Go Military. I think one of the greatest triumphs of my time here has been realizing how much I love my family. It is crazy. I have loved getting to know Paul, Lenea, and Elizabeth more. I pretty much grew up only getting to see them at random times throughout the year. I am totally coming back to visit. This I know to be true. I want to see Germany at Christmas with all of the Christmas markets, lights, snow, .... I want to see it all!

Today is a big day for me. I am going to quit my job. What I didn't anticipate was how hard it would be to quit. I just keep telling myself that this is a good thing. I feel so supported in this decision and I know in my heart that this is a good thing (I am psyching myself up to walk in with confidence and just do it). Wish me luck!

I know I have said this before, but I will say it again.... I am terrible at keeping up with the blog. Blogging is truly a great way to stay connected, but I have found out that I am not entirely great at staying connected either. It is a good thing that I am coming home soon, so I can reconnect with everyone. Let's see...what has happened since the last update?

Work. I really like my team I work with and I like the kiddos too, but they are a lot to handle when they are all present. I don't know. It is not my favorite at the moment. We shall see.

Friday we went to Stadt Fest. I am not entirely sure what the reason was for the festival, but it was fun. That is one thing I have noticed. The Germans love to celebrate. They have festivals for everything. There is a festival pretty much every weekend in various cities all over Germany. The Stadt Fest in Mannheim had two stages set up. One at the water tower, and one in the middle of the walking district. The bands would play a plethora of music, but most of the music was circa 1980s. Fabulous. I don't know why the Germans dig the 80s so much, but they do. They were all over it and jammin' out. It was a sight to see.

Another bonus of festivals (besides the great music..haha) is the great food. Seriously. The music may not have been so good, but the food was stellar. They had anything you could have wanted....yummy grilled meats, fried bread with nutella, pizzas with potato and bacon...ANYTHING you wanted. Oh yeah...the beer was pretty good too. :) There were food/beverage tents all over! There were people everywhere. We found a primo table under one of those white tents and enjoyed a few drinks before venturing down to the second stage. It was a fun time. The best part was that no one had to be designated driver. We could all relax and enjoy ourselves without having to worry about driving. We simply hopped back on the jam-packed train and headed to post. I slept most of the way on the 20 minute train ride because I had been up since 4:30 AM. I worked the 5:30 AM-2:30PM shift since it was a training holiday. The soldiers had a four day weekend with the training holiday and Memorial Day. You would think the CDC would be closed because of this, but no. Parents are off of work and they still send their kids. Go figure.

Saturday Elizabeth and I saw Robin Hood. It was pretty good. Nothing like I thought it was going to be, but good. It was more the beginning of Robin Hood, recapping how he got started. They pretty much paved the way for the sequel. Kind of like the new Batman movies. The first one sets the stage and the sequel shows him kicking but and taking names. After the movie Elizabeth and I ventured out Stadt Fest. She didn't get to see it Friday night with us because she had to babysit. She was pretty underwhelmed by it, so we headed home for a Disney movie marathon.

Sunday we had Elizabeth's farewell to 15 party. There were about 15 of us... our little family plus another family that we have befriended along with Cathy (the dentist), Frau Karen (the German woman who teaches the German culture class to the soldiers) and some of Elizabeth's friends. The Greek people were great. Yolanda had a huge table set up for us and catered to our every need. Her husband of course fixed us fantastic food, and we ate until we were stuffed. We wore black in honor of the event. It was fun and she had a good time. Now she is 16. Yippeee!

On Monday (Memorial Day) we went to a BBQ at Paul's boss' house. It was cold outside, which was not so good, but the company was great. I actually ran into two people from Texas. Small world, eh? We had a potluck BBQ... Lenea brought her famous green beans, and other people brought other sides like salads, brownies, etc. We also got to try the most fabulous beer I have ever tasted. In years past it had been voted the best beer in the world. It definitely earned the title. It was brewed by monks in this small town in Germany about 3o minutes from us. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the beer, but I do know that it starts with the letter K. Sorry. That is the best I can do. You will have to venture to Germany to find out for yourself! :)

Then Tuesday started a fresh, short week of work. Thank goodness it was a short week because it kicked my butt. I am in this weird place here. I put in for leave to come home for my girls who are getting married, (Oh happy day! I am so excited for them!!) but I never heard anything about it. I requested three weeks without pay since I don't have enough time saved up since I started. Then I had to change my flight, which has kind of been a blessing in disguise. Let me explain. My original return flight was for June 1. Once that date began to approach I began to look into changing my flight. The only date that was available to me was June 17. This is great on the personal aspect since it allowed more time for me to be with family and friends. This is not so great on the job aspect. They were not thrilled about me requesting even more leave. When it is all calculated out, it comes to a month. Yikes! Decision time. Do I just quit and come home, or do I feel it out with my job and see if this is even a possibility? Who takes a month off of work? Three weeks? Yes. Everyone I work with is from the states, so when they take a vacation they take a vacation. I don't know what difference that one week difference really makes, but apparently it makes a big one. Here is where my brain is at the moment:

I felt really guilty for coming back here knowing that I was leaving my mom and Jordan to go off to fill my own selfish desires. I just got the job at the CDC when I came home for John, and I didn't want to quit before I even started so I came back to Germany. I needed to do this for me. The weird part comes into play now that I am not crazy about my job and I am crazy homesick. That is kind of putting it lightly. I am in this weird spot where I am questioning my ability. Am I really cut out to work with kids? Some days I leave work and I feel so yucky about the day. There are things I could have done better, or worked harder on to have a better outcome. 30 kids is a lot to have in one room. I don't think it is a good setup for them or the people on my team. It is really stressful in there. I know the adults feel it, so I am pretty sure that we are passing that on to our kiddos making for some pretty intense moments. At times I would like to just walk out the door. Then in the next moment one of my kiddos says something off the wall and I can't help but bust a gut in laughter. They are really some sweet kids, but a few lack some much needed discipline in their home environments. Then I start thinking about the future, and I wonder how this is affecting my career as a whole. How does this look on my resume? I hate growing up. I think part of the reason I came to Germany was to kind of avoid this thing called growing up. I am coming to terms with it, and I think I am ready. I really wanted to get into the DoDs school system through the military, but that didn't work out. Now I am not really sure what to do.

Another thing I thought would be different about my time here was making friends. I like to think that I am a people person. Not so outgoing, but really friendly. I didn't realize how spoiled I was by my friends until I got here. It is really hard to make friends for a couple of reasons. None of the Americans stay longer than 3 years because the army relocates people after 3 years. People are constantly coming and going. Also, most people are married with babies. I am not. The married thing is not what is weird...it's the babies. There not even babies really. The people who are my age have children who are anywhere from infant to six years old. The others who aren't married with babies are kind of sleeze-tastic. I went up to my uncle's unit one day and one of his soldiers was asking me all of these questions. Then he asked if I was single. I said yes, and he told me that it would be easy for me to make friends. I kind of laughed, and said, "No. I am not looking to be that kind of friend. I am not looking to be some body's booty call." See what I mean? Sleeze-tastic. My friends spoiled me. I took for granted how easy it was for me to be relaxed and just be me.

I guess I just kind of feel like a failure. I have done my best to avoid growing up. It scares the crap out of me. I am terrified of teaching and then realizing that maybe I am not cut out for it. Then what? What do I do? Working at the CDC has really tested me. I have been questioning my ability to do this. To teach kiddos. Sometime when I reflect on my day I shudder. I think to myself....wow. You could have done that so much better. I can't believe I did that, or I could have tried harder, prepared more, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Finally Friday came. We went to a Hail and Farewell for Paul's unit. They welcome new soldiers and say goodbye to the ones who are moving on. It was at this awesome restaurant, which was a ginormous keg. Who would have thought?

It was hotter than all get out inside. No AC, just fans. There were about 60 people crammed into this room. It was hot! and the food took forever to come out. I don't think the restaurant was truly prepared for us either. They had two servers to take all of the orders and bring out the food. Once the food arrived, it was just mediocre. Cool atmosphere, though.

WC=water closet, aka: the restroom. I thought this sign was funny. The little boy is headless, and the girl has no legs or facial expressions. Yikes! The Germans are tough.

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Saturday we woke to sunshine and warm weather. We decided to venture out and go to Luisenpark in Mannheim. This place was incredible. It was unlike any park I have ever been to. You had to pay admission to enter, but there was no lack of entertainment once inside. There was a zoo, water boats, restaurants, mini water parks, and several open fields for people to hang out on.

It was so overwhelming at first. We walked down this path which forked into two directions with ample amounts of things to do both ways. Luckily the path made a giant circle, so we were able to see a little bit of everything! We could have stayed all day, but after a few hours we were hungry and opted for Greek. I know. Shocking.

Ahhhh. The boats. They moved along a path under the water which meant absolutely no effort on our part. We didn't have to paddle or do a darn thing. The boat moved all by itself. It was great. 40 minutes of peace as our boat moved all by itself around the entire pond/mini lake.

The needle thing in the background is the spindle top restaurant. Apparently it has a pretty wicked view of Mannheim.

Ewww. These fish would swim up to the boat with their mouths open expecting food. I am not a big fish person, but the people in front of us were. They kept sticking their hands in the water trying to hold the fish. This of course led to lots of splashing and rocking of our boat. Good times.

After the boats we toured the park some more. That is when we ran into this piece of awesomeness.

Your eyes do not deceive you. This statue looks like a giant piece of poop. Gross? Yes, but we had a good laugh over it.

One of the many water areas. The Germans would just strip down their kids and let them frolic in the water. If you look closely on the railing on the right side, then you will see a small child's pair of panties.

Awesome jungle gym, but very frightening at the same time. Do you see the cages? Great safety precaution. No kid is going to fall off the top, but it is kind of eerie. How could I not take a picture?

Beautiful garden. It was the coolest park I have ever seen.

I almost forgot. As we were searching for the exit, we found this. Those are all pacifiers left at the park, and instead of throwing them away they have been turned into art. The Germans don't waste a thing. One man's trash, another man's treasure?

After we ate Greek we decided that there was still too much sunshine left in the day to go home. The sun stays out now until about 9:30 pm, which is great! We hopped back in the car and headed to Ladenberg. This town is so stinking awesome. If I could choose a place to live off post, then it would be Weinheim or Ladenberg. Our first time we toured the city we ate at Die Kartofel (The Potato), but this time we toured more along the river. It was absolutely gorgeous. The sun started setting along the water and it was like magic. You can't escape all of the beauty that is to be found here. Just when you think you have seen it all, there is something else that takes your breath away.

This is me being a creeper. This is someones backyard. I know. Creepy. In my defense, their backyard is too awesome not be documented. Look at it. Well this picture does no justice to it. They had rows of cabbage and various other veggies. They had all sorts of flowers. It was truly magnificent.

Today we went to Heidelberg after a morning filled with laundry. We were wanting some good chinese food and we just happened to find this inexpensive place that serves great food right in the shopping district. One thing I love about Germany, is that whenever the weather is good people are outside in it. All of the shops were closed (the only thing open on Sunday is restaurants), but people were still out walking up and down the shopping district. We ate our dinner in the "garden" which was really just a table outside. It was no garden. It was a group of tables set up on the sidewalk. Go figure. We enjoyed lots of yummy food outside in the beautiful sunshine. Then on the way back to our car, we saw this....

Go Germany :)

Another week

Well another week has passed and it kicked my butt! The ratio in our room is one adult:10 kiddos. It is crazy! At one point last week we had 29 kids. Oh my goodness it was crazy. I am racking my brain to come up with better solutions to manage these kiddos. I am trying to do as much movement as possible, while still allowing for ample learning opportunities. It is tough. On top of that, I am not too crazy about some of the management. I know this is still new, so it will get better. It will get better, right? I don't know. All that I know is that life here is getting pretty routine. I need to start planning more things for the weekends now. This weekend and the last one I have not felt too good. Last weekend I had no voice. This weekend I am coughing up all kinds of lovelies. I just can't get a break. Friday I saw Iron Man 2...equally as good as the first. Saturday we celebrated Paul and Lenea's anniversary. 17 years. Wow!

We are studying the alphabet right now. We are on an alphabet adventure. One letter each week, and this coming week is the letter Q. You know what starts with the letter Q? Not a whole lot. Bummer. It is okay. We are going to do some Q-tip painting this week though. That should be interesting. 29 kids and paint. I am not entirely positive how it will turn out, but it should be alright. Everything is washable. This coming weekend we are going to be celebrating Elizabeth's 15 death day. She refuses to have a sweet 16 birthday, so we are calling it the death of 15. Eccentric, yes. Anywho, it should be fun. We are going to celebrate it on the patio behind our favorite Greek restaurant with a few families and some of Elizabeth's friends. It should be fun!

Time Flies

It is amazing how much faster the days pass by now that I am working. Grrr. I don't like it. I need to be more intentional with my time here. I want to do more traveling on the weekend and explore more of this great land! Unfortunately this past weekend I was sick. I spent all day yesterday inside reading Harry Potter. I never thought I would say this, but I am addicted to the series. I am on the seventh and final book and it is consuming me. It was good to have someting to get wrapped up in, so that I could rest up and allow my body some down time. I started this week with a cough and a little congestion. I assumed it was allergies, since everyone around here is doing the same thing. Slowly my cough progressed so that Thursday I was starting to lose my voice. I sounded like an adolescent boy going through puberty. It was lovely. Friday my voice was kaput. It did not work. Saturday I spent all day indoors reading until Saturday night Paul and I ventured to the movies. We saw the remake of Nightmare on Elm St. It was so-so. At first we thought we were in the wrong movie theater because there were two couples with small children ranging in ages from infant to six years old. Parents of the year. Those poor kids looked traumatized at the end of the movie. Essentially the parents were only making it harder on themselves. The entire premise of the movie is not to fall asleep or you will die. It is just weird because for some reason I assumed that soldiers would make very disciplined and involved parents. This is proving to not be the case for a large majority of the parent population. There is a small percentage of parents who are really great and involved parents, but the majority are just terrible. Case and point the parents who brought their kiddos to a rated R horror flick. Way to go.

Today I am feeling much better. My voice is almost totally back, so I am planning on reconnecting with the world via skype. I am finding it a lot harder to keep in touch than I thought it would be. It is killing me! I have missed numerous skype dates and I miss you guys. I guess you could say I am a little homesick at the moment. Just missing some of the conveniences I was used to...being able to get in the car and go wherever I wanted, hanging out with friends and family, shopping at my favorite places, etc. I know...I am throwing myself a bit of a pitty party. I will get over it. I just love you guys and I hate missing out on things like friends' graduations, birthdays, and anything really. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a fantastic opportunity here. I am finding out more about myself while trying to become an independent person. All right. That was deep enough for one post :) Love you guys!!

My first full week in my classroom!

Ahhh....must love the weekend! I woke refreshed this morning, which is a feeling I haven't felt all week. It just seemed like I was never going to catch up on my sleep. I slept for almost 12 hours and it was glorious! It is almost noon here and I am still in my PJ's. Good times. The weather here has been crap. Those two weeks of sunshine and bliss were a mean trick. We were expecting the weather to stay that way, but aparently that is not the case. It is just gloomy. We have a few hours of sunshine here and there, but mostly overcast and drizzly. Gross. It makes you want to find a good book and curl up in bed. I must venture out today to return a dress in the Mannheim shopping district. I am thinking about bringing a book and finding a cafe to park myself for the afternoon. This will allow me to feel a little better about doing absolutely nothing on my Saturday. :)

The week in review:

Sunday we went to Ramstein, which is an air force base that is about 10 times better than ours. These are some pictures taken along the way. My intention was to take pictures of Ramstein to show as proof of the awesomeness, but my camera died after the third picture I took along the way. Whomp. Whomp.

The first thing we did once we arrived in Ramstein was eat at Macaroni Grill. Of course it was delicious. The best part was that everyone spoke English. Don't get me wrong, I love learning German. It is just nice to be able to speak in my native tongue and not feel ridiculous for trying to pretend that I know what I am doing. I didn't find anything while we were there, which is probably a good thing because I won't recieve my first pay check for a month.

I decided it would be best to give you the highlights of the week instead of a daily breakdown. Let's see.... Monday was spring cleanup. All of the flowerbeds were spruced up with fresh flowers. The ghetto trash sitting along some of the buildings such as old bikes no one rides, were hauled to the curb for trash pickup. The new found beauty of spring clean up lasted about 5 days before the ghettoness returned. It didn't take long fo the hoodlums to kick up the newly planted flowers or leave their trash scattered along the streets. Ridiculous. I have decided that I am going to like my co-workers (as in the people on my team that work with me in the preschool room...I am not so sure about some of the members of management). They seem like genuine people, so I think we will get along. It is kind of hard/weird for me to be in the lead position. I had wanted to ease into it, since I am still learning the routines, but this was not the case. I have already done two weeks of lesson plans, updated bulletin boards, set up conferences with parents, etc. It is all me, but my team is really great. They do anything I ask, and are eager to help. I am pretty excited. The only thing I am not excited about is the crazy amount of kiddos in my room. Ahhh! I would say that about half of them have some pretty intense behavior issues due to terrible parenting. It makes me want to say a few choice words to some parents who are refusing to parent these kids. I think the craziest thing is that for some reason I thought that soldiers would be very diligent parents who would reinforce more structure into these kids lives. This is not the case. They pretty much let their kids do whatever they want. I would sort the parents into two groups....really good parents and parents who should not have kids. There really is no middle ground on this matter. With all of this being said, it makes for a really tiring day when I am chasing kiddos around for eight hours. I come home and zone out. Eventually my body will adjust and this will feel normal. I can't wait for that!

Everybody's working for the weekend.

Ahhhh....the weekend. I was pretty excited once I saw Friday. I was pooped. Wednesday I did not have to watch videos, just more paperwork. I am pretty sure that they know everything about me, which is a little intimidating at times. In the afternoon I did more observations in other classrooms and not my own. Interesting, but kind of odd. I would have like the opportunity to be in my room more, so that I would be able to see the setup of the day. This would have helped in making the lesson plans for the upcoming week, but aparently that is not how they do things. After work I came home and cooked dinner from a box. We had one of those Macaroni Grill things...it comes with noodles, spices, grated cheese, and sundried tomatoes. All you have to do is add the chicken, water, and butter. Very simple, but so yummy! Then I headed to bed around 9 PM for my early morning the next day.

My alarm rang at 4 AM for my 5:30 AM shift. I am one of those people who must set my alarm to allow snooze time. I just can't get up immediately unless I realize I have overslept. In that case the rest of my day is ruined. I find myself running to get ready and the rest of my day is off. I need time to wake up and put on my happy pants. I didn't sleep too well that night; I was too fearful of oversleeping and being late for my first early shift. I found out that if you are a minute late, then they dock you 15 minutes on the time clock. I am not entirely sure how legal that is, so we are looking into it. Anywho, I was not late. In fact, I was early. Shock! Actually I have been on time and/or early every day! Sorry, I have to give myself props for this because I am not the most punctual person. I found that I really enjoyed the early shift. The morning was so productive. We (Shauna, my coworker, and I) were able to get so much done... we organized some shelves, laminated fun decorations for Cinco de Mayo, and other odd jobs around the room. The kids slowly started trickling in around 6ish and then another wave of kids came around 7:30. I spent the entire day in my classroom. It was glorious! We also had a team meeting to get everyone on the same page. We are behind on observation portfolios, which are really great in theory. Every child has a portfolio that the teachers add to every week. It can be simple things like Johnny learned to tie his shoe, or Susie was able to say her ABC's. Really great, right? I agree, until you realize that I have 28 kiddos and the portfolios have not been updated since August of 2009. I love jumping into something and already feeling like I am drowning in it. So refreshing. Not. Sorry, I am a wee bit bitter about this. I did find out that all of the people on my team can help on the portfolios, so we have divided the kids up amongst us. We each have 7 kids to make observations for. It is a good thing. I also found out that I am loosing one of my team members to the toddler classroom. Major whomp. I have a very attention needy group, so the more hands the better. After work I got an official ID. I can now purchase things on base without any help. I am a big girl. I can now by a soda from the commissary. Small victories my friends. Small victories. This is a big joke with us because I was told that I did not have permission to purchase anything on base with my installation pass. I could enter the commissary, PX, or anything else, but not purchase. Where is the logic in this? Now I am a big kid. I can buy things all by myself.

Friday I had my normal shift hours from 9-6. I spent the first half of the day watching videos circa 1975. Always fun to see how far we have progressed in fashion. Other than that, I didn't really learn anything I didn't already know. I couldn't imagine that a random person on the street wouldn't know either. Yeesh. It was training for the sake of training; just so they can say they did it. I went to my little training room, sat down to my 8 videos, and thought about the numerous things I would have liked to be doing. After lunch I came back to my room to enjoy the rest of the afternoon with my kiddos. We had cake for a birthday celebration and played outside. It is amazing what sugar does to a little person. It is like we injected them with crazy juice. After our outdoor time we came inside and closed down the room. I really like my team members. They seem really supportive and like good people. We went to eat italian food for dinner, but this italian place is located in the back of a park. It is pretty incredible!

This is a tree in their beer garden. It catches my eye every time.

The beer garden outside. On a sunny day you would not be able to find a seat out here.

The inside. I know it is dark, but it was the best picture I could get. The pictures on the walls are a mixture of famous people and random Italian families.

Today I slept in. It was glorious. We were going to go to the MaiMarkt, but it was rainy and yucky outside so we opted for lunch and a movie. Of course we ate Greek to satisfy our weekly indulgence, and then we went to see Percy and the Olympians. It was pretty cute. I have spent a large majority of the day reading. There is nothing like curling up with a good book on a rainy day. It is oddly satisfying. Tomorrow we are going to Ramstein. I can't wait to see what fun we find :)

Ahhhh...the weekend :)

We had a fantastic weekend!! It was so relaxing and the weather was perfect. The sun came out to play and we soaked up every second we could. Saturday morning we ventured to Weinheim for the farmer's market at their MarktPlatz. There is just nothing like fresh produce. It is insane how much better fresh tastes compared to what we get at the commissary. We ate lunch at a cafe and snagged some fresh produce, jam, and a bottle of white wine that was produced in one of the local regions. Then we hopped back in the car and went back to post for a baby shower. One of the females in Paul's unit is about to pop, so some of the other women in his unit threw her a shower. The best part was that we had no idea who she was, nor did most of the people attending the shower. Oh...I forgot another tidbit of information. The shower was held in a back room at the bowling center. Love it. Elizabeth and I managed to scoot away quickly, leaving Paul and Lenea stranded. Well not stranded exactly. They had a car. We couldn't help it. It was a beautiful day, and the thought of waisting it inside bowling was devastating. We decided to hop on the train to downtown Mannheim. We originally were going to try to buy some train tickets to Paris for next weekend until we got to the DB desk and the clerk told us it was going to be 276 euro. Whomp. Whomp. We decided that was out of our price range for a day in Paris. It is only a three hour train ride, so we were going to try and go just for the day until we heard the outrageous price. We will have to save that for some other weekend. After our feeling of defeat we landed in the shopping district. It is amazing how shopping seems to soothe the soul. After a couple of hours of walking around looking for a purple dress for Nicole's wedding, (which I found...YAY!) Paul and Lenea called so we headed home. That evening we went to the movie theater and saw Valentine's Day. It was so-so. Nothing I would rush to see if it is still in theaters.

Sunday we returned to Weinheim. This time we took a ginormous blanket and went straight to the park. It was gorgeous. I took a book and Elizabeth brought her homework. Paul and Lenea walked around Weinheim and eventually met up with us at the park. When we arrived at the park we were met with a surprise.

I think it must have been some sort of family day event, because they had all sorts of games and tents set up for families.

The greatest part of the day was the sun. I even got a little pink on my shoulders. It was so nice. To top it all off we ate Greek for dinner. The weekend was so relaxing and perfect for a new and fresh week at work.

I started a full week of work on Monday with paperwork and training. Not my favorites, but I guess they have to be done. It feels like I have signed my life away. I signed and initialed what felt like 100 papers. I am not sure how much of an exaggeration that is, but sadly it probably isn't too over the top. During the afternoon I was able to observe in different classrooms to see what happens in each room. I spent a few hours in Strong Beginnings (this class is for 5 year olds who didn't make the September birthday deadline), and concluded my day in infants. Thank goodness I am not in infants. I don't think I have the gusto to survive in that room. It also proved to me that I am no where near ready for kids. Sorry mom. It will be at least five years before that happens. After work we headed to the commisary for groceries. Our refigerator was beverageless...no water, tea, or soda. We also needed a few random things like lunch meat, apples, yogurt, etc. It was a good start to the week, but I am so ready to be in my own classroom instead of seeing everyone elses.

Today was good. Not nearly as much paperwork, and I was able to spend a little more time in my room. I made a to-do list of things that need to be done in the room after observing in the other classes. I saw some great ideas in the other rooms, and remembered some things from my wonderful time in Kindergarten that I would love to add to the room. We are going to have a team meeting on Thursday where we will be able to brainstorm and collaborate on what needs to be done for the kiddos. I am pretty excited about my room and my team. I heard several awesome remarks concerning their work ethic, so we should work well together. I am the preschool lead and have four assistants. It is weird to be in charge of others, but I am excited about it. Unfortunately I am going to loose one of my team members because we will have too many staff members in the room now. The ratio for preschool is one adult:10 kids. The room has a capacity to hold 30 kids (YIKES) and we have 28 on the roster. I am pretty sure I had the deer in headlights look on my face when they told me this. I was expecting somewhere between 12 and 20 kids, but not 28. I was told that I will have 30 kids by the end of the month, which is quickly approaching. I have the largest room in the building, so space is not a problem. Chaos is the problem. 30 preschool kids between 3 and 4 years old in one class is pandamonium. I am going to try to figure out a way to group the kids so that we aren't so many kids in one area at a time. The classroom looks like it was once two classrooms and part of the middle wall was knocked down. I don't know. It will be lots of brainstorming with my team, but I am sure we can do it. I know that I am qualified for this. I just have to turn my noggin on and think it through. Most of today I simply observed some more in different classrooms. The staff was really supportive everywhere I went, so I didn't feel like I was intruding. They didn't treat me like an outsider, so I am thinking that this will be a good thing. We shall see.

Tomorrow is filled with videos. Yes. Videos. Luckily they have my transcript, so I am going to be able to bypass some of the training due to the courses I took in college. I also found out that Thursday I will see what it is like to open at 5:30 am, so I will be getting off at 2:30. Friday I will close at 6. Next week I will start my normal hours from 9-6 with an hour lunch break. I am not crazy about the time slot, but I have no choice. All lead teachers work the same hours. Luckily the sun stays out until about 9 pm, so I still have several hours of sunshine after work. I am loving life!

I got a job!

Wednesday I was lazy! Did some laundry with Lenea and finished the fifth book of Harry Potter. 870 pages. Oh yes. It was an accomplishment. It is an odd and satisfying feeling to finish such a ginormous book. I invested so much time in those 870 pages that I almost felt empty once I finished. Luckily there are more books in the series. Don't judge me. Our bookstore is not so bueno. I am reading whatever Elizabeth suggests, and she thought it was a sin that I started and did not finish the series. I must admit that I am enjoying it. It is that little kid inside of me that wants to believe in magic. Anyway... I finally got a hold of someone at Human Resources. Yahoo! They scheduled me for in-processing on Thursday at 2:30. We also found out Wednesday night that Elizabeth had been nominated and won the youth volunteer of the year award for 2010. The ceremony for all of the volunteers was to be held Thursday evening at 6 pm. The only problem was that Elizabeth was currently in Frankfurt for MUSS (Model United States Senate) where the students act as senators and try to pass bills amongst themselves. It is pretty cool. I never had my stuff together like she does when I was 15. She is pretty stellar. All of this to say that in order for Elizabeth to attend we were going to have to make a 45 minute trip to Frankfurt to the volunteer ceremony and a 45 minute trip back to Frankfurt for her to finish her conference deal.

Thursday finally arrived and I had tried to contact the Human Resources in Heidelberg for my in-processing all morning to try and change my appointment time, but I could not get a hold of a soul. I wanted to move my appointment to an earlier time so that I could ride with Paul and Lenea to Frankfurt after my appointment. They were in a meeting all morning long, so my appointment time stayed at 2:30 pm. We were hoping that it would not take more than 30 minutes, since I was just going to be signing the last of the paperwork. This was not the case. Luckily I arrived about 10 minutes early and was able to start on some of the paperwork. What kills me is that a large majority of the paperwork are things that I have already filled out numerous times. Why do I have to answer the same questions over and over again? Grrr to the military. Back to the story... I finished my paperwork and spoke with a woman from Human Resources who told me more about my benefits and the behind the scene details of my job. I have full benefits... health and life insurance, 401k, retirement plan, yadda, yadda, yadda. I don't feel old enough to be dealing with some of this. As of 3:40 pm on Thursday I no longer have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for my independent Cobra Plan. I have Aetna! and it is SOOOO much cheaper than what I was paying. That is one of the small benefits of being employed! I can now go to the doctor and not have to pay a 500 euro deposit. Sigh. I can breathe easier knowing that I am not going to be screwed over quite as badly by my insurance company. Since my appointment ran until 3:40, Paul and Lenea went to Frankfurt to snag Elizabeth so that we could make it to the ceremony on time. I rode the train home and we all headed to the ceremony together. It was nice. Nothing grandios, but nice. The food was yummy and the awards were for well deserving people. After the ceremony we quickly left the building so that Elizabeth could return to her MUSS festivities. It was a whirlwind, but fun. Once we arrived back at the apartment, I went to sleep to rest up for my first day of work. I'm a big kid now (in the old theme song of Toys 'R Us... at least I think that is what it weant to).

Today I arrived at work at 7:55 am. That sounds so much nicer than the 5:30 am I was originally told. I found out that I will only have to show up at 5:30 am a couple of times a month and will only be required to stay until 2:30. Aparently the CDC doesn't pay overtime. They roll extra hours into a cumulative tank where they are stored for paychecks that I did not meet the full 40 hour work week. Whatever. It is just another way for the government to screw me over. I would much rather be paid time and a half, but what do I know? Once I arrived I was escorted to a conference room where I spent the first half of my day reading Standard Operating Procedures. Whomp. Whomp. I was allowed unlimited breaks, but I didn't use them. I wanted to read all of the manuals/guidelins/rules and just be done with it. Halfway through the morning they had a staff meeting, which I was able to sit in on. It sounds like there is a lot of work to be done at the CDC, but they seem like good people. It should be interesting. After the meeting I returned to my table and finished up the SOPs. Then I walked back to the apartment for my hour lunch break and chatted with Lenea some about the day thus far. When I returned after lunch I was given more "weekend reading." Boo! The good part is that instead of reading the papers right then, I was able to observe in my classroom. I actually got to interact with my kiddos and meet the people I will be working with. Shocker, eh? There are 28 kids on the roster, but only 20 were present today. The room fills at maximum with 30 kids. I am sure I had the dear in headlights look when they told me this. 28 kids? and I could have 30? The possibilities for mass chaos are outstanding. The ratio for preschool kiddos is 1 adult:10 kids, so there will always be 3 adults present. All of the people seemed to be really nice and very encouraging, so I think this will be a good thing. All in all it was a good day. Only one kid pooped his pants on the playground, and the best part is that I didn't have to change him. Score one for the hometeam. :) Monday I will continue the same routine. Training in the morning and observation in the afternoon.

Tomorrow we are going to Weinheim to the MarktPlatz. I can't wait for fresh fruit and veggies. Mmm mmm good!

Thank you Mr. Volcano

Monday was an eventful day. First, Elizabeth started school again. Spring break was last week for her, so Monday was a brutal morning. Fortunately I slept in. I am soaking up every opportunity to sleep in until my job starts, which should hopefully be any day now. We shall see. Must love the military. I really didn't sleep in too late. I woke up around 8 and called Human Resources to check on job stuff. Not much to report. Whomp. Whomp. Then I called the University Clinic where I met with the German doctor who so generously gave me my insulin to check on my 500 euro deposit. It had been 2 1/2 months since my visit, and they had not called. The man I was talking with in the International Patient Office told me that the doctor did not input my information into the system yet, hence the reason he was unable to give me my money back. He called the doctor and did his business, so that I was able to meet him at 2 pm and get 420 euro back. Yippee!! Thank goodness for small treasures. This period of unemployment has been rather expensive, but I have loved every second of it. I am not going to lie though. I am ready to start working! This sense of freedom of no working schedule comes with a large feeling of laziness and I don't like it. Since I was getting so much money back from the doctor, Paul decided to escort me. He was originally leaving Monday morning, but flights were still cancelled due to the ash. We decided to drive this time instead of taking the train. It was a success. We made it to the hospital without a glich. The only set back we faced was parking. We followed the parking signs to an underground garage. We get to the machine to get our ticket to park, press the button, and nothing comes out. Paul repeats the process with the same results. Eventually cars began to line up behind us. Go team USA. The closer we look, we notice a small sign at the corner of the machine that says, "Premium Parking." Great. Are we parked in the wrong spot? Is this only for doctors? We have no idea. Then we sill a smaller button hidden under a metal flap, so Paul decides to push it. Immediately a German voice responds, to which Paul says, "uhhhh... we may be parked in the wrong spot, but we can't get out because cars are backed up behind us." The voice does not come back, so we press the button again. This time an English voice comes on and replies, "Two minutes." Okay. Two minutes and then what? Eventually the green button that is supposed to give us our parking token begins to flash, so Paul pushes it and recieves a yellow token. I don't get it. Why did we have to wait two minutes? We find a parking spot and walk towards the clinic. Somehow we managed to park directly under the main entrance. I love it. Something worked in our favor. Once we walked in we asked the magic "i", aka: information, where the international patient office is located. The man sends us on a wild goose chase, so I called the man I had spoken to earlier on the phone. He generously offered to come and pick us up. He lead us to his office, had all of his paperwork ready on his desk, and gave me 420 euro in cash. Fantastic. I was so excited. All of this happened in 5 minutes. I kept telling the man at the international patient office thank you, to which he simply chuckled. He said, "Why do you thank me? I am only doing my job." I wanted to tell him that he had obviously never been to a hospital in America nor had he worked with the military. Instead I just smiled. We then successfully made it back home. This is much more of a victory than it sounds. You know how you print out directions to go some place, but you don't print them out for the return trip and get terribly lost. We did not. Small victories my friends. Small victories. Once we returned we waited for Elizabeth to get out of school, so that we could go into Mannheim and look around and have dinner. We ate at Vapiano's, one of Elizabeth's favorite restaurants, since Elizabeth would be leaving the next day for her conference. Then we headed home for a good night of sleep. Well, Paul had to stay up to call his people due to the repeat cancellation of flights. Since Paul wouldn't be able to leave until next Saturday, his planned have been canceled and he gets to stay! Yay! One point for the home team.

Today we sent Elizabeth off to her conference. She is leaving us until Friday. We will miss her witty banter. After that we headed to the Rheine Neckar Harley Davidson Dealership. Paul needed some oil for his bike, so Lenea and I tagged along. Of course along the way we did what we do best. We got lost. Somehow we loop-de-dood our way there and managed to make it home without getting lost. Crazy, right? We stopped at the American restaurant located on the other side of the gates of post and had some yummy colas and a good meal. I had a club sandwich and BBQ chips. The best part was the fact that the Dixie Chicks were playing on the speakers. Kind of ironic eh? After that we came home and stopped at the shopette/video store (yes- imagine a corner store and video store with 1/12 of the selection smooshed into one) to pick up The Box and Boondock Saints 2. They were out of Boondock Saints, but they had The Box. It was terrible. Very sci-fy and not my element. The movie rolled to credits and I sat there regretting the last 1 1/2 of my life I wasted on that movie. It was that good (that's me being sarcastic- I realize it is hard to translate that in text, so I thought I would just tell you).

Still battling Human Resources to start my job. Grr! They are so unorganized it is driving me crazy. In addition, they do not communicate very well between departments. Must love the government.

On a high note... the weather has been absolutely amazing! The sun has been shining every day! It is truly phenomenal!

Heidelberg Castle!

Saturday we drove to Heidelberg, which is a heck of a lot closer by car than by train. 30 minutes in the car and 45 minutes or 1 1/2 hour by train, depending on the route you take. We originally planned to leave by 10 AM, but that didn't happen. We did not even wake up until 10 AM, so we left the house by 1 PM. Go figure. As we were pulling into the city we noticed some construction on the road, which altered our Google directions a bit. Then we saw this delightful sign. This is one of the reasons I am not hip on driving over here. I don't know what I would do if I was driving down the road and saw this. What are all of the arrows for? Why is the arrow in the lower lefthand corner pointing towards another arrow?



Once we arrived in Heidelberg Lenea and I had to pee. We were so excited when we found a public restroom that was free. That was until we entered the stall and saw that it wasn't even a real toilet seat. It was simply painted on. I think I would rather pay 5o cents for a toilet, than use this one for free.



Once we parked the car we set off for a grand adventure to find the castle. The directions from Google had us parking right by the castle, but the construction threw us off and we ended up parking a little ways away from it. Not too bad of a walk, though. We were able to see more of the city that we hadn't seen, and the weather was gorgeous!



What a beautiful city! Mountains in the background and fun architecture on the buildings!!



The Rheine. I think I spelled that correctly :)

Another fun street with cobblestones.

Another fun part of our Saturday was seeing fraternities and sororities from the region meeting up in Heidelberg. The best part could have been the fun hats they were strutting around in. This isn't the best picture, but there hats were similar to pilot hats of various colors. Some of the hats looked like they had giant horns on the front of them. They were awesome.

If you walked through the gates, then you would walk over the bridge to cross the Rheine.

The path that leads to the castle. There was a metro train that lead up the mountain, but Elizabeth and I decided to walk it. It was a trek! I don't think you can tell quite how steep it was, but my calves were bumpin' by about the third step.

This was our view once we made it to the top of the trail that lead to the castle.

A view of the city from one of the windows in the wall that surrounds the castle.

Same view, just zoomed in on my camera for this one.

I really liked this wooden door, and of course the Germans had to graffiti it as the Germans do.

I like this one better :) You can't see all of the graffiti.

This pathway lead to the inner courtyard of the castle.

Another view of the pathway.

View from the window.



Playing with my camera settings. I am trying to collect black and white photos for my room.

This bad boy is located below the castle in the wine cellar. Believe it or not, there is an even bigger one of these on the other side of the wall. I couldn't get a clear shot of it, because the castle was overflowing with people. It may not have been the best idea to see such a landmark on a Saturday, but the weather was beautiful so it made up for some of the crowdedness.

Fun little wine guy on a wall in the wine cellar.

The sun was kickin', so several of my pictures appear to be glowing. These are two walls from the inner courtyard of the castle.

A sun dial and some renovations. Yay! In case you were wondering, the time on the sun dial was off by a couple of hours. Another problem with sun dials is that it requires the sun. If you were living in a sunny place (anywhere other than Germany), then this would not be a problem. We don't have a lot of sunny days in Germany, so I can only imagine how much fun they had with this fun invention.

Once we paid to see inside the castle, we found out that we were only paying to see inside the courtyard. If we wanted to see inside the castle, then we had to pay for a guided tour. Luckily for students, Elizabeth and I, it was only 5 euro total. For adults, Paul and Lenea, it was 9 euro. Not too bad considering this was a full day's worth of activity.

This is a mdel of the castle, as if you couldn't have figured that out for yourself. :) Look in the lower lefthand corner. The ramp going up to the castle is the donkey path Elizabeth and I walked to get to the castle. The previous picture is a view out to the gardens, which are located on the righthand side of the picture.

If you turn your head sideways (sorry for the inconvenience), then you will see the toilets. Thank God for modern plumbing. Can you imagine the smell outside?

The goodies that dropped from the toilet would have landed right where I was standing to take this picture. Joyful.

This is the gaming area, where they kept deer and other wild creatures for hunting. Look how green the grass is. I love Spring!

The other end of the gaming area.

This room is located directly above the ginormous wine keg. There is a direct line that taps into the keg for wine on tap. How elegant.

You can rent this room in the castle for birthdays, weddings, or any other shindig that you would need to invite 500 friends to.

Another wall in the courtyard, but this one shows how intertwined some peoples' religions were back in the day. The top layer has all of the Greek/Roman gods, while the middle floor is decorated with Jesus' closest disciples. The ground floor has all of the gods. I guess they just wanted to make everyone happy.

View of the inner courtyard.

This wall had deer horns mounted all along it in between the windows. The wall directly in view is a painted picture of a deer's body with an actual deer head on it. Yuck.

Awesome door. Unfortunately this is not original to the castle, but it is still pretty old.

Part of this tower collapsed. Whomp. Whomp. The walls were crazy thick. I could not imagine building something of this magnitude.

Walking towards the gardens...

The view of the city from on top of one of the walls surrounding the castle.

Pretty flowers in the garden.

You can't have a garden without the statue of a naked man in a fountain. It would be un-European.

Ahhh...the garden :) It was so green! People were lounging all over the place. I tried to avoid getting random people in my pictures as much as possible, but it was unavoidable at some points.

This wall surrounded the garden with an awesome forest on the other side. The German word for forest is wald. Kind of cool since our stop from the train is Kaefertal Wald. The only downer is that we aren't surrounded by an awesome forest like this. Boo.

More garden.

Crumbling castle.

Fun times at the castle. I have realized that I take way more landscape than people shots. Thanks to Lenea we have this people shot.

This was the walk back down, but on the opposite side that we walked up. We were a bit confused on the way down, but we eventually found our way to food and the car.

Today we had a lazy day filled with laundry and Greek food. Both Paul and Elizabeth had to pack for their upcoming trips. Paul leaves tomorrow for two months if the volcano allows it. All of the flights are cancelled for the time being. We are selfishly hoping his flight is cancelled so he can't leave us. Elizabeth leaves Tuesday for a conference with her school and will be gone until Friday. it will be a very quiet house with just Lenea and I. What will we do? I am sure we will figure something out :)

So sorry I have not updated the spring break trip anymore. I will do my best to get that completed soon. Until next time...