The Picture Post :)

Alright folks... hop on the train so I can take you on a virtual tour of Mannheim (the condensed version at least)!!

The Mannheim Watertower. It is pretty centrally located in downtown. Apparently when there isn't snow on the ground the lawn is covered with flowers.

The university in Mannheim. I am pretty sure at one time it was home to some sort of royalty.

More of downtown Mannheim. Germany is one of the few European countries that drive on the same side of the road as us. Score one for the home team.

Now the next series of pictures are of our apartment. Keep in mind this is military housing. It is the equivalent to living in college dorms.

This is Elizabeth's room. She essentially condensed her old Kentucky bedroom (3 small rooms) into this dorm room.

As you can see, she has a lot of .... stuff, but it is all uniquely Elizabeth. :)

The snowy view from my bedroom. This is all housing. The outside of our apartment looks just like those. Beautiful is not the first word that comes to mind, but it's home for now :)

This was a couple of days ago as I was walking to the USO/Education area. I walk down this path until I get to the church and pass the clinic to the gate and take a left to cross the street. On the right is the area where the USO, Bank, Education building...pretty much everything is. Round trip is about a mile.

...and this is where I want to live. It is nicely located in the heart of Mannheim.

My bedroom! I finally picked out a duvet cover to match my curtains. I have decided to go with black and white pictures on the walls.

Ahhhh. I do love James Dean. Notice my dorm closets. Feels like Kerr Hall all over again :)

The living room. On the right hand side of the picture is a bookshelf with curtains hung on it to act as a divider from the living room and office area. This is the first thing you see if you look to the right as you enter the apartment.


The office on the other side of the bookshelf. Pretty cozy.

Quaint kitchen area and dining room.

Today it snowed. I know that is no surprise, but this is what I walked through just to get on the computer. It may not seem like much, but the windchill is COLD!!

All of the sidewalks are cobblestone or brick.

This is where all of the computers are located. The building straight ahead is the education building, which is where I am now. The building on the right beyond the square P parking sign is the USO. In this same area is the MP (Military Police) station, Mr. Donaldson's (the man who helped Elizabeth get into school and started my installation pass paperwork) office, Housing, and the bank.

Hmm....what is missing from these pictures? The sun. Whomp. Whomp. While I love the idea of waking up to fresh snow, I am not crazy about the idea of having a day without sunshine. It is very rare that sun and snow happen on the same day. Well, so far it is very rare to have a day with sunshine at all. We have had some crazy weather.

Lenea and I bought train tickets to Amsterdam today. We will be taking the ICE which is a very fast train. It will be a four hour ride instead of the 7 it would have taken if we chose anything else. Yay! Lenea is going to go early with me so that I can be in Amsterdam when Kristin, Rachel, and Angie come in. I am so excited for friends to come over!! So very excited! Now that I have purchased my ticket I feel very official! It is only four weeks away!!

Now I will give you the highlights of last week:

Saturday (Feb. 6): Elizabeth and I explored the walking district on our own, and we happened to run into this one man band/show. I was pretty impressed. It reminded me of the Dr. Seuss characters riding their musical bikes with crazy horns and drums coming off of the sides.

That night for dinner we had GREEK! Mmmm!! It is so good! I wish I could send care packages of all of the yummy food for you guys to try! After dinner we headed to Ikea to buy my awesome duvet cover. We spotted an awesome black and white photo of Amsterdam where the only color in the photo is a red bike. I loved it. Paul and Lenea picked it out as a Valentine's present for me. It is pretty over the top for a Valentine's present, but I'm not complaining. Who needs chocolate?

Sunday (Feb 7): We went to go eat at Sushi Circle with a woman who was in the German culture class with Paul and Lenea. She happens to be a dentist at the clinic on post. She is so sweet! She is in her fifties, single, and she has traveled the world. She is a doll! She also was telling me about one of the young doctors (well let's be honest... he's not a doctor, but a dentist) who is single, 27, and wants to meet people his age. I was pretty excited, until I met him. I will explain more about that in a minute. This Sushi Circle place was so much fun! They serve the sushi on a conveyer belt and you just grab whatever looks good. The plates are color coordinated according to price, so they can just tally up your bill at the end. The sushi was just as good in Germany as it is in the states. Yummy!

Monday (Feb 8): I had to go to the clinic to get a PPD skin test as part of the pre-employment packet to work at the CDC. While we were at the clinic Lenea and I decided to go to meet this dentist that I was told is cute, young and single. Let's just say he was not for me. I was very polite, but made sure to leave the situation without giving him my number. After that, Paul came home for lunch to give Lenea and I the car to drive around and explore a little. We really didn't do much, but it was fun to explore some more of Mannheim that I hadn't seen in the comfort of a cozy warm car.

Tuesday (Feb 9): I finished my 7 year background check for the CDC. This packet was intense. I had to list every place I have lived, every job I have ever had (well that part was not too bad- I have only had three legit jobs if you don't count babysitting), any tickets if the amount was greater than $150 (there were two. I know. Lead foot.), and a lengthy list of references. Don't be surprised if you get a phone call :) and thank you in advance if you do! Also, I got my fingerprints done today. The woman who did them was a German and she loved to talk. I did a lot of smiling and nodding. Her accent was really thick, so I caught about 70% of the conversation. :)

Wednesday (Feb 10): I had to go to Human Resources and type in my 7 year background check. It took 11/2 hours. Yeesh. While I did that, Lenea drove up to Vodafone. I think we will be cancelling our service with them and switching to TKS. Turns out they have not put in a service request yet. Go Vodafone. In Germany, Deutch Telecomm runs a monopoly on the phonelines. They rent out the lines to different phone providers such as Vodafone and TKS. Since the jack in the wall is not working, Vodafone must call Deutch Telecomm to put in a service request. When Lenea found out they had not done that yet, she flipped. Rightly so. It has been 4 weeks since they told us it would be turned on. Aye yaye yaye!

Today: It has taken about 2 hrs to upload all of the pictures on here, which is why I can't wait to have internet in our apartment. My computer is so much faster than the public ones in the education building. That's okay because I am in a pretty good mood today. I have some country theme songs playing in my head.... "Feeling Good Again" by Robert Earl Keen and "I'm Alive" by Kenny Chesney ft. Dave Matthews. I also bought my train tickets to meet my girls in Amsterdam, then Germany and end up in Paris, France. Oh my goodness I am excited!!!!

Tomorrow: We are going to take a day trip to Frankfurt. We found a ton of museums located along the river so that we can stay warm in this crazy snowy weather! I can't wait to explore. Until next time..... I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!