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!
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