My disclaimer, I've tried a couple of times to get on a put up a new post. I couldn't get blogger to work, the internet was being slow, blah blah blah. So now that I'm FINALLY updating again I feel like this is a major success for me.
It's been over a month since my last blog post, and it's been a busy time! I landed in the US in late January and got to see friends and family while I waited for Seth and Nigel to join me. Oh and shopping. Lots and lots of shopping. I may have gone a little bit overboard, but really I was a lot of fun and I didn't give in to any impulse buying, okay well much impulse buying. Most of the stuff I bought was kitchen stuff that I missed in our kitchen in Korea. No one is probably as excited about the new kitchen stuff as I am so I'll spare everyone the details!
I did get some clothes too. That was fantastic to actually be able to find things my size that I liked and would wear! I also learned how to knit. Which is exciting! I can make stuff now in my free time that the husband and I will use, maybe even a certain doggie we've dragged all over the world. I've been knitting, taking it out when I'm not happy with how it looks, reknitting and eventually being satisfied with the finished product.
Eventually Seth and Nigel joined me mid-February and we began a whirlwind of visiting friends and family. We tried to see as many people as we could and I think we did pretty good, however, I still feel like maybe we didn't get to spend as much time with anyone as we'd liked. But we did what we could in the short amount of time we had. And of course we did a little more shopping. Seth wasn't as excited as I was, but he did enjoy going to stores that hadn't been available to us in Korea and won't be available here in Germany. (At least I tell myself that he did!)
Then we left for Germany. I can not tell you how excited I was when I looked out the window after flying a few hours over the Atlantic and realized I was seeing lights in Europe. It was the beginning of realizing a life long dream. (I'll leave out all the details of the flights because really it was a lot of flying, airports and over priced airport food and drinks.) We landed a little before 6:30am local time and I felt like I'd been up for days. (Have I ever mentioned it's nearly impossible for me to sleep on a plane? I even tried drugging myself with Dramamine!!)
Then it was a lot hurrying up and waiting; Nigel did not travel so well coming to Germany and had a lot of waiting in his kennel. No exaggeration we waited 2 hours for our luggage, well everyone on the flight waited that long for luggage. There are still some kinks to work out in this new system the military has going for coming to Germany. It's a safety thing and I'm not complaining about the military trying to keep my and my family safe, I just hope they get the few issues ironed out. From the way the security guys were talking they're working on it and trying to figure out a better solution so that's good, really good.
Honestly I was so tired I don't remember what all we had to do and how long we had to wait, but we arrived in Schweinfurt about 2:30 pm. We hadn't had lunch, just some snacks that the USO provided. The USO was pretty awesome at Ramstein, I was not pleased with the one in Baltimore as the lady at the desk yelled at me when we walked in because we had Nigel. No signs were posted saying no pets, she didn't come up and talk to me about it, just yelled across the room. So yeah, long day shortened Seth got us food after we checked in and I crashed before 6 and slept until 3:30pm the next day.
I tried to get up! I tried really, really hard but no luck. We had the opportunity to go to Housing and see where we landed on the list, but I just couldn't make it up. Poor Seth had to report somewhere at 10am and start in-processing. (Yet another reason I could never be in the military. Some day I should compile a master list of all the reasons... a project for another day I guess.)
Seth's been in-processing, Nigel and I have been hanging out around the hotel. I try to take him outside for at least half an hour a day and just let him explore. If I sit down on a bench to read, he sits down and watches; he doesn't seem bored, he just watches. He has discovered chasing birds and squirrels. He really wants to catch a squirrel! He doesn't understand why his leash isn't long enough to let him get them. Of course they also run faster than he does so I think even without the leash he wouldn't be able to catch them, alas he thinks he's super cool and could catch them. I let a little dog have his dreams.
We're going through the normal moving process, well normal for military I guess. We're in a room with a mini-fridge and a microwave. I was really hoping for some sort of cooking surface but we got nothin'. So yeah, right now we've been eating a lot of fast food. :/ I'm not so happy about it, I bought a slow cooker but have yet to make a meal because everything I think of making would require things that I just don't have. So if you have ideas, I'm open. We have a can opener, a microwave, a mini-fridge, paper plates, cheap silverware and a slow cooker.
The good news is we got priority on the housing wait list. Back to back overseas tours do rate a little bit here for bumping us up as does the fact that I got to travel with Seth, but that was helped by the fact that we're doing back to back OCONUS tours. We take the test to get our licenses on Thursday, tomorrow, and we're looking for a car. Hopefully we'll have both before this weekend and can get out a little easier and explore our new home. There's a bus system on post, but it runs only every once in a while, about every 45 minutes and just hits the basic spots, so it'd be a LOT of walking on post and the post that we're staying on is not in walking distance to any of the German towns.
I feel like this is a good sum up of where we're at so far and I feel like maybe I'm starting to ramble. So I'm gonna wrap this up. As always I'm open to questions and suggestions. Hopefully we'll be able to explore more this weekend, it is a 4 day! And *fingers crossed* we'll have a car.
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