It's A Small World After All...

It's Friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, this is something to be super excited about.... but I am mostly thrilled because D & I have been so busy trying to catch up with life that we haven't had much time together since we've been home. So I am excited that tonight we are getting a chance to take it easy. Perhaps tackle some of those boxes that have taken up permanent residence in the guest wing hallway? Speaking of the guest wing... We have recently gotten exciting news that we will been having house guests of the Wollschlager/Ndjerareou kind in the fall!!!! Some time in September/October (just in the time for my birthday!!!) they will head to our neck of the woods to spend some quality family time. Which is fantastic because it gives me the excuse to have the house "guest ready" by this fall! Bring on the organizational skills/paint rollers/curtain & pillow patterns etc! It's time to get cracking! Chelsea Rawson.... why aren't you in Germany so I can take advantage of your fabulous organizational skills??? I need you!!!! Anyone here in Germany love to organize? I could sure use your expertise!!!

I am fascinated at how your past weaves it's way throughout your life. I feel as though I have lived in several places (though not near as many as some people) and wherever I go, I nest. I hunker down and spread roots as deep and as far as my heart will let me. Dana tells me it is because of this that I make such close friends wherever I go. Therefore I am constantly amazed at how you never know when a distant part of your past will intersect with your present. In coming to Germany I have had two such reminders of how small the world really is. Ironically I have the same lovely lady, Mrs. Paula Amrein, to thank for both occurrences.

Texas Tech meets Germany: Many months ago at the Amrien's Christmas Party I was introduced to a bright and sunny individual about my age Miss Jen Wall. We got to talking and introductions were made only to find out we were both from Texas (hooray!). Then the "where did you go to college" bit came out only to find that we had both attended Texas Tech during the same years, and furthermore had hung around the same people! The Phi Lamb, Kappa Chi, BOG, and BYX crowd. I can only imagine how many times our paths had crossed and we were simply never aware! So the whole, "Do you know so-&-so?" conversation went on for at least 20 minutes. Since December and rather as of late, she has become one of my closest friends here in Germany! I heart you Jen!!!!

Germany meets Hudson Middle School???: The most recent encounter was the day before yesterday... Paula had invited me on a exploration adventure in downtown Landstuhl. It's important to note how excited I was... even though I live in Landstuhl, the amount of times I get to explore downtown when shops are actually open is a rarity indeed. She mentioned in passing that she was bringing a new friend of hers, Andrea, along with us. I always love meeting new people, particularly here as the military wives are a special breed of woman. So when I finally made it down to Paula's car, opened the back door and peered in to say hello to the figure in the back seat, imagine my surprise when the face staring back at me is eerily familiar. I immediately flip through the pictorial rolodex of faces in my mind and almost instantly I have a name. I point to her and exclaim in what I can only imagine is shock an disbelief "I know you!!!! You're Andrea Jancoviak!!" Her expression, God bless her, is one of utter confusion as she tries to place my face in her memory. I proceed to tell her that we went to Hudson Middle School together and she is just as shocked as I am! I had also completely forgotten that we lived in the same neighborhood albeit she lived in the older side of The Greens. While we weren't friends at HMS due to the school system splitting us up into teams (MVP's and ?) I am excited at a chance to reconnect with someone from home, someone from a time long ago, someone who also knows all of the same people I do from a cherished childhood.

Here are some images from our walk!!! Ya'll know me, never waste an opportunity to break out the camera and give my readers a chance to see what I see everyday!

We stopped at Sander's for lunch! Yum!!!!

This marks a tour around downtown Landstuhl. If you follow them it will lead you around the town to specific monuments! I love it!!!

Can someone tell me if these are bleeding hearts? I think they are I just can't remember!

Paula's mother informed us that these cones are given to the German children on their first day of school. the are carried upside down and filled with goodies specially bought for their first day! How awesome is that?!?!

I love that this series of maps is the "Marco Polo" series. Anyone else find that hysterical?

The signage for a cute parisian clothing store in town. i love it!!!

 

Well our busy schedule has yet to let up.... But I'm looking forward to the events planned for this weekend. Our friends Ashley & Time Jenkins are PCS-ing back to the states, ironically to our old stomping grounds of Iowa City. They are having a huge going away party on Saturday night. And I'm super glad that my husband isn't on standby this weekend so he can have a beer or two.

Also Brandon Amrien's birthday is this Sunday and I am creating a new Icing on the Cake recipe in his honor, Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes! I can hardly wait to play in the kitchen on Sunday! Considering Reese's is Dana's middle name he can barely contain his excitement either!

So a happy wonderful weekend to you all, and I promise more pics of the honeymoon are coming! All my love to our family and friends!

New Years 2012 Road Trip to Paris

almost all of my boxes from the states have arrived!!!! it's like christmas all over again at our apartment. my favorite clothes, my kitchen utensils, my coffee grinder, air pump for the car, everything!!!! the only box that has yet to arrive is my box full of spices... which i pray makes it here in one piece. dad's been careful enough when packing things and i am beyond grateful. Here's the funny part... we now have 4 sets of measuring cups, two sets of measuring spoons, over 4 bottles of vanilla, two can openers, two cheese graters, five different corkscrews, and many more random duplicates. lol go figure.

THE PARIS UPDATE

it is truly an amazing feeling to revisit a foreign country... and it was an added bonus to be able to show dana around paris and know where i was going. it makes me super psyched for him to take me to Rome! Paris was beautiful... even though it was rainy and overcast the whole time. i've always wanted to bare witness to paris in the rain... as nothing quite beats walking around hand in hand with an umbrella. oddly enough i do want us to go back in the spring or summer... i saw paris in the summer last time and i'd be hugely disappointed if dana didn't get the chance to see the rosy sunlight. we saw as much as we could in the time that we had... all the big things that people go to Paris to see. what cracks me up is that i kept spouting out architectural trivia and knowledge upon a group of decidedly non-architects. why do i do this? it's like a knee jerk reaction that i can't clamp down on.

my favorite parts of the trip were walking around hand-in-hand with dana. talking about life and the splendor surrounding us. he may not be an architect but he's an old soul. and has the same strange appreciation for beautiful things, history, and world renowned buildings. Dinner was also a highlight as i had smoked salmon sandwhich and salad and also had bites of Dana's duck with potatoes. delicious!!! we had creme brulee for dessert.... YUM! and then savored almost 3 glasses of wine apiece. i'm ashamed to say both of us walked around Paris with mulberry red lips for the remainder of the evening.

seeing the eiffel tower at midnight was a rush... we decided to go there because we figured we'd get the best show... what you never account for in this situation is the 3.5 hundred thousand other people who had the same idea as you. i'd bet that being at the eiffel tower on new years eve pretty much rivals being in times square. so. many. people. but if you take a moment and find a five foot radius you can call your own... and let your husband wrap his arms around you, none of it really matters any more. and then you get a group of fun french people who have champagne and pop the bottle at midnight and sing "Bonne Annee" drunkenly. i loved it! seriously. even getting sprayed by the champagne. the real experience,however, happened after midnight.... because the metro was free, the entire population of paris decided to use it after midnight to get home. so there's a mad dash rush to all the stations and some of them even had the gates closed as to not overcrowd the stations. which meant dana and i had to walk past for metro stops before we found one that was open... which took about an hour. and may or may not have included me scaling a fence to a construction site. and we even had to sneak through the exit. hopped on a train and took it to the connection point between lines... where we waited for another 45 minutes for the train to take us back to our stop near the hotel. we were dying. we'd been up since 4 that morning to drive into Paris, and we had been awake for 23 hours at that point. and i had to pee the entire time... i really do miss free bathrooms. part of me couldn't believe that we had made it back. after showering off the city grime, poor dana collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep on top of the comforter and sheets. i seriously don't believe i have ever been that tired in my life. nor have i ever been as sore as i was the next morning. my brother and i have this weird thing where the ball and socket joint of our hips to our legs doesn't fit exactly... so if we walk for long periods of time we start to limp. because it gets out of alignment. not fun. haha i was so grateful for dana. that i could trust him, and lean on him (literally), and know that he would get me back home safely.

it was a great trip though. i finally got to meet more of dana's friends... Zach is a hilarious cocky gent, who loves to spout movie quotes and random trivia... but his secrets out... i know underneath it all, he's a sweetheart and a good guy. Crystal is my tiny pocket sized curly haired little sister who loves to be goofy but has such a kind heart. Sarah is her older sister who is an amazing outside of the box thinker. Jeremy and Emily are friends of Crystals and are great people. Jeremy likes good beer and Emily has great taste in clothes. basically your recipe for a great traveling crew. i loved that the on car ride home we took the back roads and saw beautiful french countryside.... and told riddles and gave logic problems... and played "what's yours like?" which can unexpectedly be played without a wipe board. all in all, an amazing new years, and a great success of an adventure. if you'd like to see all the photos from our trip this is our "Bonne Annee Paris!" album.

has been a productive week. i've discovered that 3/4 of our remaining boxes are clothes. which means as soon as we can get more storage, that part of our unpacking/apartment cleaning will be easily done. the duvet i want at west elm is on sale... and i'm tempted to get it. considering i've waited for it to go on sale for about a year now. still waiting on the couch... i haven't had a chance to get to the BX to get a photo. i had a dr's appointment on tuesday with dana's PCM to get my command sponsorship moving forward. so i spent most of the day on base editing photos. oh! speaking of which, Zach and i talked about putting our heads together and coming up with a business where he takes photos with his amazing camera and i edit them. he hates to edit photos but has an amazing eye for photography. so cross your fingers... that'd be a dream come true!

this weekend d and i have alot of wedding nonsense to catch up on. we've let it fall to the wayside a bit and decided it was time to get back on the nuptial horse. i have a skype date with brit on saturday which i'm SO excited about! and dana also gave me the okay to get paint this weekend so we can finally paint the kitchen! and then there's studying for my drivers test which has also taken a hiatus this holiday season. all in all, life is good and we're trying to kick off the new year strong. it's weird to think i'll be home in five months. huh. bizarre. time definitely flies.

Happy New Year! love and miss ya'll.

two i-devices, one phone, & a partrige in a pear tree

one phone does not work if you have two people. two i-devices work but only if you have WiFi. iPad + phone = good combination but only if you can make calls or text to the states. Therefore... two i-devices + one non-international phone = annoying communication frustrations. (the military version: 2iD + 1NiP = ACF)

Today has been a typical German day.... seriously rainy in the morning with clearer somewhat blue skies in the afternoon... and COLD. I have been working every day for the past week to get this thing up and running for you folks back home. Here are a couple of main points that still hold true since i've been here....

1. nope, still doesn't feel real.

i know i know.... but it doesn't. i keep waiting for that moment when someone pops out of a secret compartment in my apartment and says "CUT!" and then i get sent back to iowa. it literally feels like i've been through a time warp.

2. i'm married?!?!?

yeah... that part is definitely still new. but wonderful. although hilarious at times. i've discovered i'm a freak show. that when things are done a certain way, i lose it. or spit out some randomly super sardonic comment that leaves my husband hugging me and saying "it's going to be okay..." not to mention that there are now two people that eat food in the house (ie "what happened to the milk?!" "uh.. i drank it."), two people that have laundry, two people that make messes, and two people take up considerable amount of space in the bed... (ie "seriously. move over.") but then there are the joys too... like there are two people that have capable hands to clean! wow. it's never been easier! there's always someone to cook for.... and there's a man to do the heavy lifting. woooo!!!!

3. "oh!!! i've been looking for that!!!!!!"

so after being without the stuff that constitutes my life for going on four months.... i've finally been reunited with the majority of my wardrobe (including the coats i bought in iowa!), my house decorations, photos, pen collection, and my prized hardback book library. it's like christmas came early here... although we're still without the last of my things... (ie. kitchen utensils and spices... ahhh!!!) but the apartment is shaping up nicely. We're still lacking some major pieces.... like a couch. and comfy chair. and oh yeah closet space for the entire apartment! but it feels like home. my sanctuary. the place where i can come and breathe when i've been around one too many roundabouts or encountered one too many irritable airmen that day.

4. the best part of my day is still being in the same time zone as my husband.

dating long distance is hard. sure. many of you know this and have experienced it, perhaps more than once. but being engaged across an ocean sucks. big time. so the fact that we don't have to mess with it any longer.... that we can hug each other at the end of the day... kiss the other goodbye... fold laundry... get groceries... go on a date that doesn't involve skype... is an amazing thing.

THIS WEEKEND

Dana had his CDC test today which we've been study almost every night for together. this evolved into juvenile wars with highlighters that left him with an angry smilie face on his arm (that he forgot to scrub off and had revealed at the base gym) and me with a broken heart near my collar bone. We're excited to have that part done so that we can work on getting me my driver's license!!!! hooray!!! D was also given the day off tomorrow so it's a three day weekend for the W's! we plan to head to ikea tomorrow (ikea adventure 2.0) and look at extra storage for the kitchen as well as that desperately need and often fought over couch. i'm going shopping tomorrow with a friend of d's from base and it'll be nice to have some girl time. we're headed to a christmas party tonight with a white elephant gift exchange. this should be entertaining.

all in all, it's been a good week. and i feel like i'm finally making some headway on things that left me with dead ends. Happy Thursday everyone! more tomorrow..... but i'll leave you with some recent photos. enjoy!

This is the neighborhood right next to our apartment building

the amazing bakery that's in the neighborhood... yes!!!!!!!

German cookies anyone?!?

The view from outside our apartment building down to the town of Landstuhl, Germany.

Close up!

The chapel dedicated to Mary not twenty paces from our building.