Settling In

This past week was definitely a bit slower for us.  No hail and farewell dinners (where they welcome new people to the squadron and say goodbye to people who are leaving), no FRG coffees (where all the officer wives get together once a month), only work.  For me, a person who is used to being insanely busy all the time, it is difficult getting used to life like this.  It's hard not knowing a lot of people yet, but even harder being in such a small farming community since there is nothing to do and everything closes at 1800 (aka 6:00pm).  But I am adapting slowly but surely!

I did start my new job this week.  That was also a big change of pace for me.  I was always used to teacher work week being the craziest week ever where I was constantly running around getting ready and making my classroom look perfect.  And, never fail, on the day of Open House my principal would come into my room around noon and ask if I was going to be ready when the families came because my classroom pretty much looked like a disaster.  For those of you that know me well, you know that I work best under pressure so obviously my classroom was always ready when the parents and students came through.  This week, however, was quite different.  Since I'm am not a classroom teacher this year I had no classroom to get ready, except the resource room that my lead teacher will teach out of.  It took some adjusting at first because I am always so used to how I like to work and what I would need to feel ready for the year that I had to keep my mouth shut a lot as not to sound like I was trying to take over.  Luckily I really like the people I'm going to be working closely with.  We all clicked really well, which was nice since 4 of the 6 of us in the special ed room are new!  Tomorrow is the first day with the kiddos and I'm really excited to get to meet them.  I just need to keep reminding myself to introduce myself to them as Mrs. Martin instead of Ms. Odachowski!

This weekend Shayne and I did a lot of busy work around the apartment.  There are still walls of boxes in all around but we seem to have regained control of a few of the rooms.  We went shopping at OBI, whose mascot is the beaver , (which ended up being the theme of the weekend since we also watched the movie The Beaver).  Shopping in German stores is still very difficult for me since my German is very limited.  So far I know the following words/phrases:
I can count from 1-3 and I know number 7- Pretty much because whenever I order something I'm never ordering more than 1 or 2 and 3 is our apartment building and 7 is our apartment number. (All important things)
I learned the word schoko (chocolate) VERY early on :)
Tschüss!- is the informal way to say bye...you hear it all the time.  No one says Auf Wiedersehen EVER!  And I thought Heidi Klum was preparing me for Germany :(
One of the most important phrases I learned was- Ich bin allergisch gegan Sesam...which means I am allergic to sesame!
I also know how to order water....stilles wasser bitte
Obviously I am polite and say thank you all the time...danke!
And the all important...Sprechen sie englisch?  Do you speak English?

Its very difficult when I go into German stores and someone says something to me...usually asking if I need help because obviously I look like a deer in the headlights, and I usually just smile and nod, which becomes quite obvious to them that I don't speak German.  I will learn though!!

Today, while at Obi, which is like a Lowe's, we bought paint to paint our living room.  We decided on a goldish color and bought 5 liters of paint.  We used every last drop of paint and were scraping it out of the sides at the end!  Our walls took so much paint to cover it was crazy.  But we did a pretty good job!  Check out our before and after pics!

BEFORE

AFTER

We decided that we will decorate the living room with things we buy in our travels!

I can't wait to finally have people over to our house so I'm really motivated to get it all clean and unpacked.  The kitchen is all unpacked and organized but we haven't decided what color to paint it yet.  I'm really pulling for a light greenish color. :)  We are also planning to paint the bedroom eventually too, but one project at a time now!  We will hopefully be buying furniture this week.  In German it takes 6-8 weeks for the furniture to be delivered!  Right now we have Army furniture (so please ignore that in the photos!) but I would really like to have our furniture by Christmas.  Unfortunately most German stores do not take credit or debit cards so you must pay with euros.

We're hoping to take a little trip for Labor Day so hopefully I'll have some travel news next week!  Until then I hope you all have a great long weekend and that you all survived Hurricane Irene!

Tschüss!

Welcome to Bavaria!

So I've officially been in Germany for 2 weeks now!  Its crazy how much has happened in the short amount of time we've been here.  We just finally got internet today so I'll try to catch up on the past 2 weeks of goings on.  My goal is to be able to post weekly to keep you all updated on what we are doing and where we are going.

So we arrived August 10th at 6:00am.  The 7 hour flight from Boston wasn't that bad but then we had to wait 4 hours for the bus to leave to take us from Frankfurt to our post.  By the time we left it was about 11 and we began what was supposed to be about a 4 hour drive.  Unfortunately there was a STAU (traffic jam...one of the first German words I learned) on the autobahn.  So we didn't end up getting home until around 5pm, which made for a pretty long day of traveling for both us and our puppy Rocco, who did incredible with the whole trip.  Adjusting to the time difference and German life was actually pretty easy.  I was able to rent a car using my American license for a week so I could drive around which helped A LOT for my driving test.  The test here is very difficult.  Its a 100 question test.  75 questions cover the right of way and basic rules of the road which some of are very different from the US.  They have this "right before left" rule here.  Where if you come to an intersection with other cars and there are no signs the car the furthest to the right goes first and then proceeds clockwise.  Its somewhat confusing.  The other 25 questions are road signs, some of which are in German.  Now as a teacher I came up with different mnemonic devices to help me remember :).  I luckily passed the test on the first try so I'm officially a German driver!!

Last week I also had 2 job interviews for special ed aide positions.  Unfortunately I found out that there was a problem with my teaching application that I was just able to fix today so I wasn't getting any calls for classroom teacher jobs.  I was really lucky and got offered BOTH aide positions, but that made for a tough decision.  The jobs were very different.  One was a mild to moderate position where I would be pushing into the classrooms and the other was a moderate to severe self contained classroom.  I was able to confide in some great friends and my amazing husband who were able to help me sort through my decision.  I ended up going with the mild to moderate position because it was more of an inclusion model.  Hopefully this will lead into a classroom teacher position next year.

This past weekend was Shayne's first 4 day weekend since I've been here so obviously it was time for a trip!  We decided to go to Garmisch which is very close to the Austrian border but still in Bavaria.  The purpose of this trip was to go hiking in the German Alps and hike the highest mountain in Germany, the Zugspitze.  We went with another couple, Charles and Danielle, and had a great time.  The boys were in charge of the research and told us it would take about 8 hours to hike to the top and would be about 11 miles.  The plan was then to take the cable car down from the peak.  We started by going through the gorge which was incredible!  After hiking for about 2.5 hours and going about 6 miles we came across an interesting sign that said it would be 8 hours from there to the Zugspitze.  We checked with some other people and they said it would probably only be 6 hours, which still didn't put us in a great position since the last cable car went down the mountain at 5pm.  We then decided it was time to turn around and go see a king's house that was on a different path on the mountain and take the cable car up to the Zugspitze and back down.  Again, the boys did their research and said the house was only 1 mile from the the main trail so on we went.  We soon realized that this trail was much more difficult and much more steep than what we had been doing before.  After hiking 1.5 miles that took us over an hour we found out that the house was still much further away and we needed to turn back in order to get out before the gate was locked at the gorge.  Over the course of the day we hiked about 18 miles, so needless to say I had a pretty good sized blister and was limping a bit when we reached the bottom.  It's been 3 days since the hike and my legs STILL hurt!  The next day we decided to take the cable car up to the Zugspitze and see the view which was amazing!  Shayne and Charles decided to climb to the very top while Danielle and I took pictures from the observation deck.  We were even able to cross into the Austrian border!  We then got to take the cable car to the glacier and check that out.  The trip was wonderful and we all had a great time together!

Sorry for such a long first post!  Now that we have internet I promise to update more regularly and make them a bit shorter :)

Tschüss!