update on life

So there has been a lot that has happened since my last posting. I got offered a few jobs, took the one that would hopefully offer the best options and provide me with something to do during the week. Boy the last part of that is a huge understatement! Brian is wondering sometimes where his wife went and why this hard working woman came home instead. I'm teaching at the local CDC in a Pre-K type classroom. Not my first choice, but out of the options I had last month it was the best because it is teaching!

We have been to many different places since our last update. We went to the Nuremberg Volksfest, the real Oktoberfest, Brian went back to Austria, Rothenberg. In two weeks we will be heading back to Garmisch to stay for a long weekend so Brian can scuba dive and I can go get pampered at the Spa.

Aside from working tons, Brian and I are trying to settle into everyday life yet again. No real word as to where his work 'home' will be or when he will be going there. It is all up in the air like normal around here. Things seem to be settling down around here which is good. The holidays are coming up quickly! We both are very excited to be here in Germany for them. The different markets and shopping areas will be a lot of fun to visit!

I'll be back sometime to post pictures of our latest adventures... It's harder than one would think to sit down and post on here!!

flower picking German style

Brian and I went to dinner to celebrate my new job. Even if I haven't started it was still nice to go out and not cook dinner at home. On the way home I told him we should stop and pick some flowers. I've been giving him a hard time the last week or so about how I never ever get flowers lol. They grow fields of self-pick flowers all over the place. Normally you see a sunflower patch and then a huge gladiolus field. They are only 60 Euro cent per stem you pick. Pretty cheap for what you get :)

Here are some pictures from our flower picking experience tonight. All in all I think we did well :)

The wonderful trusting sign... Oh how I love it over here!

Look at how cute he looks holding up a stem of flowers :)

Just a view of how long the field of sun flowers are... Huge I tell ya!

Look at how pretty the colors are... Oh so pretty I tell ya! Corn field in the background...

Anyone want a green stem of gladiolus flowers

More view of the one field

Our flowers once we got home and got them in water. Excuse the mess!

So there ya go pops, an update on your children. As far as I know we both are still alive and doing well! Love you and miss you all
Jess

update for April/May

It's already May, where has the last few months gone? It's hard to believe it's May. It's now official I'm done with my Masters degree. I graduated last weekend while I was home in AZ. Brian flew down to see me walk!!! It was awesome but at the same time tough to say goodbye to my parents again. We got back a few days ago and we move tomorrow to a newly remodeled apartment with the washer/dryer in it. Good news is our new place is right across the street from both the high school and elementary school. Bad news is our bedrooms are way smaller than they are here. I took a bunch of pictures today when I went to hang up the command hooks for our curtains. I'll be posting them sometime this weekend with of course some after pictures of once we get our stuff unpacked! Looks like we will be going to Spain for Memorial Day weekend. I got tons of pictures and stories to post to catch everyone up on our trips from before I left... I better get busy before we add in more trips!!! I'll be back sometime next week with pictures of our new place and that. in the mean time check out this playground that is by our new place.



Oh and dad sorry we don't live in the apartment building that has purple on the stairwells outside!!! Here's a nice picture though of those :) Well one of them, the other building that is by ours has a deeper purple...

new update

Ok, so I've haven't blogged or posted any pictures in a long time... somethings came up and I flew back home for a few weeks. In other news, I am almost done with my Masters degree and will graduate the end of this month. I'll be heading back on a plane shortly after graduation back to our new home. Once I get back I'll post the pictures I was supposed to a while ago and get back into the swing of things. Everything has been hectic since I last posted! Hope everyone is doing well. Brian and I are fine, I just needed to come back home for a little while for school and my mom. Well it's late and I better head to bed but I'll be back in full force in 3-4 weeks!

update

Super sorry I haven't posted pictures from 3 weekends ago... I've been busy with school work, house work and unpacking! Yup you guessed it we have all of our stuff. I have a few more boxes to unpack and some organizing to do which I was hoping to get done after this school week (Thursday-Wednesday) but it will have to wait until next weekend. I thought I had a week off but I guess I was told wrong. Oh well just means another week closer to graduation! On another note, my car made it here in one piece so we went from having no car, to one and now two!!!! I've heard a rumor that the school across the street is going to be losing 4 teachers this coming school year, if it is true I will go apply. Strange thing is they aren't hiring until July 15th to those outside of the school district... cross your fingers! I will be dropping off a packet for substituting in the next few days there in hopes of it helping me get my foot in the door. This Saturday we are heading down to the Alps for a night. Brian will be hitting the ski slopes and I'll be at the spa when not doing homework I suppose... so much for a nice relaxing weekend with no homework! I'll be back in a day or so with some pictures we have taken in the last few weeks. As for now I'm going to get ready to head to bed. Oh and ALL of our snow is melted and gone :) this makes me a very happy person!!!

Road trip

Brian was able to get his car the other day and he has been busy driving all over the place! We both are rather happy he has it so we don't have to walk everywhere, take a taxi or bum rides from others to get there. Friday night we spent a long time at the Pub getting to meet a few new people and some other obnoxious people who decided to sit down with us, which did not last long.

Saturday morning we both got up and decided to head to the commissary to get some groceries there before heading to a German grocery store. Let me just say this the German store was bigger than most Walmart's and Targets back in the states!!!! There was tons of stuff in the one we went into. So much that we almost got lost a few times walking around. We have decided that next weekend since it is a 4 day that we will venture out to visit two other grocery stores on the economy. There are plenty of grocery stories around here, I'd say probably 6-8 if not more in our small little town!

After we went grocery shopping and came home to put up all our food we got ready to head down to Nürenberg for the afternoon. We got in the car and off we went. Oh did I forget to mention that visibility was close to zero because of all the fog that we had floating around us! Today looks a little better though. Anyway back to our trip :) It was a short drive down the road took us only 20-30 minutes to get into town. We were able to drive through several small towns along the way and see some great churches and other things that we will have to go visit in more detail some time soon! We got to Nürenberg and parked at the one train station. After walking around and not finding much to do we decided to Google a castle or two to go visit. We got lost a few times and it took us an hour and half to drive 12km. This isn't far at all considering we drove 50-60 km in less than 30 minutes! Sure it was all a straight shot the first time and not in a major city but still we got lost. We had a wonderful time once we found the castle. It covers a large area well at least the wall does. I didn't get a chance to take many pictures as I was wanting to get something to eat and warm up some! As we were walking around the little town inside the walls of the castle I spotted a Starbucks, this girl hasn't had any in a month and half. I begged to go get something to warm both of us up! Brian also had to pee really bad so we decided to stop in and get something to drink before walking around more. After Starbucks we headed up the hill to walk around some more. I spotted some tents in an open area right outside of a church or two. We walked over to the one tent and I was in even more heaven than with Starbucks! At last I had found the gingerbread cookies that were covered in a powdered sugar icing. Not my favorite ones but it will have to work until the fall when the ones come out that are dipped in chocolate and I can buy boxes to store in the freezer for next year. Some how we got a little turned around and got lost in this little town. We walked up a huge hill and then back down. Brian remembered after we stopped at Starbucks and got the cookies that his iPhone has an application that will save the location of your car and give you directions back to your car when your ready. Needless to say we WILL be using that from now on when we go out and travel on the weekends! We were hungry and decided to head back to Ansbach to go to Da Enzo's Pizzeria for dinner as Brian now has the car and we don't have to pay for the taxi ride to and from which is more than our dinner was last time.

We ended the afternoon at Da Enzo's for dinner. We both had pizza and split a piece of tiramisu which was to die for. After dinner we came home to relax for a bit before heading out to the Pub with our friends for a little while. We all did not want to stay a long time as we were all tired from our trips and what not. Today we are being bums and not doing much. We can hardly wait for dinner because I'm making tacos and all the fixings. Brian isn't sure if he has work in the morning or not. If he does we probably won't stay up to watch the Super Bowl but if he has it off we most likely will stay up to watch it! I'll be posting pictures this week from our trip. I need to downsize them and look through them to weed out the bad ones!

car...

Brian picked out the car today and put a down payment for it! Hopefully he can pick it up before Friday gets here so we can have a car to ride around in :) woohoooo I can't wait and I know he is super excited.

last few days

The last few days have been wonderful! We have our unaccompanied baggage which included our tv, a set of 4 folding chairs, a small folding table, pots and pans, baking pans/sheets, plates/bowls, silverware, our Wii, towels, clothes and of course some of Brian's military gear. It all came on Friday pretty early into the day which was nice. They gave Brian a time frame of 7am-7pm which is just nuts. Our place is starting to look more like a house than just an empty place with little stuff in it. We are trying to figure out what the best way is to do the curtains because they all have the German track system and not regular American systems! So for the time being we have sheets hanging up in the dinning room covering the window so when it gets to be sunny we can see inside of our place unlike this past Saturday when I couldn't read my laptop or any of my homework papers!

Brian was able to pass his drivers test last week and can now drive in Germany. This is huge news, I plan to go take the test on Wednesday since my homework was a breeze this week due to group work! I've been busy working on submitting applications for jobs around here in hopes of being able to get something. At this point I would be happy with a job that could give me 25-30 hours a week just to get me outta the house and saving some money to travel with later on. We got spoiled and had 3 home cooked meals this past weekend. It's been so nice being able to cook not only with my own pots and pans but in my own kitchen! We are loving it here and have been able to go out into Ansbach and go walk around downtown. We had a short walk through downtown where all the mom and pop shops are along with restaurants. Before that we stopped at the plaza that is like what we'd call a mall back in the states. We will be heading back down there to get some stuff for our house such as curtains and other things hopefully this week or weekend. Brian is busy looking for a car to buy so he doesn't have to walk places anymore. Hopefully the one he is supposed to look at today isn't too highly priced and is in great shape. I'll post later on about that. Now onto the pictures I took of our place on Thursday. Sorry some aren't great but deal with it! I'll be sure to post pictures later this month once we get our stuff (should be next week when we get everything else!) I'm also hoping that I can go with Brian next week to do "Head Start" with him. This is just like going to school, they teach you some German, take you around town, make you order in German and show you the ropes of things around here. If all goes well I should be able to go all week with him.

On to the pictures:

Our front door, sorry it's a bad picture!

Stairs from the top of our floor, looking down to go down stairs.


Let's start off in my favorite room of the house the kitchen! Here is one side of the kitchen. As my family would say it's a one butt kitchen!

Neat shelving in the kitchen... Oh the possibilities of what to put there!

Other half of the kitchen. Yup hard to cook, do dishes, clean with more than one person in there!


Shelving in our dinning room. It's pretty neat and yet we have no clue what to put there just yet.


Dinning room with the loaner table and chairs. Excuse the mess!

One side of the living room.

Behind the front door is a pretty nice coat/shoe closet!


Other side of the living room.

Our hallway towards the bedrooms and bathroom.

Bathroom, pretty new was redone in Sept of last year. Sadly bigger than the kitchen!


Big linen closet inside of the bathroom which is nice!

One side of the Master Bedroom

Wall of closets in the Master Bedroom.

Wall of closets in the spare bedroom. Brian's Army clothing goes on the left side and the right door is dedicated to my scrapbooking supplies :) How AWESOME is that?!?!?!?!

Spare Room that was pretty empty!

Moving truck that came with our stuff on Friday!

last night

Tonight is our last night in the Inn!! We move up the street in the morning. Brian has to go take his driving test tomorrow so while he is doing that I will be doing our walk thru on our place and getting the internet/phone set up! We will be calling back home this weekend to give everyone an update and to say hi so look forward to that call. This week brought up the question of what we will do as far as a state side number goes. Our thought is since we will have my old laptop on Friday we can set it up with a Skype account so people from the states can call us and it won't be expensive on either end. As soon as we know what we are doing we will let everyone know. They won't let us use a wireless router or programs such as Skype here in the Inn which is why we've put it off. I know I know shame on us! Oh well. Hopefully we get our unaccompanied baggage on Friday. In there is some of my scrapbooking things such as my Cricut, cartridges and paper so I can have something besides homework to do! We also will have our smaller tv (the one I bought when I first got up to Drum) and our Wii so we can finally play with our present we had for a few weeks before it got packed up. This will be just like Christmas all over again. My class this term is going ok, I can tell the teacher has high high standards (more than in any other class I've taken) which I'm struggling with but will hopefully be able to pull out an A in this class. We are thinking about taking a trip up to the ski resort (a few hours from here) during the first weekend in March. I'll have that week off from classes which will be nice. Brian wants to go ski several times before the close for the season so we'll see what happens! He even said I could spend the day at the Spa while he went to ski... I might just have to take him up on that offer! Today was by far the coldest day we've had yet. It wasn't until around noon when it hit over 10 degrees. By 4:30 tonight it was a cool 20 degrees (the high for the day). Tomorrow is supposed to be 29 and snowing which will be great for my walk up the street. Luckily we have a fellow soldier who is coming over to let us pile our luggage in her car so we don't have to drag it around in the snow/slush crud outside on the street and sidewalk! What is even better is we already know what we will be eating on Friday and Saturday as long as our stuff comes on Friday. I'm off to go work on my application(s) for a few jobs before heading to bed. Hope everyone is having a good week!

Lots of love,
Jessi and Brian

weekend full of fun

This weekend we were able to get out of the Inn and head down town for some time at a local Irish Pub. One of the guys who picked us up and took us around the first day we were here asked us if we wanted to go out with him and one of his friends he met the first night he was here. We thought it would be a fun time so we went. Sat around in this Pub for a while before anyone really showed up but we were able to meet the lady who owns it with her husband and try out a few drinks before. Brian was able to discover other beers he likes and try new ones while at the Pub. We ordered one type, and decided it wasn't for us. I switched over to drinking Razz the rest of the night with the except of doing an Irish Car Bomb with Brian... the night went well, we both returned back to the Inn safely and were a bit tipsy. All in all it was a nice evening out. We saw a lot of his coworkers at the Pub and found out quick who acts/does strange things and who is level headed real quick.

Saturday morning we went to the gym to workout. Got a nice workout in before heading to get some food for a few meals. After coming back we decided to go bowling after dinner to kill a few hours before heading back to the Irish Pub. Let me tell ya it was a fun interesting night! We spent a while at the bowling alley, our new friend came and hung out with us for sometime as well. After having fun bowling we ended up calling a taxi to take us to the Pub. Since we had been there the night before we were noticed right off the bat and the lady who owns it tried to give us the same drinks from the night before. Talk about a nice family Pub. Saturday night was more interesting than Friday night was only because of the people. We met some really strange drunk people who couldn't leave our table alone! Once again I drank Razz pretty much all night and Brian enjoyed his beer and cola/beer. It is defiantly an acquired taste.

Sunday I spent the day sleeping as my stomach wasn't feeling well and I was sick. Brian was nice enough to do laundry for me and got me anything I needed or wanted. He is such an awesome husband!

Newest updates: last week we toured our place, accepted to live in it and we move in on Thursday! They are lending us a bed, a table and a set of chairs until all of our stuff comes in a few weeks. We get our small shipment on Friday so I can finally cook with my own stuff! I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and stop eating so much junky food that is premade! Brian has work this week, well more like classes and in-processing even more so I will be busy at the Inn until Thursday working on homework and packing up our bags to get ready to move up the street. It is starting to snow again tonight, it hasn't snowed really the whole time we've been here but there is still snow on the ground (not much anymore after the other day's rain storm) from the days leading up to us getting here. I can't wait to have a car so we can drive around and I can take more pictures. I've been slacking on that majorly and will get better. Hey I have 3 years to take pictures right? Well off to get ready for bed and work/homework tomorrow! Hope all had a good weekend and hope this week goes great for everyone.

Lots of love,
Jessi and Brian

good news?

(Our view from the room at the Inn)

Well it's a pretty nice day out for starters. The sun is somewhat shinning upon the base today. This is great! Brian had work today, all of his in-processing and what not has been going well. Yesterday I was able to pick up an iPhone to use while we are here to help communicate with each other while we are apart. It's been nice to be back in touch with him while he is gone. Brian was told today that tomorrow or Thursday we will be able to go look at a place here on Bismark. If we decide to not take it, we won't be able to get on post housing for a year and will have to look off-post for housing and will be responsible for paying for our stay at the Inn... so all in all we are praying this place is decent enough to live in for a year (rumor has it that since it is the unremodeled place we will be first to get the newest housing either the end of this year or early next year. Unremodeled housing still has the washer/dryer in the basement and this place is on the third floor.... I think I could live with it for a year!) We should find out more this week.

(My Doner Kabab)

I met up with Brian for lunch today at the Pizzeria on Katterbach and we had a pretty nice lunch. Lunch consisted of a burrito like wrap that is called a Doner Kabab. It was super delicious and rather filling. The wrap was larger than my hand and I had to use two hands to hold it because it was so full! The wrap had meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onion and a garlic sauce. Brian added spices to his which made it spicy! He, of course had to finish mine up because I was so stuffed. After lunch Brian was able to find out that our first shipment of goods has made it and will wait for us to get a place. This shipment has some scrapbooking items, clothing, one tv and few other things needed for our sanity! If we are able to get the place I described above we will be able to move in if all goes well on Jan 28th which is next week Thursday! As always it's a hurry up and wait kind of game the Army plays.

Here's hoping we are able to approve the place and to be able to move in next week! Hope all is well with everyone and we miss everyone.

With love,
Jessi and Brian!

past weekend

Hey all,

This past weekend was very interesting needless to say!

Friday we went to an Italian/German restaurant on the other side of Ansbach. Da Enzo was by far the best meal we have had here. We both had pork, Brian had a pork loin in a Gorgonzola sauce while I had the pork rolls stuffed with spinach and Gorgonzola in the same sauce as Brian's had. Both came with a salad and fries. I had a glass of wine while Brian enjoyed two tall glasses of beer... To end the meal we were given a cherry liquor that was pleasant.

Saturday we did laundry, hung out around the room. Ended up eating at the Pizzeria on Katterbach before we picked up a bottle of Crown Royal and headed back to the hotel to play cards and have a few drinks. We were supposed to go to an Irish Pub but our plans fell through.

Sunday we got up went to the gym, stopped and picked up some groceries on the way home. We ended up at a Greek restaurant for dinner which wasn't all that bad. To start our meal off we both had a shot of Ouzo. We each had gyro's in different sauces, Brian had potatoes and I had pasta with mine. (No flatbread with them though). Our cab ride home was interesting to say the least. After waiting in the cold/rain for 30-40 minutes we finally had a cab. Our driver was an older lady who hit 100mph on the drive back to the gate... Very interesting to say the least. Our night was spent drinking and playing more cards... seems to be the thing now-a-days for us.

Stay tuned for this week's interesting things. Brian goes back to work tomorrow (Tuesday). Hopefully he will find out our housing stuff among other things. Tonight we plan on ordering dinner in and enjoying some relaxing tv while I work on some homework.

first full day in Ansbach

Today we woke up in the Inn on Katterbach, got dressed ate some breakfast before taking our showers. Once we were dressed and ready to go we headed down stairs to walk over to the commissary to pick up some drinks and stuff. On our walk we stopped to look at the shuttle schedule and decided to take it, well we spent an hour on the shuttle being driven from small base to small base and then had to wait for the driver on his break before we could head over to the commissary area that is on the base across the street from the one base we are staying at! We did some shopping in the commissary. We picked up a huge sandwich while we were there and boy was it yummy! Makes subway look like nothing :) we headed back to our room after the commissary to eat lunch and relax. It was a nice relaxing walk back to our room. Stay tuned for pictures and what not later on!