Getting cozy!

Rick and I have been very busy the last couple of weeks.  We received our household goods on Tuesday so we spent all last week unpacking boxes and getting the house set up.  Sunday we were able to hang up all the photos.  This weekend we were going to hang around Stuttgart and see what we can find, but instead we are driving up to Ramstein which is one of the bigger bases here.  It's about 2.5 to 3 hours away.  We need to get a new couch and they have more options so we are off to see what we can find for the house.  Thanks to our movers we need to buy a new desk for Rick, shower caddy, and large vase.  Thanks to all the rumors about living in a small place we need to buy a new couch and a couple of chairs for the living room.  We are hoping to buy some nice chairs out on the economy but figure we really want a nice big stuffed American couch to be lazy on!  :  )

This week I was able to turn in my substitute teaching application and I am also applying to do some respite care.  Respite care is a way for me to go in and give a break to a primary care giver of a child or adult who has a disability such as autism in their home.  I am pretty excited about these two opportunities.  It will allow us some extra travel money and it's a great way to get my name out there.

This week or early next week we are hoping to purchase a new car.  We are looking at buying a stick shift which means I am forcing myself to learn how to drive a stick.  I hope that Rick can handle my tantrums; I get really frustrated when I can't do things correctly.  Little bit of a perfectionist.  

Other than that life is starting to settle in nicely.  We are really enjoying Germany!  Hopefully we get our own internet today and our phone then life will seem to really fall into place!  Have a wonderful weekend.  I will make sure to post pictures of our travel this weekend!

Rubble Hill

After going to the farmer's market we drove over to Rubble Hill.  Rubble Hill is  a park off one of the main freeways here in Stuttgart.  From the street it looks like nothing.  It looks like just a walking trail, but it is much more than that.  This hill was actually created by the people here in Stuttgart after WWII.  Stuttgart was a city that was attacked pretty badly.  It was and is a large industrial city therefore during the war it was devastated.  The people of Stuttgart were left with a lot of rubble.  They decided to scoop it all together and create this hill.  They then poured dirt on top of the rubble and planted trees.  As you are walking up it's hard to imagine what you are actually walking on, but when you get to the top you can see that you are walking on history, ruins, buildings, statues, etc.  It was pretty amazing.  When you get to the top you can also see a panoramic view of the city.  Here are some pictures of this hidden secret.  I am so glad that yesterday was a sunny, clear day (very uncommon here) so that we could enjoy this beauty!

Proof

Here is a picture of Reno and Riley the English Mastiff.  He ended up leaving me a nice poop to scoop; we are now very close!  :  )

Farmer's Market

Yesterday we went down to the farmer's market in downtown Stuttgart  Look at how beautiful those fruits and vegetables are; we purchased from this stand.  The woman was so nice to us and very helpful.  I have also been looking for red curry paste to make some Thai Chili (very yummy), and I found it at another stand just around the corner.  This farmer's market is open 6 days a week so I will be visiting here again soon.  There is also a wonderful home store located in the same building.  One of my new favorite spots!  They have food from many different cultures including Spain!  Yum!

Life on RB

Well I have been slacking a little bit in the blogging category so I am going to catch you up to speed.  I signed up for a German language class level A.  My teacher is great and very friendly.  The class has been a nice introduction to help me notice more around my surroundings.  I actually have homework tonight.

I went down to the community club the other night with some friends of ours.  It's a little bar here on the base.  It's nothing fancy but I like to call it da club!  Ha.  Anyways, I met some other nice girls there.  One of them invited me to her Pampered Chef party which was another nice way to meet some of our neighbors.  Everyone has been really nice.  It seems like RB is going to be a close base and that a lot of people like to hang out with each other.

I found a zumba class here on RB which makes me very happy!  I joined the Lose to Win contest here so I have been doing lots of walking and counting calories (grrr), but hopefully it will start to pay off by April.  Still working on my sub application, which takes forever.  Turns out I was missing some paperwork in my packet.  I am starting to feel a little bit more settled here and it's nice.

Hopefully our truck and household goods will get here soon.  It will be nice to have our house set up.  Now I get to go walk our friend's dog; it's a mastiff, which me luck!

Bad Canstatt

Last Saturday Rick and I decided to go and explore one of the neighborhoods.  Stuttgart is like the umbrella city and then there are little suburbs or smaller towns that make up Stuttgart.  So, this past weekend we went down to Bad Canstatt to explore.  We have finally mastered the bus and train system by our house!  Heck yeah!  So we went and had a doner kabab to start the day off which was pretty yummy.  Not as good as the one we had a few weeks earlier but pretty good.  Bad Canstatt is mainly populated by the Turkish population.  The Turkish population here are considered pretty tough, but we have only had good experiences.  They had a great mall with some unique shops.  I finally found my hair spray (very important to me) and found a great jewelry store that sorts their costume jewelry by color (two things that are very important to me... organization and jewelry).  I will be visiting this mall again I'm sure.  Rick and I also went to this little hat shop (Rick loves hats).  The older woman didn't speak a lick of English so we participated in a nice game of made up sign language.  It was a fun experience.  She was telling Rick what colors looked good for his skin everything. It was pretty funny!  I also found a shoe store that has probably like 1,000 shoes in it...HEAVEN!  I am going to go broke here!

We then went through and walked through all of the streets.  As we walked across the street car tracks we started hearing these really loud birds.  Turns out that the birds were parrots!  A local baker was telling us that they started out with 2 parrots and now there are 26 parrots.  It was a pretty neat thing to see.  They hang out in the local park, so hopefully we'll see them again when we visit.  Here is a picture of two of them in the tree. 

We continued to walk through the old part of the town which was really nice.  They started closing early which was a little bit of a bummer but we got some really good pictures.  Enjoy some of the pictures of Bad Canstatt...

What a beautiful sight!

Walking down the street.

Local restaurant

Nice house with ivy.

Picture of the beautiful church in town!

What can ,50 Euro buy you?

Use of this... no seat and freezing!

Starting off 2011

Well I hope that all of you had a wonderful New Year's!  We had a nice quiet night and were able to watch the fireworks from the hill which allowed us to see the whole city which was neat!  We are still enjoying our house.  We finished doing our painting which was a big task but the finished product looks wonderful.

I have finally decided on a master's program.  I will be studying a master's in education focusing on teacher leadership (different from a principal's program).  I am looking forward to starting school; I have been wanting to get my master's for a while but was just so busy teaching so with this little break in teaching I figure I might as well jump at the opportunity.  I am also going to take a German conversation class which begins January 10th so hopefully I can show the Germans respect by trying to speak their language.

We are still trying to figure out the bus and train schedule/ system.  We haven't found a little car for me yet, and at this point I really don't need a car.  If I start subbing at the other schools then I know I should get a car but right now just to get around I should be able to take the public transportation.

I hope you all are enjoying your first few days of 2011.  I am really looking forward to this year!