"Just add some pork!"

Written: 19 November 2010
Written by: Lea

Well, we have officially passed Week 3 and things are settling down. I will start seeing clients on Monday and my schedule is already pretty packed. We're expected to carry 6.5 hours of face to face client time per day! That's pretty crazy. The burnout rate is pretty high at the hospital, but thankfully we have a
great new commander that is doing everything he can to keep the workplace a positive environment.

Outside of work Elliott and I have been searching like crazy for a place to live. Our free ride at the hotel runs out next Thursday and the pressure is on! We've seen a lot of places but haven't found one we really loved...until tonight!!! We were seeing one apartment that was perfectly fine and great and we were very interested in (only downside is that it only has 1 bathroom). The landlord then asked if we'd be interested in a larger place. The iffy part is that the current tenant has been using it basically as a big storage unit. He
lives with his wife, but keeps paying rent on this apartment. So it's not for sure that he'll be leaving. But we fell in love. It's awesome. So cross some fingers and toes that we get it!


We have another two places to see this weekend, so we're not putting all our eggs in one basket. But we do need a place soon! We are getting so sick and tired of eating out every night. Pickled vegetables just stop hitting the spot after 21 days of eating nothing else. I swear I'm going to become a vegetarian when I move back to the states just to get my fill of veggies. For now, I load up on salads at work and whenever we go out. The food here is great, but we desperately want to cook. It seems that the solution to any German cooking dilemma is, "just add some pork!" It's everywhere. It's on top of chicken, stuffed inside of beef, and even wrapped around green beans. It's fantastic, but I can only eat so much of it before I grown a tail. So getting a kitchen (kuchen) is our priority. Where we're hoping to live (Kaiserslautern)
has great little markets and an outdoor farmer's market every Sat. They also have several Asian food stores where we can stock up on furikake and tofu.

We're both trying to learn a little of the language. The USO offers German language classes pretty frequently, so we'll be signing up to one of those once we're more settled. Elliott's teaching me how to drive a stick shift since 90% of the cars here are manuals. All of our rental cars have been and Elliott's
been driving me to and from work every day. It's nice. Now if only I could get him to make me a brown bag lunch too... We're also working on buying a car. We're seeing two tomorrow and will hopefully
just get one of those.

We took and passed our driver's test. It's a USA/European license. 100 questions multiple choice. Pretty standard. There was a study guide and about 90 of the questions came straight from the study guide. Word for word. The other 10 came from a brief video they made you watch during orientation. You can miss 15
questions and still pass. So even if you missed the 10 that didn't come straight from the study guide you should still be able to get your license. However, the failure rate is incredibly high. About 10 of the people that were there the day we took our test had failed at least once (there were about 25 of us
altogether). It almost became a bragging right. "I failed last week" "Oh yeah? I've failed twice". It was like a very sad sorority. And they were all one-upping each other. Until, that is, one girl piped up and admitted that she was there taking the test for the SEVENTH time. Yeah, that's right. SEVEN. At that point I'm pretty sure they shouldn't let you WALK, let alone drive! It terrifies me knowing I'll someday be on the road with her and she's STILL not going to be sure if that road sign means "yield" or "barrel ahead like an
idiot". Truly frightening.

The kitties are doing well. They're getting awfully tired of being in such a small space. We thought about moving to a bigger hotel, but with all the changes they've been through in the past 2 months we decided it was better to be cramped than uprooted. The lovely care package we received from Mom and Dad Mattice
contained a fantastic remote controlled mouse for which they have gone crazy! They chase it around for hours until Zoomer picks it up by it's tail and runs off to a corner. If Zipper gets too close and tries to steal it, Zoomer will lay down on top of it and then look up all innocently.

I'm sorry we haven't been posting any pictures. My stupid camera broke!!! And the stupid cell phone I have takes horrible pictures. There's a big Nikon roadshow coming to the PX this weekend, so I may find something there. The Christmas markets are coming and I need a camera. We'll post pictures as soon as
we have some decent ones. We're planning on a weekend trip to the Nuremberg Christmas Market probably in early December and then a few day trips to some ones that are closer. Then Paris for New Year's and Rome in January. We are also trying to plan for Dublin for St. Patty's Day. Although this is
proving difficult because the flights out of Frankfurt on St. Patty's Day are already full! So, we might have to do it next year instead. We'll see.

We have been invited over to a co-worker's house for Thanksgiving and I think we'll be going. It sounds fun and it will be nice to be around other people. And, I'm pretty sure pork is not on the menu.

Can someone from the Didion side give my dad a copy of this email? And maybe tell him to get email!!!

Okay, that's all I can think of to say right now. More to come...

Lea