The Next Adventure: The first days..

I think the nights will be the hardest while I’m here. Not like, nights out partying, or nights when we’re out adventuring the lands, but at night when I’m laying in bed after Matt’s already fallen asleep. It’s the times where I find myself staring off at the stars in the window, wondering if everyone I love is seeing the same stars. It’s bad because I have to remind myself that it’s the middle of their day. I can see my sister at the office folding chips with Lauren, or all my sbux crew dancing behind the counter in a bouncy rhythm that only that store has perfected. My thoughts drift all over, wondering what my best girls are up to, whether Kels is at Café Art, or Lauren slaving away at the mall, Alana making her daily commute. The nights are the worse. I miss everyone the most then, in the calm silence that I’ve seen of Germany.

We haven’t really done much since being here. Got to the airport, got shuffled around like the sleep-deprived zombies we were, got onto a bus and found ourselves passing onto base. There was minimal running around that first day, checking in with the unit, checking into the hotel, getting a mailbox. I guess I’m not surprised that our hotel room immediately turned into a messy disaster. There are overfull vacuum bags everywhere with clothes trying to escape.

Miscellaneous items we couldn’t separate from that are strewn about without any dedicated location. I can’t wait until we get a place. This hotel is temporary and even though it’s very nice, I want a home. We went to briefings the second day we were here and learned about the ever-growing list of things we needed to do in order to settle down. It’s a toss-up between the most important items, a phone or a home. I’m dying to text someone, anyone to just feel normal again.

Matt has a German prepaid cell-phone (or Handy as it’s called here :]), but we just figured out the number last night. It’s a quick-fix until we commit to an actual company and I finally get an iphone(!). After the briefings, we got set-up with an appointment with housing that put us on a list to get an apartment. We are third on the list which translates to two weeks of suite living at the Army Lodge.

I’m hoping to get over jet-lag soon because falling asleep at 2pm every day and waking up at 4am is really just not cutting it anymore. Due to my awful sleeping habits, I haven’t ventured out much, and therefore Matt hasn’t either. He’s gone to the PX but other than that we’re pretty caged in unless we take a bus out. Being Saturday, Matt proposed to go out into town and I’m hoping to see some Christmas markets & catch it with the camera. Also on our to-do list today is to finally get our phones. When it happens, I’ll set up an event on facebook with my phone number in case anyone needs to reach me. We made friends with a super nice couple here and went bowling with them on base last night. It was awesome because myself and the other wife used bumpers the entire game J.

So I guess that’s life so far. Nothing terribly exciting, but today should get the ball rolling. The scenery is beautiful, everyone was right about that. It reminds me of a mossy Dublin which is comforting. The cold isn’t as crazy as we thought, but this time last year had two feet of snow, so we got lucky. More to come soon!