A Little Update

Hi all! Thought I’d share a few things and let you know what our day-to-day lives look like. I am starting to volunteer at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center soon, but there are about 1200 steps I have to go through first. This hospital is mainly where soldiers from Iraq and Afganistan are transported to after being injured in combat. Also, it serves the giant American military community surrounding our area. Needless to say, it is quite the facility and will be a great place to gain nursing experience. The in-processing to a military medical center is very involved and even more so since I am hoping this volunteer position will lead to a staff position down the road. I will be volunteering in the capacity of an RN in the Pain Management unit. This means I will work closely with anesthesia doctors on procedures like nerve blocks, epidurals, and even acupuncture. I think it will be a great learning experience for me and I am really excited to start! I can volunteer as much or as little as I want each week and can set my own schedule, which is very convenient. Jordon works 12 hour night shifts 4 days a week, and has Wednesday through Friday nights off right now. This makes our “work weeks” interesting! He is also taking an Anatomy class online in pursuit of his Exercise Science degree so we are lucky to get an hour of quality time together during the days when he works! He is currently recovering from his latest oral surgery and will have another surgery in about a month. This allowed for a few days off work so he has been enjoying a very long weekend. We got a parking ticket the other week and decided to pay it the other day. Turns out, the entire ticket is in German. We were able to decipher a few words but that didn’t help too much. We saw something that looked like an address on the ticket, so we typed it into our GPS and it took us to the general area of the building we needed to go to. After showing 3 very helpful Germans our ticket and asking where the heck we needed to go, we found a tiny office where we paid the fee. This just goes to show you that simple things like paying a parking ticket over here can turn into quite the ordeal. But it’s all a learning experience and we are up to the challenge!

It is getting really cold here already, it's not uncommon to be in the 30's and low 40's during the day. Hope you are all doing well, Happy Halloween from the both of us! 

Pretty church in our town, about a 10 minute walk from our house

Our 1st visitors and a little more!

Hello all! This weekend was busy busy busy. We purchased a big tv and are now going through the hassle of getting it to work! Between German electrical plugs, aligning the satellite, and trying to get the Air Force network, we have only been successful with 3 channels. At least it’s in English (and we were able to watch part of the Sounders game today!).

We had a couple that Jordon has known since being over here over for dinner on Thursday. They are actually from Enumclaw so it’s fun to talk about home with them. Just as we were about to eat, Ben Abraham and his sister Ericka arrived at our doorstep! Last we had heard from them was that they were in Amsterdam that morning and they were taking the train to Germany and going to try to make it to our house! It was a great surprise and so fun to see friends from home. We were able to take a day trip to Heidelberg and did a little shopping and sightseeing… it was cold! We hiked up to the Heidelberg castle which is HUGE and walked as far through it as we could without having to pay. Then we went to the Kaiserslautern October Festival which is about 20 minutes away from our house. Germans love their festivals! This one had rides, food, and of course beer and wine tents. Even a fireworks show, but we weren’t impressed (I guess we get spoiled every 4^th of July). Jordon’s favorite game at these festivals is throwing ping pong balls towards German glasses and beersteins. Let’s just say we are set for glassware in our house! Our friends left the next morning to continue on their travels. It was so great to have company from home and to be able to show people around. Can’t wait for more visitors (hint, hint)!

We bought a car today! We needed another car as I am starting volunteer work as a nurse at Landstuhl Medical Center in a few weeks. Volunteering will hopefully lead to a paying position but I will take what I can!

We are missing everyone at home but are getting more and more settled here as the time goes on. Have a great day! Auf Weidersehen!

Jordon and Ben in Heidelberg

You can see the castle on the hill!

At the castle

Kasierslautern Festival

Jordon's favorite game! 

Kandersteg and Murren, Switzerland

Hello all! We recently got back from a few days in Switzerland. We started off for Kandersteg, which is a very small town about 4 and a half hours from our house. Unfortunately, our GPS took us on a roundabout way through France (which is full of tolls and bad roads) so we didn’t arrive at our destination until 6 or 7 at night. Kandersteg is an “end of the road” town and to go any farther in this particular area of the Alps you must take a train. So we found ourselves a hotel with an excellent view and had dinner (no meal we had in a restaurant in Switzerland was less than $40- very expensive country!) I think I had a cup of soup for $9 and Jordon’s spaghetti was $23. But Kandersteg was a great place to stay and ideal for hiking. In the morning we took a gondola up a mountain (where the skiing would be excellent in winter) and hiked to Lake Oeschinnsee, which was breathtaking. For a Wednesday in October, there sure were a lot of Swiss out and about taking a vacation! The weather was perfect and even a little too hot. There were a few restaurants up there, which was amazing since this lake is out in the middle of nowhere. We had lunch by the lake, and unfortunately Jordon ordered “a quaterpounder with mushrooms and chips.” He was expecting a good-sized burger and fries. Reality was a slab of some type of meat (not ground beef) smothered in thick mushroom sauce and fries. No bun in sight. We have learned to not get our hopes up when looking at menus! We gondola-ed down and headed towards Murren, which was about an hour away. We passed through Interlakken and headed up into the mountains. We reached a small town where we parked the car and took another gondola up to Murren, which sits at 5,000 feet and literally on the edge of a cliff halfway up a mountain. Our hotel room was on the edge of that cliff so it was a little scary looking down but looking out and up we had spectacular views. The next morning we took the gondola up another 5,000 feet to the Schiltorn. From there you had 365-degree views of the Alps and could see the Jungfrau, which is the tallest point in Europe. There is a rotating restaurant up there, much like the Space Needle, but a little different view! The hiking was a little scary up there and it didn’t take much to lose your breath from the high elevation. Then we took the gondola all the way down, which was about a 30-45 minute trip and then headed back to Germany. We are already planning to go back in the winter!

 View out the hotel in Kandersteg

 Kandersteg is in the valley behind us, on our way to the lake!

 Lake Oeschinnsee! So beautiful, I have never seen water that color. 

 You could rent paddle boats and go fishing on the lake. So many people here were just building little fires and cooking brats or having a picnic lunch on the shore.

 Very steep hike! 

 View out our window in Murren. 

 At the top of the Schilthorn. What this picture doesn't tell you is that I am grabbing onto Jordon for dear life because there is a VERY long and steep drop a few feet behind us! 

 The Jungfrau behind us

 And you wonder why it's only Jordon in this picture??

 Paragliders were everywhere!