Late Summer to Fall in a Nutshell

We have taken a looooong break from writing here, so prepare for a whirlwind look into our last

several months. Here are the highlights of the summer:

-flying back to Washington for a week for Mollie and Peter’s wedding (so good to see family and friends even though it was a short trip)
-my work conference in Philadelphia (focused on child abuse- a little depressing but so thankful my mom was able to fly out and spend the week with me)
-Fourth of July camping and hiking in Garmisch, Bavaria
-1 Year Anniversary trip to Dresden (we had an authentic Medieval dinner… yum!)
-Jordon’s work trip to Phoenix (he loved going to the baseball game and people speaking English everywhere… we miss America)

And that brings us into the fall, where we have enjoyed beautiful weather, fall festivals, and a visit from my college friends Mal and Rachel. They were visiting Europe for 2 weeks, and our house served as a home base for them between cities. On the weekends, Jordon and I could travel with them. We drove to the Stuttgart Oktoberfest, which is #2 worldwide in size and popularity to the one in Munich. HUGE beer tents, carnival rides and lots of food… great first day for the girls to experience life in Germany. The four of us then hopped on a plane to Venice, where we spent one jam-packed day seeing the sites and navigating our way through the canals and “streets.” It was amazing to see an entire city connected by water as their main mode of transportation- so different from anywhere we have been! The next day we rented a car and Jordon navigated us across Italy to the west coast- specifically Cinque Terre in the Liguria region. It is a group of 5 towns built precariously on cliffs and outcroppings- making for a beautiful and rugged terrain. There is a trail that goes through all five towns, but we only had time to hike from the town we were staying in, Corniglia, to the next town, Vernazza. As night fell, we jumped into the Mediterranean had a blast swimming around. It was so refreshing to see the sunset over water! The next day, we were all on our way- Jordon and I back to Germany for work and the girls onto Rome for a few days. But before we left Italy, we had a quick stop at the Leaning Tower of Pisa (we had to make sure it hadn’t fallen down yet!).

We have a few more trips in the works for the rest of fall/winter and it’s strange to think we have less than a year left here. So we are deciding what our priorities are as far as places to visit…. On the list is Scotland, Barcelona, and some skiing in the Alps.

As for work, Jordon is keeping his squadron in tip-top shape with his P.T. sessions twice a day. I am waiting for government reports to come out stating that the Air Force has never been in such good shape : ) My job continues to challenge me everyday as I hear about abusive relationships and families within our community. But it’s a good learning experience.

We hope you are all having a great start to the holiday season!

A Busy Spring!

A lot has been going on these past months for us! We have been blessed with some amazing weather and quite a few visitors this Spring. Mattie and Jake stayed with us on the tail end of their 3 week trip to Europe in the beginning of April. I took them to Heidelberg one day while Jordon was working, then we went to southeastern Germany (Bavaria) for a weekend. Along the way, we stopped at Neuschwanstein Castle, which was Disney’s inspiration for the Disneyland castle and built for King Ludwig in 1886 (not that long ago) so that was exciting to see. We stayed for a few days at Lake Konigsee- it was very picturesque and relaxing.  Did a grueling hike up the mountains but the view at the top was worth it! We had such a great time with Mattie and Jake- it was great to be with family again.

Next visitors were Bill and Jody Duppenthaler- our high school Young Life leaders who were on a 2 month long trip visiting different Young Life groups throughout Europe. They used our house as a home base for a few days as they did day trips to Heidelberg and Baden-Baden. We really enjoyed having dinner with them every night and sharing our experiences of living and travelling in Europe. A few days after they left for France we had Easter dinner at our house with 3 other families. It was a great day for a BBQ and an egg hunt- we are fortunate to have a big house and backyard to have get-togethers! It’s still strange for me to spend holidays away from our families but we have formed our overseas family here, which makes celebrating the holidays really fun for us.

Our next visitor was my cousin Drew who is currently over here in Europe for a month- I was able to go to Amsterdam with him for a few days last week while Jordon stayed home to work (sorry honey)! Amsterdam was such an awesome city- we rented bikes and saw all the major sites. Going into Anne Frank’s house was very humbling as we stood in the house that was actually used as a hideout for her and her family during the war. It made everything feel a bit more real. We did a lot in our day and a half there, then took the train back home and then Drew was off to London for the next part of his trip! We are hoping to meet up with him in Switzerland this weekend.

Exciting news- Jordon and I are both starting new jobs this Monday! He will be switching over to the Unit Fitness Program Manager position- basically leading PT sessions and motivating about 500 people in his squadron to improve their health and fitness. This job was made for him! I will be working at the Family Advocacy Center on base as a Program Assistant working with child abuse and domestic violence cases. The best part of both of our jobs is that we have the exact same hours and weekends and holidays off. We couldn’t ask for anything better! Also we are looking forward to coming back to WA at the beginning of June for my sister’s wedding! It will be great to spend time with family and friends (and eat at a few of our favorite restaurants we have been missing terribly). Sorry this is so long…. Hope you are all doing well! 

A Very Special Visitor!

Before I get started, just want to say I am sitting here enjoying some Starbucks coffee, Harbor Green tortilla chips sent from Gig Harbor, and recently dipped into some very special peanut butter from Bellingham! We are spoiled over here when we get packages from friends and family but it's so nice to have a little bit of WA!
My mom traveled to Germany for a week in February.... what a whirlwind trip it was. I think her goal was to see as many castles as she could. She hadn't even been on the ground for 6 hours and we were visiting her first castle (a 10 minute car ride from our house)! She found it funny that the "golden arches" of McDonald's is the only thing that sticks out when looking down over the town of Landstuhl from the castle. That's what you get for being near a military base! The next few days were spent driving to Cochem and Heidelburg to see what cute little German towns are like (and to get quite a bit of shopping in). Oh, and of course those two towns have fabulous castles : ) In the middle of the week the three of us hopped on a train going speeds up to 200 km/hr and arrived in Paris! The City of Light/Love/Romance (whatever you prefer) is a little dreary and cold in February but we made the most of it! We rode the metro countless times to destinations such as the Louvre, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe, Champs de Elysses, and many cafes along the way to eat the essentials while in Paris.... baguettes, crepes, cafe lattes, madelines, French wine, etc. The highlight for all of us was waking up early to experience the best views in town atop the Eiffel Tower! Let's just say you can't estimate how tall it is until you are actually up there looking down on the tiny specks that are people.  We enjoyed a 360 degree view of the city (a little fog didn't dampen our mood) until we couldn't stand the cold anymore and made our way down in the elevator. Maybe next time we will try the stairs?? Overall, it was great to have my mom here and we enjoyed some quality time together- hard to say goodbye!
Side note- Jordon and I were happy to learn that we get free entry to all museums (and I'm guessing other attractions too) by showing our German driver's license. Good thing to know, it applies to all people under 26 either living or going to school in Europe.
Life went pretty much back to normal for these 2 newlyweds after my mom left except Jordon switched back to nights (no fun) and I switched units I am volunteering for at the hospital (better chance of getting hired). So we are just adjusting to weird schedules such as Jordon eating breakfast while I eat dinner and staying busy with me finally able to change my last name to Jordon's which is a little bit harder over here but slowly getting done. He refused to change his to Maenhout so I guess I am stuck being an Albers : ) We are also looking forward to Mattie and Jake visiting in a month! Can't wait to show them around and just hang out with more family!
Happy early Spring everyone! At least I think it's Spring, it's still in the 20's here most mornings when I wake up. Enjoy your day!

Cochem castle

Standing at the Heidelberg Castle looking down on the town

Watching crazy traffic at the Arc!

Mom loves Paris

Le Eiffel Tower (minus all the pretty flowers)

At the top! You can see the fear in our eyes

Coffee and baguettes

Taking a break near the Louvre

The Mona Lisa! 

Museum with a lot of Monet's! 

Spain, Christmas, New Years, and LIZ!

We started off December right…. With a trip to Spain! Jordon and I and a friend, Josh, flew to the island of Mallorca. It was mind blowing to fly 1.5 hours from snowy Frankfurt to a sunny and 60 degree tropical island. This island caters mostly to tourists from Germany and the UK, and we found that we were definitely visiting in the off-season. Most restaurants, shops and hotels were shut down for the winter but we managed to find a hotel in the main city of Palma that was right on the water with a marina out front. One day we rented bikes and rode 20 miles down a winding promenade, all along the water. The next day we rented a car and drove to the opposite side of the island, where we toured the “Cuevas del Drach” which were these underground caves and the largest underground lake in Europe. It was pretty spectacular, especially when a string quartet came out on the lake in rowboats and played a mini-concert! We didn’t want to leave Spain, mainly because it was warm. Our flight ended up being diverted to another airport in Germany on the way home because of inclement weather, which made sense once we got to the car at the airport in Frankfurt- 8 inches of snow and more was coming down! It has been snowing all of December and none of it has melted, not what we are used to in Washington!

The next major event this month was Christmas! A few days before the holiday we drove to Luxembourg city, about 1.5 hours away. We did a little shopping and found a great Christmas market! We got our gluwein (hot spiced wine) and listened to some carolers. It certainly got us in the holiday spirit. We ended up getting our Christmas tree from a very German Christmas store a few towns over. The man who was helping us get the tree to the car would not let Jordon strap the tree to the top of the car! He insisted on making it fit inside, who knows it is probably against the law to drive with a tree on top of your car over here! We had Christmas Eve dinner with two other families and then Christmas Day we opened presents and were able to Skype with both of our families and grandparents.

            A few days after Christmas, my friend Liz from PLU came to visit! She is currently living in Slovakia with a host family and volunteering at a community center, mostly teaching English and working with the gypsy population. It has been so great to have someone familiar here and to be able to show around. We have been “volksmarching” which is “hiking” in German, had a fondue party with friends, and have been cooking and baking a lot since she has been here. For New Year’s Eve the three of us drove to Cologne, Germany to ring in the New Year. Cologne is the 4^th largest city in the country and home to the Dom Cathedral, which is larger and more impressive than the Notre Dame. Our hotel was within walking distance to the cathedral so we toured the inside right away. At midnight, we walked down to the Rhine river where thousands of people were standing to countdown and celebrate. We walked through the crowds to a bridge where we were hoping to see more, but it was so foggy and smoky from the fireworks you couldn’t see much! It was really hard to walk anywhere because of the crowd and also because people would light off fireworks in the snow wherever they felt like! We wished we had brought goggles because fireworks would be going off 10 feet away all around you. It was insane! There were no regulations on fireworks and we only saw a few cops hanging around, not like New Years in the states at all!

            Jordon and I wish you all a Happy New Years! We are looking forward to many good things this year and are excited to come back to Washington for Mollie and Peter’s wedding in June! Also looking forward to my mom coming to visit in February. We love visitors! Also, our wedding made it into South Sound Wedding and Event Magazine so if you see a copy in a store be sure to take a peek. Once again Happy New Years and we are sending our love from Germany

 Shopping in Luxembourg

 Christmas Eve

 Liz, Jordon and I in front of the Dom Cathedral in Cologne 

 At night, a little scary looking! 

Counting down in German on New Year's Eve! 

And finally, our stuff is here!

Many changes around Ringstrasse 39 (our street and house number) are happening! We finally received our household goods shipment. This involved about 7 German men going in and out of the house saying, “Miss, miss! Where does this go?” Honestly, I had no idea where things went because we have no where to put anything. So the entire downstairs became a sea of boxes and plastic wrap and more boxes. We had to create little pathways just to get to the kitchen. But a week later, all the important things have found their places and yes, we still have an entire room or two of boxes but at least it is organized. At the same time as the house was a ridiculous mess on the inside, they started work on the roof. Finally a purpose for the scaffolding that has been up since we got here in September! So this has consisted of a week of, once again, about 7 Germans in and out of the house. They put in two new skylights upstairs, so it was not uncommon for us to wake up to 2-3 Germans right outside the bedroom door (and they aren’t the quietest workers). During the day there is lots of hammering, thumping, a few loud bangs, and even a chainsaw used as the new roof is being made. I know it will be nice and hopefully do a better job of keeping our house warm, but Jordon has had a hard time sleeping during the day through all of this! I just talked to the landlord (Gretel) and apparently they will be done with the major work on Tuesday, thank goodness. They are also trying to fix our satellite for the TV today which is nice, currently it has been frozen on a football game for the past 3 hours which is not a good sign. Our landlords have been great to us though, and are trying to make the house even nicer than it is so we are thankful for that.

We are hoping to take a mini-vacation next week because next Thursday is our only mutual day off. It will be so nice to get out and travel again! It feels like it has been forever since we went anywhere, but I guess we would be doing even less traveling if we were living in the States so we are fortunate to do what we can. Hope you are all enjoying the (hopefully) beautiful fall weather! It has turned to winter here already and it’s so windy I wouldn’t be surprised if we woke up in Kansas one morning. Tschüß!

 Our still-a-work-in-progress living room. Feels so much more like home than before! And if you notice the upside down laptop sitting on a bed of rice, someone might have spilled water over his laptop. Whoops! 

Currently the view of the house from the street! The landlord joked with me the other day when I got home, he said "all done, looks good!" Yeah, right. 

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!