It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

The big news this week of course is that we have moved into our house!   We waited until Thursday because Horst (our landlord) wanted to have it painted inside.  It is very white!  The tile floors are white and grey and the furniture we are borrowing from the base is blue, so it feels pretty sterile in here.  I told Travis it reminds me of an operating room :)   But the good news is that the morning we were moving, TMO called and said our unaccompanied baggage (the air shipment) had arrived and would be delivered that afternoon!  Yay...now we would have sheets and towels and some kitchen items.  Even more important....some more clothes!  I was getting pretty tired of wearing the same 8 shirts that I packed in my suitcase four weeks ago.  

The house is spacious, except for the kitchen, which is quite small and not much storage or counter space.  The european fridge is very small but we have one the military gives you downstairs in the big laundry room.  They also gave us a european washer and we were lucky and got a brand new american dryer!  


Here's the craziest thing yet...NO disposal!  Not only no disposal, but they are BIG into recycling here.  It is required and they are serious about it.  We have yellow sacks for recycling plastic, meat trays, aluminum, and tin.  A blue garbage for paper and cardboard.  A brown garbage for biodegradables which is where the no disposal comes in.  They sell these little covered tubs that you keep on your counter and as you cook, you put everything that you would normally put down your disposal into this tub.  Then every day or two you take it out and dump it directly into the brown garbage container outside.  You also put all of your yard stuff in there. No bags allowed!  Just dump it on in there and man does it start to stink, especially since they only pick it up every two weeks!   There is also a very small black container that is your garbage that can't be recycled.  They keep these small, so you are forced to recycle I guess.  Anyway, it is something very foreign to us and we are trying hard to live life the german way.  Below is a picture looking out our big picture window to the backyard.  It's really pretty, but we have lots of raking to do!  The apple trees are losing their leaves by the bucket full.

We have met several of our neighbors.  Bridgette and her three year old daughter , Trinity live in the other half of our duplex.  She is a nurse at Landschtul and works nights.  We have only seen her once. We never hear her...Horst says the houses are all made with cinder blocks and this house has a double cinder block wall between units.  We also met Barbid and Dieter and August.  They all live across the street.  Our favorite is Horst, our landlord and his wife, Jutta.  They are awesome.  He told Travis he will only speak german to him to help him learn german faster!  We love our neighborhood.  It is very traditional.


Weather Report:  It has been cooler this week.  Highs in the 60's.  Usually pretty overcast in the morning and then the sun peeks out in the afternoon.  Today we went to Mannheim to check out the IKEA and got caught in a torrential downpour!  Next week is supposed to be only in the 50's.  I am loving autumn here, but I don't think it's going to last much longer.


love and miss you all,
-corri


Happy birthday Dad I was thinking of you today.


Mike


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