Lunch along the Rhein

Yesterday, Dan and I packed up the bikes and headed to our favorite spot so far... the Rhein. It is such a beautiful river, with castles all along the way. Every time we go there, we feel like we are on vacation...which is great because it only takes us about an hour and a half to get there! We ended up biking 20 miles along a pretty popular stretch, and stopped off in St. Goar to eat lunch. I brought with me a bunch of painting supplies since I am very inspired by the buildings, so I wanted to paint some. I ended up painting at home though, since I forgot water for my watercolor. lol. This is a playful scene, and my interpretation of what some of the buildings along the Rhein look like. This is entitled " lunch along the Rhein". I look forward to traveling all over and being able to paint the cool scenery... what a fun place to be right now.

Moving Day--what a mess!

Last week our household goods finally arrived after 2 and a half months of being without it! What a great day it was to finally have everything that reminded us of home back in our possession. This is a picture of our kitchen during the drop off. What a MESS! As the boxes were brought in, I frantically opened them like a child on Christmas morning. Even though I knew what was coming out of the box, it was like I was seeing it for the first time again. It made me miss Boise so much though, since that was the last place I had seen all of this. Thankfully everything made it in one piece, and nothing was banged up or broken. We have heard horror stories of people having things stolen, or destroyed during the move. In fact, a guy who is buying our Golf said that a forklift went through his leather coach! I couldn't believe it.. I would have been livid! Now the fun part comes in... putting everything together again, and unpacking for the next few weeks. A few more trips to Ikea are in store to get some organizers since German houses do not have any closets! I can't wait to make this old house our home... finallY!

Life got busy

Hey everyone, I'm so sorry for the lack of blogg-age this month. As you can tell, May was not as busy as June since I was able to blog about 2 or 3 times a week. Since I got my new job as the Pool program director, and managing my swim lesson side business, I haven't had as much time on my hands to do the things I enjoy ( like this blog) and that is a total bummer. But please, keep checking up on me, because you motivate me to at least get on and write a little something when I can! I hope everyones summer is going great! The weather here is unpredictable, but when the sun shines.. the SUN SHiNES and it is amazing... 4th of July this weekend...who has party plans?!

We're not tourists, we're explorers!

Yesterday, we wandered down to a village called Baden-Baden which is the gateway to the Schwarzwald ( black forest) in the South western part of Germany. Originally, we were just wanting to go drive through the forest, but we ended up stumbling upon a beautiful trail to a waterfall that snaked throughout the forest for about 4 km. It was so amazingly beautiful! Then, we hiked back up and found a point that overlooked all of the valley and villages. On the way home, we neglected to find a restaurant, so we stopped off at a Mcd's... gross, right? Actually, no! Mcdonalds here is so much different than back home in the states! We got a chicken wrap, and they used mixed greens instead of iceberg lettuce, and the quality of the chicken was so much better too! lol, I can't believe I am comparing and contrasting Mcdonald's. But at least it was a pleasant experience. Well, the world cup is going on, and even though Germany lost yesterday.. people are still blowing their obnoxious horns and flying their flags from their cars. you know what I have to say to that? GO USA!!!

Back seat driver

We got a new car this week! Well, not brand new...but new to me! It's an '07 Caliber, which is a big jump from the '93 VW golf we got when we first arrived. When we got home, Hannah jumped right into the trunk like she was the queen of the Caliber. It may look like she doesn't fit.. but you would be surprised. She ended up taking a nap back there for a good majority of the afternoon... now we just need to work on getting her a driver's license!

Would you like a Luxem-burger?

This last weekend, we jumped the border over to Luxembourg with our new friends ( and tour guides) John and Heather. We found out that they speak 4 different languages there: French, German, English and Luxembourgish ( a mix of French and German). Crazy, right? We passed a restaurant that had a Luxem-burger, catchy name, however for the cost of 12 euro, we were not sold. We walked through the Castemates, which were underground tunnels built a super long time ago...and then were used to hide Jews during the Holocaust. Very interesting to see how they were constructed, yet so spooky at the same time. After that, we hopped back over the border to a city in Germany called Trier, and saw the Porta Nigra which was the main gate to the city, and is one of the only parts of the original 4 mile structure left today. Then, there was a Korean man selling handmade wire sculptures on the sidewalk, so I bought a few. He was an extremely odd individual that needed to consume his time with something other than wire bending. When the rain came in, we dipped out... then headed back over to H&J's place for pizza and World Cup action. As they say in Luxembourg...wait, actually no, i don't know what they would say.. so...see ya!

Clash of the Cultures

Last Saturday, I started my new job at the Ramstein Aquatic center on base, as the pool program manager. So far, it's been interesting to learn, there are so many different hats that I have to wear, which is fun because there's always something different to do. Today, I had the opportunity to "expose" my manager skills and take the heat from one of the patrons. There was a woman, who decided to breast feed her baby completely topless on the pool deck. In her defense, she was European, so this is completely natural for her to just whip out the goods, and feed her kid. Unfortunately, we are on a US installation base, and not a European beach. So I walk up to her and have to explain how this is making our male lifeguards feel uncomfortable ( yeah right) and that she had to either cover to a layer of modesty, or go to the locker room. She refused to do both, and started to become irate, and tell me every word in the book. All the while her boob is just flopping out of her suit.. this is very disturbing i know. So I removed myself from the situation, let her cool down.. and came back out later. She told me this time that i was harassing her, and that she would call the police. OMG. this is my third day on the job, and someone is already wanting to call the cops on me, perfect. Myself and another co-worker were eventually able to calm her down, after telling her that we would be calling the cops on her. Some people have nothing else better to do with their time than to start headaches for others.. and you know what i have to say about that... save the drama for your mama... and keep it in your shirt next time.