Happy Asention Day! Its not even on the American calendar but Germans get to take the day off. How dose one celebrate the day Jesus bodily asended to heven after his resurection? Cake?

I recently finished another novel by Tom Robbins. Fierce Invalads Home From Hot Climates. His newest book in paperback (another one just came out in hard cover). If you've never read any of Mr. Robbins' books I highly suggest them. He has the innate abbility to be the most silly and most profound person all in the same sentance. I'm glad though that I never decided to use one of his books for a school book report. Where do you start? Each book is about so many things. i.e. Fierce Invalids is about a CIA agent who gose to South America to let his grandmother's parrot free into the rain forest. Here he meets a shaman with a head shaped like a pyramid who shows him the creators of the universe for the price of the agent's ability to walk on the ground. In response Switters rides around in a wheel chair. After he meets an excomunicated convent of Nuns in the Iraqi desert he up-grades to stilts. Ah, but there is so much more I can't even get into, like his desire for his teenage stepsister to the Mother Superior once being a nude model for the painting Switters grandmother hangs in her house. READ IT! It will make you giggle outloud at the same time as it massages your synaptic connections. Delicious.
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Have you ever been so anoyed at an advertisement that you refused to use the product? The Fanta girls drive me nuts. Plus how many fruit flavored sodas do you ever want to drink after you turn 12? Well 'Green-eggs-and-ham' to me. Fanta in Germany is like any other soda. The other day I was shopping for a clear carbonated refreshment. Anything but Coke or Pepsi (cause they are both gross). But there was no Sprite or Sierra Mist and nobody sells 7-up any more. So I tried a Fanta. Its NOT GROSS. It isn't that nasty fake orange crap that you used to get with your happy meal. Its more like real orange juice mixed with Sprite (one of my fave drinks anyway). So if you see one in a 7-11 cooler don't ingnore it. Just put aside the stupid song playing in your head and try it. Please.
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Quote of the day:

"If life in America is such a 'Bless`ed' one, why did God put all our oil under people who hate us?"

John Stewart, Daily Show

Yeah! We finaly got the net at home... oh wait there is a lot in between huh?

We got the Jeep in at the begining of the month. We picked it up at our sister post Grafenwoir (pronounced Graf-en-veer). It is a much bigger post with all kinds of good stuff. We also got to see Vilseck wich has the huge PX. They are only about 30 minutes away. I may end up working there if nothing happens here.

Next, we moved in to our AMAZING house and received household goods on the 9th. I'm still unpacking. It only took 3 hours for them to unload the boxes but then the movers made us sign the paperwork and skipped out without helping unpack like they are supposed to. I guess nobody knew enough German to explain it to them. :P

Between unpacking and aranging my house I've been working on setting up my sewing area and starting a new quilt. It is nice to have something creative to do. There are only so many video games you can play before your brain feels like jelly.

Sushi is getting setteled in at work. As a matter of fact he's there all weekend. At least he gets to come home from the feild each night. Unfortunatly, when there is a rotation of training going on the gate that we go in gets closed so we have to go all the way around post. Fortunatly, since the "Box" (thats what they call the training area) is right by our house you can hear the helicopters and fake gun fire all day. Its really neat. I'm such a geek that I grinned all day because of the Huey low flying over the road I was driving on last week.

Here are some pictures we took in Regensberg when we first got here. There are some of Velcro too (just because she is a camera ham). We went to Parsberg last weekend to a place called Mobilhof. Its is a furniture/home store bigger than most malls. It is like 2 wearhouses, 3 stories tall conected together. And stuffed full of great German designed furnishing. I love it! There are about 4 couches that I HAVE to have. :)

Sorry no culture shock pic today. I need to transfer them off the lap top.

Ciao!

Wow! I acctualy have people bugging me to post more. I thought you guys would have better things to do than read about my boring life locked in motel room.

OK... I realy haven't been locked up here. And the room is way better than the Microtel that we stayed in when we moved to Drum. The great thing is that post is really small so its easy to walk just about everywhere. Now, whether you want to carry groceries for 45 minutes is another story. There is a good shuttle bus but it has been reduced in stops this week because of the Volks Fest.

The big news these last couple days is that we picked up a car to drive into the ground.... I mean.... a cute little car that will save us money. It is called an Opel. (insert future pic here) Basicly a cheezy hatch back with teeny tiny tires. I've had spare tires bigger than these. But we got two sets, a summer set and a winter set. They just made it law that you have to have both kinds. The winters up here arn't as bad as Drum's but the roads are differant and require the specialness. The guy who owned the car before us had a bunch of things like hoses and belt replaced before he sold it so all we have to do is change the oil and the filter. The worst part is that it has a manual transmition. I've never driven one and Sushi hasn't scince he first learned to drive. Its quite a challenge. But I wanted to learn new things in Germany so I suppose it all works out.

TV here is weird! Scince we are on base right now we get a few channels of AFN (Armed Forces Network). Thats basically a bunch of American crap that they think everybody wants to see (like Survivor and Idol) all cramed into 6 channels. The strangest part of these channels is NO COMMERCIALS. There are breaks in the normal places in the show but no products are advertised. The DOD uses the break for propaganda and reminders of our patriotism. For example April was Sexual Assult Awareness Month. Every other clip was how not to get raped or how to report rape etc. We have also seen alot of OPSEC (operational security) spots on how to shut your mouth in public and how to not leave top secret documents on your desk. We also get a few BBC channels. I'm watching the Snooker finals right now, ping pong was on earlier. And of course we have the a few German channels. It makes me want to learn German just so I can watch them. The best shows are American shows in German. Aparently they have a thing for early 90s shows like Knight Rider. We've also seen an episode of South Park... Kyle's Mom Is A Big Fat Bitch in a forign language takes the cake.

Todays culture shock comes from the extensive train system here. The pic was taken in a train going from Regensburg to Parsburg. The sticker warns not to throw things from or stick your head out of the windows.... He did have a head.