December 22nd was D-Day, and by that I mean "Dang I have to fly 7 hours alone" day. My flight was, to say the least, terrible. The seat belt light stayed of all of 30 minutes total and about every half hour the kid behind me kicked my seat, which prevented any sleep I tried to get from happening. I did have 2 whole seats to myself though and got to watch "We're the Millers" (which actually wasn't nearly as bad as it looked) and "Tangled". I also got all of my Christmas and going away party thank you cards done, so can't complain too much. Once I landed in Germany it as customs and baggage and then try to find my husband. Thank God I am somewhat competent with airports! It is 2 Euro for baggage carts (which I DEFINITELY made use of) and while standing at the carousel waiting for my baggage to come out I saw at least 3 people completely struggle to comprehend how to get a baggage cart. One lady didn't understand you had to pay, another stood there staring at the machine that took your money for at least five minutes. Bless their adorable non-traveling hearts. Moving on. So I found James and we made our way to Ikea which was actually still closed. We went to this Home-Depoty type store (Picture the Home Depot, but with a pet store included...) and got a tree stand and a couple various other things in an attempt to kill time so Ikea would open. We eventually decided to just ditch Ikea because we were bored of waiting. We made our way back to base to pick up a few things I needed and then back to the house. James did a great job with the house. It is so perfect! The yard is gorgeous and I love the country feel of it all. It has a covered porch which I can't wait to sit on every day once it gets warmer.
Spooker loves to run around in the backyard too. All our furniture fits n the bedroom and we have 2 wardrobes as well. Europeans for some reason don't believe in closets. I will never understand. EVER. Spook loves our bed and sometimes lays in our room by himself. Freak. Our kitchen is small, not like an America kitchen. We are planning on getting a little buffet cabinet for some extra storage/counter space in there. Both our bathrooms are decently sized and have plenty of bathroom storage (YAY!) We (I) have gotten all of my books unpacked and onto the bookshelf in a very disorganized fashion, but the boxes are broken down and out of the way so I don't care. James got a lot of kitchen things unpacked before I got here, but like I said we will need more storage in order to finish that. I have gotten 90% of our clothes out of bags and hung or folded. Have yet to find many shoes, but finally found an abundance of socks and underwear. Moving is hard and messy.
My first few days here have been crazy. It's hard to believe it hasn't even been a week since I got here. Since I landed on the morning of the 23rd, once we got home and unpacked a few things we set up our tree. James cooked me an amazing welcome home dinner while I wrapped the tree in lights. After dinner we decorated together and used our handy dandy tripod to take some Christmas pictures.
Christmas Eve we went to a candlelight service on base and then over to one of James' friends houses for food and games. We had a really great time. Christmas day we were supposed to go to a progressive dinner but ended up waking up really late and missed the first house. We opened our gifts to each other and had a nice breakfast before making it out the door. James got me a few things from Christmas markets, including this really gorgeous heart necklace I am in love with!
We then scurried out the door to make it to the second house in the progressive dinner for salad and Secret Santa, and then onto the third for dinner. After dinner we swung by our house to pick up the pup and a movie and then made our way to base to play games, have dessert and watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
The day after Christmas two of James' friends, their dog, James, Spook, and I all left in the afternoon to drive to Brugge, Belgium. We got there in about 3 hours and found a hotel and then did a little shopping and attempted to go to the Christmas market, which was all closed except for the bar. We tried a couple of drinks and made our way back to the hotel for the night.
The Christmas lights in Brugge are beautiful. Every town in Europe has a town square type feel even if its a big city.
In the morning we got breakfast (Belgian waffles!!) and stopped to get some chocolate. There are more chocolate shops in Brugge than I have ever seen in my life. We then went to the snow and ice sculpture festival! It is sponsored by Disneyland Paris so this year it was all carved after scenes from "Frozen" and they also had a few classic Disney characters. It was so beautiful and incredible. Disney is the professional when it comes to paying attention to detail and making things magical, and magical it was.
All of the classic Disney couples were dancing in a ballroom at the sisters' ball from "Frozen." It was so neat.
They of course couldn't go without Mickey and Minnie there as well!
In order to keep everything frozen it was 21 degrees in there. My toes were numb ad freezing by the time we left! Spook was not a fan of the ice either...
We then drove about an hour to Brussels and hit up the Christmas market there, in the cold rainy mess that is Europe. James and I found this really neat nativity scene which we invested in. We then moved on to try to find the famous bar Delirium. Delirium, as it turns out, is not one bar but a network of like 5 or 6 bars all in the same building. The environment was very chill and nice. They have literally thousands of different beers you can try. We sat in there for a while with the dogs, and then headed back home.
It has been a great adventure thus far but I will be thankful once New Years is over and I can get everything more organized and settled in. My sleep schedule has not been working for me either so I will be glad once the jet-lag has passed. Moving to a different country is kind of like moving to a different planet. I had to relearn how to use a dish washer, washing machine, dryer, etc. The heating and air is different as well as light switches, and pretty much anything else. I feel much more cultured already. Once some more unpacking and organizing has been done I will post some house pics but until then you will just have to wait :)
TTFN, Ta ta for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment