Oktoberfest 2011

Once I found out I was actually moving to Germany, I knew I HAD to go to Oktoberfest!  Yesterday was the opening day of the fest!!  So Friday night after school I went all over Amberg looking for the perfect Drindl to wear.  Every time I mentioned to someone that I was going down on Saturday, they recommended buying one to wear.  Bavaria is a region rich in tradition, and Oktobfest is no exception to that rule!

We left Saturday morning around 5:30 AM to make it down into Munich by 8.  The fest doesn't officially start until the parade ends and the King taps the first Keg at noon, but getting there early is  MUST to ensure you actually get a table to sit at.  They will only serve you beer/food etc if you're seated in one of the Beer Halls.

When we got there I was amazed at how many people were there already!  The lines to get into the beer halls were already so long!  We decided to wait in line to try to get into the Augustiner Brau.  They opened the doors around 9:00 and it became evident pretty soon that there was no way we were going to find places to sit.  So we decided to just wander around the grounds, look at all the venders, walk into the different beer halls and hang out until the parade came through at 11:30.

9:30 AM, inside the Augustiner Brau

The parade was really cool.  Each brewery had their own floats and the horses pulling them were gorgeous! After the parade we made our way to one of the Breweries that had outdoor seating.  Eventually we realized that we'd have to split up to find places to squeeze in at the end of tables.  I ended up at a table with a couple americans from California, a German who lived in Berlin but had a condo within walking distance of the fest and came down for it every year.  He had 3 friends with him, a guy from Frankfurt, one from England, and I never caught where the 3rd was from.

It was such a beautiful day and so much fun to sit outside, drink great beer, talk to new people, and enjoy the music from the Oom-pah Band!  Long, but super fun day!!!!

Hopefully a full album will be up on Facebook soon!

9/11 remembrance concert

I'm going to backtrack a little bit to get everyone caught up on last weekend and this past week before I go into what's been going on this weekend.

Last weekend ended up being much busier than I had planned.  The weather was going to be GREAT on Saturday so I talked to Paula and Wolfgang and they recommended a couple of local places that had some nice hiking trails.  It ended up being more of a nature walk than a hike, but it was still beautiful and great to be outside.  Here are a couple pics from the trail!

Beginning of the trailhead

Hiking along some cool rock formations

It's already beginning to look alot like fall

The trail ended in an open field

After hiking all day Saturday, I talked to Paula and she mentioned that there was a 9/11 remembrance concert on Ramstein Air Force Base on Sunday.  Trace Adkins was performing a free concert!  It was too good of an opportunity to pass up (Country music is one of the things I miss the most being over here, it's so hard to find any on the radio stations).

I'm so so glad I ended up going!  The atmosphere at the concert was incredible!  It was really inspiring to see so many people gathered in one place who have dedicated their lives to serving our country.  Especially on such an important day in our country's history.  It seems hard to believe that it's been 10 years since the attacks.

I was able to get a few pictures from the concert!  Enjoy!

In other exciting news, on Monday I received an e-mail saying that my car has arrived!!!  I spent literally all day Tuesday running around Graf getting everything in order!  But, by late Tuesday afternoon, I had my car, she was inspected and passed with flying colors, she was registered in Germany, and had new license plates!

She looks cute as ever!  Now it's really time to try new names on for size to see what fits!  I'm still open to any new suggestions, so please send them my way!!

A is for Autobahn, B is for BMW

I had my first experience driving on the autobahn Wednesday!  Well actually, I drove on the autobahn for 2 separate trips on Wednesday.  The first one was to go to a meeting in Ansbach for new Sped people in the district.  It was actually not as exciting as I had hoped.  It was raining and we hit a couple of Staus (or traffic jams).  So I really didn't get to experience the full effect.

In the evening after the meetings was over and we were back in Vilseck, I headed down to Schwanddorf to go to a store called Globus. It's a super Target of sorts with tons of school supplies and stuff for the apartment and right off of the autobahn!  Well, this time is was a clear evening and I was in a rental BMW.  So, needless to say I had some fun :)  I'm still getting used to the no speed limits thing.  I think I maxed my speed at 185KM per hour, which is something like 115 MPH.  Cars were still passing me, but it was exciting and scary and very German all wrapped into one.  So I was a giddy happy!

Speaking of BMWs on Sunday I went over to Paula and Wolfgangs for a family dinner with Wolfgang's dad and brother.  Wolfgang's brother Klaus bought a VERY nice BMW convertible last year and we took it out for a spin!

I think my white sunglasses go nicely with the beautiful paint job!

It's been too long!

Oh my goodness, it's been awhile since I've updated this!  Things have been very busy this past week.  I moved into my new apartment last Thursday (the 25th) and I don't have internet out there yet.  I can access my gmail and facebook accounts before and after school, which is nice, I just don't like staying there late for social reasons.  I'll be happy when I have internet out at the apartment again.  In the meanwhile, I've been spending most of my evenings getting things set up in the apartment (pictures up on facebook), taking walks around my new neighborhood, and watching dvds on my computer.  It could be a worse :)

School is in full swing and it looks like it will be a very busy year!  Every special ed progrm is run differently and I'm having to learn alot on the fly as things are getting thrown at me.  We don't have Lee's Summit's equivalent of a sped coordinator.  We do have a special ed chair, I'm just still a little blurry as to what my technical responsibilities are and what the chair covers.  I know I have more responsibilities here in terms of incoming students, referrals, and 3 year re-evals.  The lingo and terms are also a little different for the forms and steps of the process, so my learning curve is pretty steep!  Today I had my first IEP meeting though, so it's nice to have that out of the way!  Tomorrow I start seeing students for the first time and I'm excited for that.  I'm starting with 19 on my case load and there are 4 more in the referral process.  So, as stated above, between that and more responsibilities in the process/testing, I'll be a busy girl.

I'm definitely going to make plans for lots of travel too though!  Hopefully once the school year settles in, I'll be able to start planning some trips soon!

New Country -Check

This weekend I was able to go to Poland!  The Outdoor Rec on base occasionally does weekend trips.  Last time we were here it's how we traveled to Munich, Prague, and Amesterdam.  On a whim on Thursday I stopped by their office and they had a trip going to Poland this weekend!  Hiking plans in Switzerland for the weekend fell through due to weather, so it was a perfect backup plan.

Boy, I forgot how exhausting traveling on a bus can be!  We left Rose Barracks at midnight Friday night/Saturday morning, stopped by Graf to pick up more people, then started heading to Poland at 12:30am.  I think I fell asleep pretty soon after we left Graf, but we made for a pit stop from 3:30-4.  I think I slept again from about 4-5.  By 5:30 we were at the first Pottery store.  All of the patterns and deigns were so overwhelming!  I think in all we went to 8 or 10 pottery stores and by the end I was seeing spots because I was so tired and all the patterns were blurring together!  I ended up getting so great pieces that I loved though!

There was a pottery festival going on while we were there.  And while we didn't make it to the old part of town where the main fest was, there were smaller fests going on in the outer part of town where we were!  We found a Polish Polka Band!

Busy Week!

The past week has been really busy!  I won't bore you with every detail, but I'll highlight the biggies!

Apartment: After looking at a couple more apartments, I couldn't get the apartment in Amberg that I loved out of my head.  So at the beginning of the week I went back out there, talked to the Landlord again and decided to take it!  The housing office on base is a little difficult to navigate but after jumping through a few hoops, I get to move in on the 25th!  I get excused from work that day to go out with an inspector from base, sign the lease and wait for loaner furniture from post to be delivered! Hopefully all of my stuff will be here around the 20th of september!

Driver's License: I can legally drive in Germany!  Getting a license is a little bit of a process but after spending all day on Thursday, I have one!  The road signs and right-of-way laws were a little tricky to learn, they are pretty different than ours, so I'm glad the test is behind me!  A lot of people are in-processing  on base right now, so unfortunately I can't pick up a rental car until Monday because they are all rented out right now.  I'm just grateful I'll have one before I move into the apartment on Thursday!

School: I've gone in a little bit this week to re-acquaint myself with the building.  It's going to be a busy school year!  I'll start with 19 kids on my case-load with 3 more that will start the testing process at the beginning of the year!  And that's only 3rd and 4th grade!  The Sped dept is huge at VES.  We have 3 learning center teachers,  in addition to one for severe kiddos, one for emotional kiddos, one for vision impaired, and one for hearing impaired (from what I can remember, I might be forgetting someone!)  The school is way over crowded right now, I think our numbers are getting close to 650, so I will actually be sharing a classroom with Mel, another learning center teacher.

Star Spangled Banner:  Thursday night I decided I wanted to go see a movie at the theater on base.  I was tired of hanging out in the hotel room in the evenings and they were showing Harry Potter that night, so it seemed like a good idea.  I completely forgot instead of previews or adds before the movie everyone stands up and they play the Star Spangled Banner with an armed forces montage playing in the background!  Definitely hard to forget you're on an Army base with that happening!

House Hunters International!

Friday night the reality of being here sunk in and even though I've been having a great time and everyone has been really helpful and nice, I got pretty homesick.  I miss everyone back home alot and I know this is just the beginning of a long transition period.  Right now life is pretty unstructured, hectic, and cramped.  I feel like it's a big hurry up and wait game of running around doing errands but having no real home base (no pun intended there!).  My hotel room is pretty small and cramped and while I'm grateful being on base now, I know I can't stay here much longer or I'll go crazy!

Thankfully the housing office was actually pretty helpful in suggesting some apartments to look at and Paula and Wolfie have been checking German papers looking for listings!  Today Paula and I went out and looked at three different apartments.  I really felt like I was on House Hunters International. We'd go in, walk around, the realtor would come in and answer questions, and then Paula and I would leave and discuss :)

Apartment #1 -great location but pretty dingy
- Amberg is the closest thing to a big town that is reasonably close to base.  It has a stunning old downtown with cobblestone roads, churches, coffee shops, bakeries, shopping, everything really!  The first apartment we looked at was right off of an alley of the main road.  I'd literally be a 2 minute walk to everything.  BUT, it was really cramped, didn't have alot of windows and was pretty dingy. It did have 2 bedrooms, a decent sized living room and a small area for a table.

Apartment #2 - Huge living space in smaller town
- Aside form Amberg, the other town I'm considering living in is Sulzbach-Rosenberg.  It's where Paula lives and is a little closer to base than Amberg.  Sulzbach is smaller and doesn't have as many restaurants, shops, etc.  The apartment was actually the lower level of a house and is a little over 1300 sq ft!  It has 3 bedrooms, a very large living room and 1 bathroom.  The floors weren't very good, the bathroom was an interesting shade of green, and I'd be a 3 minute walk to the train station (which can be good and bad considering convenience vs noise level).

Apartment #3 -Country living in the big city
- The last apartment we looked at was back in Amberg.  This was in a quieter neighborhood that is about a mile and 1/2 from the inner city (25 minute walk, 10 minute bike ride, 5 minute drive). The apartment was on the third floor of a house that was on the end of the street.  The back of the house faced open country fields and lots of forest area.  A terrace off the living room overlooks the fields while the views from the front of the apartment look down into Amberg.  This one had 2 bedrooms and 1 bath and was about 925 sq ft.  Smaller than the one in Sulzbach and a about a 25 minute drive to get onto post.  I would also get a garage parking space so I wouldn't have a scrape my car in the morning!

I have a clear favorite.  Paula and I have one more to look at tomorrow.  I don't have to make a decision anytime soon, I can basically live at the hotel indefinitely. But, I would like to make a decision soon!  Of the 3 so far, let me know which one you think I should go for!

I tried to be as nonbiased as possible when writing these :)