Kylee can ride a bike!!!!

So proud of her!! And James got to teach her!!!!!

Still no internet

Guess what today was? Today was the day that our service provider was coming to the house to set things up. He did show up, and tried to hook things up but apparently our lines are connected to the crazy cat lady's house. So, we have to talk to get to set up a time where the phone guy can go in her garage as well. She was home, but didn't answer. And I asked about the Internet. He said his orders were only for the phone line because it says our Internet is satellite (which is wrong). So, no Internet. I am so mad!!! How can it be so difficult to get Internet here!

Still waiting....

It's been two weeks and we still have no Internet. We got an email saying its going to take longer than expected, so I guess we have to wait some more. I have pictures on my camera I want to upload and post! But I can't do it till we have Internet. :(

Gotta Improvise

One thing we do not like about our house is the kitchen sink. It's not deep enough, no sprayer, and there is only one side. Not only that, but you have to push a button to heat up the water before you use it. It needs to heat up for about 10 minutes to get enough hit water to fill the sink. We do have a dish washer but we still wash all of our pots and pans by hand. There isn't really a place to let your clean dishes dry. (We are buying a dish rack today!). James improvised though. He found a place to rinse off the soapy dishes and let the dry. We do not use this tub at all to bathe. I thought it was funny.

Euros

Aunt Carol asked how money works here. I will try my best to explain.

We use Euros here. The base facilities take both Euro and dollars as well as credit cards. However some places in town only take Euro or Visa. Our current bank account is only a MasterCard. We had to get a new bank account here that had both US and German routing numbers so that we could pay our German bills. Anyhow, that account does have visa card do things may be easier if we don't have Euro on us. We learned this lesson at McDonalds the other day. We ordered our food and tried to pay with our MC. unfortunately they didn't accept MC and we had no Euro on us. We had to leave. It was a bit embarrassing.

Not all places take Visas either but they do take Giro cards. We will have to get a Giro card eventually if we want to travel.

Currently the exchange rate is one USD buys you .73 Euros. Apparently that is low. Eventually it will go up a few more cents and then people will do an exchange so they can get more for their money.

Germany taxes are crazy! I may have posted about this before but I will write again just in case. Tax is 19% here. Instead if tax being added in at the end it is reflected in the actual price advertised. We are able to buy something called a VAT form that will allow us to receive that tax back. It's a nice little tax relief but not every store will accept a VAT form. And this is only available for Americans stationed here.

Excuse any typing errors. My spell check on the phone has a mind of its own and I always dont catch it if it changes it to something different.

A short update

We are officially in our house and I live it. We have yet to get out Internet turned on so my postings will be limited or short. It's hard typing long notes on an iPhone. I have a few things I want to post about but that will wait till the Internet is hooked up. For now I want to share some pictures I took on our walk to Kylee's bus stop. Which, by the way, us up a few hills. The walk is actually good exercise.

The picture of Wyatt is him at the top of the hill close to the bus stop. Our house is WAY at the bottom behind the last row of trees.