HAPPY 4th of JULY!! We are missing seeing fireworks today - we hope you guys get to enjoy them and that it does not rain!

Ronnie left this morning for Milan, Italy for a project kick-off meeting. He is just going for the day and will be back tonight. He also has to go to Paris every Thurs for the day. So tomorrow he goes to Paris. The Paris thing will be for the whole 6 months, so every Thurs will be hard on him and we won't see him until late that night. Please pray for these little plane trips. I dislike him having to fly every week!

Alexis is asleep and I was going to upload photos, but I forgot Ronnie took the camera with him, so I will just type - this might be long....

Things I still wanted to write about Paris...
The cab ride to the airport was crazy - first time in a car in 30 days. While driving I noticed very busy roads with no divider lines for the lanes. So people sort of formed their own lanes, it would go from 3 lanes to 4 and back....so scary. I know I could never drive there! The fare for the taxi ride cost us $130 Euro! YIKES! For 2 mini vans (to tote our baggage) and then they charged us for helping with the luggage (taking it in and out of the van)!

Ronnie’s basketball game U.S. vs. France. France won at the last minute with a 3 pointer. It was so close. It was funny to watch because none of them had played in 10+ years!

Sights and Sounds of Paris that Alexis will miss:
Seeing the French dogs, pigeons and her little park.
Hearing “Belle, Belle, Belle” and “Cui, Cui” everywhere she went.

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Germany now...Things to get used to…
Well, we’re hoping that it will grow on us. Much harder to adjust cause the food, people and language are very different. We are by 2 little grocery stores. I mean little. Not like the one in Paris that was like a Super-Target. It is much harder to find essentials within walking distance. We also don’t have a microwave and are looking to purchase one someday. So those who know me, I don’t cook. No microwave = starvation. Really though, I am trying to adjust without one, but it is hard when you don’t cook, plus can’t read the directions on the food or know what half of the food even is! Also Alexis wants to eat real food now, so I have to eat whatever she can eat. Looks like Germany is going to force me into living up to my last name now!

People…different. It is also probably the neighborhood we are in, like I said, the gay district. So you go out to eat and there are many “couples”. Not really what I prefer Alexis seeing or growing up around. If we walk 15 mins towards Ronnie’s work it is much better. It is the tourist area – so you get a better mix of people. Looks like that is where we will be going the most.

This is funny, Ronnie’s work made us redo our passport photos because we were smiling. So goes the rest of Germany we found out. There was a Walmart here that is no longer and we read one thing they did wrong was have their customer service people smile – well that is not the German way. Well it is very hard for me to not smile at people. I can’t do it – so I guess these people are just going to have to get used to this little Texan smiling at everyone. Hehehe! So needless to say, walking down the streets here is not very friendly thus far.

Our place is way better then the last place. It feels much more like a home, much bigger. We are still trying to get used to apartment life though. Alexis loves slamming things on the floor and crawls fast – so I bet our downstairs neighbors love us! We are also not used to being “quite”. Laundry…oh how that is the main thing I miss about home life. There are about 10 tenants in this building. 1 Laundry facility – in the basement – 1 washer, 1 dryer – both enough for one small load, and you have to pay a few Euros to use it. The basement – is also where the trash goes. So the trash and laundry are side by side – so you get a good whiff when you want clean clothes. It is also dark and scary. Not looking forward to doing my first load – not sure how it works if you just hope no one else is doing laundry when you are or what. We’ll see…

Yesterday, Alexis and I decided to venture out. We looked at the forecast and it said sunny, no rain. So we left - no umbrella. Once I got 20 mins from home, it started to rain. We sat in Starbucks for 1½ waiting for it to stop. We got a little gap where it slowed down. Now my mission was to find a rain cover for Alexis’s stroller for the walk home. People kept sending me further and further out from home to different stores – many were wrong. After 5 hours of looking for one, I finally found a store that sold them. By this time, Ronnie got off work and met up with us. We bought another umbrella for us and there we were - all 3 of us walking home 35 mins in the cold rain at 8PM. Fun times. Oh yea – another funny…we needed to buy little CD players for the bedrooms so we could have sleep music. I saw one in the window of a store by Ronnie’s work, so I bought them. When Ronnie had met up with us – he had a bag with him – he bought 2 of them as well. So now we have 4 of the same CD players and we are hoping they will take back 2!

Though this all sounds negative – we are looking for some positives and I am sure there will be many. It’s just the beginning which is always the hardest. Please pray that we can do this for 6 months. Also, it is not confirmed, but it does look pretty promising that we will have to go back to Paris for possibly another 2 months (Jan-Feb).

I’ll stop now since this is so long. We love and miss you guys. We’re trying to come home at the end of July for a few days – we’ll let you know! Love – Us3