another job offer

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?? Okay, I'll give you the bad first. Bad news is I don't get to sit around on my butt all day everyday without any responsibilities anymore.  Bummer, I know.  Good news is I just got a SECOND job offer! WOOP WOOP!! I got called into interview at the bank here on post yesterday! They told me they had many other applicants and would finish the interviews out this week and get back to me sometime next week.  However, I got another call today asking me to come in with my passport, ss card, etc. to discuss my recruitment! When I got there the manager said they didn't see the point in carrying out the rest of the interviews when they made the decision right after I left my interview. So I will now be working at Community Bank here on post; it's the overseas branch of Bank of America (which is awesome because he said wherever we move next, I will have a job at Bank of America).  I am so excited! I already have dates for a week long training session that will take place in another city in Germany where I'll stay at a hotel (they cover all expenses) and it works out PERFECTLY cuz that's the last week Chase will be in the field for their next rotation.  God is good. And my first business trip!! haha. As far as the substitute teaching position, I will probably still keep that job also - but I just won't be as available anymore - I'll have to be more of a back up plan for them. I'll keep you all posted, but as of right now I am supposedly starting my first day at the bank on  March 7th. 

Love,

One Happy Math Major :)

neuschwanstein

We just had the best celebration weekend ever! It was our Valentines Day present to each other and our way to celebrate Chase finishing Pathfinder School.  Btw, here is a pic of me pinning on his Pathfinder torch :)

We left bright and early Saturday morning to head to the Neuschwanstein Castle! It was only about a 3.5 hour drive and we used the spiffy new GPS I bought Chase for his birthday (you all know how well the GPS on my phone worked..not! lol). The new Garmin worked perfectly!! And we seriously couldn't have asked for better weather for the drive down there.  Check out these few pics of us approaching the Alps - where our hotel was located!

See what I mean? PERFECT weather!

Breathtaking..

Getting closer!

We passed through a few REALLY cute ski-lodgey looking towns on our way too! Then we finally got to the foot of the mountain that the castle is on and there is a town full of hotels/restaurants/ticket centers/souvenir shops/etc.  HOWEVER, the hotel that Chase booked was supposedly ON TOP of the mountain right next to the castle...oh yea..he did good! So we started driving up the hill that TONS of people were walking up and down.  Between the people walking not getting out of the way and getting stuck behind a horse and carriage carrying a load of people it took awhile to get up the hill.  We just kept driving though...hoping that our hotel was indeed at the top haha.

It was a tight squeeze on the tiny road for them and us! lol.

Dodging people left and right.

Then we finally made it to the top to find the cutest hotel RIGHT next to the castle. :)

Our hotel: Schlossrestaurant Neuschwanstein. :)

Schlossrestaurant Neuschwanstein.

Our hotel and the Neuschwanstein castle right behind it!! (Told you it was close!)

As you probably noticed, there is scaffolding on that side of the castle.  Unfortunately, they are renovating the castle in 2012 so the scaffolding will be up all year.  But that did not damper the beauty one bit.  After we checked into the hotel and brought our stuff in, we grabbed a bratwurst from the stand right outside the hotel/restaurant and headed to the castle to check it out!

Schloss Neuschwanstein (Schloss = Castle)

Feeling on top of the world!

How 'bout that view, folks? (I'm talking about Chase here people)

We walked around on our own for awhile, taking pictures and soaking in the view before sunset.  I probably took hundreds of pictures of the castle/Alps/view so I'll post a few of the best pics..enjoy:

It went on forever

One of my favorite pics of the weekend!

Side of the castle.

Front corner of the castle!

The front of the castle. LOVED IT!

The coolest door to the entrance!

Walking inside the castle.

If you look really hard, you can see a bridge in the mountains.  Next time we come, we want to figure
out how to get on that bridge!! :)

So, after we did as much sight-seeing as we could without the guided tour, we decided to head back to our hotel and have a little dinner before the restaurant closed (everything closes so early here!).  Chase ordered the biggest piece of pork I've ever seen! It was knuckle of pork, with a potato dumpling and sauerkraut.  I had spaetzle with jager sauce and a small salad...DELISH!

That's about as German as it gets for dinner!

This was the best spaetzle I've ever had.

It took him awhile to figure out how to eat it hahaha.

After dinner, we headed back to the room to drink some Kellerbier and watch the sunset behind the Alps...surely a sight we will never forget (but in case we ever forget, I took a million pictures haha).

Our cute little room. 

So happy!

Perfection.

The view from our room!

Probably the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen..

The colors just kept getting prettier and prettier!

The next morning we woke up bright and early to have an awesome breakfast and buy our tickets for the guided tour of the inside of the castle.  There are actually two castles in that area.  Neuschwanstein was King Ludwig II's castle and Hohenschwangau was his father's castle.  The castle of Hohenschwangau is right at the bottom of the mountain we stayed on - right next to the ticket center where you buy all the tour tickets.  We only toured Neuschwanstein but I got a pretty awesome picture of Hohenschwangau when we went down to buy our tickets:

The Castle of Hohenschwangau

It was a little more overcast the day we toured inside so I'm really glad we took so many pictures of the outside the day before.

Walking inside for the tour!

The only picture I got before they told me I couldn't take pictures inside of the castle.

The tour was AWESOME.  Every inch of the castle was beautiful! After the tour we checked out of the hotel and bought one more brat before we hit the road back to Bamberg! Don't worry, before leaving we found a fellow tourist to take a picture of both of us in front of the castle. :)

One more down on our list of places to visit before we leave.  Neuschwanstein Castle: CHECK!

it's official: my husband is a stud

Well I just got the call...Chase passed the final cumulative test!!!! He is officially a Pathfinder!! :) aka, he is a genius. He worked so hard for the past few weeks and studied so hard. He said he studied harder in one week of pathfinder school than he did in a whole semester at West Point. And he even missed the Superbowl to study for a test!! Now that's dedication. it was such an intensive school and very intellectually demanding I never doubted him for a minute. However it wouldn't be Chase if he didn't throw me a curve ball. When he called I asked very hesitantly if he passed and he convincingly told me he failed but would take the retest tomorrow and hope he would pass. I immediately put on my "it's okay, just study really hard tonight" speech...and then came the "I'm just kidding!! Your husband's a pathfinder!!!" hahaha. I hate when he does that. So add this to list of reasons why Chase is so impressive. Thank you all for the thoughts and prayers along the way. He has three more days of field exercises and clean up then graduation on Thursday!! This weekend is a four day weekend so were going to celebrate his accomplishment and go somewhere. We're thinking the Neuschwanstein Castle. Congratulations, Chase!!

this-n-that

First things first: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO CHASE!!!! Today he turned the big 2-4!! :) Unfortunately, he had to spend his whole day in classes and studying at pathfinder.  BUT tomorrow will totally make up for it! He gets to come home tomorrow night (and I have to take him back Saturday evening).  I've got a fun birthday dinner surprise and tons of awesome presents for him to come home to.  He also got a little surprise email from my mom.  They made a funfetti cake (Chase's fave) in honor of his birthday and emailed him this picture:

Love from my family :)

He only has one more week to go so keep those prayers comin'!!

We've both been thinking about our wedding a lot lately and how wonderful it was.  Our photographer finished the slideshow from the event and posted it on Facebook.  I have literally watched it 5 million times and cannot get enough.  The pictures captured such joy in EVERYONE'S faces.  My mom just mailed me the disc so once I get it I will try to post the slideshow on here for all you who don't have Facebook (love you, Nana). :)  Speaking of our wedding, I got this picture from my mom and thought I'd share it:

Ain't that the truth?!

In case you can't read the print, it says: "...and do you promise to leave your home, family, friends, and all that you've ever known, to move across the country - or to the other side of the world - at a moment's notice without complaint, and to take care of everything, everything, everything while he ships out for months at a time?"  I'm not gonna lie, I kinda wish Father Dave would have said this at the wedding instead. haha! Cheers to all the military wives.

And more importantly than Chase's birthday or our wedding..I have to tell you about my HUGE achievement this week.  I graduated from the PEP course here in Bamberg!! LOL.  It's a course they put spouses through when they first move here to get them familiar with the area and give them tons of information about the post and the economy.  However, you're supposed to do it the first couple weeks you live here but since I got here right before the holiday season they didn't offer a course until this week. So I had already discovered most of the places they took us to see but it was still a blast and I learned some new things! I had to miss the first day because our wardrobes were being delivered so I had to wait at the house until they arrived.  So I showed up on Tuesday and the first thing the instructor said was to turn to page 14 of the handbook, wait til she said go, and that whoever finished the quiz on the next page first was to shout out and they would win something if they answered everything correctly.  I was like great I missed the first day so I'm obviously not going to win.  Guess who won the quiz/prize??? THIS GIRL! haha. Hell yea I know my German numbers.  The same exact thing happened the next day - we started the day with another pop quiz; except this time it was on German days of the week.  Emily takes the win again! Haha. I showed those other spouses who was boss! (To be honest, I only knew the days of the week so well because my iPhone was in German for the first 3 weeks I had it so I HAD to know them if I wanted to know what day it was lol) Then, there was no quiz today but we did have a raffle....AND I WON IT!! I mean I never win things and here I am going three for three in PEP.  Man, it felt good! I came out with a pink shopping bag (you have to bring your own bag when you go shopping most places here), a pocket size German phrases book, and a  "Best Places to Visit in Germany" book! Oh and of course, my diploma:

That's what I'm talking about!! But in all seriousness, it was an awesome week.  I met a lot of new people and learned some really good tidbits.  For example, you can use American lamps without a transformer over here, you just have to match the light bulb to the German voltage - thank goodness we can have light now! Haha.

Well I am loving Germany more and more every day.  Things are just great - I'm exploring the area, finding new places, and meeting new people.  And I really can't wait to get some visitors...so please come!! Seriously!! Well I'm off to wrap presents and bake a cake for Chase for tomorrow. :) Tschüs!!

enjoying the little things

I don't have a big event to report on, but I just wanted to check in and let you know how Chase is doing at Pathfinder school! The answer is: he's doing great! He passed both tests in his first week there which is a big accomplishment.  I guess the class started with 60 people and by the end of the first week there were only 40 people left.  He actually got to come home this weekend so we had an awesome couple of days together! I left on Friday afternoon to drive back to Schweinfurt to pick him up.  The school is actually held about 20 minutes outside of Schweinfurt in the middle of NOWHERE! We had no idea how to get there so last week when I dropped him off for the first time we did a little caravan action with someone that knew where it was.  So we thought we'd be tricky and "drop a pin" on the iPhone Google maps the day I dropped him off so it would be really easy for me to get back there to pick him up.  Well I was doing fine on Friday driving back there by myself using the pin to get there...until the GPS started taking me a different way and took me through a little village outside of Schweinfurt and into someone's driveway and proceeded to tell me that I reached my destination. HA. Yea right! I was preeeetty sure they didn't relocate pathfinder school to a local German's house. lol.  (Turns out there was no reception out there when we dropped the pin on the map so it just dropped one in the first area that had reception. I guess that makes sense. NOT!) So I was trying to figure out how in the world I would get there from where I was and decided to keep driving...decided I went too far out of the way...turned around...passed a deserted road that had a couple piles of logs...I did a double take because those piles of logs looked familiar (on the way back the first time I drove home, I took a wrong turn also and found myself on an empty road with just logs - THE SAME LOGS I JUST PASSED!) So I just turned onto that road and repeatedly said out loud, "please be the road I incorrectly turned on last trip." Well luckily, that was it - and I found my way to the middle of nowhere safely. Thank you God for making me take a wrong turn the first time around so that when I got lost again I recognized the wrong way haha. [[I apologize for taking way too long to explain my trip there, but it was too funny to only keep to myself.]]

So after we got back on Friday night, we had an awesome dinner.  I cooked a sauce all day.  For those of you who don't know, my "big fat Italian" family has a family recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce that is probably the most amazing thing you'll ever taste.  So I made that to go with Rigatoni (aka rigs), made a salad with the family recipe salad dressing, and created a recipe for garlic bread that was delicious! Well, old habits are hard to break and I cooked enough of everything for a family of ten haha. So we decided to invite some friends over - our very first dinner guests!!  Jason, Kate, and Kate's mom who is visiting right now all came over for dinner and stayed for hours! We just sat around, ate, drank, and talked - good old fashioned fun. :)  Saturday was just a serious "chill day" for us.  We actually didn't even leave the house once! I think that was just what we needed. Chase studied a little bit, we watched movies, and I tried out some more new recipes for dinner that night (I'm starting to cook a lot more, and I'm loving it!).  Then Sunday morning came way too quickly once again...I had to take Chase back around noon so we only had enough time for a little more studying on Chase's end and a big breakfast.  The drive back to the middle of nowhere went much more smoothly this time since I knew NOT to use the dropped pin haha.  We navigated the tiny, curvy roads and dodged all the German walkers to get there.  On Sundays here everything shuts down, no one works, and EVERYONE walks...EVERYWHERE! There were seriously hundreds of Germans out walking haha.  At one point, I came around a curve and there were probably nine people all in a line perpendicular to the road just walking along blocking any traffic.  I slowed down behind them and they all turned and gave me this look like, "why in the world are you driving on the road and ruining our walk?!" I actually felt bad for a second and started second guessing myself...then I remembered I was on a ROAD for crying out loud. But everything was fine when I got to stop at the Taco Bell on post in Schweinfurt.  Gosh I've missed Taco Bell so much. lol. I explored the PX there too and then headed home.  It's always a lot quieter and not as fun without Chase at home; but we only have five more days until the next time I get to venture back to pick him up. 

Oh and by the way, it's gotten so much colder in the past week...here is a screenshot I took on my phone at 9:00 this morning:

SIX BELOW!!!!

Yea - THAT'S cold!  So I'm going to go bundle up in my Snuggie and lots of blankets and catch up on the Grey's Anatomy from last week.  Keep the prayers coming so that Chase passes the two tests he has this week!!