Bavarian Bells

Carissa has been doing well over in Germany over the last week.  She has been working everyday (not seeing patients) and then hanging out with her mom (who arrived on Thursday I think) at night.  They have been able to do a little bit of investigating into our car and house, but haven't had great luck.  There is a place that Carissa is very interested in, but we are second on the waiting list and won't hear until tomorrow.  They did a bit of sightseeing this past weekend at Flossenberg concentration camp, and then Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic.  They also had attended a dinner with all of the dentists from the clinic to send off two of the Army dentists who are being deployed to Iraq.  Both of the women have children and Carissa said it was pretty emotional to be there watching them with their kids a few days before they had to leave.  She thought two weeks was difficult and these women will be away for 6 - 9 months!  Everyone has been great and very welcoming though, and her new coworkers have amazing stories and are incredible people.

Imperial Hotel, Karlovy Vary

They have also had a chance to check out more of the base, which Carissa has found is home to much more than just Army personnel.  There are soldiers from the Navy and Air Force on base as well as NATO soldiers from many different countries.  Any and all of these will be patients in the clinic where she's working which should be very interesting.  In addition, she went to the commissary (grocery store) and the PX (similar to Target) and said both are very reasonable and have almost everything we have here at home.  She also went to the Rec Center and said it was incredible.  As far as the food goes she just told me today that she's been eating a lot of pizza, but our conversations have been quite short so I'm not clear why.

The only downside of her time there so far are the church bells.  Apparently all the churches in Bavaria sound their bells every 15 minutes (1 time at 15 min, 2 times at 30 min, 3 times a 45 min, and 4 times on the hour and then it changes tones and rings 1 time for each hour).  She said it is charming, except for the fact that it goes all through the night and a church is right outside her hotel room window (so at 11pm it rings 4+11 times for 15 total).  After the first couple nights of getting no sleep she got some earplugs and is now sleeping much better.

The kids and I are doing well back at home.  They had a busy weekend with sleepovers with friends and family, and I had one last day and night with my college buddies and Luke golfing, eating and drinking.  This morning I was able to ship 95% of our things and also found out for sure that we will be flying out Friday morning.  Still have quite a bit to do at home, but I think I'm right on schedule.  My last day of work was last Friday, so I have a lot of time to get everything together before we leave.