Arrival...that's a fermative

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I'm thinking of the electronic voice on our GPS machine that states "You have arrived" when we reach our final destination.  Well, Tom and I have in fact arrived in Germany.  At least I'm not hearing a voice in my head saying "Prepare to make a legal U-turn."  :-)  That would probably not be good sign.

Things are going well my first few days.  Tom and I got in Sunday morning with our fuzzy kids.  It was certainly a long haul from Phoenix, Arizona (3.5 hour flight) to Atlanta, Georgia (4 hour layover) and then into Stuttgart (9.5 hour flight).  Tom and I were most worried about how Smokey (our youngest cat) would handle the trip but turns out he handled the trip beautifully.  The one that was stressing out was Bear (our old man).  He was not happy about being in his carrier at all.  In fact for about two hours during the flight over the Atlantic I took him out of his carrier and just held him.  He would not settle down nor would he sleep.  Smokey just hung out in his carrier and required no real attention.

Getting through customs was a breeze.  We declared the kids and after the officer quickly verified our paperwork we were on our way.  My sponsor picked us up at the airport and drove us to Kelley Barracks.  It is here where I'll be staying temporarily and where I'll be working for U.S. Africa Command.  Unfortunately our hotel room wasn't available right away so my sponsor took us over to his house.  He and his beautiful wife hosted us for most of the day, trying hard to keep us awake and fed us a wonderful dinner.   We got into our room late afternoon.

My first two days have been taken up with in-processing.  My boss is not expecting me to get started with AFRICOM work until after all my in-processing and orientations are complete, approximately 3 weeks.  I'm also registered to be do the week-long German Head Start program, where I'll learn some German and also learn about the people of Germany and their customs. 

Today Tom and I stopped by the Housing Office to start getting a feel for the housing options we might have available.  There are already a few places we'd like to see so Tom is going to get an appointment set up for us to go see a few places here in the next couple days.      

I'll be keeping you posted on the latest and greatest.

Comments

  1. debwonderSeptember 29, 2009 at 1:00 PM

    I know you've got so much to do...but I'd love to see some pictures...Germany! woohoo! so glad to know that you all arrived safely...I've been praying!

    ReplyDelete
  2. NicoleSeptember 29, 2009 at 9:34 PM

    Sure thing Deb...I'll definitely get some pictures up soon. Truthfully haven't even taken any yet as I've just been around the installations in-processing. Within the week...I promise :-)

    ReplyDelete

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