Life on the Vine

So long 2009 and hello 2010.  Thinking back over this last year and a lot has happened.  I spent the first five months in Iraq, completing a 7 month deployment.  You can read about that at my other blog .  And now I've spent the last 3 months here in Germany.    Ever since I can remember, I have wanted the opportunity to live overseas and more specifically, live in Germany.  When I was 6 years old my dad got orders to Germany (he's retired Air Force) but his orders were changed and we ended up going to Alaska instead.  Now Alaska was a great place to live but I think the 'almost' move to Germany planted a seed in me that never went away.  So now, here I am, more than 20 years later, finally living in Germany.  It's a strange thing getting what you've always wanted or thought you always wanted. And, regarding my public affairs job with U.S. Africa Command ...that too is something I have wanted for a couple years now.  In 2007 when I read about the creation of

A lot has happened in the weeks since I last posted a blog. On December 1st I received our household goods and got moved into our apartment here in Stuttgart.  Everything went smoothly although it did take almost two weeks before I found all the sofa pillows. Tom, who had been traveling for 9 weeks doing consulting work for a family friend, returned to Germany on the 13th.  He got back just in time to hardly see me for a whole week as last week was my busiest week since starting with U.S. Africa Command.  I definitely need to do a blog that covers some of the things I've been doing at work but for now I want to blog about our outing yesterday. The USO here in Stuttgart offers trips.  Last month I signed Tom and me up for our first USO outing, a day trip to Dresden. We caught the bus at 2 a.m. Saturday morning and we were back this morning around 12:30 a.m.  The main attraction was the Christmas market, which has been going on for more than 600 years.  It is the longest runnin