A Collective Sigh of Relief (and now I'm allowed to drive here, too)

First things first.  I managed to pass my driving test today, although I did give failing the test my best effort.

These Germans sure are tricky.  They have you study your butt off, take a two hour long class, take multiple practice tests, and then, on the real thing, spring all sorts of things on you, not covered in any of it.

Regardless, Team Bucky is now fully on the road (not that I didn't almost totally go through an unmarked intersection today and attack a Land Rover with our little Opal rent-a-wreck...don't tell Amy, she'll never let me out unsupervised again).

 Ok.  That being said.

For those of you who are trying to figure out where this place is on Google Maps, or Google Earth, or whatever you have, there is no way to express how hilly/mountainous/wild this place is.  It's all rolling hills.  Not little hills like we had in Maryland...everything here is like the Catoctin Mountains, or bigger, and everything is set into the valleys. So everything is squeezed in tight.

Oh, we also managed to do a couple of other things today.

 This afternoon we went to Ari's daycare orientation, on Kleber Kasern (Kleber Army Garrison).  This base is located about 20 minutes east of Ramstein Air Base, and about 30 minutes from Landstuhl, where Amy is working.  This was not the ideal location, but we'll stay at this daycare until a spot opens up at Landstuhl, which is supposed to be a much nicer/newer facility.

 The orientation was given by a older American woman, who was an administrative assistant, and made no bones about her displeasure with the separation of church and state.  She also didn't seem to have a command of of the information she was presenting to us.  While she did not leave me with a warm fuzzy, we were introduced to several of the care givers, who were very warm and welcoming.

Regardless, Ari starts tomorrow.  This should be interesting.

 We also got a temporary Status Of Forces Agreement card, and I got my permanent one, which entitles us to flee the country if the Red Hoard should ever try to re enter Western Europe (maybe also if the Iranians start launching missiles at US bases in Europe...hey, I'm just saying it's a possibility).

The weather, which was awesome at the end of last week, has become much cooler.  Today it started sunny and maybe 60 degrees, and then went to cloudy, raining, sunny, pouring rain, sunny, thunderstorms (hey, the new French President's plane was hit by lightening on his way into Germany today), sunny, little rainy, sunny, cloudy, rainy, cloudy...and now it's still cloudy and probably in the 50's.  Just like Syracuse.

Well, that was Tuesday. More when we get there.

Amy / Ari / Ben