Apparently everyone in Germany lights fireworks on New Years Eve. Kaycee hates fireworks. I really didn’t care to see midnight. But I did. Lordy, it was loud.

We woke up on Monday and while Jay and Ty were cooking breakfast, our neighbors Suresh and Anu stopped over to introduce themselves. They had just arrived home from Kenya and brought us some yummy African chocolate and coffee. They have a son in college at the U of Maine, and a daughter in 8th grade. She attends the FIS-Oberursel campus that Ty will go to next year.

They helped me decode the trash calendar. Y’all. Trash is no joke here. We are learning how much Germans love system and order. Ok, so…. Food scraps are compostable and they need to be thrown in the brown paper bags (which will obviously leak) or green plastic sack (which I need to buy). This waste gets put in the brown bin and is picked up every other week. The yellow sack is plastics (no bin) and is also picked up every other week. Paper (with no plastic tape, coating, etc) goes in the blue bin, no sack, every other week. Everything else goes in a black bag and black bin, and I think it is picked up every other week. Once I survive a month of not messing up the trash I will win an award and Trash Survivor certification….

We went for a little drive to show the kids some places that will become the center of their worlds. First we drove by Lily’s friend, Maggie’s house, which is less than 10 minutes away. Then we drove to the school – Frankfurt International School – Wiesbaden (FIS-W) Campus. We drove by a potential CrossFit gym. Next stop were the baseball and softball fields. At this point the kids were STARVING. Have I mentioned that nothing is open on Sundays and holidays? Today was a holiday, but the American Gods were shining upon us and McDonalds was OPEN!!!! A couple observations. No lids. Paper straws were not automatically provided. The burger was huge. The small fry was actually pretty close to American size – unnecessarily large. The Happy Meal had an option to select a book and a donation, which we chose. The children’s book is in German and despite 104 days of DuoLingo I couldn’t read much of it. I suggested that our family goal should be to be able to read the McDonalds children’s book before we move back to Iowa.

When we got home, Jay and I took Kaycee for a nice long walk, exploring the adorable little town that we get to call home for the next couple of years. I found a few options for hair salons, a Thai massage place, a hospital, a dog groomer, lots of doctors that may or may not speak English, a massive privately owned villa, and a vending machine that sells milk, eggs, sausage, chocolate, wine – you know, all the staples for Sundays and holidays when the shops are all closed. Of course (natürlich) we bought some milk (milch) and chocolate (Schokolade) because we could. 🙂

Last night both Ty and Lily’s phone data slowed waaaaaaaaaaay down. I called Verizon today to find out why their Unlimited International plan seemed to have run out of data. Turns out they only get 10GB of high speed data, then it drops down to 2MB slower speed (I probably have the GB and MB messed up but you get the idea). I am hoping it is because of the holidays (no school) and extra time on their phones, and not going to be regular usage amounts. I bought them each an extra 2GB and told them to lay off their phones for a bit. We will see…. I’m hoping when we can get our home internet sorted it will be better. The hotspot we have been using also ran out, approximately 7 minutes into family movie night.

The German units are still shut down this week. We still have quite a few things to sort out now that the shops will be open again tomorrow (yay). Cross your fingers that we get our bank account ASAP so we can order the internet. We also need to swap out some incorrect rental furniture. And, Ty and I are going back to Ikea!!!