Advent

The weeks leading up to Christmas are some of my favorite in the entire church calendar.  I always look forward to seeing the church decorated for Christmas and to hearing familiar carols and hymns.  My favorite thing is the Advent wreath and the ritual of lighting it every week in anticipation of Christmas and of Christ's second coming.  The act of anticipation is one that I enjoy taking part in even though I know that it always ends in Christmas.  It is nice to take time out of the usual busyness of the Christmas season and remember to focus on Christ and his birth.

The last church that we attended did not use the Advent wreath in their worship services.  I loved when we were able to go to one of our parents' churches and have it done there since we normally missed it.  Since we do our own services here in Germany, I felt that we should do the Advent wreath here.  There is more than just the anticipation of Christmas for Brian and I this year - there is also the anticipation of going home for a few weeks!  I found some readings and prayers to go along with the Advent wreath and we were able to find the supplies to make our own wreath.  It sits in our house during the week, but on Sunday nights we share the anticipation with the others who attend our small church.


May you share in the wonder and anticipation of the Advent season!

Der Trockner ist kaputt.

A couple of weeks ago, our dryer broke.  It is normal for me to run a load of laundry on more than one cycle because it takes that long for the clothes to get dry.  After running one load of laundry through the dryer for about 6 hours, I decided that there was something wrong with the dryer and Brian was going to have to look at it.  When he got home, he discovered that some plastic pieces that connected the heating element to the dryer were completely burnt through, therefore, no heat for the dryer.

Since none of the furniture in our apartment belongs to us, we had to find out who the dryer belonged to before we could either try to fix it or replace it.  We e-mailed MTU and the woman in charge of the apartment wasn't sure about the dryer and told us to contact our landlord to see if he knew who owned it.  Whenever we contact our landlord, it takes a minimum of a week to hear back from him.  It took Brian over a week and two e-mails to finally hear back from him that it was either MTU's or was left here from a previous tenant - he did not own it.  After letting MTU know this, it was decided that we would just get a new dryer since this one was at least 10 years old and probably not worth fixing.

Brian and I headed to the store to get an estimate on how much we would spend on a dryer because MTU needed to know that before we purchased on.  We found a brand we knew and picked a dryer that was in the middle of the price range.  It's amazing the amount of money you could spend on a dryer if you had it laying around!  We reported back to MTU and got the go-ahead to buy a new dryer.

Since we already knew which dryer we wanted, we walked into the store and just needed to figure out how to buy it and where to put it in our car.  As we were looking at it again, a salesman approached us and started talking to us in German.  We told him in German that we only speak a little German and wondered if he spoke English.  He definitely did not!  We knew this was going to be an interesting purchase!

The man kept talking in German and was showing us the differences between this dryer that we wanted and the one in the same brand that was one step down.  He was pointing at things as he talked in German, so we were able to figure out what he was talking about.  We discovered the one we wanted had a display for the time remaining on a load, it had a shiny metal interior, and had a setting for wool.  I knew a few words that he was saying, but it was definitely helpful that he was pointing at things!

We then told him (in poor German) that we wanted to buy the one we had looked at.  We went to the computer and he put our name in.  They already had our information since we had previously bought a prepaid cell phone from this store.  Thankfully we didn't have to go through the process of telling him our address because the Germans can never seem to understand what we are saying when we tell them our street name.

He then asked us a question that we weren't sure about.  Something about "mitnehmen" and "lieferservice".  I know that "liefer" means something about delivery because that is what was on the top of our receipt when we bought our IKEA couch that had to be delivered.  I also knew that "nehmen" means to take and that "mit" means with, so I decided that "mitnehmen" means to take with.  Once I figured that out, I told the man "mitnehmen", but Brian was still a bit lost so I had to explain to him what the man wanted to know.  He then told us how to get our car to the door where we would pick up the dryer. 

The dryer fit in the car and wasn't too hard to get into our apartment.  It just plugged in and we were back in business!  I was no longer going to have crunchy clothes!

Here's a picture of the new dryer that we are very proud of because we were able to purchase it all in German!

Oh Tannenbaum!

Since we are only here in Germany for 2 years and we had a limited amount of room to ship stuff here, we did not take any of our Christmas decorations with us.  They are all sitting boxed up in a storage unit in GR.  I am generally one of those people who gets all the decorations out the day after Thanksgiving and puts them all up in one day.  I love to take out each of our ornaments and hang them on our huge tree.  I have certain ones that I always put in the front of the tree because they are my favorites! 

I was a bit disappointed this year because our tree is sitting in a bag and the ornaments are buried at the bottom of our storage unit.  I decided I needed to have some Christmas decorations even though we won't be here for Christmas.  I was out in town on Monday and came across a very cute Christmas tree.  It was pretty plain though, so I decided it needed a few decorations.  Here's the end result:

We are having a Christmas/Going Away party on Saturday night and we are going to make some more Christmas decorations (paper chains and popcorn/cranberry strings).  I decided to do a little more decorating yesterday when I did the tree and here is the result:

I'll hopefully have more pictures of the rest of the decorations I make and some pictures of the party on Saturday.  I'm definitely looking forward to it!

Brian

Here's what Brian looked like when he came home from work yesterday.

Notice the gash and tape on his forehead.  He was a bit reluctant to tell me what had happened, but eventually reenacted it for me.  He had been talking to some guys in their office and was on his way out.  The door was partially shut and he had to open it more to get out.  While opening the door, his foot got in the way and impeded the path of the door, but his head did not get the message that the door was not out of the way and he walked right into the corner of it.  After rubbing his head a bit, he realized he was bleeding and needed a bandaid.  Apparently MTU has a doctor, so he went with a coworker there (who hoped he needed stitches) and just ended up with some tape to hold it together instead of stitches.  Desk jobs can be dangerous!

Last weekend we went to Ravensburg for their Christmas market (more to come on that in a future post).  Ravensburg has more stores than Friedrichshafen, so we did a bit of shopping while we were there too.  We both ended up buying new winter coats and snow pants.  Neither of us had snow pants and we're hoping to do some winter activities while we are here.  Brian didn't have a waterproof winter coat.  When we got home, Brian put all his stuff on and wanted me to take pictures of him.  Here's him all decked out in his new winter gear.

His coat and pants both had some special features.  First, armpit vents.

Next, crotch vents. :)  (Notice the zippers hanging out.)

And there you have my husband.  Other than his head injury, he's enjoying work and recently moved to a new office.  He has it to himself this week since the guy who shares it with him is on vacation.