Our First Week in Germany!

We arrived at our new house in Bad Soden on Thursday, January 27th 2011.  We have spent most of our time exploring our town, walking through the winding cobblestone streets and checking out the little boutiqes and restaurants.  It is beautiful and everything is within walking distance.  Feeling pretty settled already and falling into a little routine in our new life here.  Todd had his first day of work on Tuesday and he really likes his new team.  He has already signed himself up for more language classes, and they offered to set me up with more as well.  Stew is loving Germany and is happy that things have slowed down a bit so he can actually sleep in a crib rather than on hotel beds and on airplanes!  We have our daily walk to the market to get ingredients for dinner, and he loves dozing in and out of naps while I browse the aisles trying to figure out what everything means.  Joey is quite pleased with Deutschland.  He has finally found a place where he's treated more like a person than a dog.  There are only a couple of places where he waits outside, otherwise he's in the bank, shops, and cafes with us.  We have been spending our evenings reading since at this point our TV situation only allows us to watch one channel in english which is CNN.  We know more about Cairo now than we ever thought we would.  Thankfully our friend, and Todd's coworker, "Danny the Aussie" just lent us a bunch of DVDs from his collection which we are really excited about!  Our sea freight should arrive at the end of February or beginning of March.  It will feel even more like home when we can set up our place with our own things.  We are going to go to Todd's coworker's house for dinner tomorrow night and on Sunday we plan to drive to the town of Heidelberg which is an hour south of where we live.  We have been told it's a great day trip.  There is a castle from the 1300's to tour, museums, zoo, alstadt (old town), and philosopher's way which is a famous path along the Nekar River.  Looking forward to seeing what it's all about!  That's all for now, more to come!  ~ Jackie