Christmas, Part II

An update from Joe (with minor edits and interjections from Betsy): 

We celebrated our second Christmas on Saturday.  We received a package from Gabe (Joe’s brother) of popcorn and special spices to make a pork rub. We will have no problem finding pork in Germany to try this out. Plus, we received several things we ordered from Amazon.de (our first time using the German Amazon).  Amazingly, we only placed our order on Wednesday and nearly all of it arrived on Saturday –and Friday was a Federal Holiday!  Mail travels faster in Germany, probably because Germany is smaller than Minnesota and Iowa combined.

Our Amazon haul includes a new Smartphone for Betsy (this means that Joe gets the cell phone we bought new when we arrived, and doesn't need to rely on the hand-me-down phone from a friend whose battery only lasts about 1 hour). Joe's home office is now nearly complete with a wireless network that includes a printer we found on sale this week, and the phone now linked in too.  Cellphones are new to Joe, and Smartphones are a new step for Betsy, but we already have apps for the German train schedule, Googlemaps +street view, Skype, a German-English dictionary, and a kitchen timer. Next up: teaching Joe to send text messages.  So far the most useful app has been the kitchen timer, since we were using it to simultaneously time both a pressure cooker for beans and corn bread in the oven for dinner last night.  But the other applications should prove their worth when we do some more traveling.

This weekend has been rather rainy, so we have been inside a bit more than normal, and Betsy has had time to catch up on all the sleep she missed last year.  And we each got one other goody yesterday – rain boots!  We got them at our local hardware/lumberyard store, on the suggestion of Betsy's friend Merle (after complaining about how "fashion" rainboots cost over 30 euro, and don't appear to be too functional).  This has been something that we have been sorely lacking this winter - it rains a lot and we bike a lot!.  This afternoon we will go for a walk like most Germans seem to do on Sundays.  Since the rain continues, we may take a stroll in our new rain boots.

We also feel that we are past the survival phase of our first few months. Obviously, we are now on to the "making our lives more comfortable" stage.  Although we have been having fun in Germany all along, we are now starting to make it our home.