This is the House That the French Built

Now that we've been in Mainz for two months, pictures of our home are probably long past due. So, here they are, and I hope you enjoy. And for those who might have read the previous post, I am unable to clump my pictures together because I don't have Photoshop. So, the endless stream of photos will have to do.

This is the top portion of our building.

This is our building.

Our building again, but this time with the St. Quintin Church.

And our building again.

#19

Stewart on the side of (and kind of behind) our building.

Our building from the back.

That's our window in the middle.

The garden (or backyard) of our building.

And again...

The sign on the front of our building.

The doorbell for the Institute.

The doorbell for our floor.

The lobby of our building.

I know it's blurry, but these are our mailboxes.

And the lobby again...from the other side.

The laundry room in the basement...2 washing machines and 2 dryers.

The ping pong room in the basement...REALLY in the basement. Actually, maybe we should just call this the dungeon. Stewart and I love playing ping pong, and oddly, we're the only ones that ever seem to go in there.

Those ladder rungs on the wall go up to a tiny "window" that's impossible to escape from because it's completely covered over with a metal grate.

2nd floor lobby

2nd floor sign showing you which way to go...we live to the right (in the Wohnheim)

The door to the 2nd floor Wohnheim...yah, that's me in the reflection. ;)

2nd floor hallway...pretty boring, eh? And it's usually dark in that hallway, no matter what time of day it is.

Sinks in the 2nd floor girls' bathroom...I'm sure the boys' bathroom is the same

2nd floor girls' shower

There's a sink in the shower room...

...and that's the heater and water heater for the shower room.

And just what you always wanted to see...one of the toilet stalls.

2nd floor kitchen sign...blurry again, sorry.

2nd floor dining room

2nd floor dining room and kitchen

2nd floor kitchen

This is the sign on the fridge so that we know who has which shelf.

This is our shelf in the fridge...and that's why we shop about every 2 days.

Our freezer drawer (that we share with two other rooms).

Our cupboard shelf

The door to our room

Our room sign

The inside of our room

Our sink

Our bookshelf

Our desks...yah, that picture on my screensaver is me at the Fountain of Trevi. :)

One of our beds

Our closets

The inside of our closets

And the other closet

I'll post some pictures of Mainz next week. At any rate, I hope you enjoyed the tour of our building. Until next time...

Blogging Again

Well, I am attempting to revamp the blog and start again. Don't expect me to be great at this, but I will try to do better. I have some pictures of our "home" to post, but it will have to come on the next one. I'm attempting to discover new ways of posting pictures so that it's not an endless stream of one picture at a time. More to come, but I hope to welcome you all back to the blog soon.

A Day in the Life...

A friend of mine reminded me that I'm horrible at updating the blog. This is true. It's mostly because I have nothing exciting to say. However, I decided I would take her advice and update. For those of you who have been dying to know, I will give you an inside look at my day. (Stewart's day is, of course, very different).

I'm not necessarily a creature of habit, so my days constantly change. They may also change depending on where I live. At any rate, here is a smattering of what I might do in a day:

• Clean the bathrooms
• Make the bed
• Wash, fold, iron, and put away clothes
• Put together a contacts database
• If I can remind myself, I also have some cross stitch I want to finish
• Wash, dry, and put away dishes (or just load/unload the dishwasher)
• Dust
  
• Check my e-mail
• Facebook
• Make and eat food
• Study/practice German
• Clean the kitchen
• Update my movies to see, books to read, and wish lists
• Do logic or other math puzzles
• Talk to my mom on Skype
• Watch a movie
• Listen to music
• Play the piano
• Read
• Search for new recipes and enter them in my database
• Shower
• Sing
• Move songs from the external hard drive to the iPod (which is a ridiculously long--and sometimes tedious--process because it requires listening to them to see whether we even like/want them, in most cases)
• Walk to the store (and shop, of course)
• Sweep
• Watch TV shows on the internet (specifically "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "So You Think You Can Dance," "Star Trek: The Next Generation," or "Who's the Boss")
• Vacuum
• Walk in the woods
  

I don't do all of these things every day (nor do I do them in that order, necessarily), but I have plenty of things to occupy my time. So, in case you were dying of curiosity, there you have it. Doesn't it sound awfully mundane for living in Germany?

Back in Berlin

We made it back to the starting point...literally for now. We are back in Berlin and staying in the same house we lived in before. However, we're only in this apartment until Sunday. It's so nice to be back here! The country is beautiful and peaceful, but it doesn't compare with Berlin! I'm very grateful to be among people who aren't so ridiculously anal about how clean your apartment is! I wouldn't call us the cleanest people in the world, but we're really not that dirty either. We mostly have paper clutter (since I'm a teacher and Stewart is a student/prospective professor). I think people in the city just have a different mentality. Life moves a little faster for them, so being super clean is not as important. Hallelujah! Believe it or not, a person can breathe here!

Madrid Mission Reunion

I have the good fortune of attending my mission reunion this month. You may say it's silly to call it "good fortune" since many mission reunions are held twice a year around General Conference time. Obviously this isn't General Conference time. The "good fortune" comes with the fact that my mission reunion is being held in Madrid! The main reason for this is that the Madrid Temple opened its doors 10 years ago this October. (I arrived 2 months later). So, that makes it a special occasion on two accounts.

I am ridiculously excited! In fact, I leave tomorrow. I know, I know...you're wondering when I'll stop all this traveling. First Barcelona/Athens/Italy, then France/Germany, now Madrid. (My poor Relief Society president must wonder if I'm going inactive, since I'm hardly there to play the piano). Actually, I am getting pretty worn out from all the traveling. It will be nice to just relax, but I wouldn't miss this opportunity. I will have the great pleasure of seeing people that I wouldn't otherwise see: people I taught, missionaries with whom I served, members I knew there. So, despite the cliché-ness of this sentence, this is truly the chance of a lifetime!