So it looks like our last day in the U.S will be July 8th. Shaun's new job wants him to start on July 13th. Let the insanity begin! Well I guess it all started a few months ago. What started as random thoughts and ideas turned into a full fledge plan. We wanted to move somewhere new. Somewhere with culture (museums, arts, music, jazz clubs, historical sites, restaurants, etc), good education, would be safe (in terms of natural disasters and crime), was a place with reasonable cost of living, a place that has good career growth and also is family oriented. Shaun is lucky enough to work for a company that has jovs worldwide, so we started to look at relocating. We had considered Virginia, Hawaii (again), Arizona, Seattle and Germany. Germany quickly became our first choice. After months of anticipation, anxiety and disappointments Shaun was officially offered the job in Heidelberg this week.
We are extremely lucky and grateful to be given such an incredible opportunity. Within the last few months we have done so much research on life in Germany. I personally know quite a few people that have lived there and absolutely loved it. Many people don't even come back once they get there! We will be there for 3 years (minimum). But who knows, maybe we'll want to stay. We will be living in Heidelberg, which is between Ramstein and Stuttgart (and only 3 hours from Paris!).
We will truely get the best of both worlds. Not only do we get to live in Europe, but we get to do it mostly at American prices. We'll be able to buy anything we need on the army base (groceries, gas, furniture, medical, cars, etc) and we'll also have the military community to connect with. There are actually quite a few Americans living in the area where we will be. We don't have any expectations. It is a different culture and way of life and we are going into it knowing we will have to immersify ourselves into the German culture. I actually know we will love it because living in Germany is not typical. And neither one of us has had a typical life. I never have done the "typical" thing in my life and so this move makes sense, for both of us.
I will most likely not work while out there. I am going to have to get a pre-school curriculum to keep Lexi up with her sign language, spanish, music and art skills. We'll all of course learn German together and I also would like to learn Italian. I took 5 years of French, which should pay off when we go to Paris! I'm excited to be a "stay at home" mom because I'll get to do so many other things I'm interested in. I will definitely get more into photography and hopefully sell my pictures as stock photos and maybe even offer my services to the military families. I also want to do a lot of volunteer work, especially with helping troops. I might even do free lance marketing. I'm also really happy I will get to cook more! On top of that I'll still be in school (online classes). So I won't be bored at all. I'm most looking forward to going to castles and exploring the German markets with Lexi during the day...how fun!!
