Collin & Stefanie

So here is what’s been going on in my life:

School
Busy, busy, busy. There are about three weeks of classes left in this semester. After that there will be three weeks of finals. Next week I have two presentation and my very first final. On top of everything else, I still have a big paper to write plus two lab papers to finish. And then I will be busy with studing for finals. There are nine of them. It surely is a stressful semester this time.

Celebrations
My birthday was last week. I am 24 now. I feel old. I had a great birthday this year. We went to watch the soccer game on Thursday night and had a BBQ at one of my friends’ place. Then at midnight they surprised me with a little birthday cake and afterwards we went out dancing. It was a good break from everything else, plus it made me feel really warm inside. I got so many calls that night and I hung out with so many great people. I don’t know how many times I thanked them but I did it a lot.

Random Things that make me feel good these days
Soccer! Germany made it to the semi-finals of the EURO CUP 2008 last night. What a great game! What a great team! I watched the game at a beer garden with some of my class mates. The atmosphere was amazing as usual and I can’t wait for next Wednesday when they play against Turkey or Croatia (which will be determined at tonight’s game!).
Coldplay! Their new album is out and it is amazing! I like that they are more like the original Coldplay from when they first got famous. It is a great album.

AND THE BIGGEST NEWS YET
Collin and I will be moving to Washington DC in September 2009!!!! We will be there for one year because he is doing his LPN training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center there. I am so excited!!!!

It’s been 10 months since Collin left. On one hand I can’t believe that it has been this long already, yet on the other hand I am so done with it and it is hard to think that we still have 5 months ahead of us. There are so many things that I miss and I can’t wait to have them all back. We are looking forward to going back to the States and to hanging out with our friends and family there. We are talking about it all the time on the phone and it is so much fun to discuss what we want to do and what we are looking forward to the most. It will be over two years that Collin won’t have seen his parents.

Other than that, school is crazy these days. There are so many projects that I need to work on and finish by the end of the month. There is a 100+ paper we need to turn in, an AutoCAD project, two presentations and on top of everything else there will be finals (nine of them!!!) in July. I can’t wait for this semester to end. Next semester I will be with the Senior class. It will be interesting. While all my fellow students will be having their internship semester, I will be taking classes again because I am allowed to do my internship later (most likely when we are back in the States next year - HOPEFULLY! - We are so ready to live back in the States again.).

Next week I will be turning 24 years old. I feel so old. I got my birthday present from Collin already. It is a blue Mountain Hardwear jacket that I have been wanting for so long. I am wearing it right now. Yes, I am loving it that much. I don’t know yet what I am going to do for my birthday. I was thinking of having a BBQ with friends and since the European Championships in Soccer start this week and will be lasting until the end of June, I was thinking of turning it into a Birthday/Soccer-Party. We’ll see though.

So instead of spending $2000 on two new bikes, we just spent $2000 on two fabulous paper e-tickets to the States. Actually it was ‘only’ $1912 for the two of us, which I am very happy about, because finding tickets for Christmas for less than $1000 a person from Germany to Seattle is almost impossible.

Initially we wanted to spend a quiet Christmas alone here in Germany but because of certain rumors (regarding the Army) that have been going around and that I can’t discuss here right now, we decided to spend Christmas with Collin’s family in the States. Collin won’t have seen them for almost two and a half years by then. It wasn’t hard to convince him that it would be a good idea. He, himself, mentioned it one day and I just decided to go ahead and book two tickets. We will be there for almost three weeks, which will give us plenty of time to spend time with family and friends.

PS: Thanks everyone for your comments regarding my immigration issues. I sent a letter to the California Service Center where my application is being processed. I am fed up with the US Consulate in Frankfurt as well as the USCIS hotline because neither of them seem to have a clue how filing from overseas works and how this issue is being treated. I know about the stamp and I hope that Frankfurt issues those stamps as well. So as for now, I am back to waiting.

Today marks nine months of this deployment. “Only” six more months to go. Six months sounds pretty nice and we have done six months without each other before. So hopefully time will pass quickly.

Today also marks over nine months of dealing with immigration. I have been waiting for my 10-year greencard since July 25, 2007. Last summer my conditional two-year greencard expired and I had to submit my application to ‘Remove Conditions on Residency’. Well, I am still waiting to get approved. My application is way passed the usual processing times and I have been calling the USCIS hotline only to be told that I need to be patient. My extension letter will expire in September which is in three months and I need to know what’s going on. People who are stationed overseas on government orders have done it before. I am not the only person having to deal with it but it seems like noone knows how to help me. I even called the special USCIS military hotline but they couldn’t help me either. A few days ago I contacted the US consulate in Frankfurt and haven’t heard from them since. Usually they are pretty quick about emailing back right away. Well, it is not my fault because we submitted everything on time and even did the exact instructions for people who are filing from overseas. Plus, I am considered a US resident because we are here on orders. We even have a US address, US bank accounts and so on. So I am not really special. I am just like any other US resident. I just hope I will find out more soon.

Spring is finally here and it feels great. I started running again. In fact I have been since Easter which was about a little over five weeks ago. I have been doing great and have been running almost every other day with a few breaks in between due to my knee hurting. My goal is to just keep going and maybe do a race one day. One of my friends in school asked me if I wanted to participate in this years discrict race that is taking place this weekend but I passed since I don’t feel quite ready for it yet. The Army is having a 5k fun-run next weekend though which I might participate in. We’ll see.

Since my last post it feels like time is picking up again and days are finally starting to go by a little faster. Collin and I have been sending emails to each other a lot but phone calls have been very limited. In fact, we only had the chance to talk twice within the passed three weeks. But receiving emails almost every day makes up for it and it is not as bad as it sounds. We have been discussing about investing into a couple road bikes. Collin’s Cannondale road bike is almost 10 years old and it is time for a new one. And since I like roadbiking too, we are thinking of getting two new ones. The only problem is the price. We want a good one - preferrably Cannondale bikes again - which means paying $1000 or more a piece. I have been looking into a few and there are only three models that we could actually afford ranging from $1000 to $1350 per bike (note: the most expensive one is $9999 and looks amazing).

So we’ll see how much we can save up. It would be awesome for this summer and I could get into roadbiking shape until Collin comes home and then we could go on rides together.

It’s been a while since my last post. The past four weeks have been really tough for both of us. I can’t believe it has only been four weeks since he left… it feels like it has been four months. Time has been going by really slowly. I feel like these next six and the half months are going to be the longest time of my life. Thinking about all the things we will be doing after he gets back doesn’t help. I want summer to be here as soon as possible. I want my birthday to be over and Collin’s birthday to be over. Then it will be October and I will be able to start the big countdown. Gosh, it seems so long until then.

We both have been really busy with school. Collin started taking online classes at the Central Texas College. They have a campus on the military post here in Germany and Collin is able to take classes online at his own pace while he is in Iraq. He just completed his American History class with an A and is looking forward towards his next classes. He is thinking about English and American Government but he will have to wait a term or a couple terms to start because of the current lack of internet where he is at right now. I am really proud of him. This will look really good when he goes to the boards to get a promotion.

As for me, I quit my part-time job that I had always worked on Fridays. I have a really busy schedule this semester and on top of tutoring Math again this semester, I am also the tutor for a class called control engineering. It is fun but takes up a lot of time. But at least it will pay for my tuition for the next semester.

On another note: We only have about 16 months left in Germany. Crazy. We started out with 36 months. I can’t wait to be back in the States again. I really miss our life there. I miss it so much!

The past few weeks have been amazing and I couldn’t have asked for a better time together with Collin. He arrived on March 1. I picked him up from Frankfurt Airport early in the morning. His flight was scheduled to arrive at 6:50am and luckily it was on time despite the predicted rain storm. There were a few other wives waiting for their husbands. One by one they were reunited but I was still waiting for a few more minutes until he finally came out the sliding door.

 It felt so great seeing him and hugging him. It felt like he wasn’t gone at all. He still looked the same, he still smelled the same. It was amazing. And judging from that I knew the next few weeks were going to be amazing as well.

I didn’t want to fill his time here with many surpises, I wanted us to do the same things we always did. So instead of going on huge and expensive trips, we only did a 4-night stay at the Edelweiss Lodge in Garmisch. It is a hotel/lodge for military and government personnel only. There we went to see the Neuschwanstein Castle, we went skiing for one day and the rest of the time we just relaxed at the pool there, went around town and had a few drinks at the bar there.

Here are a few pictures of what we did:

Relaxing at home.

Dinner with Tina and Markus.

Bowling in Vilseck after seeing Semi-Pro at the movies.

Us at Neuschwanstein Castle.

At our hotel in Garmisch.

Dinner at Edelweiss Lodge. We got free breakfast and dinner at the lodge because of Collin serving in Iraq.

Us being goofy.

Saying goodbye was sad but not as sad as in August. We have already made plans for when he comes back for good in November. Let me tell you, I can’t wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas!

…that I will be really busy for the next two and a half weeks. I got the call today. He is on his way and I will be on my way in a few hours to pick him up from the airport. Life couldn’t be better.

So this morning I climbed into the car and noticed a 5-inch crack on the windshield. I have no clue how it happened. It must have happened last night when I drove home from my parents’ house but neither did I hear a rock hitting the windshield nor does it even look like it happened from a rock. It is just a crack. Thankfully we have full coverage on our car. I just hate taking care of things like that. It is supposed to be the husband’s job. But even if Collin was home, I would have to take care of it because our insurance company is German. This also means that I might have to take the Jeep to pick Collin up from the airport. Which also means that our drive home will be much longer because I can only go 60 mph compared to the 100+ mph I can go with the BMW. In such a situation the Autobahn is not so great after all.

So here we go. I finally got my hair done and it turned out to be a complete makeover. I am so happy with the result. First i just wanted a trim but instead I decided to go for the famous Victoria Beckham bob. It was a spontaneous idea and sometimes I love being spontaneous.