Day to Day

So, we're obviously not travelling all of the time. Day to day is pretty much like in the States. I have yet to work up the courage to go to the meat counter, so we're sort of becoming defacto vegetarians except when we go out to eat. Last nite we did have sausage, tho, so that was a change. After dinner Kyle usually sits down to a book (he's currently reading Munich and Memory, borrowed from a fellow Rice arch. grad who's been living in Munich for 3 years or so; and I'm reading Strong Motion, in case anyone's interested ;) while I usually sit down to homework. We've just borrowed a DVD player from the same Rice grad, so we purchased some movies in German to help us learn the language: the Matrix, Spaceballs, and Schrek. We've also borrowed the first season of 6 Feet Under, which should be interesting to watch, as I've heard it's great. We're still totally addicted to Lost, so are very appreciative that iTunes carries that show!

In any case, we still have the regular washing to take care of, which like most things here takes a little bit to get used to how the machine works. When we first arrived, I spent an hour translating, with a few calls to Kyle at work to help out with the random 'Achtung!' warnings. It's a combination washer/dryer, though it's ventless, so that means it's more like sucking and spinning the water out of the clothes more than anything else. It is also very teeny, which means that you can't even put a whole set of sheets in the tumbler. And if you expect it to dry anything, you need to put in even less. What this basically means is that we do a lot of airdrying, as apparently do most people here. Our balcony does not really face the sun, nor does it have a clothes line, so that means the drying rack is always set up in our dining room. I imagine at some point we'll hopefully have a few people over and we'll have to put it away, but currently it seems as if there is always a load that needs drying. Dry cleaning? Well, that one we haven't quite worked out yet....