Wow, it seems whenever we get an internet connection, the blog entries come out fast and furious.
Many people have been asking for our contact information here in Hamburg. Obviously, our email addresses will continue to work as is.
Postal mail:
Ken and Kristy Lawrance
Jungfrauenthal 6
20149 Hamburg, Germany
Phone number:
011 49 40 416 25852
(011 is international access, 49 is Germany, 40 is Hamburg city code).
Also, for those interested, I've posted a link to our best dive pictures from Belize for those family and friends that are interested. You can click here to go to the pictures.
Ken
Sunday, February 25, 2007
New friends and gizmos
Yesterday (Saturday) was my best day in Germany yet. Ken and I spent some good quality time together during the day including our first shopping spree. We took the U-bahn to the Saturn electronics store downtown. This puts any other electronics store that I have ever been to to shame. It had not only the TV’s, Computers, washers, and ovens that our HHGregg’s or Best Buy would have but also has every other thing with a plug that you would ever need. I had the choice of 20-25 different kinds of curling irons and 30-40 blow dryers. It was overwhelming but definitely one-stop shopping.
In the evening, we went to the Asia Garden buffet with the members of our new church, the International Baptist Church of Hamburg. Everyone was so friendly. We got a chance to chat with the pastor and his wife and make some friends. We met Meggan from St. Louis who has been in Germany for the last 6 years. It was a flashback to my first meeting with my dear Jenn C. This woman passionately loves Jesus, seeks out newcomers to connect on a deep level with, and was a graphic design major. We had a science major- art major moment that made my smile. We met a couple about our age Steve and Tina. He’s a financial planner from Great Britain and she’s busy with three children 3, 6, and 7. He was very outgoing and really connected with Ken. The evening was topped by karaoke. The Filipinos led this activity with gusto!
This morning, the sun was out!!! (Not common here, I’ve learned.) Before church, Ken and I took a 2 mile walk to the Alster Lake. I then got to go to church here for the first time. It was a wonderful experience of diversity. Too often in the US, the Asians go to one church, the blacks go to a few churches, and the whites go to the rest (and then don’t get along). Here all the races met together in one church. I have never been to such a diverse church. I loved it. After the service, the Filipinos made lunch for everyone down in the basement. They are clearly the servant leaders of this congregation. I can’t wait to go back next Sunday.
Kristy
In the evening, we went to the Asia Garden buffet with the members of our new church, the International Baptist Church of Hamburg. Everyone was so friendly. We got a chance to chat with the pastor and his wife and make some friends. We met Meggan from St. Louis who has been in Germany for the last 6 years. It was a flashback to my first meeting with my dear Jenn C. This woman passionately loves Jesus, seeks out newcomers to connect on a deep level with, and was a graphic design major. We had a science major- art major moment that made my smile. We met a couple about our age Steve and Tina. He’s a financial planner from Great Britain and she’s busy with three children 3, 6, and 7. He was very outgoing and really connected with Ken. The evening was topped by karaoke. The Filipinos led this activity with gusto!
This morning, the sun was out!!! (Not common here, I’ve learned.) Before church, Ken and I took a 2 mile walk to the Alster Lake. I then got to go to church here for the first time. It was a wonderful experience of diversity. Too often in the US, the Asians go to one church, the blacks go to a few churches, and the whites go to the rest (and then don’t get along). Here all the races met together in one church. I have never been to such a diverse church. I loved it. After the service, the Filipinos made lunch for everyone down in the basement. They are clearly the servant leaders of this congregation. I can’t wait to go back next Sunday.
Kristy
Friday, February 23, 2007
Parks and Grocery Shopping (Thursday)
Today after we set up our German “Haspa” bank account, Ken went to work. I had a conscious choice to make. The jet lag and loneliness set in when he left, so I decided to get out of the flat and go running. Ken warned me before he left that I’d better be careful since I did not know my way around. I told him that I only needed to go east and I’d get to the Alster Lake. I had wanted to run there since we toured the city in January. He then asked me the brilliant question, “Which way is east?” On a cloudy day, I admitted that I hadn’t a clue. He said that our street is east/west, so that helped. I started out walking south and found a nice park with a ¼ mile running track. I ran a mile on that before getting bored. I’ve been so spoiled running in Lawrence. I then walked on and actually found the Alster. I needed this boost of encouragement- to find something here without Ken’s help. I ran a little there and came home.
In the afternoon, I ventured to Budni and the grocery store. Budni is a CVS or Walgreens type store without the pharmacy (a separate store). My adventure there was to buy laundry detergent. I had my handheld translator, but all the words were not in the dictionary, so I had to do some guessing. We’ll see of our clothes turn blue or something!
The next stop was the grocery. I only bought about 15 items and spent well over an hour there. You know how challenging going to a new grocery in a different city is. “Your” Kroger is arranged in a specific way and even if it is another Kroger, things are in a different place. Then
add the challenge of having all the food in a foreign language. Buying cheddar cheese had me nearly in tears. I walked up and down the packaged cheese aisle and translated each type hoping that it would come out Cheddar. (Of course my dictionary did not have that word, so I did not know what I was looking for.) I finally found it in the deli. I was blessed with an English-speaking employee there. He also helped me buy a ½ kg of hamburger.
In the afternoon, I ventured to Budni and the grocery store. Budni is a CVS or Walgreens type store without the pharmacy (a separate store). My adventure there was to buy laundry detergent. I had my handheld translator, but all the words were not in the dictionary, so I had to do some guessing. We’ll see of our clothes turn blue or something!
The next stop was the grocery. I only bought about 15 items and spent well over an hour there. You know how challenging going to a new grocery in a different city is. “Your” Kroger is arranged in a specific way and even if it is another Kroger, things are in a different place. Then
add the challenge of having all the food in a foreign language. Buying cheddar cheese had me nearly in tears. I walked up and down the packaged cheese aisle and translated each type hoping that it would come out Cheddar. (Of course my dictionary did not have that word, so I did not know what I was looking for.) I finally found it in the deli. I was blessed with an English-speaking employee there. He also helped me buy a ½ kg of hamburger. As many of you know, my comfort food is ice cream, so I headed to the ice cream aisle. I couldn’t see anything that was vanilla other than “Bourbon-Vanille”. I really did not want liquor ice cream, but after the stress of shopping, I needed ice cream desperately. Another lady saw me keying in the word“Bourbon”. She knew English and told me that it didn’t have liquor in it. She also helped me find the mayonnaise. I had a headache by the time I left.
The Moving Trip to Germany (Tuesday - Wednesday)
As Ken mentioned, I've been typing all of these thoughts out in Word until I could post them. Here goes!
We left Indianapolis around 1:30 Tuesday after a crazy morning of running errands. Pop and Grandma Lawrance were kind enough to drop us off at the airport and Margaret Foltz was our “sending off crowd” by joining us there for lunch. The flights were uneventful. The only crisis that we had was in the hour layover in the Amsterdam airport. First of all, the airport terminal is a long line rather than the hub and spoke style. There was also no tram or shuttle from one side to the other and, as expected, our flight came in on one side and departed from the other side. It was about a 30-minute walk. Then we had to go through customs and, as is expected when you are tight on time, got in the slow line. My bag got stopped going through customs. According to the security, my laptop lock is a risk and I had the choice of checking it or having them discard it. I carried this lock on airplanes with me to Washington D.C., Belize, and Germany and not one guard had questioned it. We didn’t have time to check it, so we had to watch them discard our $50 lock.
National Starch’s cab driver picked us up at the airport and took us to our flat. Inge, our relocation consultant, met us there with the keys. She took us to get registered and to research banks and U-Bahn passes.
We forced ourselves to stay up until 9:30 PM to see if that would help us get onto Germany body times more quickly rather than napping. If you do the math, this meant that we had been up from 6AM Tuesday (IN time) to 3:30 PM Wednesday or 33.5 hours. I was able to sleep an hour and a half on the plane, but Ken didn’t sleep at all.
We left Indianapolis around 1:30 Tuesday after a crazy morning of running errands. Pop and Grandma Lawrance were kind enough to drop us off at the airport and Margaret Foltz was our “sending off crowd” by joining us there for lunch. The flights were uneventful. The only crisis that we had was in the hour layover in the Amsterdam airport. First of all, the airport terminal is a long line rather than the hub and spoke style. There was also no tram or shuttle from one side to the other and, as expected, our flight came in on one side and departed from the other side. It was about a 30-minute walk. Then we had to go through customs and, as is expected when you are tight on time, got in the slow line. My bag got stopped going through customs. According to the security, my laptop lock is a risk and I had the choice of checking it or having them discard it. I carried this lock on airplanes with me to Washington D.C., Belize, and Germany and not one guard had questioned it. We didn’t have time to check it, so we had to watch them discard our $50 lock.
National Starch’s cab driver picked us up at the airport and took us to our flat. Inge, our relocation consultant, met us there with the keys. She took us to get registered and to research banks and U-Bahn passes.
We forced ourselves to stay up until 9:30 PM to see if that would help us get onto Germany body times more quickly rather than napping. If you do the math, this meant that we had been up from 6AM Tuesday (IN time) to 3:30 PM Wednesday or 33.5 hours. I was able to sleep an hour and a half on the plane, but Ken didn’t sleep at all.
More Belize Pix
Before I dive (pun intended) into Germany details, I wanted to post the promised Belize pictures.
<-- This one is for Jeff and Mom, my crab leg-eating family members. My stomach growled when I saw this guy/gal.
Here is Megan on the zip line. On Friday, we did this and "cave tubing" which involves a 45 minute hike through the jungle followed by lying on an inner tube and floating down a river that goes through 2 caves.
We continued to see eagle rays during the week. The picture with the turtle was taking while we were all in a group looking at a pair of rays. Ken was down taking a 
picture of the rays and then looked back at us to see the loggerhead in the middle of our group. None of us had seen it. We joked that it was trying to see what we were all looking at.
This little Hawkbill turtle was so intent on eating this coral that it allowed Ken to snap a bunch of pictures and Mom to be about 2 feet away watching. She just wanted to hug it because it was so cute!
picture of the rays and then looked back at us to see the loggerhead in the middle of our group. None of us had seen it. We joked that it was trying to see what we were all looking at.This little Hawkbill turtle was so intent on eating this coral that it allowed Ken to snap a bunch of pictures and Mom to be about 2 feet away watching. She just wanted to hug it because it was so cute!
Troubles with Internet Connection
Kristy and I arrived safely in Hamburg Wednesday morning. We've been having some trouble getting the internet working in our apartment, and the provider (T-Com) is a bear to work with. Kristy has created several entries offline detailing our adventures, but obviously has not been able to post yet. Hopefully we'll have these up this weekend to share with everyone.
Ken
Ken
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Belize Dive Pix
Our week in Belize for the Lawrance family dive trip is almost over. It has been wonderful. This has been the best diving for the Lawrance girls and it is up there for the rest of the family. The pictures can share it better than I can.The first "big" thing that we saw were nurse sharks. That was just the start.
This is me during one of our surface intervals snorkeling at "Shark Ray Alley". Ken's dad Chuck found great pleasure in throwing the chum by my head so all the fish would attack me. Luckily the sharks and the rays there weren't so aggressive.
My new favorite sea creature is the spotted eagle ray. They are not found everywhere and are pretty skittish. We saw them on two of our diving days. The best part was the day where we saw 8 in a group. They looked like birds flying through the air.
We saw a number of loggerhead and Hawksbill turtles. Mom Peg had a close encounter with one that was eating. It just sat there and munched on the coral for a few minutes with her only a few feet away. Ken got a number of pictures before it swam away.
We'll try to post more when we have a stronger internet connection.
We return from Belize Sunday and leave for Germany on Tuesday.
Kristy
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Sitting in Amsterdam
I thought I'd take a few moments while waiting on my connection in Amsterdam to detail my ordeals from last night and this morning.
After I wrote my blog entry last night, I was getting ready for bed and waiting on my coworker to show up to take my luggage. He showed up about 9:45 (I wanted to be in bed by 9) and I took my luggage down to his apartment. I got back to my apartment and realized that I forgot to give him the food from my kitchen, so he came up to get that. I was then brushing my teeth and I realized that I needed to take my toothpaste down to his room to leave behind as well (it is larger than 3oz and cost 4 euro and I wasn't planning on checking any luggage). I grabbed my key and went down to his room. When going back up to my room (2 stories up and a tower over) I went up the wrong stairs (the towers are totally isolated except for the floor that my friend is on. So I went back down the stairs, walked over to the correct ones and walked back up. I get back to my room and the key doesn't work.
I knew exactly what the problem was. I grabbed the old keycard (identical) from my previous hotel room. Funny thing is, in all the moving about I knew that I was going to do something stupid like that. So I make the 5 minute trek to the front desk and get a new keycard, then 5 min. back to my room. By the time I get back to my room it is much closer to 11pm than 10pm. Of course I try to go to bed but can't because I'm too worked up. I finally get to bed at about 12:30 or 1am, to wake up at 4:15!
When I check in at the Hamburg airport at the KLM counter I learn that the baggage allowance is different than in the US. Click here if you're really interested. So apparently if your flying from Europe, you can only have one bag PERIOD. If you're flying from the US, you can have one bag and a 'personal item' (laptop in my case). Needless to say, they made me check my carryon suitcase. This makes me a little upset, as my connection is only an hour and a half, and I now need to wait on my baggage to clear customs. I wasn't worried before, but I'm a little concerned now. I don't think customs is too bad in Detroit though, so hopefully I won't have any problems. We'll see. If these are the worst travel stories I have from this trip, I'll be happy.
Ken
After I wrote my blog entry last night, I was getting ready for bed and waiting on my coworker to show up to take my luggage. He showed up about 9:45 (I wanted to be in bed by 9) and I took my luggage down to his apartment. I got back to my apartment and realized that I forgot to give him the food from my kitchen, so he came up to get that. I was then brushing my teeth and I realized that I needed to take my toothpaste down to his room to leave behind as well (it is larger than 3oz and cost 4 euro and I wasn't planning on checking any luggage). I grabbed my key and went down to his room. When going back up to my room (2 stories up and a tower over) I went up the wrong stairs (the towers are totally isolated except for the floor that my friend is on. So I went back down the stairs, walked over to the correct ones and walked back up. I get back to my room and the key doesn't work.
I knew exactly what the problem was. I grabbed the old keycard (identical) from my previous hotel room. Funny thing is, in all the moving about I knew that I was going to do something stupid like that. So I make the 5 minute trek to the front desk and get a new keycard, then 5 min. back to my room. By the time I get back to my room it is much closer to 11pm than 10pm. Of course I try to go to bed but can't because I'm too worked up. I finally get to bed at about 12:30 or 1am, to wake up at 4:15!
When I check in at the Hamburg airport at the KLM counter I learn that the baggage allowance is different than in the US. Click here if you're really interested. So apparently if your flying from Europe, you can only have one bag PERIOD. If you're flying from the US, you can have one bag and a 'personal item' (laptop in my case). Needless to say, they made me check my carryon suitcase. This makes me a little upset, as my connection is only an hour and a half, and I now need to wait on my baggage to clear customs. I wasn't worried before, but I'm a little concerned now. I don't think customs is too bad in Detroit though, so hopefully I won't have any problems. We'll see. If these are the worst travel stories I have from this trip, I'll be happy.
Ken
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
