RIA, Recycling and Rain

Can you believe that I am sitting in my apartment, updating our blog and watching "Mythbusters" in German!! What a life! Wanted to give a quick picture of our school with Delynn out front (wave Hi!). This is on one of the nicer days. It has been raining for 3 days fairly strongly - we even heard that the Rhein river was flooding in Basel, Switzerland. When we walk everywhere, rain is a bit more of a pain. This is a much more rain than we are used to in August - it feels more like a bad February or April in Vancouver WA right now. However, we more than make up for the rain with the great group of teachers and staff we have here at RIA. We are meeting every morning for devotions and prayer; praying for the families and the children coming into the school. Dispite the craziness of getting everything prepared, we feel that it is just so right to be here. It's supposed to clear up a bit for the weekend - we might take the train to the neighboring town of Loerrach - they have a nice pedestrian zone and market there on Saturdays.

Last Sunday, we worshiped at the Basel Christian Fellowship. After worship, we (and our director Diana) were invited to a nice meal by Jim and Anita Cooper. He is a retired Wycliffe translator from the US and Anita is his charming Swiss wife. They are a very sweet couple and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. This week we plan to worship at the church where two other teachers go - they live very near us, so we can all go together. There are a few English speaking churches in the Weil/Basel area and we look forward to finding the community God wants us to join.

We also have a picture here of our temporary apartment - we are on the 2nd floor (called the 1st floor in Germany), so not too far up. We will only be here for a month as our permanent apartment will become available on September 3rd. With school and such going on, we are not really sure when we will actually move in. Once we move in, we will have to re-register with the city hall for our new address, get the utilities, garbage, phone, etc. sorted out. Another new reality we have here is that it takes us much longer to get things done. It is a combination of translating everything and learning new ways of doing things. For example, we have discovered that to get monies into our German bank account, we have to withdrawal cash from the ATM from our US account, walk into the bank and deposit the cash. The bank is open late (i.e. past 4pm) one day a week, so we will need to walk to the bank a few times every month to make sure we have sufficient funds for our bills. We could also write a check (but we can't write a check in Euros) or pay $45.00 for a wire transfer. Oh bother.

I also wanted to touch on recycling. The Schwarzwald is very green - in many ways. We think that in the NW that we are big recyclers (and you are, so keep it up), but here in our new home, we take it to an extreme. It is almost a game of "who can create the least amount of trash." Here's how we play. First, we get charged for each time we dump garbage into the dumpster. The dumpster is inside a container that requires a "garbage card" - kind of like a credit card - to open up a small transfer chute that holds about 3 gallons of garbage (10 liters). Every time we use the card, we pay. We don't know how much yet because we don't have garbage card... However, the only garbage for which we are charged is what is left over after we separate out all of the recyclables. This includes the glass (clear, green and brown), paper and cardboard recyclables and also everything that goes into the "Gelbe Sack" (or Gold bag - see picture of the sack in the corner of our kitchen). The Gelbe Sack takes just about everything except food garbage. We put plastic, Styrofoam containers, food packaging, foil, just about everything. We can fill as many Gelbe Sacks as needed and they are picked up for free once a month. The thing is, we need to wash out the packaging before putting it into the sack. Yogurt cups, meat trays, milk containers, etc. You get the idea. In the week we have been here we have not even generated enough garbage to go to the dumpster once (and we have only eaten out two times in the last 8 days)! It is an amazing thing but like I said, it becomes a game pretty quickly.

Well, that's it for today - we love and miss you all. We are so glad to be here, even when it wears us out. What a blessed adventure.