The Rhein River Valley - If you love white wine, this is your mecca

Winery

We spent the day in the Rhein River Valley yesterday, home of Riesling wine! We bought about 10 bottles of wine and visited this old monastery that makes their own beer and wine now. It's called Kloster Eberbach im Diedrich. REALLY cool place and a must see for whoever is our first visitor! I am bringing home a couple bottles of beer for Jason's party on Saturday.

We can not wait to see everyone this weekend. It is very hard to believe that we have been here almost two months now.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has become our favorite store here in Germany. I think I have stepped into only two in the U.S., but it's the one place we can get everything, include a few American favorites. My favorite food group happens to be ice cream and today we found Haagan Daas!! Thank god for chocolate ice cream...and I didn't care that it was double the price!

Spent our Saturday at IKEA getting a few more items for the house. We hope to end our weekly shopping trips soon.

Doing laundry as we speak. I can honestly stay that our clothes have never been cleaner. However, the washer takes 2 hours and 12 minutes, dryer takes 1 hour and 56 minutes. It's a painful and long process compared to home.

Tomorrow we are of to Rudesheim which on the Rheine. We are going with two of my co-workers to check our the wineries. At least something fun is open on Sunday - oh, found out that the tanner is open on Sunday, too!

As tonight is Jenna's bachelorette party, I hope that the girls are having a blast at the spa and having a night to remember out on the town. It's hard not being there, but I am there in spirit!!

Tanning

So, in preparation for Jenna's wedding in Vegas, we started tanning today. Very similar to the US, with the exception of the German police coming in to visit and sitting outside my tanning room while chain smoking the full time I was in! Talk about uncomfortable...

I haven't blogged in a while and haven't been so great with email as work is crazy busy. Last week purchasing leadership approved our strategy of how we are going to award wiring on a next generation vehicle for 1.4 million units. It was the first time I had been in front of our leadership in what we call sourcing or "the table" in over four years. Luckily the questions weren't too bad and we now have a conference with the suppliers to kick quoting and negotiations off tomorrow. Looks like I will be busy with this project through the end of June.

The house is coming along great! All the boxes are finally unpacked and we are about 90% organized. We hope to have everything in it's place before we come home in 11 days. We should have pictures of the house up again next week.

For those in the area....April 23...big party at Jay Boss' new place since we will be in town. Keep the evening open...looking forward to see quite a lot of people in a few weeks.

Rainy Thursday

Working from home today and assembling our wardrobes in our closet.

I spent a couple days in Rouen, France (Lincoln Electric - France is in Rouen) earlier this week. REALLY cool city about 100 miles NW of Paris near the English Channel. It is split in two by the Seine river and lies right in the middle of a valley.

Rouen is about an hour drive from Normandy beach and was one of the first major cities liberated during WWII. It is really cool to see all of the history around here. There are American cemetaries all around northern France. They look very much like Arlington in DC with all of the white crosses just on a much smaller scale. Next time I drive by one, I'll snap a picture.

We are getting pumped about our trip home! I can't wait to head to the Tiger game on Sunday!

gotcha...

it seems as though a few people thought we were off to New Dehli?

sorry...(not really)

off to IKEA to buy some house stuff and then settle in for a late night. State plays at 3:45 in the morning!

GO GREEN!!!!!!!

gotcha...

it seems as though I fooled quite a few people!!

sorry (not really)

off to Ikea this morning to buy some stuff for the home and then to the market.

We've got a long inght ahead of us - State plays at 3:45 a.m.!!!!

GO GREEN

BIG TIME NEWS!!!!

Holy Cow!!!

Kelli and I have just learned that we are moving!!!

With everything going on with GM, they are moving a great deal of their business to the Middle East and Asia!

SO, We are moving to New Delhi!!!

They want Kelli to head up their Advanced Purchasing Group in India for future programs.

We being learining Hindu next week at Berlitz in Wiesbaden and will be in India within two months!

There is more news at the bottom of this page so scroll all the way to the bottom!

This weekend

Just found out I have to drive to France on Monday. About 1 1/2 hours northwest of Paris near the Ocean. The city is called Rouen, it's the home of Lincoln-France. I am REALLY looking forward to the 6 1/2 hours in the Focus. That damn thing better go 100mph. AND it better have a cd player or I'm not going. The only thing worse than driving in France is listening to French radio.

This weekend is going to be a tough one. Between the Spartans and Opening Day on Monday, this would have been a historic weekend in the D. Brad Hehl is in the UK but can't get down here to watch the game because he has to work tomorrow. It would have been cool to have our first visitor.

Congratulations also to Jay Boss who moves into his new place next week. Enjoy the big screen jerk.....

miss you all :(