Things I live without

We arrived in Germany on August 23.it took a full 40 days for me to decide a cell phone might come in handy. (and go figure, in  the week I've had it I've only used it once!). It got me thinking though, what are the other things we've done without since arriving.

-first thing that comes to mind is my furniture. After finally moving out of a hotel, we got government loaner furniture... Albeit limited. I miss my bed, and my couch. And rug and piano. (I don't miss the boxes of "stuff" that always seem to fill up our storage space).

-a hair dryer.  I quickly exhausted all (socially acceptable) hair styles that looksomewhatsocially acceptable without the use of a hair dryer since mine is 110v and Germany uses 220v.  Then it was just an ugly ponytail everyday.  I finally found one at the thrift store (thankfully... And for just $5!) three weeks with wet hair is just too long.

-friends.  Sad that this shows up on the list. Maybe it's the bad hair? Ha. In actuality, I just haven't gotten out much. I'm looking forward to establishing a schedule and habits and some socializing. But Ive always been pretty happy with my own company so I'm not too torn up.

-a vacuume or a broom.  This is becoming a problem. I don't like to sweep, so I don't own a broom. ,instead, I like To vacuume the floor, but I don't have a $100 transformer yet to use on my vacuume. So the floors are dirty. Must fix soon.

-A job. Haven't started missing this yet. Once the rest of my life is in order (vacuume, furniture, friends) I might try to fill this gap. In the meantime travel and hobbies are filling my time quite nicely. I know my life is so hard.  Hyrum keeps telling people I'm still on vacation from my last job. Kind of true.

-a pillow. I don't know why I didn't put these in our 'fast shipment' but I didn't. So we've been sans pillows for several weeks now. I kind of like it. Hyrum doesn't but he is leaving for a while anyway so it doesn't matter. 

-my car. We went a week without hyrums car, which was painful. It took us an hour just to walk into the closest German town to post. I walked to the grocery store on post and had to carry all the bags home. No fun. Now we have one car so life is good. I guess a second car is a luxury we don't really need right now. Especially if my husband is absent half the time anyway. Such is my life...

Most recent trip to neighboring country: Austria. 3.5 hour drive.

On a positive note, we have many wonderful things here. A brand new large refrigerator is one of them, courtesy of the government. (loaner of course, but still brand new and large and clean and the door isn't falling off like past fridges...). We have an awesome apartment. Pictures to come.  We have a bakery within walking distance. I have an ikea desk. So many countries within driving distance. A steady income. More clothes than we can even fit in the closets. Oh wait, we don't have closets. So add that to the 'living without' list!  We've had great weather. An English speaking ward. Two temples in driving distance. German chocolate. And many other great things. No complaining about the trade off.