"Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine".

- Lord Byron

Yesterday, Steven and I decided that instead of it looking like we live in a cardboard box we should attempt to make it look like a house. You see, the thousands of boxes that our furniture came in had become our new flooring once we were done putting the furniture together. The first room we tackled was the living room - piece of cake. We now have our couch/futon on the wall across from the windows. It's really nice being able to watch the sunset while you're eating dinner. That is of course, if we actually eat at a normal time. The second room (and only other room we have other than the bathroom) to arrange was our bedroom. Was that an easy task? Oh no, not for the Bockmann's! We had decided that we wanted our bed across from the door and our wardrobe on the wall across from the bed. Well, the wardrobe was easily moved. I mean, it is just plywood after all :-). The bed was a different story. We had gotten it moved halfway to where we wanted it, when SURPRISE! Thunk...... Yup, that's what we heard "thunk". Instantly, I was on the floor laughing. Steven and I had always joked about how the bed was just going to fall apart one night and we would wake up on the floor. Well, our joking was becoming reality.

Steven: "What the heck was that?!"

Me: (trying to talk while I am dying laughing) "I don't know but it was funny"

Steven: "Did our bed just break?"

Me: "I think so"

Both of us are laughing now... our beautiful Austin Powers bed was breaking before our eyes. Bummer, we know.

So, we sat the bed down and took a deep breath (well, Steven did I was still laughing). I thought maybe a leg had fallen off the bed. Ya know, no biggie. Oh no. It wasn't a leg of the bed. It was the whole center brace! When we realized what it was, we were laughing even harder... I mean, how many times can you say the center brace broke off your bed?! And yes, we did take a picture ;-)

Onto our next story. Yesterday, we went to Lidl because frankly, we're getting tired of eating only pasta and were hoping to find something meat related that looked somewhat edible. We didn't succeed in finding anything that we wanted meat wise but we did find some yummy chips and cookies! While we were in line checking out, all of the sudden these 3 people come zooming past us to leave. And then it happened. Dun dun dun... what did we hear??? For the first time since we have moved into our apartment, we WILLINGLY heard ENGLISH! The girl asked her friend if she could go out a certain exit and he replied with no. I thought I was hearing things. I instantly turned to Steven and said, "did you hear that?!". But, by the time we realized that they were speaking English and were in fact around our age, they were out the door. Yes, we thought about chasing them down. Yes, we thought about begging them to talk to us in English. Yes, we thought about inviting them over in hopes that we could have a conversation with someone that didn't start with "Sprechen sie Englisch?" Ah, maybe we will run into them again.... and next time we'll be ready :-)

For those of you who are wondering (Lois and my momma) we did make it to the Visa office yesterday. We patiently waited for our mere number 47 to be called and once it was called we darted up to the counter. Upon our arrival at the counter (and after we asked if she could speak to us in English which only resulted in her asking us if she could speak in German to us) she left us to go get someone who could translate better. This dude comes up and gets out a German to English dictionary. I was trying not to laugh while Steven proudly showed the guy his English to German dictionary. Ah, common ground for once. We were a bit relieved when we found out that we had all of our paperwork, but that feeling only lasted a few seconds. She kept asking us if we had already registered in Pforzheim. We were suppose to do what??? Um, no we hadn't. So, once again off we went to another office... which was more like a hall. Yet again, we took a number and waited for our turn. During our wait in this hall, Steven seemed to be quite frightened that we were going to be deported and that some Arnold Schwarzenegger type person was going to chase us violently from the country. However, these fears were short-lived. Long story short, we got registered but only after a little confusion as to what my maiden name was. I kept saying that she already had it written down but she wanted to know what it was? I'm still confused. Once we got registered, we went back down to the Visa office and waited again. This time number 55. We got up to the counter only to find out that our registration was not in the system yet.... joy. So, tomorrow we will go visit the Visa office - again.