Today I wanted to get the phone line taken care of. We got letters in the mail saying that our phone line should be up and operational but when I plugged in our phones, there is no dial tone and when I call the number, it rings on the caller’s end, but not on the phone. I went back to the place where I signed up for phone/DSL. It is across the street from the Hauptbahnhof and in the PostBank building. It was pretty convienient, because we had to add me to the bank account and we could do it in one place. I had to ask we could do it there, since we didn’t open the account there. There are too many occasions where that kind of thing happens. I waited and waited, then a line started forming. There were only two guys helping people, one guy was helping an old woman, who took forever taking off her coat, so she wasn’t going to be done anytime soon, then the other guy was engrossed in talking about all the different options the customer had, going through some kind of booklet. I waited for 20 minutes, the line was super long behind me. I made my first German mistake, and told a guy Sprechen sie keine Deutche, instead of Ich spreche keine Deutche. I told him “you speak no German”, instead of “I speak no German”. He had a confused look on his face, then kind of chuckled and I immediately realized what I said. How embarrassing! I left because it was just taking too long, so I went over to the T-Mobile booth and it was empty and seemingly closed. There was a jacket hanging in the back, so I thought maybe the person had to step away for a second. But I waited and waited and called Michael because I was so mad! When I walked in, there were people all bustling about in the booth and now, 20 minutes later, it was closed and it was only 3:30pm. Shouldn’t they be open the same time as the bank/post office? One would think. Anyways, Michael said to meet him at the bank near his work (where we opened the account). It is much bigger and a lot more people in it. I was sooooo mad, I think it’s because I set out to do a bunch of stuff today and it was quickly looking like I was going to get nothing done and the day would be wasted. While I was walking back to the UBahn station, I noticed that another bank had their hours posted and they close at 3:45 and that made me even madder because after all this trouble, the bank that I was headed for would probably be closed as well. For a fleeting second, I thought about turning around and heading home before I blow my top. But I figured, I’ll give it one more shot. I got off the Karlsplatz exit, and headed for Michael’s office. I was still confused as to where to go, and headed down the wrong corridor. This has to be one of the biggest stations, there are 2 “underground” levels, which is kind of like a mall. Not a nice mall, but a place with stores. Even with the signs, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I had to find a Tengelmann’s store. I finally found where I was supposed to go and the escalator that I usually go up was going down (it goes both up/down), so I took the one next to it. Big mistake! I ended up on some tram island and couldn’t cross the street. I ended up having to go all the way back down to the station, find the escalator again and go back up again. Temper was at the boiling point. I managed to make it to the bank and to my amazement, it was open. That calmed me down a bit. Also, I noticed a T-Mobile “center” next door and it was a big place, not a little dinky booth at the Hauptbahnhof. Michael met me there with my favorite pastry, an Apfelrolle. Mmmmm… We got through all the paperwork and had all the necessary documents (whew!), and found out the last time we came the guy didn’t change our address! No wonder we never got any mail from the bank! And they are one of the biggest mail generators, I think because they are also the post office. I also found out that you can’t change your pin number - they don’t have the technology for it. Can you believe that? They said that next year they should be able to do that. Also, the pin number for Michael’s card will be different from my pin. One card, one pin. After we get through with the bank (let’s hope everything gets done right), we went next door to the T-Mobile place. They guy there was helpful, but he said that we need to contact the tech center, at a phone number that wasn’t notated anywhere on the letters that were sent to us. Why the other guy yesterday didn’t tell me about this number is beyond me. We had our cell phone with us (or “handy” as they’re called here), and immediately called in the lobby. There was no way we were going to leave, only to find out we need to come back. It turns out that the number had a computer answering it, and all in German. You know, they outta have an English option, like how the US has a Spanish option. Anyhoo, I couldn’t understand it, so I gave the phone to Michael who thought we needed to enter our number in, so he did that, but I think it was wrong, but it got us to a person who spoke English, thank goodness. They asked if the technician came over, and we said no. It turns out that buried in the letter that they sent us was a date/time of when the technician was going to come (12/20) and of course, I wasn’t home. So, we set a new date of January 3rd. Ugh, this is taking forever. But I figured we won’t have internet until the 2nd, so waiting 1 day is no big deal. I’ll be really shocked if we actually do have everything set up and working on the 3rd. We’ll see. It was pretty miserable outside today, cold and snowing very hard. The boys have been patient with us today and didn’t complain at all even though they had to wait so long in the bank and at the phone place. I was going to go to “Basic” the organic store, but didn’t want to risk a time bomb going off. Michael agreed to go after work instead. I went home and kept the boys up. Rowan did some neat things like he was trying to stack the blocks on top of each other. Both the boys have been in a destruction mode, where if I get even two blocks stacked, they will immediately knock it down. It’s a fun game for us, I try to get a tower as tall as I can and they try to not let me build one. Elijah was catching on that if he waits a second, he will get to knock down a really big tower, so nowadays he lets it get to be at least 7 or 8 blocks high. Also, Rowan was hiding blocks under the couch. It was too cute! He would get a block and then carefully place it under the couch. Elijah loves for me to bounce him on my lap, it cracks him up. I don’t continuously bounce, I stop, then do a bounce, then stop again. That always puts a smile on his face. Every once in a awhile he’ll make a sad face and I copy him and then we both laugh. It’s a really special thing when that happens, since we are communicating and we both understand each other, which is rare! They were super tired by the time bedtime rolled around since they only had 1 official nap. It was good because they didn’t wake up at all at night. Sometimes when we put them down before they’re really tired, they end up playing awhile and then frequently getting up, crying for about 5 seconds, then going back to sleep. Today was my “off” day, and since I walked a lot today for errands, I counted that as my off day exercise. Geez, I’m already slacking. This evening we watched Mr. 3000 and The Pacifier, we saw them both before and enjoyed them again.