The Commander's and Commander's Spouse's Course

John and I went to Vilsek, Germany to attend the Commander's course and the Commander's Spouse's course. It is a week long (8 hour days) of training for our next military experiences. For those of you who are not in the military, when someone becomes a commander the wife is most often the Family Readiness Group leader (FRG leader). FRG is set up as a support group for the spouses, especially during deployment time. Being a commander is a demanding job and even if the wife is not FRG leader it is good to know what's going on when hubby is at work all day and night.
For those of you who are military, if you have the opportunity to go to this, I would highly reccommend it! I was not excited to go, especially because I had to put my kids in daycare. It turned out to be AWESOME! (It is for commanders and first seargents.)
This was one of the best experiences I've had in Germany. And it was at such a perfect time for me. I got to know the neatest women (and one man) who are at the same rank and experience as me and our spouses are all doing the same jobs. I made friends with this wonderful woman, Sabrina, who is at the base that we will be moving to. As well as the Stake Relief Society president for the stake we are moving to.
(This picture is of all us spouses in the class.)
Even though we are in Germany, we will be going to a military ward in a military stake. IT'S ALL ENGLISH. It will be strange to be living in a foreign country and have everything around me be "American". I'm a little sad about it because here in Bamberg we have made some great friends. The Dettmer's are the best and we will not have another opportunity to make friends with German families like we have here.
Anyway, I couldn't be more excited to move after this last week.The military offers so much for families overseas, none of which I knew about until now. How sad it is that I have stayed in my lonely bubble for this entire year that I've been here. NO MORE! I can't wait to get involved and be out and about doing things for the community and the members of the church.
We stayed in a Germany hotel. I was surprised that we had such a large room for our family. It had one bed and a small crib. That first night Jakob, John and I all slept on the bed. (I being in the middle). (I didn't get much sleep that night.) The kids usually go to bed at 7:30pm so for the entire week both John and I were in bed no later than 8pm and were up by 5am to get ready. It was nice to get so much sleep :). Below are pictures of our beds. From what I'm told, what you see is typical of German hotels. They do not use large blankets, rather two single blankets folded sideways, and the beds are very low to the ground. The picture of John and the boys are during their exercise time. John did push ups and sit ups every morning and the boys had fun going along with him.
I wasn't prepared to stay off post. We got there on Sunday night and I didn't have a blow dryer that would work in a 220 outlet. Monday, we found out there was no PX on post so I had no way of buying a dryer. Tuesday morning I washed my hair and thought I would try those little plug-in converters (not an outlet converter but one that you put on the plug and it makes it so it will fit into a 220 plug). Yeah, what was I thinking? My blowdryer blew up on me before I even turned it on.
For the next few days I went without a dryer. Thursday a bunch of us went to Graffenwoer (30 minutes away) to their huge PX and I was able to finally get a 220 dryer. Lesson learned: you can't use plug converters unless the electrical item says it can be used for both :).




My classes ended on Thursday so Friday we got to take a tour of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. This camp was originally set up for German criminals but turned into a prison for political and foreign prisoners of war as well as some jews and continued for Germans. By the end of WWII there wasn't enough room to contained everyone. It is set in a part of Germany that is well known for it's granite and Hitler used the prisoners there to get stone for his "dream buildings". That is what the tour guide told us. It was a death camp and it was death by labor. It was a VERY COLD day and our feet were frozen by the end of the tour. The entire time we were outside on the tour, I kept thinking about those poor prisoners who had so little to wear and still had to work outside in that kind of weather.

Me in the cold.
This is the front of the camp. Below is a picture of what it looked like in the time of it's usage.

This is below the boundaries of the camp. The building in the back is the creamatory. I'm actually not sure what we call it. The German tour guide called it a creamery. It is small and by the end of the war it was too small for the number of bodies needing to be cremated. That square in the middle is where they heaped all the other dead bodies and burned them.

When a goup of prisoners arrived at the camp they were brought to this room, stripped of all their clothing and the showers were turned on. One would think it was to clean everyone off but it was to make them submissive. When they left they were to leave not as John Doe but as the number they were given.
Oh, I will never be able to comprehend the cruelty one can do to another!