Treasures in the mail box

 Yay when I came home yesterday my book order was waiting for me! I am ready for Europe now with France, Italy and Germany being my new home boarder countries. Plenty to read and even more to see and do. I don't think we will run out of road trips to make and things to do. Living and moving to the heart of Europe should keep us busy for a good while.

 Maps. I love maps! That is one of my favorite things to do when we go for both shorter and longer road trips, study the map. Even if we have the GPS navigator in the car I still love the perspective that a map offers. It gives you the visual location of where you are and what is around you. There are always new details to find on maps. City map of Basel and map of Switzerland.

 Also found and ordered this book. It belongs to a series of books called Culture Shock and there is almost a book for each country. It gives you the basic facts in a fun way about a country, it's people and do's and don'ts about the country.

 I got Culture Shock USA when we moved to Alabama and I also have Culture Shock Sweden just for the fun of it.

December has moved so quickly. I can't believe it is almost Christmas! Soon I will be on my way to Switzerland. I am still thrilled and exited but also a little bit nervous about it all. I feel like I have just been strapped into a roller coaster and it just started slowly making it's way up the steepest hill. Butterflies in my stomach.

Something that also waited for me was my new American passport. It does not expire until next summer but still I wanted to make sure I had applied for a new one before our move to Switzerland. The other day I was just wondering what had happened to it as I applied for the new passport in mid November. I was just about to call them and ask when it arrived.

New passport and old passport. The new passport is valid for another ten years. Feels great to be able to put this off my check list. December has been a month when I am doing a lot of those things that I should have done earlier. Things and stuff I want to get done before I move and leave Sweden. At the beginning of December I went to the dentist (first time since we moved from Alabama). Last week I went to the optrician to get a new prescription for my contact lenses. I know I can get this done in Switzerland as well but when you move to a new country you have so much new stuff to face so it is always good to get stuff like this done.