Monday, October 29, 2007

Winterzeit

Whew, it's been a long time since I've written. OK, I guess a week is not that long, but still. Last week was really busy. Stephanie was in the hospital having an operation, so that meant that I had to get up early every day and work late every day. I felt bad for her though, because she was supposed to come home on Wednesday, but she ended having to have another operation. Poor gal (hahah). But she came home on Friday afternoon, so that was nice.

The kids were pretty good this week, although Johanna was a lot clingier than usual. I think she was a little bit sick, combined with missing her mama. Side note: the kids call their parents Mama and Papa, which I think is so funny! I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that what I learned in German class wasn't right, since there have been a lot of things that are different than what I learned! (What we learned was that kids call their parents Mutti and Vati, but Dominik told me that none of his friends call their parents that.)

I had an adventure on Wednesday morning when I had to go into Heidenheim to get my visa extended. I had to go to the Landratsamt (I know what it means, but I don't know what it is in English) and that part was pretty easy. All I had to do was give them my passport, my insurance card, and my visa application and I was done. And luckily, they let me take my passport with me so that I'll be able to leave the country this week! (more on that later) After that I had to go to the Gesundheitsamt (an office about health) because I had an appointment with a doctor whose job was pretty much only to talk to visa applicants and figure out if they have tuberculosis. I cannot figure out the obsession with tuberculosis here! I mean, I could understand being required to have a test before entering the country, but I've already been here for two months. If I have tuberculosis, I've been spreading it around to everyone I've met for a long time now. Also, they refused to accept my skin test as valid proof that I don't have tuberculosis, even though that would have saved everyone time and money. Anyway, so I went to the Gesundheitsamt and it turned out...the doctor was sick. And she's only there on Wednesdays. Of course. I made an appointment for this Wednesday, but now I can't go because Dominik has the week off from school. No biggie, it just sucks that this keeps getting pushed back. I also have to get an x-ray (to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don't have TB), which I couldn't do, because I couldn't see the doctor, because she was sick.

So, in my 2.5 hours that I had to kill until the bus left, I went and got a library card. The library is not exactly huge, but they do have a bunch of DVDs with an English-language option, plus a section of books in English, plus a huge section of travel books which I will be taking advantage of. The only thing that sucked was that I had to pay for the library card--12 euros for 1 year, which isn't bad, but still! If all those taxes the government collects aren't paying for the libraries, what are they paying for?

Hmm, then this weekend I did.....nothing! It was really great. After having to work so much, it was really nice to relax and rot my brain out watching TV and stuff. On Saturday night I went to Gegenwind, the youth group, which was pretty good. I'm getting to know the people there a little bit more, so it gets better every time.

And today, Dominik and Johanna both went to Oma and Opa's at 12, so I had the afternoon off. For lunch I actually cooked for myself (!!!!), soup with carrots, onions, and noodles. I'm impressed, because it ended up being really good. I never really have an opportunity to make stuff that I really want, so it was nice to have some free time! After that I went into Heidenheim and just walked around for a while. It was a really nice day, and (comparatively) not that cold. It was in the low 50s, which was a nice improvement. I also bought a battery charger for my digital camera batteries (10 Euros), and another 1 GB memory card (also only 10 Euros). I am quite pleased with my 1-gig card find. I would really like to buy a new digital camera, but 1) I can't find any I like that also have a viewfinder, and 2) they're all really expensive here! I guess I'll just have to wait til I get back to the US, but it would be so nice to have a new one here, where I'm taking tons of pictures.

And.....finally, the reason I need my passport is that I'm going to Budapest and Bratislava this weekend! I'm leaving Wednesday night and going by night train to Budapest, arriving Thursday morning, going direct from there to Bratislava, Slovakia, spending the night there, and then returning to Budapest the next day. I'm spending the rest of my time in Budapest, then Sunday night I'm taking the night train back, so that I can be back in time to pick up Johanna in kindy on Monday at 12. The only thing that sucks is that there were no sleeping berths left for the Munich-Budapest trip...at least none in my price range. I didn't really want to pay 200 Euros for that. I got one for the trip back, but the train leaves at 8 PM and arrives at 6 AM, so I still won't get a really good night's sleep. Oh well, either way, I think it's going to be a really good trip. The only thing I'm worried about is the language thing, but from what I've read, the two foreign languages spoken most often in Budapest and Bratislava are German and English, so I think I'll be ok.

Whoo, I'm really excited! I've spent quite a bit of time planning this trip, so it sure as heck better pay off! I've also started planning my Christmas trip to Italy--I've already booked a flight, in fact. It looks like I'll be spending Christmas Day in Rome, so I think that will be pretty cool. Oh man, I love planning trips!

Oh yeah, weird thing here: Standard Time starts one week earlier than in the US, so right now I'm only 5 hours ahead. It's also really weird that it starts getting dark at 5 PM. Seriously, why is winter already? Can we please have the warm weather back?

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bleh

I'm in a bleh mood. There's nothing to write about. Except that I know that even though I said that, I'll go on to write a really long post.

For some reason I did not sleep well at all this week. Even the days that I didn't have to get up early, I couldn't get my act together and just go to bed at a reasonable hour so that I wouldn't be tired when I woke up. Then, when I did have to get up early, I went to bed on time and slept badly. So right now, I'm on one good night's sleep in the past 6 or 7 days. I can't really complain though, because I did NOTHING today. But I have to get up super early tomorrow and Wednesday (just regular early on Tuesday), so I'm not looking forward to that.

Things that have happened this week: It was really nice on Monday and Tuesday, nice enough that I didn't need a jacket to go outside, then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday it was freezing. Literally. It snowed this morning. Granted, not enough to actually stick, but it was real snow. It sat on the ground for maybe 30 minutes before it melted. It's October! How is this possible?? I'm really glad that I bought some new sweaters, otherwise I'd freeze to death here.

Speaking of sweaters, can we talk about how my wardrobe is clearly not adequate for a German winter? I guess I'd been lulled into a false sense of security by South Carolina winters, where the coldest it gets is 30, and that's only early in the morning. I think 30 might have been the high for today here. Anyway, I really only have long-sleeve shirts--you know, the ones that are pretty much like long-sleeved T-shirts and provide no added warmth except for keeping a little bit of wind off of your arms. Yeah, that's what my wardrobe consists of. Fortunately, I have some camisole things that I can wear under those, so that helps a little bit, but I had to break down and buy two sweaters, since I previously only owned 2. This was bad for two reasons, because 1) I'm really cheap, and 2) Clothes are really expensive here. And no, I'm not exaggerating. Clothes really are more expensive. My family here always buys stuff from Esprit and they told me to look online and see if there was anything I wanted to get bc they get a 10% discount (they're frequent Esprit customers) so I could use it if I wanted. Ummm, all the sale stuff was like, 40 Euros! And that was the cheapest! Not that I'll ever wear Esprit anyway; I refuse to. I'd only been looking because I was hoping that maybe some stuff was actually really cheap and then I could buy it. But nope, wayyy too much. Seriously though, Esprit! I had no idea their stuff was so expensive. And besides the whole clothes being expensive thing is the exchange rate. So all that stuff that's, like, 40 Euros is now close to $60. It really sucks to buy stuff with a credit card right now because the exchange rate is so bad, but sometimes it's unavoidable and I have to. I ended up buying two sweaters (not from Esprit, don't worry) for about 16 Euros, which is about $22 or $23, so I think that's pretty good.

In other news, I decided that if I ever move to Germany, I'm opening up either a bakery or an ice cream shop, because those seem to be the only places here that consistently do tons of business. I'm always a little surprised at how many people I see walking around with ice cream because it really hasn't been warm out for a while. Everyone always seems to have it though, but that could just be because it's delicious. Really, it's waay better than American ice cream, and cheaper too. Every time I'm in the city I buy ice cream. And Laugenbrot, which I am secretly addicted to. I even go to different bakeries to buy it because I'm ashamed of my habit.

Hmm, other things. I went to Ulm on Friday, but I didn't really do that much. I forgot to bring my camera unfortunately, plus it was freezing out, so all that=go in lots of stores to keep warm, AKA buy stuff. I bought two books in German, because I've decided that reading is how I'm going to get my German exposure. I mean, I hear German all the time and I speak it with the parents, but I don't get to speak it nearly enough. I think reading will really help me. I also bought a hat for €1, which turned out to not be as warm as I thought it would be, but can I really complain for €1? No. I also bought.....a Coke! I have had approx 4 Cokes since I've ben here, so this is a real luxury. I didn't drink the whole thing; instead, I saved it and brought it back here and I have been drinking a little bit every night. I am savoring it; I still have half the bottle left.

On a completely unrelated topic, I've decided to go to Italy over Christmas, and I'm eagerly planning my trip. So far on my agenda I have: Rome, possibly Ostia Antica, Naples, Pompeii, Capri, Florence, Pisa, Milan, Venice, and possibly Cinque Terre. Planning travels is maybe my favorite thing to do, and I'm also planning another trip! I'll have 4-5 days off in two weeks to travel, so I really want to go to Budapest and Bratislava. The only thing is, I have to get my visa extended this week, and if they take my passport, I can't leave the country (obviously). I'm hoping they will either a) be fast (highly unlikely) or b) let me take my passport and bring it back when they're ready to put the visa in it (I feel like this is probably also unlikely). But seriously, are they allowed to just...take my passport? What if I have to go back to the US for some reason? I mean, not that that'll happen, but if they have my passport, I'm stuck here. And while I want to see more places in Germany, I want to save that for shorter weekend trips.

OK, this post ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. In that case, I'll go back to doing my favorite thing--planning trips! I'm even planning trips that I don't even know when I'll take. It's so exciting!

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Remember everything I wrote in that last post about speaking well? I take it all back. OK, not all of it. But I feel like I've taken a massive step backwards or something. I feel like I'm struggling and not doing well again. Is this just how learning a language goes? I make a little progress with speaking, but then I feel like I lose it? It's really frustrating. It's a little bit reassuring that I can understand a lot more things, but I really want my speaking to get better!

Speaking of understanding, I really do feel a lot better with that. I can understand TV shows better, and even just regular conversations. TV might be easier because they always speak Hochdeutsch (where they speak without any accent). Conversations are definitely more difficult though, especially around here. A lot of people here speak the Schwäbisch dialect, which is quite hard to understand. What's funny, though, is that people here acknowledge that they're hard to understand, and other freely admit that they can't understand all German dialects! In the US, you'd never hear a Southerner admit that they don't speak normal English and that they might be difficult to understand, just as how it's totally taboo to say that people who speak Southern are hard to understand.

On a completely different topic, I've discovered playlists on my iPod. I always knew how to make them before, but for some reason I've always found them daunting. I never made any because I didn't feel...competent? I don't know. Making playlists isn't exactly an art, but in my mind I've equated it with deciding the order of songs on an album, which I highly doubt I'm qualified to do.

Anyway, I've gotten past that and now I'm playlist-crazy. Except I haven't really gotten it down, since my way of making playlists is saying, "OK, I'll make 3 broad categories and divide all the songs in my iPod between them." Somehow I put Michael Jackson's "Black or White" (which I love!) in the same general category as a song from O Brother, Where Art Thou? Even I'm not sure how I did that.

I've also gotten a little obsessed with eMusic.com, which I LOVE. If you've never heard of it, check it out. There isn't much music from the big-name artists because the big labels refuse to do business with eMusic--all because their music is DRM-free, meaning that it can be played on any player anywhere, unlike iTunes songs. My obsession with eMusic has frustrated me this week though, because their website has only been working sporadically. They also seem to think that I'm in the US, which means that I can't download music that other people in Europe can. I'm not sure why they think this, since when I first got here that music was available to me. They're also horrible about responding to customer service emails. I've sent them about 5, starting about 2 weeks ago, and haven't had a single response, except the automated ones saying, "Sorry that your eMusic download manager isn't working! We'll get back to you," which isn't even what I wrote them about.

Anyway, except for horrible customer service, the site is great and has a huge selection. It's also really easy to find new music from it. I've discovered soo many things that I never would have listened to without it.

Not much has happened since Wednesday. The most exciting thing that happened was that we had carrot soup on Thursday (maybe?) and it was delicious. I still don't like most soups, but I guess those vegetable ones are really my thing. I plan on eating them quite a bit.

OK, time to get back to music downloading and playlist making!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Gut sprechen

I've been noticing the past few days that German is coming more easily to me. I still feel like I have to agonize over every single sentence, but when I talk, it just comes out. It's not totally natural, but it's a lot better. Lately I've been having this feeling where, after I say something, I'll think, did I really say that? It will be some complex sentence that just a little while ago I really struggled with, but without me even thinking, it came out of my mouth the right way. I feel like this happened all of a sudden, but I guess that's probably not true. Oh well, it's definitely nice! It makes me feel like I'm actually making some progress, since for a long time I was really frustrated about not getting much better. I've been complimented a few times on my German, although I can never really believe it because to me I feel like I'm so bad at it. But the thing that really made me feel better was when Tabea, one of the youth group girls, said that my German is better than either Joy's or Vivien's (two of the previous aupairs) was when they'd been here the same amount of time as I've been. Well, even if I don't feel like I'm doing well with it, at least I'm tricking everyone else!

Monday I had my second cooking class. It was kind of difficult because there were a lot of words I didn't understand, mostly the ingredients. I thought about bringing my German-English dictionary, but then decided it was a silly idea. Next time I am definitely bringing it! Anyway, we made a few different soups, and the one I made with my partner was a vegetable soup, and it ended up being really really good. That is definitely something I'll be making again.

To me, cooking class is a little bit like chemistry lab--I always mess up little things because I'm too impatient to read all of the directions or just because I'm inept at measuring. It's frustrating, but I guess that's how it goes. The soup turned out well, but I think that had more to do with my partner than with me (just like chem lab).

Yesterday...not much happened. Went to the playground with Johanna and she played on the slide for a while. She fell about 15 times but as soon as she stood up was fine; then of course when we got home, she discovered a tiny, microscopic, practically invisible dot of a cut on her wrist and started getting worked up. Of course as soon as I put a bandaid on it she was fine, but it was so cute--she kept saying, "I can't bend my wrist otherwise I'll hurt my cut." Oh, and another adorable thing she did recently: I was putting her and Domink to bed and I saw her doll sitting in the shower. I said, "Your doll is in the shower! Do you want to get her out and have her with you in bed?" And she said, "No, the doll is at her swimming class!" Johanna has been dying to go to swimming class ever since Dominik started, when he was four. She's already excited to go next year when she's four.

And a cute Dominik thing, but first a little background. OK, really the only background is that his favorite food is noodles with tomato sauce. The other day he said, "Know what would be great? If we took all of the windows out of the house, filled it up with tomato sauce, put some noodles in, and then I could swim through it! Naked!"

I think that's a good note to end this on.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

It has been alternately boring and interesting here, at least to read about. On Thursday, the highlight of my day was that I found the post office in Dettingen. Reason #1 I could not find it before: it is located in a basement. I'm not even trying to be funny. There's small store that's attached to someone's house, but the store is one of those ones where it's in the basement but you can enter from the street. The post office is in there, and the entrance is at the back on the house. I saw that I had the right address, and I was kind of thinking, hmmm, I think I'm in the wrong place, I'll go in this nice little parking lot and turn around. While I was turning around I saw the Deutsche Post logo. It's not even really a post office; it's more like, the lady who runs the store also sells stamps.


Friday was also slightly exciting. We collected all of the apples from the apple tree in the front yard. It was kind of fun--Stefan got up in the tree and would shake the branches in a certain part and then wait while we all ran around and collected them. It was pretty much only me and Stephanie collecting apples, while the kids "helped". There were a ton though; there is a store that takes the apples to make apple juice and gives out credits towards future purchases of juice, and Stefan said that when they took the apples there, the store said they weighed 150 kg.


Saturday=day of excitement. I went to my German class in the morning, which was fine. We did more stuff with conjunctive, which is getting a little old, but at least now I remember how to say that stuff. Last week all the stuff we did was like, "I would like to make more money." This week we progressed to, "If I made more money, I would buy a lot of gummi bears," and other such complex sentence structures.


After class on Saturday I went to Ulm, which was really nice! I'd only been there on a train stopover so I didn't see much, but it's a really beautiful city. I definitely plan on going back. I of course went shopping and bought two skirts at H&M (only 5 euros each!), then walked through the Fischerviertel (Fisher's Quarter) which was so nice! It was all cobblestone streets and cute German houses and little canals. Then I walked along the old city wall, which runs right along the Donau River (the Danube, in English--why do we always change the names of perfectly pronounceable things?). The Donau is the border between Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bayern (Bavaria--again with the name-change!), so of course I had to walk over the bridge just to say I walked to Bayern. After that I walked around a little bit more, then went into the Muenster, which has the highest church tower in the world. Unfortunately I didn't walk up because I had all my German books with me (those suckers are surprisingly heavy), but next time I'm there I'm totally doing that. The church is amazing though. Like every church in Europe, it's elaborate and ornate and all that typical stuff, but mostly it's just HUGE inside. I took a few pictures, but there's no way to get a sense of how big it is without seeing it in person. It doesn't even look that big from the outside--it mostly just looks tall.

I eventually took the train back from Ulm, got picked up by my fam, and we went home, where I had to eat dinner super fast so that I could shower before going to the youth group. I'm really glad that I decided to go again because this time ended up being a lot better. I rode with two girls who live in a nearby town, and they were really nice. At the youth group it was better too, I think partly because we watched a movie instead of talking about junk I didn't understand. Afterwards, I felt a lot more comfortable hanging out with the people there. There were more people there, which helped, and they also weren't so shy/awkward. I think my German must be getting better too, because I felt more able to participate in the conversations. Last time was tough because not only was there a language barrier, I also didn't know the people. This time I knew them a little better plus I can speak a little better.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

I am not good at coming up with titles

Whew, a lot of exciting stuff has happened since the last time I posted! The two big things: I had my first language class on Saturday morning, and I had my first cooking class on Monday night.

Language class: it's pretty much an integration class, so that all us newbies can integrate into the German culture. Fortunately, that means that everyone speaks fairly good German, so I think it will be right on my level. Also, I am the only American and the only native English speaker. Here are the native countries of the people in my class (excluding me): Argentina, the Ukraine, Russia (x2), Dominican Republic, Brazil, Romania, Japan. It's pretty cool though, because that means that we won't all just lapse into speaking English. And there are two other aupairs in the class! Finally! The Dominican Republican (is that right? I don't care) and the Ukrainian girls are aupairs, in Giengen and Sontheim, which are both nearby towns. They both said that they don't know any other aupairs here, but I found out later that Katja (the Ukrainian one) met a French aupair who lives in Heidenheim. Anyway, after class ended I walked around Heidenheim a little bit with Katja. We were going to ask Dianny (the Dominican one) to come with us, but she had already left. There was a market set up on the pedestrian zone so we walked around there for a while. It had mostly tacky stuff, but there was a crepes stand, so of course we ate crepes! The market was PACKED though. The stands were all set up in front of the stores so there was less room to walk than usual, but there were also a gazillion people there. And no one was polite and said "Excuse me" or anything, they all just pushed right through. Anyway, a little later Stephanie came into the city to go to the craft market which was up in the castle, so she picked us up and we went with her. That market was actually really nice. There were a lot of nice craft things, and I bought a turtle made out of bread. (That should not have been one sentence; those two things are unrelated.) I also bought some peppermint candies, which on the bag are called "peppermint pillows", hahaha.

Cooking course: Monday was the first time for that, but it starts at a really inconvenient time. As I'm sure I've said before, the buses here suck. So, one leaves at 6:15 and arrives at 6:40 for my class that starts at 6:30...which is no good. I think I'll prob have to take that from now on, but Stefan said that today I should be on time. Which meant that I took the bus that left at 4:30 and arrived at 5:00. Whatev, it was nice to walk around for a little bit before the class started, and it was a really nice day. The class ended up being good. I was hoping there would be some people my age, but they were all older. There were two old men (like, 60, hahah) and three younger women, but the youngest was prob 30. Oh well, no BFFs for me in this class. But yeah, we made salads and soups, and I made one called Karottensalat (carrot salad), which was made from 500g of carrots (aka A LOT) and one apple, with yogurt and vinegar used for the the dressing. It ended up being pretty good, definitely different than other things I've eaten. All of the salads ended up looking kind of like cole slaw in that they all had shredded ingredients with the dressing mixed in. The other salads were: Greek salad, wurst salad (which had sausage and ham and onions), and something with sauerkraut and some other junk. We also had tomato soup and carrot soup, which were pretty good. I don't think I'll be taking many of these recipes home with me, but at least after this class is over I'll know how to follow a recipe.

Hmm, I guess that's all that really happened. Today is a German holiday (reunification, I think) so of course everyone has off today, and tomorrow and Friday for good measure. It's nice because I don't have to work, but it also means that nothing is open. Oh well, I am looking forward to relaxing. And maybe tomorrow I'll go into Heidenheim and buy the books for my German class (woo woo...can't wait).

So, I was thinking about this blog and how I wanted to keep it to remember what's going on...but I realized that my messages to Jonathan probably more accurately document what's been going on in my daily life. I write a lot more stuff in those messages, plus I write them more often. As long as Facebook's server doesn't explode, I think I'll have a pretty good record of what I did here in Germany by the time I leave.