Taking leave of this place

We are on the road again, and, well, just about off the road. We dropped off the car to be shipped to a far away place and will be boarding our plane for a far away place soon. But first, here are some sights from our trip through MI, ON, NY, PA, NJ and back to NY.


















This is a sight from somewhere in New York or Pennsylvania. There are just too many things about this scene that I love.
























Fries Poutine. An eastern Ontario delicacy best eaten after drinking large amounts of alcohol, at least according to insiders. It consists of fresh cut french fries, warm cheese curds and beef gravy. Mmmm. I actually tried it, and in my hungry state, didn't mind it, though skeptical at first glance.


















Big Turk, Canadian candy bar. Highly innappropriate by PC German standards. Very delicious by my standards. Inside German sources say it tastes like Gelee Bananen. We'll see about that when we arrive. My description: chocolate covered gummy bear in bar form. Mmmm.



















Insert "don't" here. Sorry Michigan, but it's true. Some people have been known to say, and I quote: "The only good thing about Michigan is that when you leave, you know you can't be going anywhere worse."



















Turtle crossing in Kingston, Ontario. On first glance, I thought: "How nice of them to think of the turtles!" Upon commenting on how I like their turtle crossing to a Kingstonian, I was told: "You don't want to hit one of those with your car! They're huge! They can do some major damage!" So I guess it's more to protect the motorists than the turtles, unlike Germany's frog crossings.

Sauer Kraut at Harley Davidson gang run junkyard today: "I need a loud horn for my car. I'm taking it back to Germany and there people just walk out in front of you, and I need something that will make them jump out of the way."

Harley gang: "Why don't you just run them over?"

Sauer Kraut: "Well, I can't do that. I don't want any legal problems."

Harley gang: "We just put loud pipes on our bikes so people get out of the way."

Sauer Kraut: "I had loud pipes on my bike in Germany and lost my license for two years."

Harley gang: "Go out back, there are some old Cadillacs out there, you can take a horn from one of those."

Sign on the wall in Harley gang's office: "Wanted: old motorcycles. No Japs." Good think S.K. didn't mention what kind of bike he had those loud pipes on, they would've kicked him out. Or run him over.

What question could I have asked this 8 Ball one year ago during the planning of my move from Dresden to Michigan?

a. Will this move make me lose my mind?

b. Am I ever going to have more children?

c. Will we ever move back to Dresden?

d. All of the above.

Sorry to get all hocus-pocus on you and start writing about silly things like four leaf clovers and 8 balls lately, but I am feeling kind of hocus-pocusy. I guess being nearly six months pregnant will do that to you. Oh! That gives away one answer: b. could have been a correct question for that 8 ball answer. It's true, there is a baby on the way, and in honor of that, a baby joke I heard today:

Two babies were lying in the nursery of a hospital. One looks at the other and says, "I'm a girl!" The other says, "I'm a boy!" The girl asks, "How do you know that?" The boy says, "Come here, take a look" as he pulls down his blanket. "See! I have blue booties on!"

Ha ha ha. That one is from the Danish mother of a wife of a colleague, imported straight from Denmark.

Anyway, back to the hocus pocus. Along with all the four leaf clovers (see previous posts about my finding of 4 of them in the past week), all fortunes from fortune cookies at every delicious Chinese restaurant I go to have been telling me that prosperity is near, and soon you will be sitting on top of the world and stuff like this. Huh, well, we'll see. I quit my job today, so that won't be making me prosperous any time soon. It may be a surprise to some that I quit my job, but it really is for the best. You see, I feel like I am losing my mind once again planning yet another intercontinental move...so answer a. above was also correct. I probably did lose my mind last year during intercontinental move #1. Big news for those not yet in on it! We are returning to Dresden! And now, a little Westernhagen (or is it Nena?) in honor of this:

"Ich bin wieder hier

in meinem Revier

war nie wirklich weg

hab mich nur versteckt

ich rieche den Dreck

ich atme tief ein

und dann bin ich mir sicher

wieder zu Hause zu sein"

I know my readers could probably all qualify as members of Mensa, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this, so you've probably figured out that answer c. from above would have also been correct last year had I asked the 8 ball that particular question. And from the Dreck part of the song, you probably also figured out that we are returning to the Neustadt! Hooray! We're not there yet, so I can't smell the Dreck (dirt) just quite yet...but soon enough. July 9th, I will officially be smelling the smell of Dresden again!

Soooo, in all truth, the 8 ball could have just said "All of the above."

Things I can't wait for:

-delicious German baked goods

-going to the Plus Markt and having the cashier throw my purchases for me to bag them myself (I'll tell you what, that's a lot more efficient than the slloooooooww cashiers here, and I can deal with my thrown purchases much better when tired and hungry than with some friendly cashier chatting with me)

-giving people dirty looks for anything and everything (I've already been practicing, I am sick of all the niceness around here!)

-letting Wilhelm scream in the store and getting dirty looks

-did I mention sunflower seed rolls? Quarkkuchen? Roggenbrötchen? Kuchen? Any kind of Kuchen? Schokoladenbrötchen? Oh yeah, baked goods!

-my bike

-Panama

-the tram

-delicious milk products

-Kartoffeln und Quark

-Rahmspinat

-the smell of the bakery in the morning, oh my god

-the lack of fast food restaurants

-Neustädter Diechl!

-Bagel's!

-Frank's!

-the playgrounds and all the über-moms there

-Softeis!

-being sent to the butcher to buy some meat products I know nothing about and will not eat, looking and pointing at the totally wrong thing when placing my order

-mmm, the cheese! All the wonderful cheese!

-people outside walking, biking, running and skating everywhere, even in the rain!

-all of the sounds, the angry tram drivers and their angry bells, car horns honking, dogs barking, people talking, church bells, the music in the cafes...

I could go on and on, but it's getting late and we have a big day of packing the car and dealing with the debacle that that is sure to develop into tomorrow.

Good Luck

I walked out the door today, and what was staring up at me from the lawn? Another four-leaf clover! The fourth one in a week. We must be heading for some luck, or needing some major luck soon...

What's going on?

We must be doing something right, because today I found my third four leaf clover this week. How can that be? Are these things really lucky? Do I need all of this luck, or is it a sign that we are just doing everything right? Some very big decisions were made and finalized this week, then I started finding these! One on the 17th, one on the 18th and one today. And it's just when I am walking along, looking down at the grass, they jump out at me, I don't sit and search for them like I did when I was a child (when I also found several). On the 17th and 18th, I was walking from the car to the house, and there they were. Today I was walking over from my neighbor's garage, and there was one. Huh. The really funny thing is that I haven't found one for years, and now 3 in one week.

C'mon Dresden...










The whole world cultural heritage site thing is getting old. For those not in the know, Dresden's Elbe Valley, a nearly 20 kilometer long part of the Elbe River Valley (it's the red outlined part on the map of Dresden above), was declared a UNESCO world cultural heritage site a few years ago. Now the title is in danger because the citizens of Dresden voted to build a bridge at one point within this area. Indeed, the planned (and currently under construction) bridge is not a pretty one (see below), and its planning has some flaws, but how can this bridge lead to the removal of the title of world cultural heritage site?










By definition, a world cultural heritage site is a cultural landscape in a large city that has been used and formed by humans. I know, I know, the UNESCO has 6 criteria all written out in pretty language describing how this cultural landscape is to be, but basically, what I wrote above is what it boils down to. The criteria are written in such a way that one could understand them to mean that the new bridge in Dresden, just as an example, is acceptable or unacceptable (the architecture in the area unifies one or more significant cultural epochs) . It all depends on how you want to understand and view the whole thing.

How can one ugly bridge ruin 20 kilometers of an incredibly beautiful landscape full of architectural and natural treasures? There are other existing ugly bridges in the 20 km stretch of cultural heritage. Everyone claims how these incredible meadows that are so nice for picnicking, etc. are being destroyed. But do you know what? I rarely saw people picnicking or playing sports where this bridge is being built. You know where the people are picnicking? By the other bridges! People put cows out on these meadows to chow on the grass, and bale it up when the time is right, but that is still doable when a bridge is there. You can still go for a walk down there by the Waldschlößschen where they are building the bridge, it will just be a bit louder, but guess what everyone, you're in the city, and it's loud in the city. Should they close the Königsbrücker Straße in the Neustadt because it's loud and it stinks? NO! I live on a quiet road in the country right now, and I am losing my mind. Bring on the noise!

My main beef with the Waldschlößchen bridge is that I hear it has no opportunity for pedestrians or cyclists to cross. Also no trams. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this point, but I find this unacceptable and silly. Of course, that is just in my own personal interest, as a pedestrian and cyclist. In my current life I am forced to drive a car, but at heart, I am a pure pedestrian and cyclist, and would love to bike across this bridge to work or wherever I might need to go on that other side of the river. It would be much more convenient than biking over one of the other bridges and then rattling my brains out on some of those cobblestone streets they've got over there. Why not build big with space for pedestrians, cyclists and a tram that could be added later should the need arise (though the need is probably already there)?

Maybe the whole thing is just a set up, maybe someone in Dresden paid off the UNESCO to give them the title then threaten to take it away (even though they knew upon awarding the title that this bridge was planned) for publicity. I've got to say, if nothing else, this whole debacle is spectacular publicity for Dresden. No one would have even known that the Elbe River Valley in Dresden was a world cultural heritage site if it weren't for the title being endangered by the bridge. A lot of people never would have even heard of Dresden or thought about Dresden had this not happened. The only problem is that a lot of people are probably shaking their heads and saying "Those silly Dresdner!" about the bridge trouble.

Assorted stuff of late

Not a whole lot has been going on around here, but that's probably just the calm before the storm. We had some visitors, a couple of birthday parties, and lots of asking ourselves "What's next?"























I love this sign, it is posted near Beaverton on Dundas Road. Someone really wants to scare people off of their property. But, if you look closely at the lower right hand corner, you notice that this sign was ripped off from the city of San Diego, where, unlike in Michigan, they must actually have rattlesnakes.
























My sailor friend pointed this out to me on a stop in Traverse City, MI. "Oh my God! Come look at this! You've got to put it on your blog!" All I can say is: shame on you, Mother Nature!



















Wilhelm is only 3 years old, and on two of his birthdays, he has had hail storms. What are the odds of that with a late May birthday? On his first birthday in Dresden there was a sudden hail storm, and this year on his third birthday in Beaverton, there was a sudden hail storm. Weird.



















Wilhelm's birthday wishes? Balloons and bunny cake. He got both, and the excitement was immense.

Herding feral cats in heat

Never before in my life have I had to deal with more blatantly disrespectful, nasty, mean comments than as a teacher of middle and high school kids. It is as if these children have no upbringing or have never been held accountable for the horrible things they say. And I don't want to say "well, maybe I'm just taking this all to personally", because is it really acceptable to tell someone to their face (a person who should be a person of respect, haha) that they are "being dumb"? Is it okay to tell a teacher (a teacher of an elective course that these kids are in purely by choice) that "no one cares"? Is it acceptable to constantly interrupt someone who is speaking to you or simply turn your back on them and start having a social conversation? Is it acceptable to blurt out "This class sucks cock"? That one warranted a call home and contact with the office, and things have straightened out, because at least there is some parental support in this instance. Throughout all of these stupid instances and more there have been messages home, contact with superiors, and searches for help and support, but little has helped. Some days I am left after my last class just shaking my head. One very nice student I have said one day, "You know, they are like they are because of how they've been raised". I was tempted to add, "No, it's how they haven't been raised at all." Most of the kids in my classes are like wild animals who just do what they want. A stark minority of them have parents who are really there for them, teaching them things and holding them accountable for their actions. Those ones are great kids, good students, and an absolute pleasure to teach. Teaching the rest of them is like herding feral cats in heat.

And the thing that makes my blood boil is that I know my class isn't lame. As a language nerd, I have been in a number of extremely lame, boring language classes, where you don't do any communicative activities, any projects, anything hands-on. I have all glowing reviews from my three bosses who have been in observing me this year. These kids in my classes are constantly doing projects and hands-on stuff, games, stories, and still they bitch and complain. Probably because they are being forced to think and do something. I was tempted a number of times to go in this year and say, "Well, if you don't like how I'm teaching you, let me show you for a week how I was taught German in school." I could have pursed my lips and turned red every time a kid talked out of turn, sent them to the office for any minor infraction, and had them doing book work and worksheets the whole hour with a strict no talking policy. They would've loved it.

Tales from the front

As the weather gets nicer, the kids are getting more colorful.

Quotes from today:

One student asks another student for a cookie. Student with cookie replies, "The last time I gave you something you tried to smoke it." Student who wanted cookie then states, "No, I tried to snort it." (it was a pack of Smarties) Student wanting cookie then got cookie, ate it, and snorted the crumbs from his paper. This is a true story that really happened today at about 12:40 pm.

Out of the blue, someone blurts out, "If you eat your own leg, would you gain or lose weight?"

Today they called me the "fun Gestapo" because I "suck the fun right out of everything."

Mud Blog

Driving past Lloyd's house on Friday, it seemed that something was in the works, since they had a giant digger in the field, digging the mud pits even deeper. On our way home yesterday, we first heard the roar of engines, then saw the field on the corner full of parked cars, and knew some kind of event was happening. A mud bog. The mud bog is apparently a favorite rural pastime, occurring all around the United States. From what I have observed at our neighbors' house, a lot more preparation seems to go into the thing than the actual bogging itself. The vehicles are constantly propped up on cinder blocks, and the boggers are always working on them, for days and weeks at a time, the bog is constantly being flooded and dug out, and then the actual bogging, the driving of some big, loud truck through the mud, takes a couple of minutes. That is, unless they get stuck or the truck overheats and quits. Then they sit for quite a while, futilely spinning their tires, waiting for something bigger and more powerful to pull them out. We parked on the road, like many other passers-by, to gape at this spectacle of rural entertainment.



















In the left edge of the picture, you can see a Jeep with its hood up. This car had overheated and quit. It sat motionless for quite a while. The orange truck is in the process of pulling the brown truck out of the mud where it got stuck.


















The orange truck was unable to pull out the brown truck, so the big boys had to come out. Big blue was able to get the job done, but only after the overheated Jeep was removed from the scene so it didn't get damaged in the towing process.



















Equal opportunity fun! Even people on crutches can bog.





































Doesn't that look like fun?

Upon leaving our safe parking spot on the road to head for home, we noticed a car turn the corner behind us from the direction of the bog. To be safe, we turned the wrong way and didn't drive to our house, because we were scared we were being followed by Lloyd's friends. They probably didn't like it that so many people in nice cars were stopping on the road, pointing and laughing at them, so it wouldn't surprise me if they were following people to beat them up or do some kind of damage to their vehicles. Also, Lloyd the bogger does not get along well with people who live on our road. It is a different world from Lloyd's, just a half mile away. Well-kept houses and people walking, jogging and riding bikes in clean clothes, not caked with mud. As our neighbor, the man who in hindsight very unfortunately sold Lloyd his property, would say, "Lloyd, the people who live on the river, they have a little bit more money, and they think your mud bog is stupid." This conversation occured after a mud bog years ago, during which Lloyd and his friends drove their big trucks onto property that didn't belong to Lloyd and tore up the land with their big tires.

Viewing this bog and its poorly dressed participants with bad haircuts took me right back to my school days, when people who looked just like them (maybe these same people were there yesterday) used to harass my friends and I, calling us lesbians, breaking and mutilating our things, and committing other forms of abuse. If these people weren't such cruel jerks, maybe I wouldn't laugh at them and how stupid I think they are. Maybe I wouldn't point and take pictures which I plan to broadcast to the world and write sarcastic things about. In the end, I am no better than them, laughing at them and making fun of their silly loud trucks because I just can't understand what they enjoy about doing what they do.



















Haha. What luck. I am stuck stuck stuck.

Chocolate Chip Pancakes, oh my God...





















That's what I had for breakfast this morning.

I'd been planning on making delicious pancakes for breakfast today since yesterday, and when I woke up this morning, I had a hankering for chocolate chip pancakes, because I wanted to use up that bag of chocolate chips that was just lying around and terrorizing me. So I found the easiest recipe I could, and wow...

Here it is:

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 cup whole, 2 percent fat, or 1 percent fat milk
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, or less to taste
• Butter, for cooking

Directions

In a small saucepan, combine the butter and milk. Place over low heat just until warm and the butter is melted. Let cool slightly. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt; mix well.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs with a fork. Whisk in the milk mixture. Add the dry ingredients and mix just until barely blended. Add the chocolate chips and mix.

Heat a griddle or large skillet over medium heat. Add about 1 teaspoon of butter and melt until bubbly. Ladle 3 tablespoons of batter for each pancake onto the hot surface and cook until bubbly on the top and golden brown on the bottom. Turn and cook until golden brown on the other side, about 30 seconds more. Repeat until all the batter is used up. Serve hot.

from http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/cda/recipe_print/0,1946,FOOD_9936_14767_RECIPE-PRINT-FULL-PAGE-FORMATTER,00.html

----------------

While I did melt the butter together with the milk in a sauce pan, and did mix the dry ingredients as instructed, I did not whisk the eggs or whisk things together, I just mixed them with a spoon because I didn't want to dirty another bowl. It all turned out just fine. I also only used about 4 ounces of chocolate chips, because that's all I had, and it was quite enough. Wow, these are good, though my Hauskraut did say, and I quote: "that's typical American food. Way too sweet. Ugh," with a wrinkled nose. But I must add, he did not eat these with syrup, or even plain, but with butter and SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK on top. No wonder they were too sweet.

It's almost over

Well, the countdown to the end of the schoolyear has begun. I didn't think I was going to make it on many occasions, I thought I might just drop dead from exhaustion or being harassed by some of my lovely students or from getting up at 5:30 in the morning and not seeing any daylight at all all winter long. But I've nearly made it, as long as I don't catch swine flu in the waning days of the school year and drop dead from that. But I've got lots of soap and hand sanitizer and am avoiding kids with runny noses like the plague, so I hope I don't get this one last scourge of the school year. I've been sick enough, either needing mental health days or actual sick days, whether puking, having a fever, hacking up a lung or just feeling like I can't go on. Anyway, there have been a number of funny moments, and that's actually what this post is about.

-Frau R#$*&§?'s Cafe: For those who don't know, I am a German teacher, so that will help these things to make more sense. The kids in German 1 had to make a menu for a fantasy restaurant, then create a dialog in that restaurant, ordering food and paying, etc. After being constantly hounded by the kids about "When are we going to do something fun? When are we going to play a game?" I just looked at them with my darkest look and said "I hate fun." That seemed to sober them up. As a response to me hating fun, one student's menu for his fantasy restaurant was for Frau R#$*&§?'s Cafe, and it consisted of meals such as Dead Children.

-My portrait: While circulating around class the other day, I was having a look at the students' work, and noticed a number of portraits along the margin of one kid's paper. At the top was Hitler. Then Stalin. Then...you guessed it, Frau R#$*&§?. But I only got third place because the kid couldn't draw Mussolini. I would have had fourth. Another student in class placed right after me, he is the best student and consistently has the highest grade on everything. Then another student, one of the worst, and he was saying in his portrait something about "drinking all I can, then drinking some more", which was quite accurate, considering that he usually talks about how long he is grounded for for coming home drunk, and explaining different types of beer bongs and how to use them. Then was yet another student, one who comes in late and often fails everything, very apologetic because he "lost track of time at fast food restaurant xyz" or "couldn't find his book" or "didn't know what to study" and usually just falls asleep. His quote was "Uuuuuh, I lost track of time." Also accurate.

-Yet another portrait. This one came up when doing a little project to practice the future tense, the kids drew six pictures and wrote six sentences about what they are going to do this summer. One kid who is mildly amusing drew as his first item "I am going to the Grand Canyon." In his picture was him standing over a big hole throwing in Frau ... Ummm, excuse me?

-Scribbled on the back of a piece of paper: Frau R#$*&§? = Hitler. Keine smiles. Kein lachen. Das Reich.

Huh, it seems like there are more, but they are not coming to me right now. I will post pictures of some of these items because they are amusing. I am just too lazy and exhausted right now. And anyway, I hate fun.

By the way, I did not put my actual name, but Frau R#$*&§? instead, because I know these kids are just dying to find this blog. Well, I congratulate them if they do, but pray they don't. At least not until I am far away from where I am now.

A joke from one of my highly innappropriate high school students during our Easter Monday lesson today:

What did the egg say to the boiling water?
It's going to take me a while to get hard, I just got laid by a chick.

The Rabbit Died

These rabbits fortunately did not die, they are some of the precious buns who live in the wild on our street.

For whatever reason (maybe because it's Easter), the conversation turned to the "Rabbit Test" while we were coloring Easter eggs this afternoon. I have often heard the phrase "The rabbit died" as an idiom for someone being pregnant, but never knew the horrible truth behind it. In the early part of the last century, a test was developed to test for pregnancy by taking a sample of the possibly pregnant woman's urine, injecting it into the ear vein of a female rabbit, then waiting 36 to 48 hours to dissect the rabbit and examine its ovaries. If the woman was pregnant, the rabbit's ovaries would change in response to the hormone hCG, interestingly enough, the same hormone detected by those trusty pee-stick tests you can get at your corner pharmacy. It seems the rabbit would die regardless of a positive or negative result, because either way, the bun had to be cut open. I can't imagine they'd have put the little guy under anaesthesia, sewn her up and saved her for the next test if the result was negative.

Anyway, happy Easter all, and let's all celebrate the cheap and easy availability of bunny life-saving pee sticks at our local pharmacies!

Haircuts by Bob*

To get my spring break off to a roaring start, I accompanied someone to get a haircut in a town nearby Beaverton on Monday. The sign outside the salon announced a very inexpensive price, so we thought "Why not give it a try?" with the childlike innocence of foreigners. We ventured into the house, which is actually the barber's house, a pretty old house with a funny smell at that. The salon was the front room to the right when one enters the house. We loitered in the hallway next to the stairs after not seeing anyone in the salon area. Out of the kitchen which housed an avocado green refrigerator, probably a collector's item, popped a man's head. "I'll be right up," he announced. So we entered the salon area. Wilhelm was excited to find a cockatiel and parakeet in the corner of the salon, and as I started removing his coat and hat and he was busy peeping at the birds, the barber entered the room and said, "Oh, no, I don't do guys that small, he won't even fit in my chair." Somehow this always happens, at salons people always think Wilhelm's hair should be cut, but we do that at home. Anyway, the correct customer then took out the photos of his best haircut and said, "This is how I'd like my hair." Barber Bob glanced at the photos, tossed them to the side and whipped out his electric razor. "You want a lot off, huh?" was all he said. And did he start cutting! Wow! He turned his customer away from the mirror and shore him like a sheep. His customer had a worried expression on his face, and I probably did too. I decided it would be best to stop watching, and as my eyes wandered through the room, I noticed a giant rifle, much like the one pictured above, standing in the corner of the room. I guess Barber Bob must not get many complaints with that standing in the corner. Or if he does, he takes care of the problem so word of bad haircuts doesn't spread. Or maybe it's there because Barber Bob's shop is across the street from the county jail. Perhaps he has a contract with the police to, um, take care of any inmates that escape street clean up duty. Whatever the reason, it wasn't only the gun that made us pretty much satisfied with the haircut. Where else can you get a haircut for $8.50 these days?

*Barber's name has been changed

A quick trip back to Germany













I can't take credit for this picture, it was borrowed from Mid-Michigan Dining. Go there for a true American perspective on Aldi.

"Are you from Europe? You don't look like you're from here." That was a pleasing greeting from my friendly Aldi cashier today. Somehow it was nice to hear after being fully annoyed this morning doing my laundry and being stared at like an alien in Beaverton, having a gas truck driver pull out in front of me (hey, my car's already smashed up, so what does it matter?), and having some lady cut in front of me in the supermarket line. Twice. Once as I was talking to Wilhelm when she just oh-so-casually slipped in front of me, and the second time when an extra cashier opened up a new lane. I was headed over to the new lane and this spry bun-wearing senior with dyed brown hair hopped in front of me for the second time. Then I saw her in the parking lot and swore at her under my breath.

But back to our little trip to Germany. Aldi is always refreshing, because it's so different. Well, Saginaw is different too. After living in small-town Beaverton and working in white-bread Midland for 7 months, we are sort of losing contact to the world. It felt so nice to be somewhere with such a colorful mix of customers, all friendly, not staring and suspicious like the Beaver-townies, or even the Midlanders. And everyone says such bad things about Saginaw, but everyone was very nice, returning Wilhelm's shoes to us when he kicked them across the store in a fit of rage, or asking if other dropped items were ours when the child screamed.

At Aldi, it feels so nice and homey to have to put a quarter deposit in the shopping cart to unlock it, rather than just grab a cart and leave it stranded in the parking lot somewhere as at all other American supermarkets. And not to have the cashier pack my items into 10,000 plastic bags (of which I now have a collection of probably a million overflowing from under my sink), but into another cart and let me fend for myself on how to transport my goods home. The Aldi shopping experience in America is pretty authentically German, with two major differences: the cashiers and the other customers. The other customers are nothing like German Aldi customers. They aren't complaining about some weird obscure price problem, or just about any other thing from the store to their health to the weather, they don't have sour looks on their faces, and they don't push and shove other customers or stand too close in line. They actually say "Excuse me" if they would like to get past you, or just wait patiently while you block the aisle, knowing that at some point, you will move. The American Aldi cashiers are also always very nice, with a friendly greeting and they will often chat with you about your purchases, or whatever else may interest them about you, as mentioned above. American Aldi cashiers seem genuinely nice, whereas cashiers at other retailers seem fake nice. Maybe my perception is altered because of the excitement of shopping at a German supermarket chain, but in my few trips to Aldi, I have had nicer, chattier cashiers than in my thousands of trips to Wal-Mart or Meijer. Yay, Aldi! You made my day.

My poor car was once so handsome, now it has an even more broken up grill (on the left) and that big fancy dent in the hood from the car-deer impact. Like I said, it could have been worse. A lot worse.

I hate deer
















Unfortunately, the one I hit wasn't that far away when I saw it. It was right up against my windshield.






















This is not the deer I hit, but very similar. It was dark when I hit "my" deer, and by the time we got back to take a picture of it, it had been reanimated and had left the scene. No, it didn't die, which is very disappointing to me. Never before have I wanted something so dead as I wanted that deer to be. But it was just in shock and later jumped up and ran away after defacing my car.

Well, today is another day of firsts. I hit my first deer today. Fortunately, it was a small one, and fortunately I was able to brake when I saw the idiot jump out of the trees on the side of the road, but it still screwed up the front end of my car. Honestly, it could have been worse, but I still cursed like I think I never have before, using words in front of my son that probably made his tender ears burn. But, other than burning ears, no one was hurt, so all is well. The car still drives, you can still put the hood up, it just has a bit more character now.

The whole scene was quite comical. Driving home from my brother's house, we were on a curvy road and apparently this deer was scaling the bank of the river, because it came running up from the bank of the Tobacco River. I saw it, honked and braked, but the stupid idiot just kept going, and ran right in front of my car and I hit it. Because my car is kind of low to the ground, the deer flew up onto the hood, against my windshield (which fortunately didn't break), and was projected 2 meters up into the air in a great arc to the other side of the road, where it landed. We drove back and the stupid thing was just lying next to the road gasping for air. However, 5 minutes later upon our return to take a photograph of the deer, it was gone. It had fled the scene. Never before have I wished that I carried a rifle under the seat of my car as my grandfather did, because I would have loved to have really done that deer in.

Ice Mountains on Saginaw Bay

Last weekend we drove to the Bay City Recreational Area to have a look at all of the ice that has been pushed up from Lake Huron onto land. This didn't only happen here, but also in some residential areas where ice was pushed up into houses, through windows and walls. There were some photos in the newspaper of people with ice in their living rooms. We didn't see any of that, but from the shape of these ice mountains, you can imagine how that could happen if your house was very close to the shore.



















Here you can see over the ice mountain out onto the Saginaw Bay. There are more mountains of ice out in the bay.



















The surface of the ice had a neat crazed pattern, and was very glassy.



















Here is some older ice, it looks more white than clear. And you can see the sheets of ice that have been pushed up from the water.



















Here are some more crystally, sparkly, glass ice mountains. When the ice started to fall down like an avalanche, it even sounded like broken glass.

As seen in Bay City, Michigan

Living in a bunny's paradise









These guys are the only thing to make life in Michigan bearable. The bunnies. After noticing bunny tracks in the snow all winter, we weren't surprised to establish that there seems to be a high concentration of bunnies in our neighborhood. We were surprised, however, that these bunnies are not only Eastern Cottontails, as pictured above, but precious dwarf rabbits in black, gray, and white with black spots. In all my previous life in Beaverton, I had only witnessed Eastern Cottontails, and now living on the other side of town, I am seeing precious, multicolored dwarf rabbits in the wild! One of our neighbors even reported that years ago, these rabbits were so abundant that they were hopping around everywhere in the morning when he went to his car to go to work and wouldn't even hop away from people. Could we have found heaven?
The current bunnies do hop away, and seem to only live near vacant houses. I am pretty sure that one of the people on our street thinks we are sizing up the houses on the street to break into them and steal stuff, because we regularly drive and walk down the road to check on the bunnies, stopping in the middle of the street and staring onto property that does not belong to us. That is suspicious in America. You are not normal if you go out and observe precious bunnies in the wild, you are a burglar.
The biggest bunny news today: not only did we see all 5 of the precious buns (the gray one, the two brown ones, the black one and the one with cow spots), we also found baby bunny tracks in the snow on our front step! We had a tiny bunny visitor this morning who hopped right up onto our front step! The prints were very small, but definitely from a bunny, so we are very excited. Our master plan of capturing a baby bunny and taming it will soon be reality.

The Bread

After eating lots of bad bread that tasted of dough conditioners and other assorted additives, and basically had no texture or substance anyway, someone started baking bread. After a few months of experimentation and travels from Gladwin, Michigan, to Windsor, Canada, in search of the perfect flour, here are the results:

germanbread.blogspot.com

Who knew I would marry a passionate baker?

Someone seems to have a new career: modelling

http://www.paradise-sportsonline.com/

Click on that link and you will find one of the websites of one of our neighbor's companies. Anyone recognize the model? The first person to post a comment with the model's correct identity will win a free game of Elefun with me and Wilhelm. Hmm, if this new career will help us pay the bills? When do the royalty checks start rolling in?

Finally, beautiful weather

This weekend we finally have gotten a break from the miserably cold, gray winter weather that we have been having. Yesterday and today it was at least 42 degrees Fahrenheit (around 6 Celsius) and sunny, finally allowing us to go outside and do some walking. We decided to go to the park in Midland where there's a funny bridge called the Tridge and a couple of rivers that come together, as well as the Pere Marquette Rail Trail, an old railroad track that has been removed and converted into a bike and pedestrian path. The Rail Trail goes along the Titabawassee River for a while, which made us reminisce of walking along the Elbe Radweg with one big difference: on such a beautiful winter day in Dresden, you'd hardly be able to move on the path it would be so full of people. Yesterday, a large percentage of the people we saw in the park were Germans. We identified them based on the sensible winter clothing the children had on (especially the Kenny hats) and their fashionable shoes. When we got closer, we confirmed their nationality by hearing them speak actual German. Today we didn't spot any Germans, but didn't spot many other people out enjoying the beautiful weather, either. Why not? People do appreciate the nice weather, lots of people are talking about how beautiful it is outside, but very few are actually taking advantage of it. It's not only this way in the winter either, it was like that in the summer here as well. Pedestrian areas seem spooky, like ghost towns, there are shops, but no customers in sight. It seems like a lot of people here only really partake in outdoor activities (winter or summer) as a reason to drink lots of alcohol. Plenty of people go boating or canoeing or camping or fishing or paddling here, at least they call it that, but it has less to do with getting exercise or seeing the landscape than it has to do with sitting around and drinking lots. Maybe more people would go outside in the winter in Michigan if mulled wine were being sold along the Rail Trail. But I do recall being so happy going to Germany and just seeing people outside walking, because that is something you just don't see here. So this difference isn't new, I guess I must have just forgotten about it. If you are walking here, either you have a dog who forces you outside or your car is broken down or you're too poor to have a car. People just don't walk or move for fun or as a mode of transport here.

"wer für alles offen ist, muss sich fragen lassen, ob er noch ganz dicht ist"

All the stuff I'm missing

We've been feeling like we are badly integrated in the USA, much like the headlines in the German newspapers are writing about the Turkish people in Germany lately. We download German news shows to watch, read the German news on the computer, and I am constantly checking what's up in Dresden. We are resisting integration here, we refuse to go ice fishing on the river, eat American bread or watch television. We don't even speak English in the home! Here's something else I have missed, the new cupola in the castle in Dresden. I'll just have to add that to my list of things to see when we visit.

















What can I say, that looks really great! This is the part of the castle that I can only remember being reconstructed in the 8 years that I have known Dresden. Apparently, they'll still be working on finishing it until 2013. But I won't delay my visit until then.

Other things I plan to see and do:
-go eat at the Neustädter Diechl
-go to Kalaschnikow Galerie
-go to Bagel's
-go to Cafe Pott
-walk past Förstereistr. 13 and Alaunstr. 17
-have a Softeis if it's open
-go to Panama and visit the bunnies
-ring Hohlfeld's doorbell and imagine his face turning bright red
-go to the Chicsaal
-of course visit my friends (that should really be first on the list)
-go past the Schwalbennest and remember nearly being run over there, and better yet, remember my revenge
...

Where's the Lebensfreude?

This is something that I am missing here. Not only from myself, but from others as well. Lebensfreude is something like lust for life, or zest for life or pleasure of life. It just doesn't seem like many people around here are radiating this, sie strahlen keine Lebensfreude aus, as you would say in German. What's wrong here? Why do the people I know here who have jobs they like and spouses they love and everything they need not have this? I was just looking at some pictures from Germany, and in most pictures, I was reminded of people who were just radiating this sort of satisfaction there. Even if they weren't rich or necessarily in the greatest relationship or whatever. Then I wondered "And here? Who do I know here who shows this kind of excitement for life?" And I can't think of one. Maybe one of the teachers I had a coffee with this afternoon, but she's the only one who pops into my head right off the bat. Why? What's wrong? Obama, can you help us get our excitement for life back? That's the change I need. But I think I'll need to take care of this one myself, I don't think any president can fix this problem.

Road Trip Day 12: Welcome to Crime Scene Inn

*this is not the crowbar I saw today at Crime Scene Inn

As a child, we always had a joke about the motels we would end up staying in. They would likely be cheap, and maybe the door would hit the bed when you opened the door, and the best deals usually had a body outline on the floor they were so shady. This was just a joke, though, at least until today. We booked a hotel (Rodeway Inn) online for our goal today, Cheyenne, Wyoming. Upon finding the hotel immediately in Cheyenne, we joked that something wouldn't work out, because otherwise everything had gone perfectly today. Our timing all day was perfect, we even did some sightseeing and nobody had any major meltdowns on the road. I went in to check in at the hotel, the receptionist wasn't so friendly, but I chalked that up to the cold weather and the fact that we simply aren't in sunny California any more. We noticed that the parking spot in front of our room was a handicapped parking spot, so we decided to check the room quickly to make sure it wasn't full of low light switches and the like. Not to be prejudiced, but we ended up in an accessible room once on this trip, and while all the other rooms had supposedly been remodeled in the hotel, this one had not been. Dirty creepy bathroom, low light switches, fixtures that were half falling off of the wall. Not to mention a funny, hospital like smell. Wanting to avoid that, we had a quick look into the room. Strange, upon opening the door, we couldn't find the light switch, then I immediately noticed that the bed was messed up. Is this a joke, we wondered, this room hasn't been cleaned. Still not finding the light switch (and not thinking to look for a low, wheelchair accessible switch) I then noticed something lying on the floor. Was it a cane in this possibly handicapped accessible room? I stepped closer. No, it was not a cane. IT WAS A CROWBAR. I backed out of the room. Shut the door. Hurried to reception and checked right back out of that place faster than I had checked in, telling the perplexed receptionist about what we had found. I'm glad we didn't find the light switch, because who knows what else we would've found lurking in the dark corners of that room. Creepy. Honestly, I find the whole state of Wyoming creepy. It's just empty and empty and empty. And then this. I can't wait to get out of here. I just wish we were going west, not east. California is fantastic, and I hope I will be moving there soon. But more on that later. So everybody, watch the news, because if there was some kind of heinous crime committed in room 109 of Rodeway Inn in Cheyenne, WY, I was there. But I didn't do it.

Road Trip days 3, 4 and 5

Good morning from Fabulous Las Vegas! After days and days of driving through snow, creepy mountain towns, plains, deserts, more mountains, and yesterday wind, a blizzard, rain, hail and an electrical storm with lightning bigger and brighter than I've ever seen before, we have arrived in Las Vegas. Slightly different than the original plan of driving to Mexico in hopes of arriving somewhere warm, it's still not bad. The Mexico plan was dropped because even Mexico is not warm this time of year. At least the part of Mexico we could've driven to. Here's some of what we've seen:

The Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo, Texas. This is on old Route 66, apparently some rancher decided to plant 10 Caddies in his field.

Nothing as far as the eye can see. Pretty much all of Texas and New Mexico.

Here is where vacation finally really began: in the Painted Desert in Arizona, part of Petrified Forest National Park.

Petroglyphs carved into rock over 1000 years ago by native people in the Petrified Forest area.

Lots and lots of Petrified Wood in the Petrified Forest National Park. It was so nice here, because despite rather cool temperatures and heavy wind, we could finally get out of the car, walk around and see something!

This is exactly what we were trying to escape: snow. There was a huge snow storm in Flagstaff, Arizona last night. We considered just stopping there, but after talking to a friendly tow truck driver (who noticed our Michigan license plate and said "Bet you wanted to get away from this!") we continued driving. His tip that the snow would be finished in about 30 miles was correct. We got out of the snow, and into some calmer weather, but crazier things awaited us: a lightning storm, for example, then a torrential downpour, and finally, a bit of hail. But none of that lasted very long and we continued on our way to Las Vegas.

Road Trip!

Thanks to that snow day (#4!) yesterday, we got an early start on our holiday road trip. Goal: California. So far we've driven 1,170 miles in the two days. Yesterday we made it to Springfield, Illinois, and today we have finally arrived in Clinton, Oklahoma. Oklahoma is kind of frightening to me, we wanted to stop and picnic, but it was too cold and I was freaked out by the campground and state park that I found somehow reminiscent of the film Deliverance. We had hoped to make it to Amarillo, Texas today, but that proved to be a bit farther than we could handle. All we've really done the last couple of days is drive, so there's not much to report. The real fun will start in the next couple of days when we get to Arizona, where we plan to see the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, among other things. But until then, we've got a lot of driving to do.

We drove through Chicago yesterday evening around rush hour and it was full of crazy drivers. This morning we drove through St. Louis and had a nice view of the Gateway Arch from the highway (above).

Probably my favorite gas station of all time, Kum & Go. Spotted multiple times in Oklahoma.

Snow day #3

Amazingly enough, it's a double header: today school is cancelled once again. It stopped snowing in the night, but we have an accumulation of about one foot of snow, which must have made the roads a horrible mess, making transport to and from school too dangerous. I only left the house yesterday to shovel out the driveway and clean off the cars, which is about the only possible form of exercise right now. Well, except for ice skating, but unfortunately, the ice is now covered in snow.

It's true: I can walk out my door, down to the river and ice skate, the river is frozen through. We skated for a couple hours each on Saturday and Sunday, and it was fantastic. I forgot how much I loved to skate. It's been years since I last skated, and I'm not very good at it, but for whatever reason I find it very fun. The reason I probably never skated in Dresden is because I was scared of too many people on the ice. That makes me nervous, because, as previously stated, I am not very good and feel that I can be a danger to myself and others on skates. This is also the reason I don't rollerblade. Ice skating involves ice, meaning that it's cold and one must wear layers of thick winter clothing, providing great padding in case you fall. There's also probably some snow around in case you take a spill, which I did a couple of times, which also pads the fall. And anyway, ice seems softer than concrete to me, which it probably isn't, but I am less scared of ice. Concrete, however, terrifies me, and this is why I refuse to put any form of wheels on my feet, because I know I would fall and do some major damage to myself.

Snow day #2!!

When my alarm went off at 5 this morning, I looked outside to see how things looked. It didn't look like it had snowed as much as had been forecasted, so I hit snooze and started to mentally prepare myself for the day. These last two weeks before Christmas are going to be rough, because I am burned out and the kids are whacky. But then, as I was giving up hope of a snow day, my phone rang. It was my mom. "Could I be so lucky?" I asked myself. And I was! School cancelled! Snow day! Hooray!

Here's the total amount of snow as of a few minutes ago.

In other news, gas is down to $1.42. It just keeps dropping. Incredible.

Snow day!



















I got up on Monday after the four day weekend not really wanting to go to work. But I arose at 5 am, started getting ready, and as soon as I got out of the shower, I heard my phone ringing. Who's calling at 6 in the morning, I wondered. I didn't want to get my hopes up, but all I could think was "Snow day?" It had started snowing the previous evening, and the snow was heavy, but my school rarely closes for snow. But I answered my phone, and it was the bearer of great news on the other end! No school! Snow day! School had been cancelled due to the snow storm, and because it was supposed to continue dumping snow all day on Monday, making it dangerous to transport students to and from school. So I stayed up, had my coffee in peace before the boys woke up, read for a while, and just enjoyed not having to drive 30 minutes in to work and deal with a bunch of silly kids. Aaaah, if only every day were a snow day.








































We had a great snow day, building an igloo and a snow bunny.

























































Above is a sampling of Christmas lights around Beaverton as well. These started going up around Thanksgiving time, and will be up, bright and shiny, until January!

Holy smokes!

Gas is down to $1.56 per gallon! I thought it was at its low yesterday with $1.58, but after I filled up my tank at the station where gas was $1.58, I found that gas was down to $1.56 on the other side of town! Is this a political thing because Michigan has the highest unemployment in the country? This is like the good old days before I moved to Germany and could fill my Escort for under $20! I filled my car for under $20 today! Hooray! All those people with silly gas pump noose stickers on their cars can peel them off now!