More Michigan

 The Michigan vacation wasn't just a trip to visit my family or do some urban sightseeing, we also travelled to the north and had a little active vacation as well.  Whenever you want to visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula, there's just about no other way than to cross the Mackinac Bridge, unless you're coming from Wisconsin or Canada.  This suspension bridge was for a short time the longest suspension bridge in the world.  It's currently the third longest, which also isn't bad.

 It's one heck of a bridge, and the really creepy part is driving or walking on the middle two lanes, which are just metal grating.  When you look down you can see the water, and that kind of makes me dizzy. 

 We made it to the UP!  This bear pretty much says it all.  Paradise is a small town in the Upper Peninsula, and I was quite enamored of their fancy sculpture.

 It really was that empty on the beautiful white sand beaches.  We had very long stretches while we were driving where we saw no cars, no people and no houses.  Northern Michigan is not very densely populated, and the Lake Superior beaches are not only pretty far away for most, but Lake Superior is also rarely warm enough for a comfortable swim. But it certainly is pretty!

 The first night we stayed in Grand Marais and had a delicious breakfast at this fabulous fifties style diner. 

 We made it to our destination:  Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Our first hike was to Grand Sable Falls.

 We continued on to Grand Sable Dunes, which were also super fun.

 We took the scenic turnout to have a look at Miner's Castle, too.

 Above are a couple more shots of the sandstone cliffs that make up the Pictured Rocks lakeshore.

 After staying a night in Munising we visited the Chapel area for a full day's hike.  We saw probably hundreds of these precious little chipmunks!

 The first sight was Chapel Falls.

 Our goal was Chapel Rock, here's the top.

 There's our lunch guest.  We didn't notice this friendly guest when we sat down for lunch on a piece of driftwood, then I quickly found a total of three snakes and a chipmunk dwelling in and around the driftwood!  But they're all harmless.

There's Chapel Rock from the beach.

 After spending a night in Escanaba and eating delicious Michigan specialties like homemade pasties, we drove to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where we saw this shrine to awful, disgusting beer. 

The last big event was a ride on the SS Badger, the only coal-fired car ferry in operation in the US.  It was a long ride across Lake Michigan (about 4 hours) and nearly made me sick, but I was okay.  The kids had a blast, and so did I as soon as I got over the fact that I was out in the middle of Lake Michigan and can't swim!

The Heidelberg Project

A few weeks ago I returned from a few weeks in my home state of Michigan.  The whole trip was pretty nice, but the very last leg of my visit has really stuck with me and just won't leave me alone.  That was my visit to the city of Detroit.  The whole thing started on my last Friday evening in Michigan, when we arrived at my sister's house.  I decided that I wanted to be a bit of a tourist in my home state and see some things that I've only ever seen photos of, like the Michigan Central Station that loads of people in Germany seem to know about due to a documentary on television and now the famous book by French photographers, The Ruins of Detroit, but that I didn't even know existed until a couple years ago.

The empty shell of a building that was once a train station and hotel:  Michigan Central Station.

You must understand, when you come from a tiny town in the middle of the state, you don't generally know much about the big cities except that they are scary and dangerous and best to be avoided.  That said, this drive into the city was not at all scary.  It was much more saddening than anything else, and a little exciting to see that, yes, there is still life in Detroit.  There are people out and about, small businesses and things are happening.  But it's certainly nothing like being in other big American cities like Chicago, New York or San Fransisco where there's true hustle and bustle.   
My sister, beautiful genius that she is, said that if we're going to Detroit, we might as well stop by the Heidelberg Project too.  This name rang a bell, I'd heard of this street before...



















It's the location of an outdoor art installation right in what a lot of people might consider the ghetto, a neighborhood that just fell apart in the second half of the 20th century, people moved away, houses have been burned, demolished, the empty lots were unused and not taken care of.  The artist Tyree Guyton grew up in this neighborhood and started this project with his grandfather in 1986 as a kind of protest against these negative developments in his neighborhood.  Here are some pictures of the installments.

This art environment stretches along two city streets.  It's packed with social commentary.  For more about the history, development and details of this project, visit these sites:
http://heidelberg.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg_Project
http://www.detroityes.com/art/12heidelberg.htm
I experienced a whole range of emotions on this visit.  The colorful, creative environment was exhilarating, but then looking at these abandoned houses and empty lots stirred up some sadness, confusion and anger.  This used to be a place where there were lots of houses and families and people going about their daily lives, now there are only a handful of houses that people actually live in.  There are many empty lots.  Some houses have visible fire damage and are clearly uninhabited.  This is not the only part of Detroit that looks like this.  But why?  Why are these cool old neighborhoods left to rot away and the people left to their own devices while the edges of the city just stretch and stretch and stretch and people hunker down out there behind their chain link fences?  Is that the American way?  Does that have to be the American way?

Shameless self promotion

Check out my fancy new website!  It's still a work in progress, and will in no way replace this lovely little blog of mine. 

http://www.lsr-english.com/

If you're interested in getting an English tip every day, then follow me on Twitter (@LSR_English) or like my page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/LanguageServicesReader)

Enjoy!

La Palma Day 7

This post has been lost for months!  Well, not exactly lost, but ignored.  I started a draft in January, and just never got around to finishing it.  So here it is, day 7 of our La Palma trip!

 

On this day we did some easy excursions, like a walk to see some petroglyphs.  Certain members of my group were not convinced that these are authentic, but I'm a sucker for sights like this and think they are excellent either way.

Here's the view from the petroglifos; it's not bad either.  Palm trees dotting the landscape just make me happy, as do the colorful houses. 

After our quick visit to the petroglyphs, we drove to a pine forest and hiked up to the Cumbre.  This is like a long backbone running to the south of the island.  The view from up there is excellent, even if I did get dizzy a couple times from basically walking on a pass.

Can you spot the Caldera in the distance?

 

Here's what I mean about walking on a pass.  It doesn't look so dramatic here, but the wind and view did play some tricks on my sense of balance up there!

My long-lost habit of blogging

I got a message from a former student today that her colleagues were worried about me because I haven't posted anything lately.  I just looked today and noticed that I haven't posted anything for four months!  I can't believe it.  But here's an idea of what's keeping me so busy: 

Chasing crazy kids, for example!  But not only that, once again, I hit the ground running after our most excellent and relaxing vacation in La Palma.  I have so many ridiculous and crazy projects that it's not even funny.  I practically meet myself coming and going these days. 

But still, that's no excuse for not sharing some funny stories and neat pictures.  So here are a few things from the last months for your viewing pleasure!

 

One highlight of the first half of 2012 was getting to meet the cool axolotls on an English tour / presentation at an institute where I teach.  I have the greatest job I can imagine, I get to meet lots of interesting people and see neat things every day!

I love creepy crawlies and always have, so it was also a high point of one of our early workdays in the garden when I came across this pretty lizard.  I was transplanting some flowers and only saw a small part of him at first.  This small part was his belly, and I initially thought it was a giant, slimy, disgusting snail.  But no!  It was this friendly (and sleepy) lizard!  I must have woken him up from his winter nap, because he was very slow.

 

We've also been enjoying the nice weather as much as possible!  The last winter was really horrible for me, the dark days and cold were just awful.  So now that the weather is better again I feel like a new person!  We were waiting here at Martin-Luther-Platz for Wilhelm to finish singing in the children's choir.  He goes there every Tuesday.  He never sings in the group, but after I pick him up he sings all the songs all week long. The nice weather has also motivated me to pursue my 15-year-plan with dediction:  the plan is to retire to a sunny island asap!

But before I can pursue my 15-year-plan further, I'm going on vacation!  It's off to Michigan soon.  My three-week-plan for Michigan is to score a whole load of these and decorate the cars in the Neustadt with them:  

So if you spot some cars cruising Dresden with these, you'll know I've been hard at work.