they learn so quickly...

Today at lunch, I was trying to convince Emma Sophie and Paul Luis that their rice and fish would taste much better if they put some of the delicious sauce on top. Emmi heartily agreed, while Paul Luis of course wanted nothing of the sauce. Emma said "if you don´t eat sauce on your rice, you aren´t a real boy", and Paul Luis quickly retorted "you´re not a real girl if you DO like sauce with rice!!" and back and forth. As the debate moved from silly teasing to Emmi´s fierce indignation, I interrupted and asked "Emmi, who decided this? How do you know that Paul Luis isn´t a real boy if he doesn´t like his food with the sauce?" There was a short pause, and then she said with confidence "OBAMA said so." I couldn´t help myself from bursting into laughter and tears, which of course infuriated Emmi. She would not back down. "He REALLY did, Kate. It´s not funny!! Obama said on the television that if you don´t like rice with sauce you aren´t a real boy!! AND he said that girls who like their rice with sauce are real girls - really good girls." Paul Luis soon caught on, and said that when HE watched the television Obama said the opposite. With time the debate fizzled, but I kept chuckling to myself about it all day. All the children here know what a big deal Obama is lately, as he´s all over the television and newspapers, and they´re learning about these events in school. Paul Luis and Emmi also know I´m excited about the new president, because they were with me while watching the Inauguration, and their parents have reinforced over and over again how important that day was in history. So apparently now the children think he is a big super hero, and that everything he says is FACT. So if I don´t believe something the children say, they´ve decided now that maybe I´ll believe them if Obama said so!!! I must give them points for original creativity... right?

Oh, funny kids. They keep my life interesting.

Spring teaser

Today was one of those mid-winter days that gives us a glimpse of the spring to come. At first I thought it was cruel, but then decided to soak in the sunshine and enjoy it while it lasts! It was still bitterly cold, mind you, but the clear blue sky and still air made it feel so refreshing. I see days and days of rain ahead of us in the forecast now! Sigh...

Reading back over yesterdays post, I feel so silly. I can´t believe I can get myself so worked up over something as silly as busy playdate schedules. But this is my life now - day after day, and it is incredible how much it can consume a person!!

I´ll leave soon for class. Update - I´m still in the old course. Turns out we only have about a week left in this course anyway, so it is simpler to just wait and skip ahead when the class changes all happen together. It makes sense, but I´ll admit I was a bit disappointed. As terrified as I am of skipping ahead, I know I need it and am so anxious! I´m sick of just waiting around for this language to fall in my lap. I need to get out there and work for it. But I´ve waited 5 months, I can wait another couple weeks...

Now I´m going to go try to make the most of this last 1/2 hour of daylight!

Chapter 2

There is no denying the historical significance of today. Monumental and exhilarating. This is an inauguration day that I will never forget, for sure. At the same time, in all other respects my day was quite frustrating. Thankfully it began with the frustrating, and ended with the exciting!

This morning was decent enough, but I had so much preparation to do for the crazy afternoon! There was simply too much scheduled for the day. Last week I arranged a play date for Paul Luis and his friend Sammi for this afternoon. Later Torsten planned a play date for Emma Sophie with her friend Sofie, which wouldn´t work of course, because I needed to drive Paul Luis to Sammi´s house, and Emmi also has English class on Tuesdays. I also need to be at the house as much as possible on Tuesday afternoons, because Natalia the housekeeper comes. But Torsten and Claudia were determined to make Emmi´s playdate work, so they had Sofie come here early enough for lunch and a bit of play time before Emma´s class. This also meant that Paul Luis and Sammi needed to play at our house instead of his, so I could stay here with the girls instead of driving. I´ll admit I was a bit irritated. They pressure me to keep a clean schedule and make my own plans for the children, which I had in excellent order last week. But once they start to add plans of their own without consulting me, the schedule becomes a big mess. This afternoon was SO stressful in our house. Poor Natalia could hardly do any cleaning with so many children running about. And of course the girls threw fits when it was time to leave for class, because they couldn´t squeeze enough enough play time after lunch. Tuesdays are NEVER good days for Emmi to have play dates - I know this by now! I wish they would either give me total responsibility for making the children´s plans for the week, or none at all. This was just too messy. And I was so distracted this afternoon keeping an eye on Paul Luis and Sammi, helping Natalia, and other household chores that I didn´t yet have time for - folding laundry and such, that I COMPLETELY forgot to pick up Emmi from her English class at 4:30. It was nearly 4:50 when I made it there, and luckily Christianne, Tivan´s mom, stayed with her until I arrived. I´m such a terrible au pair! What kind of person just FORGETS a child? And of course Torsten had just come home when we came back to the house. Emmi was very excited to tell him all about my big failure in picking her up....

HOWEVER, after all this I was so thrilled to come back and see the live CNN footage of Obama´s inauguration on my computer! After a while, Claudia called and asked if I wanted to watch the speech on their big TV with them in the main house. So I ran over and we watched the event together. I was almost in tears, I was so excited and happy!! I will definitely never forget this oath of office. I have never felt such pride and hope. After 8 long years of anxiety, worry, disappointment, and sometimes embarrassment, I have hope now that I can remove that shroud and embrace my patriotism and love for America the beautiful. We have some difficult times ahead, and a LOT of work to do, but I have to believe that the steps we are taking in this new chapter will be in a positive and productive direction. In this we must trust.

- (deep breath)

...

Tomorrow I will tell my language teacher that I want to skip ahead to the next level. She asked me last week if I thought our class was too easy, and it really is. While everything is new material for me, it is SO painfully slow. However the next course has been studying completely new material for months now without me, and I will be so behind if I try to join them now! I know I will never catch up. But I don´t think catching up is what matters anymore. I don´t need to be at the top of my class anymore. I´ve had that position for months now, and it bores me. I need a challenge, and I definitely didn´t have that with Frau Kohlman in Klasse 1, as much as I adore her. So... I´m going to try. These next few weeks will quite literally feel like Hell to me. I will be lost and confused and embarrassed and stressed. But I know deep down that I need that. I know I will learn somehow, and this kind of excites me.

- (exhale)
In other news, I am content and energized this weekend. I feel good...

That feels good.

Sons and Daughters

This morning after sending the children off to school and Kindergarten, I walked outside to go buy some bread and milk at the market. It was still a bit dark and foggy, and I felt like I had a cheesecloth draped over my face as I watched my steps on the sidewalk. The stones from our carport to the Volksbank lot are patchy shades of red and grey, where old crumbled stones have been replaced by newer bricks. I make sure to step only on the reddest of bricks, as my own personal attempt to preserve the older weathered stones. They might not actually be older... now that I think of it. It is entirely possible that some fool built the path with stones of a weak quality, quickly realized that red bricks are sturdier and changed course. But anyway, it is a game that I play, and I like to pretend I am preserving history or something quietly significant. So I was walking down our street and heard what I assumed was a flock of geese overhead. But the honking had a sharper quality to it, and I had to squint to look up into the smoky light of an amber winter morning. Drifting in and out of the fog were twelve to fifteen swans. Something about this image literally (with the full risk of sounding cheesy) took my breath away. I stood in a stupefied trance in the middle of the street, and watched the sky long after they floated back into the clouds again. I could still hear their music for almost an entire minute after I lost sight. Maybe this doesn´t seem at all interesting to anyone else, but I have never seen a flock of swans before. I wasn´t even aware that they were common to this area of Germany. But their elegant white necks and long black beaks were instantly recognizable, even from far below. Maybe on another morning, or at a different place or time I would not have been moved by this scene. But for some reason this morning I kept reliving the moment, and felt strange for the next few hours. Sure, a part of me felt a certain amount of peace, but that wasn´t all of it. I wish I could pin-point something here. This will sound ridiculous and trite, but it was a similar feeling to certain parts of Inman´s journey in the book Cold Mountain, or the Machu Picchu scene from The Motorcycle Diaries. A scene that made me feel cold and warm at the same time, and nostalgic for something of which I really have no memory. A bit isolated, but at peace with the comforting reminders of life and nature in my surroundings. My environment here is strange and new, but I must find ways to stay inside of myself and keep watching for those small things that will move me, as they used to. If I can ever understand why they move me, perhaps there is hope that I´ll figure out some of the essence of who I am, and on which soils I should stand.

Here´s to a starry-eyed ramble wishing to be worthy of a soaring swan!

Prost.


Also, I shamelessly borrowed these images from flickr users... for anyone who regulates these things. I´m not sure if they have copyrights.

New things

I added new music to my profile. Something to pass the time, I guess. Feel free to stop it, if it bothers you. Actually, I think I´ll try to find a way to make it so the music will only play if you want to hear it.... we´ll work on this.

I feel like it has been a while since I´ve written a genuinely worthy post. So here is my attempt. I really don´t have any direction here, so I´ll just start talking about things I´ve noticed lately in my life.

First things first, it is JANUARY. From the beginning, if I was ever having a difficult day (or week), I kept telling myself that if I just make it through the winter holidays then everything will be okay. The rest of the year will fly. Well - it´s here now! The holidays have passed, and I did surprisingly well considering it was both my first Thanksgiving and Christmas away from Kansas. Now I am realizing that I am in Month Five of my year in Germany. I feel like I´m at an awkward place now. A part of me is pleasantly surprised at how successful my first few months have been, and I am excited to know that August will be here before I know it (thus my happy reunion with family and friends whom I love and miss). At the same time, I am disappointed that I am still living so much in the past and future. Why did I come here if I was just going to constantly think of home, and the next year ahead of me? I am here in Germany NOW, and there is so much I want to experience before I leave in just half a year. While my language skills are slowly progressing, I am still very frustrated at my lack of ambition there. I feel like if I really made an effort, I could be quite fluent in no time. But instead I keep relying on my short "trick" phrases and survival responses, rather than focusing on constructing original sentences of my own to contribute to conversations. There is so much I have to learn before I leave and forget it all! I will probably just barely be getting comfortable with my skills just before I leave this summer...

In other news, my relationships with the children, family, and friends have become much stronger this last month. As far as the host family goes, I think spending Christmas with them was a very positive experience. I´ve had several special bonding moments with the children, and I feel like I´ve had some very meaningful conversations with Claudia, Torsten, and even Claudia´s brother, father, and mother (even with Jutta´s limited English and my broken German). Paul Luis is still not as forward with his emotions as Emmi (he is the same way with the rest of his family, too), but I feel like I am earning a bit of respect from him. He still can be quite rebellious and angry, yet I also have had some fun teasing moments with the kid. He is very much into magic again, and loves to ask me to sit and watch some new tricks. Emma Sophie hasn´t been throwing as many tanrums as in November and early December. I feel like she is definitely still capable, but I´m figuring out ways to prevent them in advance. Little tricks that aren´t necessarily solutions, but they do make the day pass with much less anxiety. And she is starting to love me as part of the family, which is so rewarding. It is much easier to put up with her difficult moments when I can also remember the long, warm hugs she now gives so freely now. She used to resent me so much, and often would tell me to leave her alone. Which is understandable, I guess. It must be difficult to be a little girl and have a stranger move in to your house for a year as a temporary replacement for your parents. But now she begs me to come play games with her in her room, sing songs, and she even likes to "help" me cook and clean! Last week, we had a monumental first experience when she had a sleepover with me here in the garden house. She asked one night if she could come sleep at my house, and Claudia and I decided to give it a try. I was not excited at all in the beginning. The garden house is my SANCTUARY. Is nothing sacred now?? But around 7:00 there was a little knock on my door, and there she was with her bundle of blankets, books, and stuffed animals. We snuggled in bed and read stories, and she had me sing some lullabies (which I am terrible at remembering - I made up most of the words - she´ll never know, right?). It was actually very sweet. I´m not hoping to make it a weekly event by any means, but I don´t think of the child with utter terror and fear anymore. :)

I´ve also had fun hosting old and new friends here at the garden house. Charles and Bryce (good friends from Bethel who are doing voluntary service in Germany) came for a visit a couple weeks ago. My fellow au pair friends, Nanna and Anna, also enjoy coming to stay for a night or day during the weekends. They live with their host families, and can rarely "escape" the constant noises and demands. I realize now how lucky I am to have my own house. If I am ever a parent, I have no idea what I will do if I can´t have a garden house to retreat to in the evenings and on weekends!! I´m feeling very close to Anna and Nanna (from Britain and Finland) lately. At first I assumed our friendships were more out of necessity than true affection, but now I realize that we have much in common, and I genuinely enjoy their company. We´ve also made a few friends through our language classes, my neighbor Harry, and other random connections. This definitely helps me to feel more at ease with living abroad all on my own.

I am planning a weekend trip to Hamburg later this month with a couple friends. It is also possible that I might meet up with some of the Bethel students in Germany for Merle´s interterm course. My most exciting news is that Oma Jutta won 2 tickets on a ship to Sweden for a weekend trip. She won´t be using them and asked if I´d take them! I think it will be a very brief trip on land, but I think it will still be amazing! Free room, food, and other amenities. I think the ship also has some nice entertainment options, like billiards, coffee shops, bars, and a sauna. I don´t think it is a luxury cruise by any means, but I´ll still take it happily! My only fear is that I won´t be able to find a friend who can come along. People have such complicated schedules lately, and I´ll be so sad if I have to go alone!! But I think Nanna is 80% sure she can go, so let´s cross our fingers!

Well now, there is much more to tell, but I think this post is long enough for now. Take care!

That 70´s Show, Episode: Deutschland

My New Years was really fantastic. Harry invited me to a 70s party at the sports center where he teaches Kung Fu. Anna came with me, and we had pizza with some of his friends first. Then we walked to the sports center in Wattenbeg, the neighboring town. It was freezing, and with our 70s costumes (we went more with the hippie early 70s look than the disco late 70s) it was even colder! But it was fun to dress like a hippie flower child again without worrying about the scrutiny of trendy and modern Europeans. The 70s party was awesome. There were about 50 people or so, and it seriously felt like the German equivalent to the Eagles lodge in Newton! Such a diverse group of people. There was the couple who looked about 80 or 90, sitting with their New Years hats and occasionally dancing to music. And everyone else ranged in age from 18 to 50. Most were in the 25-35 range, and the costumes were fantastic. There was karaoke, and I even sang later with Anna and Zina (not sure how to spell her name - I actually hope it is "Xena"). Such fun! I had some of the most genuine conversations I´ve had all year with Germans around my age. A fun mix of me trying desperately to speak only in German, and their desire to practice English with me! Good times. At midnight we had the countdown, champagne, and shouted "Frohes Neues Jahr" and everyone in the room prosted their glasses and hugged and kissed. No "Auld Lang Syne", but still very excellent. We shot fireworks outside. In Germany, it is very traditional to set off these fire-lit miniature hot air balloon lanterns into the sky, with New Year wishes attached to send to the heavens. It was beautiful to see these floating lanterns drift up in front of the dazzling firework showers. After some more karaoke and food, we walked to a couple other parties - one in someone´s garage and one in a house. These were a bit less exciting, and I think we actually spent most of the time walking. But since I didn´t know my way home, we just kept following! I had no idea it was such a trek to get to this other friend´s house - we were walking through a field and cemetery at one point. I´m pretty sure we were in another village. It was still very fun, but made for a late night. Harry brought Anna and I home shortly before 6:00 this morning! I thought I was too old for this... :) But Harry´s 30th birthday is tomorrow, and I figured if he can still do late nights like this then so can we! It´s only once a year, after all. Anna stayed at the garden house, and we slept until the early afternoon. Just in time for Anna to catch the 2:20 train, have some crackers and coffee, and then see the sun set again around 3:30... Since then I´ve been cleaning, and trying to catch up on some things. Hooray for lazy state holidays!