Yes, yes, another month has passed with my lazy self neglecting to post on El Bloggo. I suck. I’m sorry.
In all fairness, there hasn’t been that much going on over here. Hubz has been working really hard – usually in the office six days a week, and rarely home before 8pm on a weekday. The upside is that he’s enjoying the work, and seems to be getting recognition for his efforts. I’m proud of him! I don’t mean to complain here – once you have just one friend whose spouse is deployed, you realize that a little interruption like overtime is just a drop in the bucket….and I LOVE the fact that nobody’s shooting at him :)
Okay – so what does a Military Spouse on foreign soil do without kids or job to keep her busy? Hmmm…well, judging by my activities of late – darn little. She lets the housework slide a little (since tomorrow is also available for cleaning) and the meals get a little less creative (it’s suddenly such an EFFORT to cook). I know, right? Poor little rich girl gets a free ride to Europe and falls apart? I think I’m starting to realize the amount of self worth I derived from my career. I’m kind of working my way into a new and strange identity over here – and apparently none of those steps down my new road includes a propensity to do laundry :)
So, after about two months of floundering around my gilded cage, I dug in. I looked into jobs on the base (which are few and hard to know about without an inside track), and took a German Class (21 other bored housewives, two mornings a week – AND I can now count past 12 - yay!!!), and finally stumbled upon a volunteer recruitment website run by the base. On a Friday morning I responded to five jobs that interested me, and by Friday afternoon, I had a hit! It turns out that the Army Substance Abuse Program (ASAP) needed someone to step in and help run their campaigns. It seemed like a good fit, and all in all, I am enjoying the experience.
Amazingly, the laundry is now getting done, and putting together dinner is holding more appeal (when Hubz is actually home to eat it!). Things are starting to turn around a bit. I’m not completely there yet, but I at least have a few days in my week with a distinct purpose and direction. I knew that living overseas was going to be a learning experience...but who knew what I'd learn would be about myself?!?
Showing posts with label German Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label German Language. Show all posts
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Thursday, September 16, 2010
NATURE'S BOUNTY
This morning I met Jane and her adorable daughter downtown for some veggies, gelbesachs and coffee.
We met at a little café called Café Scholtz. My new favorite breakfast spot! They have beautiful pastries and lovely little yogurt parfaits – as well as a full menu of hot breakfasts and dinners. We had lattes that came in little white ceramic bowls with a little pitcher of coffee next to them. Jane explained that this was so you could flavor your latte with just the right amount of espresso for your taste. We sat outside at a little café table and wrapped blankets across our laps for added warmth. It was crisp and sunny and promised to be a beautiful day.
The veggie market was really beautiful, and around the corner, about a block away, was the flower market where you could buy both potted and cut flowers. We wound around the stalls and marveled at the beauty and variety of produce. Onions were small and round and looked like they had just come from a garden. There were 5 different kinds of pumpkins – all of which were thick with flesh – not the “all shell” version all over the grocery stores at home grown for jack-o-lanterns. Jane bought a big wedge of pumpkin to take home and cook for dinner. The baby “helped” by holding on to it in the stoller as we made our way to get the gelbesachs.
Here are some market pictures:
We navigated the city hall and found the offices (interestingly enough, the very same office where I went to obtain our Parkpasse). Since Jane and I had different last names, we had to go into different offices. I had enough German to be able to tell the lady behind the counter that I needed a gelbesach and that I lived in central Stuttgart. She told me that she’d hand over the sacks this time, but next time, I needed to go to one of the vendors who hand them out in my area. She then photocopied the list of vendors and handed it over to me for next time. (Don’t let me lead you to believe that I understood all of this…the conversation went something like this: Counter Lady: “german german german gelbesach german german zentrum german german” hands me the list and a small roll of yellow bags. Me: "Ja. Danke". - Using my brilliant deductive skills and ability to read people (i.e, she was annoyed) and a list titled “Gelbesach - Stuttgart Zentrum” with a bunch of addresses in my neighborhood, I was able to ascertain that the gist of the one sided conversation).
Once I got home, I spent a little time on Google Translate (how DID people do this without the internet??!) and taped the instructions in our kitchen so we’d be able to navigate the garbage correctly in the future. Good trash, it seems, makes good neighbors in Germany!
We met at a little café called Café Scholtz. My new favorite breakfast spot! They have beautiful pastries and lovely little yogurt parfaits – as well as a full menu of hot breakfasts and dinners. We had lattes that came in little white ceramic bowls with a little pitcher of coffee next to them. Jane explained that this was so you could flavor your latte with just the right amount of espresso for your taste. We sat outside at a little café table and wrapped blankets across our laps for added warmth. It was crisp and sunny and promised to be a beautiful day.
The veggie market was really beautiful, and around the corner, about a block away, was the flower market where you could buy both potted and cut flowers. We wound around the stalls and marveled at the beauty and variety of produce. Onions were small and round and looked like they had just come from a garden. There were 5 different kinds of pumpkins – all of which were thick with flesh – not the “all shell” version all over the grocery stores at home grown for jack-o-lanterns. Jane bought a big wedge of pumpkin to take home and cook for dinner. The baby “helped” by holding on to it in the stoller as we made our way to get the gelbesachs.
Here are some market pictures:
We navigated the city hall and found the offices (interestingly enough, the very same office where I went to obtain our Parkpasse). Since Jane and I had different last names, we had to go into different offices. I had enough German to be able to tell the lady behind the counter that I needed a gelbesach and that I lived in central Stuttgart. She told me that she’d hand over the sacks this time, but next time, I needed to go to one of the vendors who hand them out in my area. She then photocopied the list of vendors and handed it over to me for next time. (Don’t let me lead you to believe that I understood all of this…the conversation went something like this: Counter Lady: “german german german gelbesach german german zentrum german german” hands me the list and a small roll of yellow bags. Me: "Ja. Danke". - Using my brilliant deductive skills and ability to read people (i.e, she was annoyed) and a list titled “Gelbesach - Stuttgart Zentrum” with a bunch of addresses in my neighborhood, I was able to ascertain that the gist of the one sided conversation).
Once I got home, I spent a little time on Google Translate (how DID people do this without the internet??!) and taped the instructions in our kitchen so we’d be able to navigate the garbage correctly in the future. Good trash, it seems, makes good neighbors in Germany!
Friday, July 23, 2010
LEARNING AND LAYING LOW
One of the by-products of starting a blog is that you feel a certain responsibility to keep it up. …Clearly, I have not let that sense of responsibility weigh me down too much!! I don’t even pretend to believe that any of you are waiting for my next installment with baited breath – but I did make a commitment of sorts, and it’s important to me to keep my commitments. I apologize for my irresponsibility and I promise to be more attentive.
So – with that – I’ll share that we haven’t had a whole lot of excitement around here in the past two weeks! We thought that we’d have more time to ourselves now that the house hunting had concluded – but we ended up staying pretty close to home. I developed a lingering cold that didn’t sideline me, per se, but did keep me up at all hours with a hacking cough. And – thanks to the joys of hotel living – my coughing kept Hubbz awake through the night and weakened his immune system enough to invite a cold in as well. So, we spent last weekend TALKING about getting out and going someplace, but never actually achieving it. Hubbalicious spent two afternoons gleefully watching live coverage of the Tour de France, and I finished another book, napped and caught up on some work tasks. Let the good times roll!!
This week I did celebrate a birthday. Thanks to the wonders of this digital age, I spent the better part of the day responding to well wishes as each time zone awoke and noticed on Facebook that it was my birthday. It was really fun and touching to have so much of “home” in front of me. We had dinner with friends that night and overall I had a lovely birthday.
I also had a lovely birthday epiphany. I am now old enough to start lying about my age! The shape my age-lie is going to take may surprise you, though. I’ve decided that when next I am asked, I’m going to ADD numbers to my years. Seriously! My logic is this…. I may not be holding up all that well for the thirty-something years that I have actually lived…but I figure I probably look darn good for someone in their forty-somethings!!
Two nights a week now, we take a German Language class! The teacher is a very kind German woman who has been teaching ex-pats the language for more than 20 years. We like her a lot. We like her even more for the fact that she brings local delicacies of chocolate and gummi bears to class every night. She’s good people! She calls on all of us equally and is very kind in her corrections of our errors. She also fills us in on some cultural happenings and roots of words. The 2 ½ hour class is a long commitment ant the end of a work day – but overall we enjoy the time and appreciate the lessons.
Learning a new language is hard (at least it is for us). We leave class feeling like we’ve absorbed something, and wake up the next morning feeling like we have lost it all! But, I realize that I have picked up a little vocabulary here and there in little places. I can kind of get the gist of a billboard sometimes or recognize a number stated in a radio commercial. We are trying to keep at it and be disciplined about studying outside of class, but we are both working full time right now and the hours seem to fly right out of the day!
I remember feeling that I wasn’t “getting it” when I started taking French in Jr. High school. Somehow something must have stuck, because today I find my brain full of French vocabulary and verb conjugations when I reach for a German word. I imagine the process in my brain happening like this: My mind recognizes that English won’t do and it reaches for the only other language I’ve ever somewhat understood. I wonder if learning German is going to actually resurrect my French memory! It’s a bit of an impediment because I also have to fight the urge to apply what French grammar rules I know to the German I am trying to learn. A clean mental slate would probably have been an advantage but I'm determined to overcome the challenge...or maybe we need to plan lots of vacations in France :)
So – with that – I’ll share that we haven’t had a whole lot of excitement around here in the past two weeks! We thought that we’d have more time to ourselves now that the house hunting had concluded – but we ended up staying pretty close to home. I developed a lingering cold that didn’t sideline me, per se, but did keep me up at all hours with a hacking cough. And – thanks to the joys of hotel living – my coughing kept Hubbz awake through the night and weakened his immune system enough to invite a cold in as well. So, we spent last weekend TALKING about getting out and going someplace, but never actually achieving it. Hubbalicious spent two afternoons gleefully watching live coverage of the Tour de France, and I finished another book, napped and caught up on some work tasks. Let the good times roll!!
This week I did celebrate a birthday. Thanks to the wonders of this digital age, I spent the better part of the day responding to well wishes as each time zone awoke and noticed on Facebook that it was my birthday. It was really fun and touching to have so much of “home” in front of me. We had dinner with friends that night and overall I had a lovely birthday.
I also had a lovely birthday epiphany. I am now old enough to start lying about my age! The shape my age-lie is going to take may surprise you, though. I’ve decided that when next I am asked, I’m going to ADD numbers to my years. Seriously! My logic is this…. I may not be holding up all that well for the thirty-something years that I have actually lived…but I figure I probably look darn good for someone in their forty-somethings!!
Two nights a week now, we take a German Language class! The teacher is a very kind German woman who has been teaching ex-pats the language for more than 20 years. We like her a lot. We like her even more for the fact that she brings local delicacies of chocolate and gummi bears to class every night. She’s good people! She calls on all of us equally and is very kind in her corrections of our errors. She also fills us in on some cultural happenings and roots of words. The 2 ½ hour class is a long commitment ant the end of a work day – but overall we enjoy the time and appreciate the lessons.
Learning a new language is hard (at least it is for us). We leave class feeling like we’ve absorbed something, and wake up the next morning feeling like we have lost it all! But, I realize that I have picked up a little vocabulary here and there in little places. I can kind of get the gist of a billboard sometimes or recognize a number stated in a radio commercial. We are trying to keep at it and be disciplined about studying outside of class, but we are both working full time right now and the hours seem to fly right out of the day!
I remember feeling that I wasn’t “getting it” when I started taking French in Jr. High school. Somehow something must have stuck, because today I find my brain full of French vocabulary and verb conjugations when I reach for a German word. I imagine the process in my brain happening like this: My mind recognizes that English won’t do and it reaches for the only other language I’ve ever somewhat understood. I wonder if learning German is going to actually resurrect my French memory! It’s a bit of an impediment because I also have to fight the urge to apply what French grammar rules I know to the German I am trying to learn. A clean mental slate would probably have been an advantage but I'm determined to overcome the challenge...or maybe we need to plan lots of vacations in France :)
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