For Mom

So, my mom has promised me she'll read my blog. I am holding her to that promise by posting pictures she wants to see ONLY HERE! Muahahaaaaa.

Thanksgiving in Dresden was fantastic! Even with all the non-Americans who wandered in off the street (ok...we invited them), it was still a great night of delicious food, delicious wine, wonderful company, and of course....gambling. No event hosted by my dear friends, the Spaldings, would be complete without it. You'll be happy to know that I was the victor of ALL gambling activities of the evening, coming out eighty euros richer.

PSYCH! I lost it all. It all being ten euros, but I'm not independently wealthy people. And like Kenny Rogers says, you gotta know when to hold em', know when to fold em', know when to walk awaaaaaaaaay, know when to ruuuuun...well, maybe that's not really applicable considering we didn't play cards, and that I didn't, in fact, know when to walk away.

Also of note: I made a sweet potato dish (with the close guidance of my cooking sensei, Anne Kalos) that people actually, without prompting, said was DELICIOUS. Their words, not mine! It would seem things are looking up on the domestic front.

It was a fantastic night, and made me proud to be one of the 'Muricans in Dresden. Enjoy the pictures mom!


Getting ready to start the night's festivities with a
racing sort of game I don't know the name of.
Before you start, you place up to 3 euros on any of
the little characters. Then you want your little
character to stay on the table the longest. It's
far more exciting than it seems.


In the midst of it. I was still going strong with my
two bets, on the Cubs babushka doll and the Swedish
horse.


But alas, the Hawaiian Hula Bitch was the winner.


Roy getting ready to manhandle the enormous
bird.


Obviously the most attractive table in the room.


Dinner table 2.


Dinner table 3.



After dinner we played a few rounds of left, right,
center, the ultimate dice game for any low stakes
gambler.


The suspense continues as the dice roll, and euro
coins fly across the table.


An after dinner shot of....something we found in
the fridge.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Christmas is Coming, the Goose is Getting Fat....

The holiday season is in FULL swing here in Dresden, it's almost ridiculous how Christmas-y everything is. This is coming from a girl who has a deep love for all things Christmas (and Hannukah) related. I think the problem is that they start so damn early! In the US we have the Thanksgiving barrier to keep things from getting too merry too fast. Here there's obviously no Thanksgiving, so the DAY AFTER Halloween, all the Christmas stuff comes out in the stores. Then, about the second week of November, all the Christmas decorations go up around the city. THEN, last weekend the Christmas markets opened. All before Thanksgiving! Come on people, everything in moderation. Three months of Christmas is a bit much.

However now that Thanksgiving is over, and I celebrated it in style with my Dresden family, I've allowed myself to be sucked into the onslaught of joy and Yueltide cheer. I went downtown today and meandered through a mini Wheinachtsmarkt (I'm no genius when it comes to spelling German words, ok?) , and picked up a present to send to some of the relations back home. I also put out all my Christmas decorations, which total the whopping number of three. I need to do some decor shopping this week, and figure out where and how to procure a Christmas tree. Since I'm staying here for Christmas this year, I plan to celebrate in the style to which I've become accustomed. I'm also fully expecting my sister to contribute her baking skills once she's arrived.

All of this being said, I do feel a little sad and melancholy at the thought of not being in Oregon for the holidays. I enjoy the life I have here, and love my friends (who, as my friend Roy said in his Thanksgiving toast, do feel like more of an extended family). But I still miss my family and dear friends back in the US. The thought of being without them on Christmas makes me miss them a little more than usual.

So! A homage, through photos, to the people I'm missing, and wishing were here with me. Happy almost December!


Disclaimer: These are in NO particular order, as I seem to have no control whatsoever over the editing functions of this piece of junk.



My mom and dad! Seen here gettin' down with
their bad selves on New Year's Eve a couple of
years ago.


The littlest sister of them all, Bridgy.


Kristin Ourada, best friend from forever.
This is the first time I've ever
conceded to spelling her name like that.


Anna Walters, my partner in so many capers,
adventures, and inebriated McDonald's runs. We
manage to cause trouble no matter which continent
we're on.

My older brother, Trevor. He's certifiably
awesome and I love spending time with him...
it's hard to believe we used to physically abuse
each other on a regular basis.


Dear friend and fellow lover of all (ok, many) things
nerdy, Jeff Hammond. We've been friends for...FOUR
years now, and this is honestly the only picture I have
that has both of us in it.


THE BEST GRANDPA EVER. Otherwise
known as Papa. He really is the best. Do not dispute
me.


My everything but the DNA siblings: Dave and
Emily.


My one and only Court-dawg. We slept together in
EVERY bed in her old house, including the trundle
beds. I miss sleeping with her. Take that as you will...



Vanessa Hargett, OLDEST friend. We're talking
17 YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP people.


Ali, Mo and Sarah...oh, so many wonderful times
we've had together. They are lovers of my early
morning toy trumpet serenades, and I know they
really wish they could have me back just to perform
that service for them.


What better way to end an already ridiculously sappy post, than with a photo of my entire family in MATCHING SHIRTS!? I enjoy the kitsch value of this picture, and also appreciate the fact that we were all in the same time at the same place. However, I do NOT understand why no one alerted me to the extremely masculine fashion in which I am sitting. Seriously, my brother and I are posed in the same exact way.

I guess you can't win em' all.

Fight the Squirrel

I am most definitely updating my blog that nobody reads as a means of avoiding writing my report cards. Someone just TRY to stop me! Buaaaahahahaha!!

I can also neither confirm nor deny that I had an el gigantico (you didn't know this, but I'm fluent in Spanish) STARBUCKS latte around lunch time, and that it has done two things. Thing the first: vastly improved my mood. Thing the second: hyped me up to a near record level of Sunday evening energy. It's like I snorted a line of coke and then drank seven red bulls. Now, I've never actually done either of those things, but I have an excellent (some might say highly overactive) imagination, so I can imagine how one might feel if one HAD snorted a line of coke and washed it down with seven red bulls. And that's how I feel! Am I channeling this amazing energy to get lots of great report card writing done?! HAH. I laugh in that idea's general direction.

I do my best work under pressure- this has been proven time and again throughout my life. Most notably, in my junior and senior years of college, when the baristas at both Coffee Time and the 24 hour Starbucks in Portland and I were on a first name basis. I pulled so many all nighters my junior year, it ceased to be any sort of abnormal event- my housemates were amazed when I DIDN'T have to spend Thursday night holed up in the corner of some coffee shop, frantically typing out papers and journal entries until 5 AM. And guess what suckers? I got straight A's that year, WHILE taking 22 credits a semester! I feel this is empirical evidence of my ability to get shit done in a limited amount of time.

Did I also mention that I'm a master of rationalization?

Some notable events have taken (I first wrote "have been taking place" and then I had a flashback to Ms. Mclean attacking my DRAG paper's to be verbs with a bright yellow highlighter my sophomore year of high school. So then I changed it. This was an incredibly long parenthetical aside.) place in my life recently, as well as in the Caldwell Family in general. I'll give first billing to the most exciting and shout it from the rooftops-esque of said events:
My brother, Trevor Ryan Caldwell (known aliases include Douche Puppet, Hamster Man, and Dr. Bones) IS GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!
Folks who know my broski will understand my excitment. His fiancee Maureen is AWESOME, and an excellent addition to my already unique family. I hope she knows what she's getting herself into......
Compared to this piece of news, nothing else I've been up to lately is really worth getting too jazzed up about. I decided to go with "jazzed" there, rather than "excited" because I'm currently listening to the new Michael Buble CD, and if I had to choose one word to describe it, jazzy would be the one. I'm also listening at top volume, so I hope my neighbors have as deep an affection for Buble as I do.
This post is full of really strange comments. Like that one.

But really, where was I? Oh yes, interesting-ish events.
I just finished planning a six day trip to the city of all cities- LONDON. I'm heading there with my extremely likable and fun to spend time with sister Katy over Christmas break. Got the plane tickets, the lodging, even the bus tickets to and from Berlin! We're flying out from there, because it costs about twice as much to go anywhere from Dresden as it does from Berlin. Lame Dresden, lame. I'm ridiculously excited for this trip, mostly because I'm going with Katy, and we have very similar interests, so there won't be any (well, perhaps I should say minimal amounts of) arguing about where we're going or what we're doing. I've also been to London three times already, but two on two of those occasions I was by myself, so I feel there are many pubs I have yet to explore. I don't really go out pubbing (it's like clubbing, only nerdier and way BETTER) on my own very often.
Also coming up is Christmas itself, which should be enjoyable, even if I won't be at home. Katy will be here, we'll have a little tree, watch some Christmas classics (Home Alone is first on the list), and then go to some friends' for dinner on Christmas day. As long as the musical phenomenon Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is played at some point throughout the festivities, I think we'll both be filled with Yueltide cheer.

My class loves Dave Matthews! I knew there was a reason I went into this education business. It's difficult to describe how joyous I felt when I put the CD on in class on Friday afternoon, and five minutes later kids were jamming in their seats, and telling me how "awesome" the music was. I also taught them that word. I'm sure their strict German parents are really appreciative of me teaching them proper and polite English. I've only ever played quiet music in class before- things like Pink Martini (their calmer stuff), lots of Brahms and Beethoven, acoustic guitar, etc. But boy, DMB was a hit. They've already elicited a promise from me that I would play it again on Monday. Those kids are so tricky.

This next item is more interesting in a "well shit, what can you do" sort of way. I think there's a family that has decided I'm the devil incarnate, and that I'm slowly turning their daughter into one of my minions of darkness. The dad, and now I think the mom as well, of one of my students seem to just have it out for me. I can't really tell you why. I work REALLY HARD. I try to be the best teacher possible. I treat their daughter with respect and differentiate instruction as much as I can to make sure she's being challenged. But the dad likes to come to parent/teacher meetings and do things like yell, scream, lean across the table in a very threatening manner. When he's not doing any of these things, he manages to be insanely patronizing, never failing to mention my age, my sex, and my "lack of experience." I've imagined about twelve BILLION ways to TAKE HIM DOWN, all of them completely outrageous, intensely satisfying, and probably not things I should be thinking about a parent. However, I feel he has brought my negative feelings upon himself. AND NOW the mom is against me. I was out sick for three days last week (and I was really sick, there was no getting around it), and while I was gone the substitute collected the kids' permission slips for a field trip we are going on tomorrow. She put what I thought was all of them on my desk, carefully and thoughtfully labeled with a sticky note. Well, this particular child's permission slip was missing from the pile she collected, so I sent another one home with her and wrote a little note on it saying that there had been a substitute, and she hadn't received said student's slip. I then very politely requested that a parent sign it and return it the next day. Well. It came back the next day, accompanied by an EXTREMELY rude note. It was written all in German (which I feel is another underhanded way for them to try and slight me, because they don't know that I speak a passable amount of German.) and basically said "I ALREADY SENT THIS TO SCHOOL!!!!!" Yes, it actually included the five exclamation marks.
I've decided these people can go....fly a kite. Nothing I do is good enough for them, and they seem to think I'm the escaped village idiot who somehow faked a university diploma and teaching credentials. Well, joke's on them, because them shit's is REAL!

Sorry for the crassness. It felt appropriate given the subject matter.

I'm trying to be more positive about my job, as well as life in general. Thus my attempt to deal with the biggest thorn in my side these days with a little bit of humor. I've been in a bit of a funk the past couple of weeks, for a lot of reasons, most of them work related. I've also been feeling kind of homesick, possibly due to the fact that I'll be missing out on a gen-u-ine Caldwell 'Muricahn Christmas this year. But life is only as good as you make it, right? I think the key to happiness is just not letting the jerks get you down.


Another reason I'm feeling positive about life: my box of Fitness Clusters breakfast cereal has a picture of a bad ass looking squirrel on it, and his eyes are narrowed in a very threatening manner....oh, and he's wearing giant boxing gloves . Below the picture it says: "DU VS. HORNCHEN- Fight for your Fruhstuck!" German food packaging often includes a bizarre mix of German and English words, this box of cereal being no exception. It means "You vs. Squirrel: fight for your breakfast!" I've been eating this cereal every morning for a week straight, just so I can chortle at that picture when I stumble into the dark kitchen at an ungodly hour of the day. I've eaten all the cereal now, but I saved the box so that once I get around to charging my camera battery, I can take a picture of the fightin' Sciuridae. (According to Websters Dictionary, this is the particular branch of the rodent family that squirrels belong to.)

I think I may have exhausted all topics of any sort of interest. Oh no, one more.

I watched a FANTASTIC movie on Friday night- Inglourious Basterds. I have to admit, I'm not a huge Tarantino fan. I generally dislike gratuitous violence, and his films tend to contain a lot of it. I found that this one only had minimal amounts though, which made it much more enjoyable, in my humble opinion. I loved the way all the different elements of the plot came together in the end, and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I also really got a kick out of being able to understand a lot of the German WITHOUT the assitance of subtitles. Ok, I might have peeked at a few of them, but I understood a lot of it- not too bad for the ol' ego. The icing on the cake was definitely Brad Pitt's accent, as well as the incredibly short appearance by Mike Meyers as a British officer. I've never understood people's obsession with Tarantino, but if all his movies were as fantastic as this one, I think I'd jump on that bandwagon pretty quickly.


I'll post a few pictures below, of recent happenings- just in case anyone reads this and doesn't have Facebook. Haha, look at me, acting as if I have a devoted readership. I do know how to make a joke. And with that, I'm out like an irish stout. Report cards, here I come! (Maybe.)




Katy came to visit! We had a great time, and I introduced her to Dresden's finest Weissbier.




My friend Chris had a slammin' Halloween party. Anne was a vampire (they're so hot right now), and I was Pippi Longstocking....I have trouble coming up with costumes.




I t think Pippi drank one too many G&T's.


My friend Lyn didn't want her fetus to miss out on the fun.



Ok, so this photograph is not recent at all, but I just found it and think it's hilarious. My sister Bridget and I are CLASSY brauds.