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.

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary...Some Drunk People in the Street Buzzed My Apartment

I'm just sitting here in my living room, enjoying some of the finer things in life. Candles. My new DVD player. Talking to my lovely mother on the phone. Feelings of peace and contentment wash over me as I enjoy a bite of my perfectly cooked, gourmet quality, genuine American Pop-Tart (all rights reserved.) I'm thinking to myself that life really can't get much better........and then, without warning.....BUUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!
I am RIPPED from my peaceful state, jump approximately three feet in the air, and spasm so violently that my right hand seems to, of it's own accord, PROJECT my pop-tart across the room and my left leg bucks so wildly that it manages to kick my poor, abused laptop off the couch and onto the hard wooden floor. After about a minute of these shenanigans, I manage to collect myself, stop shaking, rescue my laptop and pop-tart from their various corners of the living room, and regain control of my breathing. No, it wasn't a smoke alarm, or an ambulance siren outside my window, or even a loud and scary crashing noise. It was the downstairs buzzer (doorbell-ish thing) to my apartment. Anyone who has lived in an apartment building that isn't a crack den (no offense intended to my crack den dwelling friends) knows that to get INTO said building, you have to push the little button labeled with your friend, lover, or stalkee's name. Then they say "hello?" and you say "hey friend/lover/stalkee, it's me, can I come in?" To which the person on the other end replies with a friendly/romantic "Yeah sure!" and then they push their little button inside their apartment that unlocks the front door for you. I guess if it's the stalkee situation the whole scenario might play out differently. But it's generally a simple interaction between two people, and nobody throws their pop-tart across the room about it.

BUT! Not in my case! No words can describe the terrible, piercing, gut wrenching, spasm inducing, ninth circle of hell-esque (Dante would have included it if he'd ever heard it) sound that is my buzzer. I DO NOT EXAGGERATE when I describe my reaction to it. My reaction was, of course, heightened by two factors. 1) I was not expecting anyone. 2) IT WAS MIDNIGHT. Item number one is of importance because I figure that unless one of the (let's be honest) relatively few people I know in this city has informed me of their imminent arrival, anyone buzzing my buzzer (that sounds a little dirty), is either: a German TV tax collector in disguise who will somehow sweet talk their way into my apartment and then, upon seeing my TV, scream "AH-HA! VEE KNEW IT! PAY NOW OR VEE VILL KEEL YOU!" or an Unidentified Scary Person (henceforth referred to as USP.) Call me crazy, but that's just what I assume.

So, when I hear the piercing shriek of my buzzer at midnight on a Saturday, and almost every one of my friends is out of town on vacation, AND it's a little too late for tax collectors to be trolling the streets, I automatically jump to possibility number 3: USP.

So, I've calmed myself down after the first buzz, assured my mother (who yes, was still on the phone while this whole thing went down) that I'm fine and haven't suffered any sort of psychological fit, and restored some semblance of calm in the domain of my living room.


AND THEN IT HAPPENS AGAIN.

AND AGAIN.

AND AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN.


By this time, I've passed the normal state of abject terror that unexpected sound of the buzzer instills in me, and moved on to more of a....primal rage. I wrench open the window, am blasted by the icy October wind, and direct my enraged stare to the street corner five stories below. And lo, to what do my wondering eyes appear- a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer! Oh, whoops. No that's not right. Oh yes. It was a group of drunken imbeciles, having a grand old time and quite a few laughs while jamming their dirty little fingers down on all the buzzers at the front of my building. Over and over again.

Now, I've been a drunken imbecile. On a number of occasions. I'm sure I've offended lots of people. But REALLY. COME ON. These were grown men. As my friend Chris says "If you're seventeen, whatever. If your 25, I lose my patience." AND THEY JUST KEPT GOING. Obviously they were too inebriated to feel the heat of my molten hot death stare beating down upon them.

I was just about to start pelting them with foodstuffs. Seriously. I had my pop-tart in my hand. My arm was cocked back, prepared to deliver the punishing blow. Was I going to slam my window shut and duck down below the sill like a coward the minute the toaster pastry left my hand? Well yes, yes I was. But that's really not the point here. The point is that I was prepared to stand up for JUSTICE. And DIGNITY. And.....other stuff.

But, as fate would have it, the drunken imbeciles wised up and moved on about two seconds before my deathly projectile left my window.


All I can say is, lucky for them.

I Love Oregon.

Possibly infringing on someone's something, somewhere. Apologies.

An excerpt from John Hodgman's "Secret History of the Territory. "


OREGON

Nickname: The Big Beaver Furrier’s Dreamland

Motto: “In Oregon, Where the Shadows Lie.”

Notes: Prior to the Oregon Treaty of 1846, the Oregon Territory was a rugged land, dangerously overrun with beavers and British settlers, and stretching from the tip of present-day Cailfornia to the North Pole. Seriously, it was simply gigantic. Parts of Oregon were regularly found in empty lots and basements as far east as Illinois. When Oregon was discovered hanging around the outskirts of Baltimore, President Polk cried out, “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!” His council of numerologists immediately scryed the meaning: Oregon was to be stopped. After two years of concerted spellweaving and secret bloody battles, the president’s geographimancers at last fixed Oregon’s northward boundary to the 49th parallel. With Oregon’s back to the sea, the government would continue long after Polk’s death to push Oregon south from Canada and west from the Rockies to its current boundaries, where it seethes now, perpetually covered in a dark cloud of marijuana smoke, ever dreaming of conquest.

Some things never get old....

Including "your mom" and "that's what she said" jokes. Really. I'll laugh at them up until the day I die. Maybe I would be laughing at one as I die. There are worse ways to go.


Some things do get old. Parents who are rude and disrespectful are currently at the top of that list. I wish they could all cut me a break once in awhile.


But guess who I gave a reaaaaaaaaal break to last night? YOUR MOM.

"Drucken Sie bitte die zwei...."

No, animatronic and unnecissarily angry sounding German phone lady voice, I will not drucken die zwei. What I will do is throw my phone across the room in a childish but very satisfying fit of annoyance and frustration.

It's times like these when I waver between despising being in a foreign country because I can't always understand what is going on around me (even after living here for over a year now) and despising myself for not yet speaking the language well enough to navigate a mother effing automatic call menu. I go between thinking "Germany, why do you do this to me!?" and "Bri, why do you do this to yourself!? Go get yo' skanky ass down to the language school and git to learnin' some more German!" Yes, I imagine myself saying this in the style and voice of a streetwise African-American grandmother sitting in a rocking chair. It both amuses and motivates me. Don't ask me to explain why- I don't even know. I promise I'm not a racist.

I digress. I'm supremely annoyed at the fact that my German speaking skills have not progresseed beyond the point of "sounding like a demented five year old" status. I'm also embarrassed at this fact because I took two years of German in college, and one of those years was spent living in AUSTRIA. Where they speak....GERMAN. My listening skills have improved greatly, which I suppose is a good thing, since I can understand most of what people say to me, if they speak slower than normal and repeat things when I ask them to. I also like to think I'm charming enough to keep people from becoming impatient with me and walking away shaking their heads in disgust before I've gained the necessary information from them. (Yes this did happen once, but I chalk it up to me looking like a vagrant and the train station man not being at his most cheerful at 5 AM.)

But apparently these skills do not enable me to understand the stupid voice on the call menu, the voice which does not speak slower or repeat anything, for anyone...EVER. It's kind of like Satan, in a way. I imagine Satan wouldn't speak slower or repeat what he said for anyone. So you see the obvious connection. So, in order for me to overcome what is currently a large source of frustration in my life, and to overcome Satan, I need to start speaking some more German. Here is my plan:
1.) Go to Kaestner Kollege (language school) on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday (I like to give myself flexibility in scheduling, ok?) and sign up for the German class I researched three months ago but never got around to signing up for.
2.) Go to said German class and learn lots of new stuff. I'm good at going to school, this part should be easy.
3.) Actually speak to people in such environments as the grocery store, post office, street corner, etc. rather than avoiding eye contact at all costs and keeping my headphones in all the time so no one will even think of approaching me.
4.) Read German magazines and/or newspapers.....at least the easy articles.

I currently do some of these things in a half assed fashion, giving up when it becomes too difficult or embarrassing. But no longer! The next time my neighbor talks to me in the elevator, I'll do more than nod and smile and pray for the doors to open. I'll say.....something.

Ok, enough whining about not speaking the langauge of the country I currently reside in. Some interesting facts concerning my life at the moment:

*I went to the US for a month this summer. It was an incredibly enjoyable trip, despite the fact that I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see. It sounds lame since a month is a long time but...there just wasn't enough time. I did get to drive a car and go shopping at 10:30 at night though, so there were some definite high points.

*STARBUCKS IS COMING TO DRESDEN. I feel this fact speaks for itself. And don't judge me, all you judgers out there, because once you've had as many bad cups of coffee as I have in the past 14 months, you too would rejoice at the thought of knowing exactly how your coffee was going to taste before it even tickled your taste buds. So get over it.

*My apartment is awesome. My friend Debbie "watered my plants" while I was gone this summer, which apparently is code for extreme home makeover. She scrubbed and cleaned and organized every inch of this place AND stocked my old Mother Hubbard status kitchen with food. It was all a surprise too- I came home from the airport hot, tired, pissed off at having to maneuver two heavy and ungainly suitcases up to the fifth floor- and opened the door to an entryway so clean the sparkles pinging off the floor nearly blinded me. Needless to say, Debbie's work was much appreciated, and has inspired me to keep the place clean and tidy. Good friends will know that this has often been one of my great struggles in life.

*I can cook! I really can! I might not be auditioning for Top Chef this summer (I'm thinking 2012 has a nice ring to it though) but I have actually started to eat more than tofu patties and cereal and milk. I know, I know, it sounds like a meager existence, but I think you underestimate my love of both tofu and cereal, as well as convenience. Last week I made chili, which turned out better than I ever thought anything I made could have. Yesterday and today I made both garlic bread (not that exciting but I'm trying to celebrate my successes here, people) and french toast. Both delicious. And easy. I'm finding that once you actually have the right kinds of ingredients and equipment around, cooking isn't all that hard. I've become better about buying something other than condiments every time I go grocery shopping. Just ask my friend Anne Kalos about this one. It's a serious problem I have. What can I say, the siren call of the salad dressing/dipping sauce aisle is just too hard to resist. But those days are over! Well, mostly. I did have cereal for dinner last night.

*I threw a party Friday night, my first hostessing of any sort since moving here. I think the word party might even be stretching it a bit, but there were food, alcohol, and a bunch of my friends all in my apartment at the same time. The phrase "glory hole" was tossed around a lot throughout the evening as well....I'll take it.

*I got a new sports bra last week, and am currently trying to break it in. Yes, these things need to be broken in, do not question my authority on this issue. I'm having some serious misgivings about this one on the comfort front, but I already took the tags off. Curses! Guess it'll have to do. At least it does provide the necessary squashage. Shut up, it's a word because I say it is.

*The new school year has started and we're almost a month in........................................I don't really have much to say on the subject at this point. I feel like a lot less of a fraud than I did at this time last year, but I still sometimes feel like slamming my head against the wall repeatedly at the end of the day. But I didn't cry at all during the first week, so I will consider this the mark of true growth and success and just ride the wave, baby. I also am still counting my blessings, because although my school has no language curriculum whatsoever for me to follow, as well as very unique parents, and this makes me feel anxious and upset on a daily basis, I still only have SIXTEEN STUDENTS. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, American public school system.

*I have been going to the gym three times a week. This week is the big week where I'm going to bump it up to four. Even if it kills me. It's worth it just to watch the outlandish shows on German cable television.

*I'm going to London for a quick weekend visit in two weeks. The plane ticket was twenty euros, round trip. Germany may have the annoying quality of not catering to my language needs, but if there's any European country more perfectly located for someone who loves to travel the continent, then I'm a monkey's uncle. Now if only Dresden had a bigger airport....

*I bought a vacuum and may possibly love it more than life itself.

*This last piece of news confirms the fact that I am turning into an old person.


Well, holy mother of all blog posts. If you made it this far, then here's a cookie. Enjoy it.

More to come, as soon as something interesting happens, or I buy another home cleaning tool.