Friday, July 21, 2017

Goodbyes, again. And Hello

The car is on its way. The house seems bigger with so much less stuff in it. In the last few weeks I said "so long" to friends and family. For some, I've got a feeling I'll see them when I'm next in town - only about six weeks after leaving - and for others it's still hazy.  Offers to host people in Frankfurt have been extended.

My apartment is fine, everything I need and nothing more.  It is also the smallest housing I've had in the foreign service, good practice for when we retire and live at the cabin!  My boss and colleagues seem nice, my only complaints are happily temporary:  1. it is too hot for me to sleep, there's no air conditioning and Terry has ruined me for tolerating heat and 2. the process to get internet in my house is ridiculous. Makes waiting all day for Comcast sound like a walk in the park. So I am writing from the community center/restaurant in the neighborhood for its free wifi. I probably won't have internet for several weeks. Normally not such a big deal, but it is sort of how I can communicate with my family so it sucks.

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Mom knows best

A couple of weeks ago we had a very "eh" kind of weekend. We had a lot of chores to do after having neglected the house for several weeks. I had to wake up extra early on Saturday to get the fourth tire put on my car before it ships to Germany (a rant on that coming later, maybe) so the day just couldn't be recovered after that. By Sunday evening the kids were snarling balls of emotions - they sniped at each other, then cried when the sniping got turned around, they whined and complained, and generally acted like two children who had barely left the house all weekend.

So I said "Get your shoes on, we're going into the woods."  Because nature makes people happy. Here's just one of many articles on the subject.

The kids whined and complained, although now their target was me rather than each other. They staunchly insisted they would be grumpy and miserable throughout the walk. I said that's fine, as long as it's outside in nature.

A segment of Rock Creek Park is just about two blocks from us. One grumpypants was already cheering up by the time we hit the corner of our block. The other grumpypants is more focused and dedicated and it took longer.

We discovered a million wild raspberry bushes, with the berries just starting to form (we also found three dark red ones to taste).  We captured fireflies (something I never did as a child, I don't even remembering seeing them up north). We made plans to come back with proper firefly catching jars, with mesh tops so they can breathe. We saw a couple of deer in the woods, until we scared them off. The serious, dedicated grumpypants decided with me that we should try to get into the woods as many evenings as we can after dinner.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Memorial Day

For the first time that I can remember, there were no illnesses or previous commitments, yet we did not spend the long weekend at the cabin.

Sunday we went to Gettysburg - it's only about 1.5 hours from home and I've been wanting to see it - this weekend seemed an appropriate time. On the way we listened to a podcast about the battles, which was useful as I could explain things from the podcast while standing in the battleground.

Gettysburg does this great thing where kids get a Junior Ranger booklet with information about some of the major sights, things to look for, and puzzles and games.  It definitely helped keep them engaged. Walking around downtown Gettysburg itself was also interesting, with all the buildings marked "Civil War" and trying to imagine what the town would have looked like back then.  We played "what wouldn't have been here" - cars, electricity poles/lines, the road itself.

Then on to visit Terry's sister and watch a minor league baseball game in her hometown.  There were a number of rain delays, but the game was never canceled. There were fireworks after the game, which was also fun. In general, it ended up a late night, but the kids surprised us by sleeping late the next day. Wins all around!

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

The mystery of fresh produce

 
 (stock photo)

Washington DC is a culinary wasteland. Yes there are some pockets of excellent restaurant food, usually food from Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, or somewhere else far from these shores. There may also be good, fresh produce at Whole Foods or the local farmer's market. However, with 5 mouths in this household the days of $15 bunches of asparagus are behind us.

Terry returned from a weekend in PA with four or five full bags of produce. Some of it was local, farmer's market.  The cauliflower he brought home was the best cauliflower I have ever eaten. 24 hours later I am still thinking about it. 

On the other hand, he brought home two plastic quart containers of Driscoll's strawberries, looking exactly like the strawberries I can find in any of the 6 large and medium sized grocery store chains within a 5 mile radius of my home.

I don't know where Driscoll's is, but it probably had to go through DC on its way to Pennsylvania. However, somehow, the freshness, taste and general quality was significantly better than anything I can find in DC. Given the aforementioned overstock of grocery stores in my neck of the woods, this is not a "supermarket desert". It is a quality food desert.

Can anyone suss out why on earth this is the case? 

Monday, May 29, 2017

The cabin makes me happy

I recently read an article about how spending time in nature makes people happy (here's not the article I read, but something else on the topic). Even just 5 minutes gives a boost, and hours in the woods has measurable benefits.  We spent about 24 hours at the cabin this weekend.

 Weeds can be pretty too.

 We planted the tree that's right in the center, about 10 years ago. It's a crabapple.

Kids reading in their hammocks.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

I passed!

After just about 36 weeks, I took my language exam and passed.  This means the American government feels safe sending me out to Germany to represent my country in their language and not create a international incident through saying something incorrect or inappropriate.

Woo-hoo!
 
Intensive German language training is now a thing of the past for me.  At post there is usually a couple-of-hours-per-week class to continue learning or at least not forget too much of what I now know, and I do plan to take advantage of that.  I also plan to continue listening to Deutschland Funk Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (A German radio program on economics and society, in my mind it's like NPR's All Things Considered) during my morning commute. And American politics is a lot more bearable when I first have to decipher the German so I'll probably still read Der Spiegel sometimes. But I have no homework - none of this is required.

I do, however, have to navigate a veritable mountain of paperwork and logistics to make sure I am ready and permitted to travel. And next week I get to start learning about how to do my job as a consular officer.

It's feeling more real than ever before!

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Cake!

Sometime around the pre-election season I had to quit NPR and started listening to podcasts instead. As I got further in German I started listening to news in German. But I usually play a fun podcast during my commute home to make it more bearable.

Today I listened to one all about cake and its relevance in American history. By the time I got home I knew I was making a cake tonight, German review be damned. With my test in just under 2 weeks that is a strong craving indeed.  I mentioned all this to my fabulous au pair, who then whipped up a cake in the 30 minutes between dinner and when she left to bring Zoltan to soccer (I participated too ... I took it out of the oven)

It is delicious.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

The Test

Yesterday in class we practiced some strategies for handling certain parts of the test. I hadn't been working on these particular parts of the test in a while. I failed spectacularly. Last night I had my first nightmare about the test:  I was in a play and for some reason had never bothered to learn my lines.  So it comes to opening night and there's no understudy and there's no complete script laying around everywhere but I don't even know when it's my line until I notice nothing else is happening on stage and then I tear around looking for the part of the script that has my lines, or at least some direction of where I am supposed to be and what topics I'm supposed to be discussing.

Very hard to understand where that dream came from, eh?

The good news is I feel very confident in my ability to speak German and carry on my job and my life at post. I listen to German radio [aka, news podcasts] and read German news every day. I discuss and debate various topics and while I make grammatical errors or sometimes start on a sentence that ends up so complex that I lose my way halfway through and need to back up and start over (like if I had tried this sentence in German)  I am overwhelmingly understood.  However, as in so many other things, the worry is not about Life but about the Test.

I have two weeks. And if I don't pass, the world does not come to an end. I simply have to learn German for an additional 4-6 weeks before testing again.

But I have my pride.

So I guess this weekend I will be reviewing harder and more diligently on certain areas than I have been in the recent past.

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Way More Fun with German

In addition to spending our days in the classroom slogging through the language, we also have other opportunities to play with German.  Two such opportunities came about last month.

One day we had a field trip to the German Embassy. It was the best morale boost, chatting like normal people with Germans in German. The best part - they understood us! In German!

The second opportunity was a special module put together by one of the teachers for handling Consular work. We held mock consular interviews at mock consular windows (apparently called "counters" = "schalter" in German. Probably a linguistic thowback from the days before bulletproof glass separated us from the visa seekers.)

Mind you, my German is riddled with grammar mistakes and missing vocabulary I have to "paraphrase" around. But it appears to be more or less understandable.

It is a little hard to believe that six months ago I spoke no German at all!

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Coddle Pasta

We've coined a new term tonight.  I knew I was making a meal the kids have steadfastly and continually failed to enjoy. So, I pulled out a bunch of the cooked pasta and left it out, untouched by any other ingredients. After the kids tried dinner and, yet again, failed to like it, I let them finish dinner with plain pasta saved from before. The "Coddle Pasta"; meaning the pasta that represents my coddling of the children. Heck yeah!

Friday, March 10, 2017

McDonald's

We aren't really a fast food family. McDonald's is something saved for special occasions like being on the road, birthday dinners (kids', not ours), or when the grandparents have the kids and can do whatever they please.

Alex decided she wanted to use her coupon to pick dinner, and she chose the golden arches. There are two within 1.5 miles of our house, and I randomly chose one. And oh, what a stroke of luck!

Right upon the entrance when we walked in was a table loaded to the brim with coloring pages, crayons, craft supplies and who-even-knows-what-else.  I had to drag the kids away when their food arrived and they rushed back when they finished eating. There were balloons handed out.  There were craft projects made. They even each got a sugar cookie to decorate (complete with whipped cream, mini M-n-Ms, crushed Oreos, and a cherry for the top. Oreo seems to have changed its formula because it now has no dairy, so Alex could pile that on, and she finished decorating her sugar cookie when we got home). The ladies working the tables seemed to really like kids, they had good energy and a super relaxed attitude.

I asked what it was all about and they said they are doing "Family Night" about twice a month to better keep kids entertained.  I can say that although I doubt we'll head to McDonald's more often than before, we will certainly aim for that particular one when the next opportunity arises!

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Memorable quotes

One of the kids, kicking a tree: Look, I'm a footpecker!

Terry to me, after he shared an article and started a conversation about the new McDonalds' Shamrock Shake straw design: The fibonacci sequence always distracts me when i see it in real life, and not just a recursion example.

Dinnertime rules we have been forced through experience to lay down: 1. No singing at the table until dinner is finished; 2. No dancing in the kitchen.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Fun with German

This may be the longest word I have learned thus far:  Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkung
It means speed limit and has 28 letters. I have to imagine that on the Autobahn there is some abbreviation because I am not reading a 28 letter word while travelling at 200 km/h.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Fig Newtons vs. Bark Thins

Bark Thins Snacking Chocolate Dark Chocolate Almond with Sea Salt 4.7 ozEspecially because of Alex's milk problems, we have all become very dedicated label readers. Usually, finding something my kids will eat that is safe for Alex is the limit of my capabilities; worrying about chemicals, sugar, and other signs of (un-)healthfulness take a back seat. (And, a lot of non-dairy foods like cheeses and yogurts that replace dairy depend on various kids of additives/chemicals).

Today when I got home from the grocery store we were looking at the labels for the Fig Newtons I'd bought and the Bark Thins we had in the house.

Can you guess which one was better?

The Bark Thins had all recognizable, easy to pronounce ingredients. Less sugar, more protein. More fat, but looking at the ingredients it must be the butter and/or the almonds, neither of which worry us especially in terms of the kids (i.e. nuts are healthy and the kids are skinny anyway).

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

The Great Escape 2016

We try to get a night alone once a year, although it doesn't always happen [note: dealing with house construction or rehabilitation work in the summer does not count]. This time we left the kids with Terry's dad for the overnight and hit the road - to Philadelphia. We glutted on art and food.

When we arrived in the city we went straight to Italian Market. It was a bit smaller than we remembered. We popped into the local tourist info office on the main drag and ended up chatting a while with the women who worked there. Turns out, one of them has a brother in the foreign service who served in Kazakhstan about ten years ago. What were the odds?  The other woman recommended her favorite local pizza place, about half a block away. We have been eating bad pizza for years and had even forgotten how pizza is supposed to taste.  It was so, so good. We also stopped in a couple delicatessen to look and drool and ended up carting back to the hotel some fancy cheeses.

Next up was the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  They are doing a special exhibition about the Mexican art scene post-revolution (1910-1950). The exhibit seemed never-ending - really good, but also overwhelming. I could have stopped for a cup of tea and opportunity to digest mid-way. We hadn't been to an art museum since Russia, and realized how much we missed it.

After checking into the hotel we wandered toward our originally planned dinner at Vietnam - not to be confused with Vietnam Restaurant - the two establishments are rivals and across the street from each other. But, on the way we saw a ramen restaurant and that was that. It was incredibly authentic, right down to the seven item menu, six items of which were soup with a chunk of pork in it and the other being vegetarian. Terry was pretty happy with his choice.  Turns out, ramen is apparently a new thing because we proceeded to find about five more restaurants where previously there had been none.

We headed toward Penn's Landing, which we both realized we had never visited. There's a big ice skating rink right now but it was packed so we didn't take a turn. When we were later hungry again we went to the Franklin Fountain for ice cream, but the line looked about a half hour long so we went to Capogiro instead. Some day we'll try Franklin Fountain and find out whether it would have been worth it.

Next day we headed toward RTM (Reading Terminal Market) for breakfast so Terry could get his creamed chipped beef. Walking through the market afterwards we ran into our neighbors from Maryland! We did a self-guided mural walking tour around center city, which alerted to us to how much Philly has embraced its mural culture - the majority of the murals on the tour hadn't been there when we lived in the city. None of the ones on the list were any of my favorites. Back to RTM for the pretzels. I can't describe how delicious these pretzels are, except to say they you don't think a pretzel is such a big deal until you eat one of these.

I don't know if this is a year round thing or a holiday special, but our tickets to the museum were good for two days. As we hadn't hit the parts Terry wanted to see, we went back for more.  On our way back north we stopped for the one other must-eat on this adventure - Malik's!  As the restaurant was dark, we went and got takeout from the minimart. Still delicious.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Happy birthday to me!

My day started, unfortunately, around 4am when Zoltan had a nightmare. I managed to crawl back into my own bed an hour later. I did get to sleep until 8am, which is quite late in this house!  Opened birthday cards from the kids, made chocolate chip pancakes, and had a pretty normal morning.

We went ice skating and then back home for Terry to make my five hour duck for dinner. The duck was almost endangered - we couldn't find any in the stores - but the Allentown farmer's market came through for us and we brought dinner home from PA.

Happy new year to all, and happy birthday to me :-)

Friday, December 16, 2016

German Language training Part III

Structured Learning
It's been about 12 weeks.  We have switched teachers three times.  We had our first assessment - a miniature/friendlier version of the Final Exam.  It happened to occur during my nadir of confidence and performance. I still did OK.  I have learned a lot about myself as a learner - stuff that might have been useful in my 20 previous years of learning stuff in a structured environment (school, university, graduate school).

My German is painfully slow and riddled with false starts and errors.  But it is 12 mere weeks of knowledge and I am unabashedly proud of myself. And I still have 2/3 of the course to go!

Last week most of us got all switched up - classes broken up and scattered to the wind - so not only are we all adjusting to a new teacher but also to new classmates.  I think we are getting into a groove, though, and am looking forward to more Deutsch lernen.

Outside of Class Learning
Our fabulous au pair is introducing us to aspects of German culture. One of which is the importance of Saint Nicholas Day - December 6 - where she gave the kids fabulous monogrammed stockings with little treats inside them. And she bakes cookies. Which we shared with our classmates (yes, we properly attributed her).

Also, we went to the Christmas Market held at the German School in Potomac a couple of weekends ago.  The lines for gluhwein and crepes were way too long but Terry managed to snag himself some sausage and the kids got cotton candy. We didn't use a ton of German but could hear it spoken all around us (as well as, to be honest, a bunch of Russian). The kids decorated and then ate cookies, and they got to play at the school's playground to burn off steam.

Our fabulous au pair also hand wrote these amazing little booklets for the kids with some simple "Hi my name is ... do you want to play with me" type phrases, basic vocabulary, and great drawings throughout. We got them bound at Staples and hope they will survive a couple of years of heavy use.

Wir haben viel Spaß! 

Saturday, December 10, 2016

What I love about FSI

FSI is like a college campus on reunion weekend, every day.

Where else do you find so many adults with jeans and backpacks?  I'm guessing nowhere. Ditto for people talking about homework and tests in the hallway, or rushing to get to class on time or talk to the teacher.

At FSI we also often run into people from our past in the cafeteria (for some reason it mostly happens in the cafeteria). On Friday we had lunch with a friend from our first post, someone we haven't laid eyes upon in eight years, because I happened to walk past him.  He didn't know Terry and I were in the USA and we didn't know he was in training. It was his last day in town. This kind of thing happens all the time!

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

The kids' first (and only) advent calendar!

Jelly Bean Count-Down to Christmas Advent Calendar
I waited a little long, so they only arrived today. But my kids are getting the thrill of opening up a little door each day and finding a treat inside.

What's going on?

This year, the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas eve!  And Jelly Belly makes an advent calendar and although the bean is driving a sleigh and wears a red and white hat, there's sufficiently little Christmas reference that I'm comfortable with this.

Because it arrived late, they start with the 6th now and they will go back and open the first five during nights 2-6 of Hanukkah.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Rebel Girls

Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls
What a joy today to see the package at the door and find that Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls has finally arrived!  It was a Kickstarter campaign we backed, and the results are even better than I thought they would be.  Both of the kids are sporting "rebel girl" tattoos (Queen Elizabeth and Maud Stevens Wagner).  Alex has been holed up with the book so I haven't seen much of it but I noted all inhabited continents seem to be represented. The women are queens and inventors, ancient and current (one inventor was born in 1997!), and at least one pirate.  It's in encyclopedia form, with one page devoted to each Rebel, and I reminded Alex we can get books to learn more about the ones she's most interested in.

This week was a really great time to receive this book.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Parenting win

We try to strike a balance with the kids on unhealthy behaviors (screen time, junk food, etc). We don't want to completely deprive them, but  we talk to them about why we limit their exposure so (we hope) they have a foundation for making good choices when the choices are, eventually, up to them.

Tonight, in an effort to get the Halloween candy moving out of the house, we told the kids they could each have 10 pieces of their candy as an after dinner treat for good behavior. They did eat all 10 pieces, but then said they thought it was too much and they would prefer only five pieces next time.

Will do.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

German language training Part 2

Language training is still wonderful. I definitely speak German better now than I ever spoke Russian, even after banging my head against that language for years.

This week I wanted to say I was sad and realized we had never learned that word. So I also asked my teacher for the words for "excited, or thrilled, or delighted." He thought. He came up with a word that means "looking forward to something". Um, nope.  The conversation was almost exactly replicated with my au pair in the evening.

Apparently, Germans don't have words for extremes of emotion. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

We've got more wheels!

... too many wheels, to be honest.

Right before we returned to post from R and R last year, we bought a cheap car for a cheap price. Then it sat for an entire year essentially untouched. Turns out, it didn't like that. I discovered during my roughly 700 mile trip round trip from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts that it burns oil at a much higher-than-normal rate (like, I had to check the oil every couple of hours). We had it checked out and tried a solution that might have fixed the problem without a large and costly repair.

It helped immensely, but it didn't work as well as we needed it to.

So then we were faced with a choice: keep the car and hope it passes Maryland emissions (or that we are able to get it waived in after paying a fee, something we never quite understood how it worked but several sources said was a real option);  or buy a different old crappy car for the year in the USA;  or buy a car we hope/think/believe we can ship to Germany.

In the end we bought a newish Mazda (the youngest car I have ever owned! Only 5 years old!) that we believe we can take with us and that will not embarrass us on the Autobahn.

We still haven't had an opportunity to return Terry's dad's car that we borrowed to him.  We can't get rid of the useless Prizm until we have the title in our hands, and it is in PA.  So now we sit with four cars parked in front of our house. The driveway fits one. The curb right in front of our house fits two. The last car is across the street. This is ridiculous.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

German language training, part I

We've been in class about 3 weeks now and settling into our routines and slowly developing some ability.  Some highlights include:

  • "Morgen morgen" means "tomorrow morning" although nobody says that (they would say "early tomorrow" - I forget the word for "early" but I much prefer this)
  • We've played the game of "hunt for the most consonants in a row." I am currently winning at five. The word I found was "Wortschatz" although I know it is frequent enough that it will come up again.
  • So many alliterative phrases!  One of my favorites of this week "Welche sprachen Sprechen Sie?" (What languages do you speak)
  • Direct quote from my teacher:  Fun can be German too!