It is about time to write again. My last post was end of May and even though I wrote a few articles for Heimat Abroad, I didn’t write anything just for myself. I’ve missed blogging, but life was very busy here, in my Cöllefornia. Here is a quick overview of want I’ve done in the last five months.
June
We bought a house, which is a wonderful fact, but the process of the purchase was quite stressful. Banks want to know so many things about your affairs, it felt like being on trial. After closing in June, I spent two weeks packing up our old house and painting the new one. In fact, the first three weeks of June were very stressful for all of us and it was the perfect time to leave California behind for a while and to visit family and friends in Germany. I think I was never that poorly prepared for a trip home though… I was still painting our new hall on the day we left! But as my husband always says: All you need is your passport, a toothbrush and a credit card. And in our case, the green card.
July
We spent five wonderful weeks in Germany, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland. The summer in Europe was phenomenal and super hot. It felt like it was one of the hottest summers of the last two decades.
My husband and I had four fabulous days visiting our friends in Stockholm. They live on Södermalm, a hipster neighborhood that has a relaxed and creative vibe and lots of great places to eat and drink. Classic Swedish restaurants and hip breakfast spots surround Nytorget Square, where we met a friend from CA for dinner, too. We explored the city using City Bikes and it was a great way to see a lot in a short period of time. I got a kick out of seeing Fiskargatan No. 9 in which Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson’s book “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” rented an apartment. Another highlight was having drinks at the Mosebacke Terrassen where you can enjoy fabulous views over the city. I think I have to write a separate post about our time in Stockholm.
We spent wonderful, relaxing days in my happy place, Hopfen am See. I met several friends in Munich, and went to see my favorite band at the Festspielhaus Füssen. It was so much fun riding the bikes to the venue, singing and dancing to the songs of “Die Fantastischen Vier” with Neuschwanstein in the background. An unforgettable night that I had the pleasure of sharing with my old friend from university.
August
Our re-entry was terrible. The flight was delayed and if I wouldn’t have cut all the lines, immigration, customs and security, we would have definitely missed our flight to San José.
And back in California, reality hit. It was a great feeling to come back to your own house, but boy, there was a lot of work waiting for us. I went back to school right away and there was lots of work to do in the house. My lovely husband had moved all our stuff with his buddies, but they just shoved it all in the garage and it was quite a challenge to find the boxes I wanted to unpack. But since we don’t have a lot of furniture and the new house is lacking wall cabinet space, there is still a lot of stuff in boxes right now. I can’t find bookshelves I like… Any advice? I really don’t want to buy Billy again.
My teaching job has been a lot more demanding than I anticipated, but I really enjoy working with a big group of wonderful, dedicated and hard-working teachers. It feels good to leave the house in the morning, to work with children and to help them improve their German. Besides, I appreciate the regular conversations with like-minded adults in German as well as in English.
Both our girls started new schools and the first few weeks were exciting and tiring at the same time. Now they both adjusted rather well, the older one joined a performance for homecoming and the younger one got onto her school’s basketball team last week, which is a huge success for her.
September
Over the last six weeks, a lot of our family time was dedicated to our kitchen remodel. We sold the old kitchen on craigslist, but even though we told the tiny, older couple from Taiwan that they have to bring help to remove the cabinets, they did not. My husband and I ended up doing most of the work and it was a big job. Another over-ambitious idea was to build our own IKEA kitchen. The planning went well, but if you ever think about using the IKEA online kitchen planner, you will need a lot of patience. This online tool needs a lot of improvement, always save your project every few minutes! I could write so much more about our kitchen journey, it has to be a separate post for sure. But I have to say, it was a lot of work and I love the result, we are 90% done.
October
We had a great time with my best friend visiting from Germany. I took him to my first Friday Night High School football game. We went camping at Bear River Lake and spent a beautiful day in Point Lobos and 
Asilomar, where we could watch at least four or five whales jumping around in the Monterey Bay. It’s so gorgeous there. Our friend is a frequent visitor, which is lovely, because not many friends are coming to visit anymore. I guess we have been gone for too long. But my parents are coming for Christmas and I’m very much looking forward to a quiet, happy holiday season with the family.
In the process of getting rid of old kitchen components, I had a very nice experience. I sold the old refrigerator on Craigslist, too. The guy called, accepted my price and showed up with his son the next morning to pick it up. Three days later, I received a Thank you card from his wife in the mail! It made me realize once more that there are far more nice and decent people in the world than there are rude ones.
Two weeks ago, I heard a talk about language acquisition of Prof. Dr. Petra Gretsch of the Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg. It was very interesting and informative. Learning a (foreign) language depends mainly on three factors: the brain’s capability to process language, the kind of input it gets and the motivation of the learner. Another interesting fact for me personally was, that mixing languages is not necessarily bad. People always preach: “Don’t (let your kids) speak Denglish!” Mixing two languages shouldn’t be suppressed. Children can express themselves with words from their first language if they don’t know them in the second language yet. This is an important asset they should be able to use if needed. And my girls do that every day. Unfortunately it’s the German words they often don’t know, sigh.
More blogging in 2018
Ok, that’s it for now, but I feel like there is so much more to write about. I should definitely try to find extra time for more writing/blogging in these last ten weeks of 2018.
And don’t you love my new California license plate?? I do!
