A Review

With a little encouragement from my sister, I decided to take the plunge and join blogcritics.org to learn the art of review writing. So this is my first-ever anything published by anyone other than myself that I wrote all by myself. And yes, I realize that the mini-bio at the end is missing a couple of words, but I don't know how to fix that at the moment. Oh well.

Home again, home again...

...well, not completely home. I'd say that I'm about 1/2 way there. At least I'm back in my own country. I have now been in Maryland for six days, and my first impression is that it is extremely hot and muggy. I boarded the plane in Hamburg with rain pouring down and stepped off in Maryland to be greeted with perhaps the same amount of precipitation in the form of humidity. To say that it's hot here would be more than an understatement. It is the kind of weather that makes you seriously consider joining a nudist colony.
Despite the temperature, things have been going remarkably smoothly here. When I arrived on Monday, I parked myself in Zeb and Sarah's apartment even though they had already found a room for me literally three blocks away. Allowing myself 2 1/2 days to begin recovering from my jet lag, and buy some work-appropriate clothes, I then walked just a bit further down the street to the harbor, talked to the manager of the local fancy-schmanzy seafood restaurant, and began my new job on Friday. My observations on the job so far is that once I have learned the system, it will be incredibly boring, and I have very strong doubts that I will have any desire to spend time with my co-workers in my free hours, but I am being paid well enough to survive, and hopefully even to save some money so I am simply thankful that I have income so easily and the resulting ease in financial pressure.
So that is the basic update. I am finally over the cold that I had carried with me for nearly the last two weeks that I was in Deutschland, I have a place to sleep, food on a pantry shelf with my name on it, new shoes, and wonder of wonders, I have begun to wear skirts.
I'm still working out my internet situation and I don't even have a telephone at the moment, so bear with me on my blogging schedule... it's all up in the air.

Goodbye Days

Considering the fact that my flight leaves tomorrow, and I have a multitude of things to do before that time, I am assuming that this will be my last post from Germany. It will not, however, be my last post about Germany; not by a long shot. After I recover from jet lag, I fully intend to post some pictures and stories of the last few weeks here, trying to fill in some of the multitude of gaps. With a little bit of luck (and perhaps a few reminders), this post will not go into the paving stone category with all of my other intended posts.

Tschuss, und aufwiedersehen.

Days go by...

Everyone told me that Time's leaden feet of the beginning of my stay here would be transformed in the last days into winged things such as those which made Hermes so famous, and despite my doubts, the days are indeed flying to their close.
Siobahn, the new au pair, arrived Monday night.
I leave in five days, and have more plans for those hours than can possibly be realized.
Silke and I are visiting the Netherlands on Friday.
I still need to purchase obscene amounts of chocolate to bring home with me.
There is laundry to be washed and hung to dry in the corner of the yard where I run no danger of being embarrassed by the passer-by being able to see my undergarments.
Felix, seeming instinctively to realize that I am being somehow withdrawn from him, has become adorably clingy and kuschlich (prone to snuggle).
Photos of all the places I do not want to remember are still in need of being captured.
...Therefore, if you hear nothing from me for a week or so, don't be alarmed. I haven't been sold into white slavery: I'm just tired, stressed and trying to make it back to the states.

Finale

My football fanishness came to something of a sad end on Sunday when German lost 0-1 in the final match against Spain. It was quite pitiful. We did not play well, and as a foreigner, it was almost comical to observe the almost silent procession of cars out of the city when compared to the uproar which followed the quarter- and half- finals. There were some fireworks (supposedly in honor of Spain), but it seemed to me more as though the boys had bought them supposing that we would win and then decided to set them off just so they would not go to waste.
The quarterfinal and half-final were something to see, however. The match against Portugal was just flat out an incredible game, and the excitement of the other players at the Public Viewing was thoroughly entertaining. The half final was against Turkey, and the politics of the game was quite interesting. Germany has a relatively high Turkish population and the foreigners are, unfortunately, rather looked down upon (often for what seems logical reasons). The very political message before, during and after the match was that everyone needed to be sportsmanly and that particularly means there should be no burning of flags or punching of the fans of the opposing team. I even received a notice from the America Embassy warning that although they expected a peaceful observation of the match, there was the possibility of riots in some of the larger cities such as Berlin. As I went to meet a group of German acquaintances at the public viewing I was very clear in my mind that the possibility of danger would come if the Turkish team one. Fortunately, the Germans won, and the town had a very long night of celebrating.
Having finished my night of revelry after the Halbfinale with a back ache from too much standing, I decided to watch the final not at the Public Viewing on the Pferdemarkt, but rather in a restaurant where I could satisfy my Radler (sprite and whitebeer) craving and general hunger. Today my friend Anna informed me that it is my fault that Germany lost the match because I did not join her at the viewing, and I was the Glucksbringer (good luck charm). So my apologies to all of you who were rooting for Germany. Had I known my power I would have endured my hunger and thirst and gone to the marketplace.