Trashcan

On Sunday we put out our paper trashcan. The whole day we kept reminding each other to do it. I even wrote it on a post it and stuck it on the bathroom mirror. I grabbed the office trash and noticed an envelope with our names and addresses on it.

Me: You don't throw away trash with our names and addresses on it.

Z: Why not? It's sitting outside our house, so they already know where we live and our name is on the trashcan.

Me: I don't know. I'm just going to rip it up anyways.

Z: And who's going to dig through our trash?

As we wheeled it out to the curb we looked around a realized we were the only ones that remembered to put our trash out. Good for us. Oh wait, the next day was a holiday. No one was going to come on and pick it up till Tuesday. Not wanting to walk 100 feet back to the trash area, we decided to leave it there one extra day. I know shame on us.

Next day on our way out we noticed our trashcan was no where to be seen. Ok, Monday was a holiday, so yeah obviously our trash didn't get taken out, but our trashcan was missing! It took everything in me not to point out how right I was about ripping up personal info. I think I lasted about an hour before I pointed it out. Not bad, right? So I was a little freaked out over it. This is a city owned trashcan, so if it's lost not only would I have to pay for a new one, but I'd have to talk on the phone in German. On second thought, Z would have to talk on the phone in German.

Before we did any of that though, we thought we had better look around and see if anyone was just messing with us. By this time everyone else had started putting out their trashcans. So there were about 50 trashcans that all looked a like that we had to figure out if one of them was ours. Z. decided it would be best if he dressed like a homeless person while we did this. So he put on his holey jeans and t-shirt he's had since '94 and we started walking up to every trash can on our street and staring intensely at each one. "No, this one looks too dirty to be ours." or "No I think ours is smaller." Eventually we found our trashcan not too far from our house. The moral of the story is, when in Germany follow the rules, do not put your trash out a day early, or else drunk people will teach you a lesson.

And the Forschungsergebnisse of the past 3 years is:

I'm kind of trying to learn a little Italian, when I say kind of learning that means I log into a free program once every 6 months and relearn how to say basic greetings. I'm trying to learn because I know some people in Italy and I'm going there and I always think in theory it's nice when you can communicate a bit and not make your friends ask where a toilet is for you. On top of the twice a year online studying of Italian I also have a little phrase book. When I first came to Germany I had this phrase book that I really liked, so I bought another one in Italian. As I was reading through the Italian, I was struggling to say even one word. I was like, oh my gosh, this is like a foreign language or something. I know, I know, it is a foreign language, but that was the first time I realized that German isn't a foreign language anymore. That's when I started to remember what it was like when I first started to learn German. I would look at that phrase book and barely be able to get through a word. Although in my defense, German does have words that are ridiculously long and should just be a sentence. For example today I learned the word Forschungsergebnisse, which means results of research. But anyways, German is familiar, I'm actually pretty comfortable talking here and getting around is cake. But Italy is another story. I haven't dedicated time to Italian and it is in no way a familiar or comforting language. But someday, maybe, just maybe, I will learn a bit of that beautiful language.

Meeting New People...Breath...

I went to someones house for dinner yesterday. I didn't know them. They were Z's friends. I was so nervous. I didn't know what we would talk about and I suddenly forgot all of my German manners so I whipped out a German customs book and read through the short paragraph about visiting a German's house. I mean seriously you would think I haven't been in a hundred German houses. But I guess it had been awhile since I'd visited a strangers house. So we ran across the street because we forgot to buy flowers earlier, settled on some nice chocolates and waited for them to pick us up. (we don't have a car and apparently they lived pretty far away.)

So we walked in the house. I met the wife and asked in perfect German if I should take my shoes off. She said I could leave them on. I was surprised. I guess I didn't need to put on nice socks after all. Then we sat on the couch and they were chatting a bit. And they served quiche! Yum! And we played Skip-Bo and I won, cause for some reason that's the only game Z and I played together for the first 5 years of our marriage.

Oh and the advice I got from the crappy customs book told me that they would not give us a tour of their house and don't offer to help with the food. They did give us a tour of the house, so now I'm wondering maybe I should do everything opposite of what the book says.

An Excuse to Just to Be

Today I played frisbee with two teenagers from my church. It was really cloudy, the grass was way too tall and wet. It didn't take long till our feet were soaking wet. The bottom part of my jeans was really wet too. I mean honestly, it wasn't the best game of frisbee. We wanted to play ultimate frisbee, but had to settle for frisbee golf, cause there was only four of us. So after playing frisbee for an hour we sat down on a log together. We were just talking about the two weeks of camp that we had just gotten back from, about future plans the boys had. I was sitting there with soaking wet feet and I just thought for a second, "I want a picture of this moment. I want to remember this." The weather wasn't great, the game was only so so, the hour we spent together just talking was great. Sometimes I think we plan these events just so we have the excuse to be together. I think it's worth all the planning.

This post makes up for me not writing anything for the past two months. Enjoy.

I have been ignoring my blog. Why, cause I'm a busy person. And because my husband is sitting next to me clicking on stuff on reddit and saying look at this cute penguin. I swear I can barely type up a sentence. Lets see, in the past two months I've done pretty much the same stuff I do every week, except I did go back America for 2 weeks. We went to a wedding, which I missed, because my nephew wanted to show everyone that we was 2 years old and that being 2 actually is terrible. So I took him out. (hold on I'm looking at a picture of a cat playing poker.) My aunt visited me in Germany. She took me to a zoo where I petted a lemur. I've had tons of visitors, so I've been showing people around. We had some Americans visit our church. I volunteered to show them around our town, cause it's really pretty. It ended up raining that day, but it's Germany, so that's really nothing new. So we were walking them through the town and they were so miserable in their cloth Tom shoes. (not made for rain) So anyways, I forget stuff about american culture. Like when you stay in a hotel across the street from wal-mart you still have to drive there, cause there's no traffic lights for pedestrians and also no sidewalks. And I've recently realized that Americans don't walk in bad weather. Yes I'm sure there's exceptions. Like for a romantic scene at the end of a movie, or when you're having a mud fight, or when you have to park really far away from the mall. So if you come and visit me I'll probably make you miserable and walk a million kilometers in the rain. And you'll hate Germany, and I'll have no idea why.

Ok I really shouldn't post this, cause one it's late and two I'm going through that phase of culture shock where you love everything about the culture you're in and get annoyed with your own birth culture. So, if you stay with me thanks. I'm going to get through this. And besides I always love American food the mostest.

At the safari where I pet a lemur, there was a monkey cage where if you came in with a backpack the monkey would jump on your back and open it like a professional pick pocket. It was awesome...I'm probably only saying that, cause I didn't have a backpack. But then again I didn't get to hold a monkey on my back. Pluses and negatives.

The New Swear Words

Swear word change. When I was a kid, swear words were the words that you weren't supposed to say in front of really holy people cause you'd offend them...and probably get kicked out of elementary school.

One time when I was a teenager, I was running late and I thought my parents had left without me. I ran down the stairs and only saw my brother, so I said, "Oh crap, did they leave without me?" I looked a little closer and realized that my mom was standing there too. She had heard me say crap. Oh man was I in trouble. Mom asked me, "Do you know what that means?" I giggled and told her no. That day my mother didn't tell me what crap meant. But it's ok I already knew.

The new swear words are, oh man i can't believe I'm actually going to write these on my blog, but here it goes. "Buffalo Chicken Wings, Taco Bell, El Toros, dill pickles, and soft gooey chocolate chip cookies." Uhg, I can't bare it. Those words are forbidden in our house. You want to know why? Cause those are all of the foods that I can't get anymore. Just hearing those words when I'm hungry make my mouth water. I remember wanting food or being hungry for food when I was in the USA, but now how I miss spicy Mexican food doesn't even compare. Oh sigh.

But honestly those things aren't that important. I mean while I'm grumbling because I can't have a sour dill pickle I'm hearing the same grumbling that the Israelites where doing in the wilderness. God was providing them with manna everyday. He fed them everyday, but they got sick of it and they complained. God did end up giving them the meat they were begging for, but it's like when a spoiled child begs for a toy at the store and the parent just gives in to make the kid shut up.

I mean seriously, what do I sound like to God? Do I say my prayers and say thanks before dinner, but really the whole time I'm thinking, I've had such better food? Do I sound like a spoiled rotten kid that only wants to eat what I want to eat? The answer is yeah sometimes I do.

Prisoners and Thug Kids

Recently, we had a nine active prisoners visit our church. It was kind of a scary thing. Yes our church agreed to it, yes it was my husband, Z, that was behind the whole thing, but scary for a 20 something year old girl. Z knew all the prisoners that were coming, so I comforted myself with that knowledge. I went to church a little nervous and little hesitant about the whole situation. So when I was at church I prayed that God would protect us all today. Everything was fine at church. The guys were really nice and normal even.

Later that day Z was in town and wanted to know if I would meet him downtown so we could go on a walk. It was one of the first gorgeous days of spring. So I was riding my bike downtown. I came to a crosswalk where I needed to wait for the light to change so I could cross. I stopped a distance from it because there was a group of four teenager boys that kind of looked tough. As I stopped one of them approached me and asked me something. That alone was kind of weird. Usually strangers don't talk to me here. What I thought he said was, "McDonalds." I figured he meant where's McDonalds. So I answered him. Then something weird happened. The four guys surrounded me. It was totally awkward and I really didn't know what was going on. I wanted to be friendly, but I'm not so good at small talk in German. But I noticed that the traffic light had changed, so I said excuse me and was on my way. As I rode away they started to laugh. I figured they were laughing at my German. I must have said something ridiculous or maybe just my accent. Then I noticed an angry Z across the busy road. He had seen the whole thing and asked what they said to me. Totally naive I told them they wanted to know where McDonalds was, but they laughed at me, so now I just don't know what they wanted. And the more I thought about it the less likely it was that what they wanted to know where McDonald's was.

Apparently as I rode away one of them had pretended to smack my butt and little did they know that my husband had watched them do that. Part of me thinks it would have been awesome to see those kids face if they really would have smacked my butt. Can you imagine what those kids would have done when a big muscular angry husband came to kick their butts??? That would have been AMAZING! Like a movie or something. But lets focus on God. He is always looking out for me. I don't know why when those kids circled me and I was able to get away so easily. I don't know why they didn't take my purse and bike. But thought back to that morning where I was surrounded by scary prisoners and asked God to protect us. He did, and He never stopped. It's strange to me that I was doing something so ordinary, something I do daily and wasn't thinking I needed God to protect me at that moment, but He did it anyways. He even had a back up plan in case I was too dumb to ride away.