Treats in Tacoma!

I will admit that hearing "gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free" to describe baked goods doesn't exactly conjure images of rich, moist cakes or silky whipped toppings. In fact, it kind of makes me think of grainy, tasteless, crumbly concoctions that are more hippie health food than they are a treat. But my ears prick up whenever I hear "gluten-free, vegan" these days because I'm always on the lookout for something new to try. This weekend I had great success trying Corina Bakery on 6th and Fawcett in Tacoma.

A couple of weeks ago my sister, via a labor of love and a knowledge of things like tapioca flour and quinoa, created some cupcakes that were allergen free (for both of us) and that tasted great. Her husband, who has no allergies and could easily go out and buy a cupcake anywhere even agreed that they were more than edible. She even managed to prepare some kind of coconut icing that was nearly creamy - a feat, as anyone who has tried dairy free baking knows. This opened my mind to the possibility of really good, allergen-free treats. Nothing beats the gourmet cakes from places like Trophy Cupakes or Borracchini in Seattle.

Then last week I attended the type of health and wellness event where vendors gave out samples or lotions or coupons for 10$ off scented candles and acupuncture. When I walked in the first booth I saw displayed four glass cases of tiny cupcakes. The woman behind the table, tattooed and pierced, asked if I'd like to try one. I started to answer, "Oh no, I can't..." and then I read the signs. "Gluten-free/vegan." She smiled, "At our bakery, you CAN!" I ate a chocolate one and took the woman's advice, coming back later to try an orange flavored one. I took her business card and called my sister.

Corina Bakery was easy to find, just around the corner from the Grand theater in Tacoma. Though most of their baked goods can be ordered gluten-, egg-, and dairy- free, they do not make them all this way each day. Instead, they make several options for the day that are allergen-free, so even though we couldn't eat everything in the bakery, we had at least four options, which is way beyond the choices in any other bakery I know of.

The cakes looked and tasted heavenly. I ate the biggest cupcake I've ever seen; it was probably the size of my fist, and it was dense enough that it felt almost heavy. The frosting was thick, rich and creamy with just a hint of citrus flavor and a few pink sprinkles on top. My sister tried a generous slice of the orange dreamcicle cake which was moist and equally delicious. Paired with chai lattes (made with soy milk of course), what could be better on a sunny Saturday afternoon?

Allergies in Albuquerque

The first week in March I attended a conference for bird trainers in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When I registered I knew that I was setting myself up for a challenge by attempting to travel while still an allergen-avoidance newbie. I am determined not to let my new dietary needs keep me from doing things I want to do. The problem with traveling is that often one is not in complete control of one's consumption. For instance, this conference provided breakfast, but I didn't know if that meant bagels and cream cheese (both no go's for me) or a fruit platter. Similarly, when eating out with a group, I am not comfortable announcing, "Hey, Italian food doesn't have many wheatless, cheese-less options, so we can't go to Beppo's!" It's not my style. In fact, I challenged myself to see how long I could go without anyone noticing I was eating differently at all.

So I packed a few items in my carry-on bag--two packets of oatmeal, a couple of fruit bars, some soy nuts for protein and some gummy bears. Before I left I looked at the Marriott Hotel's website to see if their restaurant provided allergen listings, which it did not. However, the site did provide links to nearby eating establishments; this allowed me to peruse their at my leisure BEFORE ending up in one of them, staring at a menu and confusing a poor waiter by insisting he go look at the lemon garlic sauce ingredient list for something called casein. It probably sounds a little OCD, but I actually memorized a short list of items I could eat at the surrounding restaurants so when I went out with people I could order without much hassle.

For short flights Delta offers a choice of pretzels, cookies, or peanuts and since I can't eat the other two, I received a total of five small bags of peanuts on this journey round-trip. I also was sure to take a lot of Benedryl for this trip because beginning about a week after I started the new diet, I began to break out like a greasy 15-year-old. I didn't have much trouble with acne as a greasy 15-year-old, so this was incredibly distressing. The doctor mentioned that occasionally other symptoms may arise as the body adjusts to changes in diet, so this could be a side-effect. I changed soaps and moisturizers three times to no avail. But then, just two days before departing for Albuquerque, my face started to itch. Around my eyes and under my chin the skin felt tight. Soon my whole face swelled, just enough so that I could tell but probably not many others could. I got some antihistamines and hoped it would just go away. I looked like I was wearing pink eyeshadow, but much of the rest of the swollen blotchiness subsided within a couple of days. Still, I had visions of my face expanding into a pressurized pink balloon on the aircraft or during the conference, so I packed a whole container of Benedryl.

I know my eating habits are by far the least interesting part of my trip, but since this blog is now mostly dedicated to my allergies, I will skip the actual interesting stuff and continue to bore you with details of how I managed not to starve. The first meal I ate in Albuquerque was at a basic American-style restaurant called Romano's Macaroni Grill, which provided excellent allergen info on its website. I ordered a side salad with vinaigrette dressing and even enjoyed some of the fresh-baked bread (because it was a wheat day!) without having to question the waiter about the ingredients in front of all the other conference attendees.

Other meals were a little trickier though, since once a catered meal was served in the hotel's banquet hall and the catering staff was not the same staff who prepared the food. They served fajitas though, which are easily converted into something edible for me. If corn tortillas aren't available I can still eat the rice, beans, guacamole and (usually) the sauteed meat and veggies.

There was one meal that I just couldn't eat though. We visited the Rio Grande Zoo on a sunny Friday and the zoo kindly catered our lunch, serving meat lasagna, veggie lasagna, garlic cheese breadsticks, and a Caesar salad doused in creamy dressing, covered in Parmesan and topped with croutons. I slipped out and ate a banana and an order of fries from the zoo's cafe around the corner. No one noticed.

On the third day, someone finally remarked that I had been ordering all my foods without cheese, so I didn't quite make it all the way through the conference masquerading as a person who is not constantly thinking about what to eat for her next meal. Almost though. And when my saint of a sister picked me up from the Seatac airport, she brought me home-made vegan, gluten-free cupcakes. They were delicious.

On a side note, the dry southwest climate seemed to actually improve my facial woes as both types of break outs finally began to subside. The acne disappearing was a big surprise and huge relief, as it has been present for over a month and was getting pretty tiresome.

I would consider my trip a consumption success, even if I ate a few more side salads than I would have liked. I didn't have to resort to my back-up plans as often as I'd feared (I didn't have to eat any of my packets of oatmeal, though I did eat the fruit bars and nuts. And I didn't have to make a trip to the Trader Joe's, the location of which I'd looked up before I left in case of emergencies). I'd enjoyed green chili stew, fajitas, and some roasted garlic hummus, among other tasty items. Traveling on a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free diet can indeed be done!

A New Twist

I've never been much of a cook. Certainly this stems largly from my dislike of spending time in the kitchen, but it could also be that I just don't have the knack. No one has ever accused me of being domestic. But with the new dietary restrictions, it seemed like more time in the kitchen would be my fate. So I decided to approach this new challenge by attempting to make only foods I really craved, thereby rewarding myself for the effort of cooking.

The internet is invaluable to me. I sifted through dozens of vegan chocolate chip recipes, bread recipes, and cake recipes in cyberspace. I could ease into cooking by making comfort foods. Later I would work on more creative ways to use lentils or what spices to pair with garbanzo beans. Once I'd decided I wanted to make a loaf of bread and a batch of cookies, I chose the recipes based on the smallest ingredient lists and shortest preparation times. Aside from a slight error with the yeast, resulting in a somewhat denser loaf than planned, the bread was great. The texture and taste were excellent, and I even had some egg-free, dairy-free butter substitute to spread on it while it was still warm.

My second endeavor didn't go quite as smoothly. The first hiccup occurred as I gathered the ingredients from the cupboards and assembled them on the counter. Upon closer examination, the recipe called for baking powder in the ingredient list, but then called for baking SODA in the instructions themselves, and according to the comments, it was soda that I needed, not powder. Not having an especially diverse pantry or the know-how to mess with substitutions, I searched for another recipe.

I found one that originally called for cocoa powder, to make chocolate cookies, but decided to leave it out and have regular chocolate chip cookies instead of double chocolate. I also saw that flax seed was included in the ingredient list, but as I had seen flax seed in a multitude of recipes ranging from soups to smoothies, I assumed it was there just for the nutrition, which is flax seed's usual purpose in these other recipes. After I had mixed all the ingredients into a gluey consistency, I read some of the comments posted after the recipe and discovered that in baking, flax seed is used in place of egg. So...I needed that. Oops.

Plowing forward regardless, I put in the first batch of dough and hoped for the best. I had tasted the dough and found it to be pretty similar to every other cookie dough I'd sampled. At worst, if the cookies were inedible, I could refrigerate the rest of the dough and eat it raw. I had even found dairy-free chocolate chips to put in, and those would be good no matter what (especially to someone with an unsatisfied sweet tooth!) After a few minutes, the cookies still looked like puddles of plasma, but they were starting to smell like cookies. They never rose though, and I ended up with very flat, strangely textured baked goods. But they tasted an awful lot like cookies, so that was good enough for me.

Originally I planned to write this entry about the foods that I've discovered I CAN eat. Not only is there a pretty good spread of dairy-free, egg-free items between Trader Joe's, Top Foods, Nature's Market, and Whole Foods, but the regular grocery stores had a few surprises as well. For instance, Teddy Grahams happen to be dairy and egg free, as do wheat thins, tortillas, some flat breads, and some frozen teriyaki bowls etc. But there's been a new development that makes me less excited about these things.

With three and a half weeks eating an egg-free, dairy-free diet behind me, I checked in with my doctor to report on my progress. I told her exactly how I was feeling and she seemed...nonplussed. Apparently, she'd expected a more drastic change, considering the drastic change in consumption. We aren't aborting the three month experiment though, since sometimes it takes longer for a body to get back on track. What she did suggest was that I use the rotation diet for gluten and wheat products. All of the items on my "hey, there are plenty of things you CAN eat!" list above contain wheat. So did the cookies and bread I baked earlier in the week.

While these items aren't completely off the table (off the table? Get it?!), I do have to eat gluten-free three days out of every four to follow the rotation diet. Since wheat is a "moderate" allergen for me, I can have it some days, as long as I give my body time to recover before eating it again--at least that was how I understood the theory. I was already getting pretty good at discerning what was and wasn't acceptable with the previous restrictions, so this news wasn't as disheartening as it could have been. But still. I have to be gluten free 75% of the time now too? As the Germans would say, "mensch" (Aw, man!)

The experiment continues.

The Great Food Allergy Experiment: Week 3

Today is day 21 of following some dietary guidelines as a test to determine whether I will feel better after cutting out certain foods I may be allergic to. Do I feel any better? Is the diet working to resolve my health issues? Is it ridiculous to say I have no idea? I might feel better. But maybe that's because I'm paying incredibly close attnetion to what I'm eating and how much of it I'm eating. Regardless, I was advised to eliminate dairy and eggs for at least three months, so even if I'm not seeing results after three weeks, I'm not going to dive into a block of jack cheese, as tempting as that might be.

The doctor's next suggestion was to use a rotation diet, which means that the foods I CAN eat should be alternated and not eaten more than once every four days. This is more involved than eating some tortilla chips one day and then putting the bag on top of the fridge for three days. The rotation diet means that after eating some tortilla chips I would have to avoid eating ALL corn products for three days, including corn syrup and all corn by-products. Similarly if I eat wheat one day, I should avoid all wheat products for the next three days. To me, that is pure insanity. It's irksome to have to read labels so closely and think so hard about what to buy and how to construct a meal, but the added difficulty of rotating is too much. I could make an allergen-free soup and then not eat the leftovers for four days (as well as not eat any corn, beef, black beans or tomatoes, since that's what was in the soup). My compromise is to not eat too much of any one type of food, even if I am eating corn or soy more than once every four days. Variety is the spice of life, right?

I grew accustomed to thinking about each morsel I was consuming surprisingly quickly. "Can I eat this?" is the most common thought crossing my mind in a grocery store. And questions like "How much tuna have I already eaten this week?" or "What else can I make using salsa and garbanzo beans?" frequently skitter around my brain when I'm in the kitchen. But what I have not quite gotten used to is explaining to people that I have an allergy. I don't like it. I realize it's something beyond my control, but I can't shake the feeling that it's a weakness, or vulnerability and something I don't want to talk about. At the same time, it consumes so much of my brain-power that is makes sense to talk about it with friends.

When I break the news to anyone, I try to be very casual because I'm not dying, I don't go into anaphylactic shock, and it won't affect my interactions with most people most of the time. I also DO NOT want to talk about any health problems that may or may not be caused by the allergies. But inevitably when I am invited over for dinner, or to a party, someone will notice my strange eating habits. Others' reactions range from, "If I had to do that I would slit my throat" to "Oh."

Beyond this, I am incredibly annoyed when people conclude that I have lost weight because I have a food allergy. "I guess that explains how you got so thin!" I know I should not be annoyed by this. I am anyway. I have only been on this limited diet for three weeks, beginning in the middle of January. I was already thinner when I arrived back from Germany in December, and in fact already swimming in my clothes a bit as far back as October. So no, I did not lose weight from eating this way. I got thinner because I was too sick to run or rock climb or do anything else vigorous. All my muscle mass is gone. And because I knew I wasn't able to be active, I ate less. This means I got thinner. Of course, it probably is easier to remain thin if one can't eat cookies or candy or factory-produced breads, but there are plenty of ways to still overeat and under-exercise. Coconut milk, peanut butter, refried beans, cashews, and dried apricots won't do wonders for your figure either.

The next thing people tend to do when they discover I can't eat certain foods is apologize for eating those foods. I would rather no one ever know I can't eat donuts than hear things like, "I would stop in at Krispy Kreme, but I'd feel bad for you!" I don't want others to feel pressured to alter their eating patterns because of my issue. I am constantly reassuring people that it's okay to eat in front of me. Oddly I find it more cathartic to watch someone else eat something that I have a craving for than to just see the item sitting on the counter uneaten.

In the three weeks that I've been sticking to the "vegan plus meat" diet (I know, REAL vegans also would avoid honey, molasses, gelatin etc., but gimmie a break)I have been experimenting with dairy alternatives. Fortunately, I never liked cow's milk. (Why do we just call it "milk"? Shouldn't it be "cow's milk" because really milk from human should be what we just call "milk"...Right?) So as it turned out, when I tried some soy milk, I liked it much better than cow's milk anyway. Not missing out on anything there--score one for Suzanne! I also tried a couple of yogurt substitutes, one of which was made from rice protein and tasted disappointingly although not surprisingly, like rice. I do not want my yogurt to taste like rice. I tried a passable raspberry coconut milk yogurt, but the issue with this is two-fold. First, it costs a fortune--$1.79 per 6-oz container if you find it cheap (and if you can find it at all). Secondly, compared to the protein-rich, non-fat, low calorie Greek yogurt I love, coconut milk yogurt doesn't really count as healthy. It's high in saturated fat, calories, and sugar, and there's only a single gram of protein. Alas. The experiment continues.

Food Allergies: Why I threw out a pint of half-eaten Ben and Jerry's Fro-yo Fudge Brownie dessert

Two years ago my sister discovered she had food allergies. Not just "no thanks I don't eat shellfish" allergies, or "when I eat too many walnuts I get a patch of dry skin on my forearm" allergies. My saint of a sister stopped cold turkey with eggs, dairy, and gluten, which is a wheat product found in about 3/4 of all processed and packaged foods. Having allergies is time-consuming and frustrating, turning a simple trip to the grocery store into a Mensa brain-teaser. How will I get enough protein THIS week? Is there gluten in this box of soup or not? What the hell do you eat for breakfast if you can't have milk, cereal, oatmeal, eggs, toast, yogurt or pancakes? But to get rid of blinding migranes, one will sacrifice.

When Lauren told me about her allergies and new diet I thought to myself, "Dear god, I hope that doesn't happen to me!" Then a year ago I started having health problems. Sometimes the thought that I too might be suffering from food allergy symptoms crept up and I entertained it. What if I had to stop eating wheat? Or dairy? What would be left? I hate cooking. Would I have to cook? Can one subsist solely on raw fruits and vegetables? Today a doctor presented to me the results of my food allergy test, showing that I am reacting negatively and strongly to dairy and eggs (not gluten--yet!) and needed to cut them out of my diet 100%.

The first thing I did after getting the news was accidentally consume a dairy product hidden in my low-fat blueberry granola bar. This is not going to be easy. It is even harder to follow the no dairy, no egg rule when you start realizing all of the clever places dairy and eggs can hide. I can't eat them in any form, which includes all the strange by-products at the ends of ingredient lists like lactalbumin, casein, lecithin, lysozyme, and the mysterious "binder" just to name a few of the dozens of off-limits ingredients.

I haven't purged the kitchen yet; that's the plan for tomorrow. Today I will work on finding a healthy, enjoyable dinner to convince myself that it's going to be fine. Tomorrow I will throw out the eggs, butter, yogurt, salad dressing, milk, etc. from the fridge. And the frozen yogurt. I have a beautiful lime-green container of the best frozen yogurt you will ever taste--fugde brownie with bigs chuncks of chocolate--that at 170 calories a serving almost passes for healthy. It too will see the inside of a Glad bag instead of the inside of my mouth.

Tomorrow is day one.

All the homey cliches you can think of

I couldn't think of a title for this post that wasn't a cliche. Home sweet home, home is where the heart is, there's no place like home, etc. I suppose the reason these sayings are so widely used is because they ring true for so many people. When I was getting ready to leave Germany, my explanation for returning to the U.S. was that while I liked Germany and enjoyed my stay, it just wasn't home. It was the truth, but to my own ears it sounded a little lame and I was surprised at how many people replied, "I would feel just the same."

The anticipation of returning to the Northwest was so great that I hardly felt sad about leaving my animals, my kindergarteners, or the zookeepers. Even the thought of leaving Shannon and Diana, my fellow English-speakers and closest companions was overshadowed by the sheer joy of coming home. I had a few last hurrahs in Magdeburg, visited the Christmas market, attended a couple of going-away parties, and generally acted sorry to be leaving. The parents, zookeepers, teachers and children all did seem genuinely sorry I wasn't coming back after the holidays this year. I tried to explain my departure to the animals also, but I don't think it had much of an impact.

On my last day in Magdeburg, I went to my usual Sunday morning cafe to eat my usual pastry, drink my usual hot chocolate and do my usual crossword puzzles. My apartment was quite bare by this time and I busied myself organizing my digital pictures for much of the remainder of the day before stopping in to say goodbye to Shannon and our project manager, Kristin, one more time.

I awoke a bundle of nerves the morning of my flight. After a few last minute chores, I still had enough time to venture into the early December darkness to buy a snack for the trip from the bakery. I lugged my backpack, laptop, and two suitcases down four flights of stairs to the shuttle that waited to take me to Berlin. I bumbled through the airport and breathed a sigh of relief when my checked bags both weighed in a three kilograms under the maximum weight (a 100 Euro charge is added for going over!) Now all I had to do was wait. And I did.

I spent my last ten euros on stocking stuffers for Jared (small, light ones that fit in my backpack of course) and started to get antsy. There was no plane at our gate yet, and the flight was scheduled to leave in an hour. Another traveller claimed he had taken this same flight from Berlin to New York twelve times before and he'd never missed a connecting flight. This was somewhat reassuring, but my original layover was only an hour and fifty-five minutes, so any delay would be too close for comfort. At 11:50, when our plane should have been taking off, it was just pulling up to the gate. I gave up the thought of making my connecting flight to Seattle and focused on worrying about how long I would be stuck in New York waiting for the next one.

We took to the air an hour and a half late, but the pilot assured us we would be making up at least an hour in the air. To me, this begs the question if you can make the trip in eight hours, why schedule it for nine and a half? But I assume that it is more fuel efficient to fly more slowly, but what do I know?

I sat in the last row and tried to prepare myself for the possibility of being stranded at John F. Kennedy airport for twenty-four hours as I had been in Frankfurt the year before. I watched a movie called Four Christmases on the plane's big screen and then as we approached time to land, I asked a flight attendant about my chances of catching the 5:10 flight to Seattle. "Oh, you'll make it no problem!" she smiled. I didn't.

Sitting in the last row of the plane means you are the last passenger off of the plane, which puts you as the last to go through passport control and collect your bags. I tried not to jump from one foot to the other while I silently willed lines to move faster. Ridiculously, I waddled with all of my baggage to the Delta counter and stood in line yet again. A baggage assistant asked, "where to?" and when I said, "Seattle" he shook his head, "forget about it." Somewhere between dispair and sarcasm, I answered, "well, thanks." But he was right and the doors closed for my flight to Seattle just as I reached the counter. I was imagining having to stay in New York for days and was trying to put on a brave face about it when the woman behind the desk handed me a boarding pass for a flight leaving in two hours. I could have hugged her.

When I went through security, now convinced I was on the final leg of my journey home, the woman who took my passport looked like I had felt a few minutes before. "Tough time of year to work at the airport, huh?" I said. "Yeah," she agreed, perking up a little, "it really is."

I called Jared from a pay phone with American quarters I had stowed in my backpack for just such an occasion and gave him the information to meet my new flight. Now I could relax. The fact that I was finally on America soil began to sink in. The conversations around me were being conducted in rapid, slangy, native English. The airport TVs, always turned up obnoxiously, reported American news and there wasn't even a hint of a British accent. After an unusually comfortable seven-hour flight (thanks to an empty seat beside me) we landed in Seattle.

In the two weeks since I've been back, I've taken part in many activities that remind me I'm home. I've seen Mt. Rainier in the distance on a clear day; I've sat in rush hour traffic southbound on the valley freeway. I have ordered an elaborate coffee drink at 6am, and seen the horrendous parking lot at Southcenter the week before Christmas. (Does anyone remember to call it "Westfield"?) I have shopped at Trader Joe's and have seen a red-tailed hawk perched on a telephone pole, watching for small prey.

More importantly though, I have seen my family, none of whom were able to visit me during my stay in Germany. I have baked cookies, gone out to dinner, shopped, and exchanged presents, hugs and stories with them. In fact, I would continue to prattle on about the culture shock of returning to the U.S. but I am going to go spend more time with my family right now. And really, for me family can make a place home. So here I am.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmaaaas...

With two weeks left before I fly home to America, I've been focused on getting all of my accounts in order and sorting through all of my belongings to decide which ones make the final cut.

I attended my final German class last week and said goodbye to the other students. At the end of class our instructor announced, "Warte Mal!" (WAIT!) and dashed into her office. She returned with tiny bottles of made-in-Magdeburg liquor, and we drank a toast to me. I told them I would write, but of course I will write in German since I don't speak Russian, Vietnamese, Hindi, or French.

Before buckling down to work for the last two weeks of my stint here, I took one more day to explore a piece of Germany with Shannon and Diana. We went to Quedlinburg, a historical city protected by UNESCO because of the survival of its original German archetecture and culture. We went to the Christmas market, drank mulled wine to keep warm and took touristy pictures of the buildings with slats criss-crossing on their exteriors. A small brauhaus (brewery) served us a meal of homemade bread and cheese (plus a ball of lard with fried onions?!), along with a pint of their special beer that left a lingering caramel taste. Despite the chilly weather (thanks for the toe-warmers, Mom!), the elegant white lights and pine trees decorating the town created a cozy atmosphere as we boarded our train back to Magdeburg.

I used my last two vacation days on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, which of course are not holidays here in Germany. I didn't have the traditional turkey dinner, but I did treat myself to some warm, puffy dough tidbits dusted in powdered sugar from the Christmas market. In the evening I settled down with some hot chocolate to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol in German. I quickly turned on the subtitles (in German)to help me keep up with the dialogue--Gonzo and Kermit are fast talkers. Around my usual bedtime I used the fantastic technlogy of Skype to see and talk to some of my family at their Thanksgiving celebration nine hours and 5,000 miles away. I got to see my mom's husband in his sea turtle apron, my cousin in her Goodwill-chic tunic shirt, and my Uncle George's mustache up close as he tried to figure out where the webcam was. I could almost smell the yams and apples.

If you're not an avid reader, or one of my friends who has been nudging me to post my reading list, you can skip this next part. But for you who are interested, I made a list of the books I've read during my stay in Germany. I think I forgot a couple I read early on, and I left out the dry biology ones, but here goes:

Slaughter-house Five—Kurt Vonnegut
My Antonia—Willa Cather
Bridges of Madison County—Robert James Waller
Eleven Minutes—Paolo Coehlo
Ender's Game—Orson Scott Card
Love in the Time of Cholera—Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The End of the Affair—Graham Greene
I am America, and so Can You!--Stephen Colbert
Cold Mountain—Charlies Frazier
West with the Night—Beryl Markham
Broken for You—Stephanie Kallos
Consider the Lobster—David Foster Wallace
The Other Boleyn Girl—Phillipa Gregory
The Time Traveler's Wife—Audrey Niffenegger
Black Mountain Breakdown—Lee Smith
Family Linen—Lee Smith
Year of Wonders—Geraldine Brooks
The Octopus and the Orangutan—Eugene Linden
Five Miles from Outer Hope—Nicola Barker
A Crowded Marriage—Catherine Alliott
Atonement—Ian McEwan
The Ameteur Marriage—Anne Tyler
The Mouse and His Child—Russel Hoban
The Shipping News—E. Annie Proulx
The Color Purple—Alice Walker
A Farewell to Arms—Ernest Hemingway
White Oleander—Janet Fitch
Setting Free the Bears—John Irving
The Full Cupboard of Life—Alexander McCall Smith
Love, Etc—Julian Barnes

I might still have time to read another couple, considering I'll have not only the 24-hour trip back to Seattle, but I will also have at least two internet-free days in a bare apartment with nothing to do but read. Since I'll be without internet on my last weekend in Germany, it's possible that the next blog I write will be posted from my new apartment in the U.S!

'Tis the Season!

When I looked out my glass balcony door in the mornings this week, I've had to remind myself that it's November. Once I almost went to my language class in my light jacket instead of my winter coat. October went in like a lion and and stayed like a lion, but November has been extremely kind to me this year, perhaps as an apology for last year when it the temperature dropped below 0 celcius and never came back up. Despite the warmth though, the November sky in Magdeburg has a way of appearing as though dawn has just broken until noon and thereafter appearing as thought dusk is coming on.

The darkness doesn't bother me much at the moment though because it serves as a reminder that Christmas is near, and if Christmas is near, so is my homecoming. Christmas began creeping up just after Halloween, subtley at first, with just a few seasonal specialties in the supermarkets. Lebkuchen (German gingerbread), stollen (German fruitcake) and nuts and dried fruits of all varieties snuck in at the ends of the aisles in Kaufland, my local grocery store. Then the advent calendars, which are wildly popular, elaborate, and always hiding something delicious behind their tiny doors, arrived everywhere. We are all now eagerly awaiting the opening of Magdeburg's Christmas market next week.

My homecoming, or rather home-going, has brought some difficulties along with the anticipation. For one thing, I have to get out of my apartment, which would include removing the refrigerator, stove, bed and washing machine among everything else, except that I fortuitously found someone who wanted the apartment and furnishings. That solved, I began taking down the pictures from my walls and deciding which items would make the cut for my journey home. I don't own much to begin with, but reducing your life (for a second time) to two suitcases forces you to prioritize.

It seems that all my personal belongings sensed the competition for suitcase space and many of them became disheartened and gave up. I don't know how they knew they would be left behind, but my sneakers started rubbing my heels raw until I duct-tapped the insides. This pair of shoes is covered not only in mud from Magdeburg's numerous parks, but they also I'm sure remnants of the sand from the Majorcan shore, dust from the cobblestone streets of Prague and London, and magic earth from the Witches' Dancing Place in the Harz moutains cling to them as well. Oh, and probably elephant poop. Okay, for sure elephant poop.

As for my other belongings...I already mentioned in a blog that my webcam became strangely unreliable and only after much coaxing could I get it to answer an incoming phone call or show video of me to anyone Skyping. The left earbud on the mp3 player I listen to on my jogs quit. (The right earbud apparently didn't have anything to complain about.) My socks all have holes. When I put my hands in the pockets of my winter coat, my fists go all the way through the lining. I shoddily sewed two spots on my favorite jeans where my fingers poked through from pulling the jeans up whenever they started sliding down my hips. The bulb in my standing lamp burned out with a loud pop three days ago. At 2am one night my alarm clock beeped bizarrely and urgently, a gadget's dying cry. My shower curtain fell off the bathroom walls three times in one week. I'm not sure what the rebellion is all about, but the offending items are clearly mutinying.

Meanwhile, at the kindergarten the news of my departure has hissed out like a slow leak in a balloon. Parents tell me they are so sorry to see me go, the children are somwhat confused (asking if I will come back again after Der Weihnachtsmann, aka Santa comes), and the staff keep asking if I'm excited yet. I pretend to be sadder than I am about leaving. There are things I will miss, certainly, but I won't miss them the way I've missed home, and any heart-string-tugging for Germany is overshadowed by the anticipation of being home again.

Majorcan Getaway

Words and pictures can only convey an experience to a certain degree. Even if the words and pictures are good, they still won't do justice to the experience I had in Majorca. I wish I could lace this blog with the smell of salty ocean air and the taste of sucking on an olive pit until all the meat is gone.

I left for Berlin early Sunday morning in my winter jacket and gloves, with only my backpack as luggage for my 4 day trip to the island of Mallorca. By 3pm I was on the beach with the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. The trip had been in the back of my mind for months; I wanted to go someplace sunny during the fall or winter, but it took some orchestrating to find a time when good fares aligned with possible vacation days, so I only booked the trip about ten days in advance. I hardly knew anything about Mallorca, and my Spanish skills were limited to what I rememberfrom sixth grade.

When we landed I took off my winter coat and the sweater I had on over my tee-shirt, and followed the signs that declared “Taxi.” Thanks to google maps, I knew the drive would be quick, and at least this way I avoided the chance of having my first act in Spain being getting lost on the public transportation system. The driver spoke to me only in Spanish, but I smiled a lot and he didn't seem to mind that I didn't understand anything.

All the conversations I overheard at the reception desk of the (4-star!) Royal Cristina Hotel were conducted in German. I knew Mallorca was a popular vacation spot for Germans, but I hadn't realized the extend of it; the language was an absolute requirement to work in the tourist industry. The concierge saw my American passport and switched to English quickly. He gave me the key-card to my studio apartment and I found it quite to my liking. Through vigilant price comparisons and bargain hunting, I snagged the room in a very good last-minute deal, along with my flights. I almost couldn't believe my luck. The room had two beds—both converted into couches as well—a small kitchen, a balcony, a television, and a towel folded origami-style into the shape of a swan. I dropped my backpack and went in search of the beach.

I didn't even have a map of the city yet, so I had to orient myself outside the hotel to decide which way the coast should be, and I found it easily, only about 100 meters away. I smelled the sea before I saw it, and when I reached it, the view was just like the postcards in the airport. There were palm trees along the boardwalk, white sand stretching down the coast, and of course clear blue waves lapping at the shore. The colors were brilliant and almost painful to look at after the dreary gray cast Magdeburg has had for the past few weeks.

In Spain November 1st is All Saint's Day, and celebrated as a national holiday, so many of the shops along the promenade had the aluminum garage doors pulled down over their fronts on the day I arrived, and the beach was quiet, though there were still plenty of people enjoying the water, strolling on the beach, and sunning themselves. It wasn't like the secluded Oregon beaches my family always vacationed at when I was growing up, but neither was it the crowded tourist beach of the high season, where the visitors are so numerous you can't see the sand underneath their umbrellas and towels.

At sunset I walked back toward the hotel, and stopped at a tiny grocery store along the way to buy a few snacks. Mallorca's party scene is the highlight of many German youths' summer, known for it's discos, cocktails, and dancing. I thought I would go to the hotel and venture out again later in the evening to see what the night brought, but it didn't happen that way. By 8pm I was in my pajamas, watching CNN (in English!) in my hotel room. Hey, it's MY vacation, so I'll eat yogurt and a Snickers for dinner and be in bed by 9 if I want to!

The wind in the palm trees woke me early the next morning and I jogged along the promenade, returning extra wind-blown and my skin extra salty. I showered and went to find the breakfast buffet. I realize many of my blogs devote what is probably a disproportionate amount of space to food. In fact, you are likely expecting me to roll out of the airplane when I come back in December, based on the descriptions of the foods in Germany and on my experiences in other countries. So, I will spare you the bore of describing the buffet, but I will point out a few unusual items that were part of the Mallorcan/Spanish traditional foods. First of all, I've never seen another culture that eats olives and dried figs at breakfast, but I'd love to start doing so at my own home. Because it was a holiday, they also served champagne. The Spanish cuisine also includes a lot of things rolled up into dough. For breakfasts there are pastries with cheese, meat, cream, or marmalade. I tried one dollop-shaped tidbit that somehow was full of a sugary, bubbly foam.

Quite sated, I waddled to where I had seen a bus stop the evening before, and took the 15, because said “Platje de Reina” on it, which was the same phrase written next to Cathedral Le Seu on a map I found on a chair at breakfast. I was fairly certain this bus would then take me to the capitol city, Palma, where I could visit the cathedral and see what else the city had to offer. I rode the bus to the end of the route and got off in a plaza with a fountain in the center, just behind of the huge cathedral, but when I found the entrance, it was closed in observance of All Saint's Day. In fact, as I wandered the city from this starting point, I found that many of the Palma's shops and restaurants were closed. The shops' rolled down, graffitied garage doors, coupled with very narrow streets made Palma seem univiting and I was disappointed, having heard that the city would be a very nice place to spend the day. Eventually I did find the open squares and wider avenues, which helped with the atmosphere, but there wasn't much to do.

One of the shops that was open on the holiday was a little bakery with a window full of delectable looking homemade treats. The display presented fresh sweet rolls, tortes with fruit and cream, croissants with chocolate centers, and the Mallorcan specialty, which is a flaky pastry spiraled like a soft cinnamon roll and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Because of my enormous breakfast, I wasn't hungry, but sat inside and drank some pineapple juice just to watch the Spanish woman behind the counter put the finishing touches on bon bons and arrange cream puffs carefully on platters.

After my juice I stumbled upon some buildings with interesting architecture and also explored the grounds at the Mallorcan Intercultural Center. Eventually, after so much walking I did finally get hungry and choose a restaurant with a bright green and gold fascade that read “Forn Teatre.” I could figure out the “teatre” part, but had to look up “forn” when I got back home—apparently forn is “oven” in Catalan, the Mallorca dialect of Spanish.

I sat at one of the numerous tables on the cobblestone outside the restaurant, but none of the waiters paid any attention to me. After a few minutes I went inside and stood at the counter, but no one there would look at me either. Unable to figure out what I was doing wrong, I went to the next door, which was the bakery that also seemed to be under the Forn Teatre business. There I pointed at a panada des carne in the case and a little woman so round she was practically spherical texted on her cell phone while she wrapped it and took my two euros.

When I finished eating I stood at the bus stop to head back to the hotel and the beach for the rest of the afternoon. Taking the bus in Spain is not as easy as one might think because there are no timetables to inform you when the next bus might be arriving; additionally, the routes don't work the way they do in America or Germany, where you could simply cross the street to take the bus back the other direction. I discovered that the return routes did not necessarily match the embarking ones, so I could not always simply get on where I had gotten off, and might have to search for two hundred meters or more to find the correct stop. Luckily, I had watched this particular stop while eating my panada des carne and knew that the 15 would come and take me the correct direction. The meat pie (that's sort of what panada des carne is, right?) had a wonderfully flaky crust that I enjoyed much more than the meat itself, though the little ball of spiced pork inside was also tasty.

Back in my hotel room I read Hemingway on the balcony until I felt like going down to the boardwalk, and again I spent the last couple of hours before sunset sitting in the fine sand and walking the shore. It was too cold for swimming, but I let the incoming tide slip trough my fingers and toes, just to say I'd touched the Mediterranean Sea.

When I felt hungry I went to a restaurant near the hotel because it had chalkboards advertising traditional Mallorcan specialties. The waitress spoke to me first in German, but switched to English when I said I was from America and said that she never gets to practice her English anymore, so she was glad I was there. She fluidly alternated between three languages, sometimes all within the space of a minute, speaking to me in English, to Tony the chef in Catalan, and to the couple behind me in German. I ordered a vegetable soup that was peppery and chunky; I think there were turnips in it. I saved space for dessert, wanting to try the caramel flambe, but they were out, so the waitress suggested another type of torte instead. She placed the creamy slice in front of me and proceeded to douse it in whiskey. It wasn't bad at all, though I am unused to my sweets being drenched in alcohol.

The next morning when I woke up and looked out the sliding doors, the ground looked soggy and wind was whipping through the palms. I had not counted on bad weather, and thought I would need to skip my jog, since I had not brought anything heavier than a tee-shirt. But when I opened the sliding door, the temperature outside matched the temperature inside exactly. I couldn't even tell whether the door was open or closed. So I jogged in the wind anyway, and by the time I finished breakfast the gray clouds were gone and the sun was shining again.

I still wanted to see the Cathedral Le Seu from the inside, so I took the bus back into the city of Palma, and was pleased to find that the city seemed much more inviting than the day before, now that the pedestrian areas were bustling and the boutiques' window displays of handmade jewelry, wooden toys and designer clothing were visible. I went to Le Seu first; I think I have seen enough churches and cathedrals to last me a long time. The best thing about this cathedral was the morning sun shining through the stained glass, reflecting onto the stone walls in brilliant rainbows. (You can see my photos of this and other Mallorcan sites at http://picasaweb.google.com/suzanne.akerman) The second best thing about this cathedral was that an artist had sculpted a beautifully dark scene, encompassing the entire altar space in one corner. The scene depicted Jesus on the cross, but he was really barely there, mostly just a faded outline. On the walls surrounding him, starting from the ceiling, the artist had sculpted and painted demons swimming down like little fish, and the stained glass on the window was painted gray with a lightening bolt cracking through the center. I have seen a lot of churches this year, and none of them had anything similar, though I admit it would be a little intimidating to pray in front of this particular alter space.

This time when I was hungry from perusing the shops of the city and snapping pictures in the squares, I retraced my steps to the same bakery where I had had pineapple juice. I ate the traditional Mallorcan ensainada, which tasted even better than it looked and left my fingers slick with whatever she cooked it in. I watched the same woman whip up fillings, roll out dough and grind espresso beans before I took the bus back to the hotel. I encountered a maid in my room and we performed a frenzied pantomime as I tried to indicate that she could stay and clean and she tried to ask whether she should leave.

So far I hadn't taken much advantage of the facilities at the hotel, so I went down to the pool to lay in the sun and read for awhile before going back to the beach. The shops and restaurants were all open along the boardwalk as well, so I stopped in many of them to look at the souvenirs. Any store that sold anything edible had a sign that proclaimed “Supermarket!” over it. I also looked through menus outside of the restaurants to decide where to eat for dinner, and found that all the menus were printed in Spanish, German and English, with some pretty amusing results. For instance, one could get “bred” with one's soup, or perhaps a “tunny fish salad” and don't forget the “chesse”! (I also saw a sign in the cathedral that dubbed one altar “Jesus of the sacred heard,” but judging from the Spanish, I'm pretty sure they meant “heart.”)

There were many more people out than on the previous day, probably because all the cafes and shops were open. Young couples cuddle on beach blankets, and even the older people frolicked in the ocean. I passed an elderly lady in a bikini posing in the boardwalk wall while her Speedo-clad husband worked the camera. When they were tired of playing in the sand or surf, everyone sat outside in front of the cafes, drinking and chatting and watching the water. It was very Hemingway-esque.

I also encountered a lot of young men trying to sell merchandise--watches, jewelry, or sunglasses and after a while I felt like swatting them away like gnats because I was tired of telling them no. They were even more persistent when I didn't look at them at all, and would ask how it was going in German and then complain that I didn't respond to a simple question.

I couldn't take enough pictures of the scenery, and then didn't feel like buying postcards because the real view was even better. I passed a McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Burger King among the shops on the promenade, but apparently Starbucks hasn't extended it's tendrils that far yet.

The restaurants at the shore all looked good, but I liked the waitress at the place I'd been to the night before, and maybe I'm just a creature of habit, so I went back to Tony's. I ordered the special, a Majorcan fish fillet with potatoes and a glass of house wine. Probably because I rarely cook, I can't explain the sauce; all I know is that it must have contained half a stick of butter, and was so creamy and peppery that they serve it with a spoon, knowing diners will want to scrape every drop off the plate. I had no room for dessert, and turned in early again, finishing Hemingway before bed.

Before check-out the next day I had time to jog, eat, and spend an hour lying in the sun by the pool while the hotel's entertainment staff did aerobics with some of the older hotel visitors. After check-out I still had time before I needed to get to the airport, and I planned to spend my last few hours on shore before taking the bus. As I was sitting on one of the concrete benches along the boardwalk wall, a portly man driving a horse carriage jangled up and called out something in Spanish, patting the seat next to him, rather than the seat behind where the passengers would normally ride. I continually had problems with the responding to people in the correct language. When someone held open a door for me, I didn't know whether to say “gracias” “danke” or “thank you.” I tried English with this man and called back “no thanks”. He switched to German and called over that he just wanted company, no money. I declined in German this time and he switched back to Spanish, but I didn't understand anything except the patting of the seat “bonita” and “por favor.” After the fifth or sixth rejection of his offer, he clip-clopped away.

The air hung very still that day, even though when I had gone for my run the mist was so thick I couldn't see the water from the boardwalk. Now I was sorry I hadn't brought a swimsuit and felt silly carrying my winter coat with me (I had my coat and backpack, since I'd had to check out of the hotel). For lunch I chose Rene's cafe, a little off the main path, and sat at a table directly in the sun. I planned to absorb every iota of vitamin D before returning to Germany.

The waitress brought me a menu printed in six languages. I ended up pointing at what I wanted in the English section of the menu while speaking in German and getting responses in Spanish. Somehow I got exactly what I wanted. I ordered tortillas Espanol because I didn't know what that was, but knew it was traditional. She brought me a little plate of green and brown olives, a few slices of baguette, and the tortilla Espanol, which was like a tiny potato pie with tortilla instead of crusts. It was fabulous. I sat for at least an hour, savoring the food, and enjoying the sun before saying goodbye to the Mediterranean and heading for the airport.

Paging Dr. Acula

In the late morning on October 14th, after a trip to the zoo with the kindergarteners and an interview with a reporter from an environmental education journal, I stood on the platform at the train station to embark on my trip to Bucharest. It wasn't as glamorous as it sounds. For one thing, being interviewed can make you feel a little silly if the reporters watch you sing “I'm a Little Teapot” or if reputed biologists watch you teach a lesson about animals to 4-year-olds with poor English. (Every day can't be taxonomy or conservation; sometimes you just need to talk about Halloween animals.)

Also, it was cold. Shannon and I shivered and groaned as the loudspeaker announced our train would be delayed fifteen minutes, but eventually we arrived at the airport in Berlin and even had enough time for a hot mug of coffee before boarding for Paris. If your geography is as good as mine is, you at least know that Paris is WEST of Germany, and Bucharest is EAST, so why were we flying to Paris? We don't know either, but the university booked it, so we went.

On the flight I experienced similar problems to the time I flew about a year ago, when pressure built up in my ears until I felt like my head was in a fishbowl and didn't normalize for weeks. Fortunately less severe this time, the pressure was high enough in the left ear that I couldn't really hear when we landed in Paris, but I at least managed to release the pressure by yawning for the entire hour and a half layover.

When we landed in Bucharest though, I couldn't get my ear to pop and actually went through the whole conference half deaf. It was late when we landed, and cold. The previous days had been in the high 60's and clear, but a cold front had blown in and when we followed our driver (yes, the conference sent a driver to pick us up—I felt important) into the airport parking lot, the thermometer hovered at just under 40 degrees.

The conference was technically run by an international organization called ISSA, which is apparently a big name in early childhood education. They do important things like “set standards” and “carry out initiatives” and they work to put in place the political and cultural scaffolding to promote quality early education. Offices are located not only in developing countries where education is just becoming a priority, but also in countries we consider 1st world, and yet have large segments of their populations without access to education before kindergarten (yes, America, that's you).

We didn't know what to expect at all. Before this adventure, I'd been warned about a lot of things. I'd been warned about muggers, wild dogs, street urchins, swindlers, and of course, vampires. Our driver presented another view entirely; on our hour-long trip to the hotel he essentially gave us an unsolicited city tour in excellent self-taught English (He used the words “megalomaniac” and “eclectic,” no joke) and pointed out buildings of interest and landmarks. We saw the second-largest building in the world, the Danube river, and an elaborately rebuilt site of a WWII bombing, and heard about Romanians who were leaders in the fields of technology and architecture. We heard nothing about vampires.
He also informed us that the hotel where ISSA had chosen to hold the conference, and where we had booked our room, is the largest hotel in Europe, the RIN Grand. I don't know if they measure this by the number of rooms, or square-footage, or or what, but I was impressed regardless. We also learned that representatives from the U.S. (not including me, since I was technically a representative of Germany), New Zealand, Hungary, Mongolia, Bulgaria, Haiti, Russia, the Netherlands, Finland, Croatia, Ireland, and Bosnia had already arrived. I have to admit this conference was like a pop quiz in geography. Did you know there is a country called Moldova? Can you find it on a map? Also, while you're in the region, try locating Slovakia, Slovenia, and Mongolia. A little after midnight, we received our room key-cards at the reception desk and groggily wandered past a man playing a grand piano for guests sitting on trendy ottomans to find our room. I slept soundly.

To my great pleasure, breakfast was included with our room reservation. The buffet room was huge and elaborately decorated with draping red and gold curtains. I wanted to try traditional Romanian foods, but I couldn't really tell which ones those were. They boast an “international” cuisine, so I could only guess which ones were Romanian for the most part. But the food was delicious and every conceivable breakfast fare was available. In the center of the room was a display of mounds of breakfast rolls, fruit, and pastries, while on the perimeter of the room, hot dishes like eggs, boiled meats, and pancakes were offered alongside salads of many varieties, as well as smoked meats and cheeses. Oh, and if you needed bran flakes, they had those too.

The conference began in a general assembly of about 150 participants, and we felt a little under-dressed and under-age compared to the mature, accomplished educators and politicians in their sharp heels, blazers and skirts. A thin man with a kind face translated all the proceedings into Russian via headsets for those participants who preferred it to English. You probably don't want to hear about the keynotes speakers, or the small group discussion sessions, or the individual papers presented, so I will just say that many of them were fascinating. Some were not. After nine hours, I was exhausted.

Shannon and I debated getting a taxi and going into Bucharest for dinner, but after much deliberation, decided against it. She was tired and opted to rest. The day was cold but clear, so I took a walk. Our driver had mentioned the traffic in Bucharest, and in fact I had noted it was the only negative thing he said about the city. As I walked, I witnessed this drawback firsthand. The road was narrow and backed up beyond the horizon, and the air smelled of exhaust fumes. I'm sure as a direct result of this, the only businesses I passed were auto industry related. You could get your car painted, your tires changed, get a tune up or buy a new car on this strip.

I did not blend in. Even in Magdeburg I stick out a little, but here my coat was obviously too long, my shoes were for running—where were my little heeled boots and tight leather jacket, the passersby seemed to wonder. Feral dogs jogged along the street and sat at the bus stops as though they were citizens like everyone else. When the sun started going down I turned around and walked back to the hotel, having never really reached anything beyond the vehicle repair shops and deserted-looking alleys. No one tried to mug me.

When I returned to the RIN Grand, Shannon and I had dinner at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. (There are four restaurants in the hotel, but none of them are Romanian) I had fantastic hot sour soup and spring rolls, and ordered a drink I had never heard of, just for kicks. It was orange soda. Shannon ordered hot chocolate that turned out to be just that—chocolate that had been melted into a mug with sprinkles on top. We had no Romanian money so I payed with my card, but then realized it's not possible to tip a waiter using a card in Romania, so feeling a little foolish, I batted my eyelashes nicely at the young man serving us and asked if he could take euros. No problem.

Not yet recovered from a long day of traveling followed by another long day of sitting through seminars, we went to bed early after watching a little Animal Planet (I hadn't seen Animal Planet for 13 months). The next morning we repeated our routine, first attempting to look as professional as possible and then heading to the restaurant for a big breakfast before sitting through a morning of presentations. Both conference days we were provided with a lunch buffet and this meal actually did contain what I'm pretty sure were Romanian dishes, among other international foods. I think the pork broth soup, cabbage wrapped dumplings, chicken bits wrapped in sesame seeds, and some of the salads were traditional Romanian style. The also served spinach lasagna, stuffed peppers, Mediterranean vegetables, broiled salmon and rosemary potatoes. If there was any space left, you could also choose from several different types of layered cakes, each covered in shredded chocolate or topped with berry cream.

As these events tend to do, the conference seminars and speakers ran long and both days we finished later than the itinerary had scheduled. Perhaps it was partly a product of culture, since so many of the participants were very un-German in their regard for time. Again, by the end of the day, I felt like I'd been hit by a bus and dragged a few miles (or kilometers). And again we debated taking a taxi into Bucharest for dinner. But the prospect of changing our money, figuring out how to take a cab, then finding a restaurant and figuring out how to take a cab back was too daunting for our fatigued state. We should have been adventurous and tried, I know. Instead, we took a walk in the opposite direction from where I'd gone the previous day.

It was cold and icy rain drenched the city. As expected, countries still recovering from decades of communism and still dealing with poverty don't have a lot of money to spend on sidewalks. Darting around cars parked on the side of the road and trying to avoid being splashed with dirty water from the tires of the passing cars, we did our best to see the city. Where there was pavement, it was uneven and rainwater pooled everywhere. We waded through Bucharest. The feral dogs all wore patient expressions.

Despite our efforts we saw little of interest, mostly more auto shops, plus some warehouses, bike retailers, and abandoned buildings. The buildings were built in the communist style and seemed untouched since then; they looked gray, dirty and sad. The Romanian countryside is reportedly quite beautiful, with inhabitants living essentially as they did in the 19th century. But when we looked out toward the horizon, all we could see were more and more tall, gray rectangular buildings.

We also found a shopping center (this actually did not take any effort to find, we could see it from the window in our hotel room) and went in partially to escape the cold and partially out of curiosity. It was a mall, on a smaller scale than one would generally find in the U.S., but consisting of all the proper components. There were shoe stores, clothing stores, an electronics store, cell phone kiosks, and a food court. We looked again for Romanian food but found only an Italian restaurant, a burger place called “Spring Time” (why?) and a “Royal Chicken” that sold pizza (and I assume, chicken, though this was not pictured prominently and I cannot read Romanian) and had a big painting of a rooster in a crown.

There was also a supermarket where we decided to grab a quick snack in lieu of eating dinner, as we were both still full from partaking in the lunch buffet earlier. The supermarket seemed very American as well; everything from laundry detergent to fresh fish was available in one place. I recognized some brands from Germany, but the only ones I knew from America were the types of candy they sold, like Twix and Snickers. I'm sure Coke was there somewhere, but we were in a bit of a hurry by this time.

On this particular evening ISSA was throwing itself a big 10th anniversary party at the hotel, and we were expected to attend. So I settled on some crackers with powdered cheese and what turned out to be a very sticky-yet-crumbly granola bar. All of the check-out lines were long. I chose the shortest one, but it soon became clear that we were waiting for a price check on chicken breast and the stock-boy was taking his time finding it.

The man behind me asked me a question. Feeling like a complete idiot because I was unable even to say “no Romanian,” I just said, “I'm so sorry.”
The man smiled and said, “Ah, you wait here?” in English. “You can go where the sign is, for not so many things.” I realized he was directing me to the ten items or less lane, but the line there was even longer. I couldn't tell from the sign whether it was an option for me to go to the other lane, or a requirement.
“Do I have to go there?” I asked the man.
“It's your time,” he said amiably. I thought maybe he just wanted to be one spot closer to check-out, and pondered this for a moment, when another clerk came and opened the adjacent register. She beckoned the man and his family over to her, and he motioned me along too. I tried to get in line behind him, but he insisted I go first. His wife and son waved, I assume because they did not know any English. I thanked the man several times while the cashier proceeded to ignore us for a full minute and a half. When I had paid and was hurrying away, I turned and said, “have a good night!” “You're welcome!” he called back. Food is cheap in Romania, or at least it can be. I bought my snack for the evening as well as a snack for the plane the next day for under a euro.

I changed out of my wet clothes and tried to spruce myself up a bit, but had not been expecting anything fancy, least of all anything called a gala, and therefore did not have proper gala attire to change into. I simply threw on slacks and a sweater and nibbled a few cheese crackers before we went down to the party. I realized immediately that for some of these educators, policy-makers, and social workers, this was a big deal. There were flowy evening gowns, elaborately sequined shawls, and and spikey heels. I noticed a few other representatives remained in their blazers, and some had even dressed down and put on jeans, so I decided to forget that I might be under-dressed for the occasion.

I got a glass of red wine from the bar and we sat at a table where we were quickly overrun by a group of women from Kyrgyzstan who gave us a bar of chocolate in a pretty blue and gold wrapper. The DJ played music from many different countries, with an emphasis on eastern European ones, since we were, after all, in Romania. The representatives from the various countries were invited to teach us traditional dances, which a few did, but mostly the dance floor looked just as any American dance floor would look at such an event.

It wasn't really Shannon's type of party, so she went back to the room after about an hour, but I stayed and attempted to mingle, though with the loud music and thick accents, I spent a lot of time just looking approachable and watching the dancing. When I spoke with the other participants, I also always had to explain that despite the name-tag proclaiming “GERMANY,” I was actually from the U.S. I learned to dance an Irish reel with a Dutch woman as my partner and chatted with Americans from an ISSA office in Washington D.C. before finishing my wine and finally returning to the room and flopping into bed.

The morning sessions were not as well attended as the previous two days, which can be attributed either to many participants leaving early due to traveling long distances, or perhaps to many participants consuming alcohol at the gala the night before. In any case, we attended a symposium called “celebrating teachers” which was about how to raise the status of teachers so they would be respected by communities and parents as professionals, rather than constantly blamed for the systems' failures. It's true that while no one ever really says “you're doing it wrong,” teachers are constantly required to take classes, and do “professional development” projects, as though what they are already doing is lacking.

Afterward we checked out and attempted to leave for the airport, but encountered a snag. The company hired to do all the driving had scheduled our car to leave at 1:30, despite an estimated hour-long drive to the airport, when our flight was scheduled to leave at 3:15. This was not acceptable. Our ride from the airport had been so successful, with our incredibly knowledgeable and lingually talented driver, so it was distressing to discover half an hour before WE thought we needed to depart, that there was a problem. We argued, but were North American about it and it didn't get us anywhere. The concierge, when questioned about taxi fares, said the fee was 18 lei, the equivalent of about 4 euros.

Many of the photos I took in Bucharest were snapped from the backseat of a taxi as we blasted through the city. I'm fairly certain this driver made creative use of open areas that were not meant to be roads. By the time we reached the airport, both Shannon and I felt nauseous. We handed over our 18 lei, only to be informed that we had misheard and owed him 80 lei. Again we bickered but got nowhere, and we needed to check in for our flight, so we paid him what was actually 20 euros—not 4.

The rest of the journey home was uneventful, just as one hopes such journeys will be. We stopped over in Paris again, landed in Berlin and took the bus to the train station. On the bus, a very small child sitting across the aisle looked like I felt. He was trying to sit up in his seat, but was so tired his eyes were rolling back into his head and he was tipping over, only to jolt himself awake a moment later. Eventually he fell right off his seat and into my arms (I had quick reflexes since I'd already been watching him doze).

Back in Magdeburg it was a little warmer than when we left and I still had a Sunday to recover from the excitement of my trip. I can't use any of the cliché phrases like “home sweet home” or “home is where the heart is” to describe how I felt coming into my apartment that night, because I've realized my heart really is in the Northwest. But it was good to be back.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

I must admit that last year my birthday was pretty much a bust. I had been in a foreign country for three weeks, had no internet, no phone, and no one to celebrate with. It was lonely. This year, I had an entirely different experience.

I got the present Jared sent me a day early, along with a note instructing me to pick up another package at the post office. On the big day itself, I brought cookies that Shannon, Diana and I had baked and iced for the children. Remember in school, how you used to bring cupcakes for all the kids in your class on your birthday? That's how German birthday celebrations seem to work, so I made sure we had enough cookies for all 25 kids, plus all the staff, and also for my department at the zoo. I found the tables at the kindergarten all decked out with candles and a “happy birthday” sign, and one kid handed me a heart he had colored and cut out.
The kids gathered around the table and sang “happy birthday” and then my favorite German birthday song, and helped me blow out the candles on the table. There is a chant that translates roughly “she'll live the high life” after which, the birthday person is hoisted, still seated in the birthday chair, into the air three times. This is easy with children, but kindergarten teachers aren't known for being a burly bunch, so we joked that we would have to skip the hoisting part for me, but the four-year-old sitting next to me declared, “I'm strong enough!” so we faked it. One child asked me if I was ten now, or would I be ten next year, and then insisted I show her how old I was using my fingers.

Shannon and Diana gave me gummi bears (they know me well after a year together!) and a new webcam, probably to shut me up, since I'd been complaining about my malfunctioning one for weeks. In the afternoon I took more cookies to the keepers when it was our coffee break and set them out on a platter. I had not mentioned my birthday, so when the first keeper came in, he teased, “Wow, what's with all the cookies? Is it Christmas, or your birthday?” They enjoyed the cookies and one of them snuck out for a few minutes and returned with a stuffed rhino. It was very sweet and by this time, after the celebration at the school, plus some flowers and a gift certificate to the mall from some parents, I was pretty much elated.

On the way home, I stopped at the post office and collected my mystery parcel that contained a care-package from my sister and her husband. I am listening to the CD they sent as I write this blog, and I have already eaten at least 25% of the graham crackers they sent (did you know they don't have graham crackers in Germany? They don't really have milkshakes either, but those don't ship well). There were also emails wishing me a happy birthday in my inbox, which I read with the stuffed rhino by my side. A little later I went out for drinks with Diana and her roommates to a small pub where a guitarist played some live music. At the end of the night, he announced, “I'd like to wish a girl who is far from home a happy birthday. So, Suzanne, from America, I wish you the best!” I called back, “Thank you!” and he said, “Can I tell the crowd how old you are, or is it a secret?” I said, “I'm 29!” and he said, “I know, but is it a secret?!

Perhaps it is a little self-indulgent to revel in one's birthday as I did this year, but I really enjoyed the attention. Maybe since I didn't have much of a birthday last year, I was narcissistic enough for two years this time. Next year maybe I'll tone it down and not be like an excited six-year-old about my birthday. Of course, next year I'll be 30, so maybe I'll celebrate even more extravagantly. My next mission is to repay the people here who made this day special, and who have been so great to be around this past year. I am at a loss when I consider what I should give to my department at the zoo when I leave in December. They have been so kind and understanding and I would like to give something to the department that they can use or that would remind them of me. But what?

Aside from my birthday, we are hastily getting ready for our conference in Romania, and next week the kindergarteners start swimming lessons at the community pool. The days are passing in a bit of a blur, and I certainly can't complain of boredom. I have been clearing up my accounts and speaking broken German to the internet provider, my cell phone provider, and playing helpless foreigner at the bank.

The weather here has turned into what we Northwesterners know as “winter.” But forecasts for Bucharest predict sunny and 65 degrees.

You and a Friend Have Won an All-expenses-paid Trip to...Bucharest!

Sometimes in life you go a whole month where nothing of note occurs and then your boss announces she's sending you to Romania. Not forever; just for a few days, but read up on early language acquisition reseach and get packing because you're leaving in two weeks. Though the trip does sound interesting, I'm not sure how much of Bucharest I'll really be seeing, since I'll be spending much of my time in a conference about child development. But if the university is paying to send me to a foreign country where I don't even know what the currency is, who am I to argue?

But it's true that the days leading up to this particular announcement were not especially eventful. A new director of marketing joined the zoo team, a tall man from West Germany who wears thin-rimmed glasses. One day, when I knew him by sight but had not been formally introduced, he ambushed me by popping out from behind foliage while I was returning the bearded dragon to his enclosure after a presentation. (Apparently, the marketing director had been waiting for the gardener and an expensive tree donated by a patron, not just lurking in the bushes.)

"Suzanne!" he began; it was an odd way to begin because we had never met and therefore had never gone through the very German process of jointly deciding whether it was acceptable to use forenames. "I hear you are from the Seattle area." He explained that after studying marketing, he spent a year with a host family in Federal Way. "I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!" I practically shouted. "I'm from Burien!" "I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!" he practically shouted back. My German became broken and frantic as I excitedly urged him to tell me more about it. He knew the Seatac mall, he knew Gig Harbor, he knew the Point Defiance Zoo! It was home.

He spoke entirely in German, although Shannon told me his English was quite good and obviously at some point it had been good enough for him to live in the U.S. The only Germans I have found who are comfortable speaking to me in English are the linguists; all the others, no matter what their level of training, hesitate. There is one trainee who switched from studying English at the university to studying zookeeping (I would say that was odd, but then, so is switching from being a middle school teacher to a zookeeper.) and she is the only person at the zoo to speak readily with me.

But I discovered she is not the only one who actually speaks English. While I was talking about the possibility of going to a movie, I invited another trainee to come along, and warned, "this one's in English." He replied confidently, "Oh, my English is certainly good enough to watch movies. I got A's in English from 1st grade until 12th" I was surprised. He could watch a Tarantino film in English and yet never spoke a word beyond "Hi" in English to me? But it was true. Similarly, another trainee said to me one day, "That's enough" in English and when I praised him "Hey, good English!" he confessed he'd lived in Australia for ten months. No one except those in their twenties had so much English in school, but it seems the German mentality of avoiding mistakes at all costs prevents even those who studied for years from speaking.

In other news, Octoberfest is in full swing here (yeah, it starts in September; howevert no one has been able to explain why), but mostly it's a Bavarian festival, so up here in east central Germany, we don't sport drindels or lederhosen. We do erect occasional booths and tiny surprise stages around the city center, and I can't find any rhyme or reason to them. On Sunday I was taking a walk along the river when I stumbled upon a pretty sizable flea market and once while walking home from German class, my usual route was barricaded by what appeared to be a celebration of the region's different wineries. I can't say if these types of things are Octoberfest related, or just coincidental. Germans seem to be constantly celebrating something, which is a pretty cheerful way to go about things really.

As part of my preparations for leaving the country, I had to paint my balcony and one room in the apartment. When I signed the lease for the apartment, I was taking over for someone who had already painted it, but when I give it back (unless I sign it over to yet another person) I have to return it to the rental agency completely white. This would not have been an issue if the previous renter had not used vibrant mustard yellow and dark velvet brown paint. It would also have been an easier task for me if I had the proper equipment for such an endeavor. Or if I were smarter. That would have helped too.

I began by covering half the balcony with newspaper because I didn't have a dropcloth, or enough newspaper to cover the whole thing. I also didn't have a paint tray, which meant I had to dunk the roller into the paint bucket directly. I also only had a roller with a six inch handle to paint walls and a ceiling that are eight feet high. Eventually I was standing on a cabinet that happened to be the only piece of furniture I could move onto the balcony without assistance and that was tall enough for me to reach the ceiling, and I was using a contraption I had rigged by duct taping the short roller onto a long pole. Fortunately I didn't plummet four stories down onto the neighbors' hedges. (But if I had, at least I would have been able to get affordable medical care!) Don't paint your balcony in this manner. I industriously applied three coats of paint, all the while marveling at the audacity of the yellow and brown paint. How could they possibly still be showing through? Frustrated and exhausted, I began chatting with a friend online who helpfully pointed out that one should stir paint before using it. Damn.

The only other events of note are that I ate a fighting chicken's egg for breakfast one day, and an elephant painted me a picture.

Happy Anniversary

Today I am observing an important milestone: the completion of my first year abraod. As they say, time flies when you're trying to figure out how to survive in a foreign country. I'm sure that's how the saying goes. To celebrate our year of surviving in this rather cloudy but extremely efficient place, my colleagues and I are going to spend a (quite tame) night out on the town here in Magdeburg.

The end of summer also means the old ladies who sit at the cafe in the booth adjascent to me on Sundays are wearing sweaters instead of their loud, floral-patterned blouses. It means I get chilly very quickly reading in the park, and there are fewer motorcades boasting newly-weds driving through the center of the city. The tradition here, after the marriage ceremony, is for all of the wedding party and guests to pile into their cars and drive in a long, slow line down the main street, honking their horns incessantly. The first car, with the bride and groom, usually is marked with a large floral arrangement on the hood, and somehow I completely forgive the assault on my sense of hearing and think, "awww, they just got married!" But wedding season seems to be over.

The curator at the zoo was married last month, and Shannon and I will be throwing her a belated wedding shower to celebrate. We promised it would be American style because she and her groom spent their honeymoon in North America and, well, that's all we know how to do anyway. The Germans traditionally don't have as many pre-wedding parties as Americans, but Jared and I did run into a group of girls in Berlin who were participating in what is becoming a traditional German bachelorette party. We were standing on a sidewalk in Berlin when a girl wearing a shirt that exlaimed, "Germany's Next Top Wife!" stopped us. She started chattering in German and when I explained our German wasn't great, she switched obligingly to English. "In Germany, before you get married, you like to make a party! But young people have not so much money for a good party." A girl from the accomanying gaggle of friends butted in, "She's drunk!" The bride, who was also wearing her wedding veil in addition to the Top Wife shirt, held out a basket of miscellaneous items including Berlin souvenir buttons, tiny bottles of alcohol, and homemade cupcakes. "You choose somesing and pay what you like. Later, we use money to make our party!" I don't know how much money brides make doing this, but Jared bought me a stuffed bear and I hope their girls had a fun night out.

The curator at the zoo did not participate in such an activity before her wedding. When she returned from her honeymoon, she did say to Shannon and me, "I can't believe how big your vehicles and refrigerators are! And the parking lots! It's crazy! And why do you build houses you could push over with one hand?" Germans don't drive SUVs, have fridges that are 3/4 the size of American ones (even smaller usually), and they construct their buildings out of brick and concrete.

I have to admit though, I am a complete convert when it comes to European cars. I have always had an affinity for the sporty Mini Coopers, but now I have extended my tastes and very much enjoy the little round French cars and Skodas. Sorry, GM. I once saw a Ford billboard here in Germany with the slogan, "Yes we can!" (Obama's campaign slogan, of course) in bold letters. There are several models of Fords available in Europe that are nicer than those sold in America, although I am not a very good judge of vehicles. In fact, my extremely unscientific method of deciding whether I like a vehicle make/model is first to decide if the shape is appealing (or does it remind me of a rollerskate?). Second I examine the grill and headlight combination, thinking of the headlights as eyes and the grill as the mouth, and determine if the car has a pleasant or alert expression. American cars look dopey to me.

In August my German lanugage class took a "Ferien" or summer break, but now we're back in full swing, and I will be attending right up until December. The class is interesting; we have students from Vietnam, Ukraine, India, France and Syria. On the other hand, the class runs for at least two hours three nights a week and that does put a damper on one's social life. Even though my German was already apparently good enough to pass the final test, I find it useful to sit in class and have conversations and be reminded of things like using the proper adjective endings. (Anyone learning German knows what I mean--Dear God, WHY the adjective endings?! Yes, double punctuation at the end was necessary.)

I am still not convinced that my German is really that good. There are a lot of details that I need to wrap up before leaving the country, and I am finding my language skills lacking. Even when I moved from one apartment to another in the U.S., it was pretty annoying to try to tie up the loose ends, change all the important addresses, make sure the car tabs got sent to the right place, etc. Here, I have to do all those things, plus many others, in German. Sure, the classes help, but I doubt the next theme coming up in class will be, "How to pay the power company when you get your bill a month after you've left the country and closed your German account." Most of the time, if I bring these issues to my bosses or coworkers, I am brushed off with the remark, "Your German is good enough. Just call and ask."

But talking on the phone in a foreign language is so much more difficult than speaking in person. I had no idea how many body language cues I was using and receiving while talking to people until I tried to communicate over the phone. So far I haven't made any embarrassing mistakes like registered myself as a citizen of Dubai while talking to the foreigner's office, or accidentally cancelled my internet or anything. Yet. There's still plenty of time for errors. I did make an error while speaking to my boss about how our presentation for a conference was going. I meant to tell her that she will be so impressed, but what I actually said was, "You will be so printed out!" Whoops.

Other highlights for the previous couple of weeks include going to a Gothic museum where I learned that often the completion of Gothic buildings took more years to construct than the architechts actually had left to live. I also learned that the Magdeburg cathedral burned on Easter Sunday in 1203, and the citizens took it to be judgement from God for their sins, so everyone with a dime to spare donated it to the building of the new cathedral, which is how Magdeburg ended up with one of the most elaborate cathedrals in Europe.

In some unrelated, rather sad news, one of our camels had to be put to sleep because of a degenerative bone disorder. The other keepers, having worked with him more closely and for longer than I, were affected much more by his passing. I don't know if I have been desensitized from my time working at the rehab center (where many wild animals were euthanized due to incurable disease or injury), but the veterinarian invited me to watch the necropsy (animal version of an autopsy) and I accepted. I will not relay the macabre details, but I found it fascinating, and actually felt a little disturbed at how NOT disturbed I was about viewing the entrails and such. Perhaps this is something I should not confess in a blog.

And lastly, the newest development in my life is a faucet that drips loudly at least twice per second. Since I have neither the skill nor the tools to repair such a problem, I searched out the water shut-off valve, which happens to be located behind a panel above the bathroom sink (who knew?) and for the past two days have been turning off the water when I sleep or leave the apartment. Anyone know how to fix a leaky faucet? If you do, I will be so printed out!

Photo Feature

For those of you who aren't keen on using the Myspace photo feature, I have uploaded quite a few pictures of my adventures onto Picassa, and I think you can all view whatever I've posted if you go to http://picasaweb.google.com/suzanne.akerman I'll be adding more if you want to keep checking, but it probably won't be updated as frequently as my blogs (which, I realize, have not been all that frequent). Another quick blog should be coming up shortly. Thanks loyal blog fans!

I am more excited than you are

As I sat down to begin writing this quick blog, classical piano music drifted down to my apartment from the floor above. Previously, the only noises I have heard from my upstairs neighbors have been occasional bad pop music, Rock Band, and sometimes a distictive high pitched laugh. This is live piano music, played expertly. My question, which I know none of you can answer, is A)has there always been a piano up there and for 10 months no one chose to play it, despite being an accomplished musician, or B) did they get a piano up five flights of stairs today without me noticing? In any case, it's far superior to the time I was woken up at 1:30am to Backstreet Boys karaoke sung very poorly.

Since Jared left I have returned to my old routines of teaching and zookeeping and taking walks and reading in parks. The public library here has a strange collection of English books where you can read mostly only very popular contemporary authors like John Grisham and Tom Clancy, or very revered authors like Ernest Hemingway and Shakespeare. I have been burning through the collection fairly quickly, but I'm sure they have enough to keep me going for another four months. I have a small collection of books that I don't think I will be able to bring back to America with me and I am considering donating these to plump up the library's variety a little. Aunt Sittrea, just think, YOUR old copies of Love in the Time of Cholera and Cold Mountain might end up being checked out and read by hundreds of Germans practicing their English! So far, my German isn't good enough to read anything of note; the last book I read in German (it was a chapter book!) was a story which translates to Four Crazy Chickens. You can imagine the ridiculousness.

The most exciting thing that has happened to me in the past couple of weeks is probably incredibly boring to most of you. We have had a Eurasian buzzard (that's a hawk, not a vulture, for you non-zookeepers) in our care for a while with the intent of turning him into a presentation bird. He was found unable to fly in a nearby park and the veterinarian had to amputate the end of his left wing; however, the bird was so calm (calm is relative--he was relaxed for a wild-born bird of prey) that they decided to keep him.

Convincing a buzzard that has lived in the wild to stand on your hand is not an easy task. Even convincing a buzzard that has lived in the wild to tolerate a human presence in his enclosure is not an easy task. My exciting moments would look extremely boring if anyone recorded them. I spent a long time sitting still in the enclosure and inching toward the bird until he decided I was innocuous. Then I spent many hours wearing the thick leather glove while sitting next to the bird. The highlight reel of this would include footage of me moving my gloved left hand out and touching the bird's talons and then moving it back again.

Finally, last week I got the buzzard, who has been dubbed Merlin, to stand on my glove. It is difficult to describe how thrilled I was to my readership, because if you have never held a bird on your fist, I can't quite convey the way your heart thunders the first time you do it, and on the other hand, the rest of my readers handle birds every day and quite possibly have done so just minutes before reading this blog. The moment was tense for both the bird and me, since we had built a trust thus far--I never did anything unpredictable to Merlin and he never did anything unpredictable in return. If it is possible for a hawk to look puzzled, when I picked him up, this one did. After about five minutes where neither of us moved, a truck suddenly squealed its tires on the adjascent road, and both Merlin and I jumped out of our skins like children watching a scary movie.

We're still a long way from using Merlin in presentations, but actually lifting him off of the perch was a huge step and I felt the surge of adrenaline you get after accomplishing something big. Of course, there was no one there to share in it with me, and again, it was hard to explain to anyone else. "Shannon! Guess what? Today I got the bird to stand on my HAND! Isn't that amazing?" "But...you've held lots of birds before." "I KNOW, but this was the first time this bird has been on anyone's hand ever! Trust me, it's exciting!" It was.

Our shows this season are coming to a close, and since school has started again, our visitor numbers are dropping back donw. This also means that we've added some new children to the kindergarten. Since these children haven't had a year of English input from me like the others, they mostly have no idea what I'm saying. Ever. They stare at me blankly and sometimes respond with a loud, "WAS?!" which is German for "WHAT?!" But it reminds me that this is the point that all of the other children started at, and I am pleased with their progress. One child I have worked with from the beginning was accepted into a prestigious international school in Berlin after demonstrating English skills usually only seen in children two years older.

Perhaps I will attempt to do something interesting in the upcoming weeks to make for better blog fodder. Then you won't have to read about things like how I ate ice cream for dinner one day last week or how it rained while I was at a BBQ with the zookeeper trainees. I guess even life abroad can be mundane sometimes.

Scenes from Summer

I know I have once again been negligent in my blogging, and believe me, Blog-fans, I hear your pleas for more. The month of July began uneventfully, since no one celebrates American Independence Day here. I considered going to a bar up the street called "The Fan--American Sport Bar" (Yes, "sport" is singular in the title) to have a beer in honor of the 4th, but in the end I curled up on my loveseat and watched several episodes of The Office instead. The next week marked the start of 19 straight days of work, an unfortunate but unavoidable scheduling situation. Not all of the days were spent performing my usual tasks. One day I led a tour through the zoo for a children's birthday party. I conducted this in German, but was sure to explain to the 5-year-olds that English was my first language and it was okay to ask questions if they didn't understand me.


Another three days were consumed by a conference hosted by the University of Magdeburg. The zoo kindergarten is part of an EU-wide research project studying language acquisition, so representatives from Belgium, Sweden, England and many places in Germany gathered to compile data and discuss our results. I will take a moment to brag a little about our program at the zoo kindergarten here, because some of our children are speaking English at levels usually only reached by students who have been in immersion schools for three years. Their grammar is far from perfect, and many times they still respond to me in German when it's easier, but with the more advanced children, I no longer have to modify my speech or use any gestures to help them understand when I speak. They are capable of producing streams of sentences like, "Can we take our shoes out (off)? Sand is too much. Me too hot. Please?" Even the youngest children, who have just turned three, are producing English words occasionally (although I will admit there is one child whose most frequent English word is "NO!")



One of the German linguists, Anja, was heading to Yale the next week to give a lecture on bilingual kindergartens, but despite the fact that Americans use the term "kindergarten" the programs are very different in the two countries. Anja wanted to avoid confusion with this issue by learning as much as possible about American kindergarten in order to understand what her audience would be thinking when they heard the word in her lecture, so we had a long chat over dinner one evening. Fortunately for me, since Anja was a linguist, her English is perfect and I didn't have to try to explain anything in German.

At the end of my 19 days of work, I finally got my reward. On the 20th day I woke up early, packed a bag and took a train to Berlin to meet Jared at the airport, where I nervously paced around, peeking into the baggage claim room through the glass windows, trying to catch a glimpse of him to convince myself he was really there. Eventually I saw the top of his spikey brown hair and breathed a sigh of relief. He was really here!

We dropped off our bags at the hotel in Berlin and started ourcity round-about, leisurely attempting to hit the major sights without packing too much into a weekend. In the middle of our search for Checkpoint Charlie from Potsdammer Platz, we got caught in a torrential downpour of the clothes-drenching, hair-flattening, makeup-ruining variety. We ducked into a cafe to dry off, watch the storm and wait it out. When the rain eased a little we ventured to Alexander Platz and attempted to go to Legoland, but it was closed so we visited the giant German TV tower and the Sony Center, and drank a beer sitting in the middle of a square just because in Germany it's permitted. The sky opened up again as the sun was going down and we sloshed back toward the hotel, on the way discovering a tiny Indian restaurant run by an African woman nearly next door to our hotel. The food she prepared was made from scratch, right in front of us, and was so good we returned the next night as well.

The next day we started out with a glazed strawberry custard pastry for breakfast and then headed toward KaDeWe, the immense upscale department store (KaDeWe is an abbreviation, but I don't know for what). Though the day was relatively warm, we stepped inside the shopping center just in time to avoid another flash flood. We marveled at the prices of items for a bit in the clothing and toys departments and then visited the top floor, which was reserved entirely for gourmet foods from baked feta cheese and olive appetizers, to fruit tort desserts. Since we did not need anything and certainly could not have afforded it anyway, we continued our walking tour of Berlin when the rain let up again. We walk toward the Brandenburg gate, through the maze of the Jewish monument. This memorial is really sort of a maze of concrete that you can see over the top of and can't easily get lost in, but it is so extensive that you might get tired of walking toward the other side down the huge gray corridors.


The next day we checked out of the hotel and put our bags in a locker at the train station while we visited the Berlin Zoo, including Knut the famous polar bear. Before boarding the train back to Magdeburg we grabbed a quick bite at a stand called "Asia Box," selling what appeared to be yakisoba noodles. I have discovered that because traditional German food is not spicy, sometimes even the types of foods that would be heavily seasoned in the U.S. taste bland to me here, as was the case with Asia Box.

Back at work after my long weekend I had to muster my enthusiasm, since I knew Jared was sitting around the apartment or wandering Magdeburg, and I would rather be doing so with him than doing my job. But the acquisition of a new buzzard (type of hawk, not a vulture, as commonly thought) made it easier to be excited and I spent a lot of time acclimating the bird to its new surroundings. When I worked in the kindergarten in the afternoons (until now I have only been working mornings there, but for my job at the zoo we shuffled things a little and sometimes my days are flipped around now with zoo time in the AM and kid time in the PM.) Jared would come to the kindergarten to keep me company, because afternoons are mostly "free play" where the children choose activities and mostly romp around with me in the yard.

In August I finally got a whole week off to spend with Jared and to relax after a couple of hectic months. First we took a small train (we joked it was the "short train," like the slang "short bus"...) to the Harz mountains in central Germany. We chose a tiny town called Thale, pronounced Tah-lay, with a population of about 12,000 residents and a great view. Our hotel was more along the lines of what Americans would think of as a bed n' breakfast, with only nine total rooms for guests. However, the bottom floor boasted a full restaurant and bar and our spacious room was bright and welcoming, entirely decked out in light green, from the bed frames to the wardrobe.


The most notable attraction in Thale is called Hexentanzplatz, which translates to "the place where witches dance." It is a high peak with a plateau where you could imagine witches once danced, and there are statues of imps and ghouls decorating the mythical spot. We took a gondola ride to the top and thought about hiking all the way back down, but instead hiked to a lookout tower to enjoy the view. You don't have to spend your time in the wilderness at Hexentanzplatz though; there are also a couple of restaurants, souvenir stands, and even an open-air theater where the tales of the witches and goblins are reenacted.

After our hike we ate a sausage from a stand, bought some gummi candy from another and rode on a contraption like a bobsled that zips you through the forest. The weather was cloudy during our trip, but not cold, and we spent almost all of our time outside. If we weren't on a hike, we were reading on a secluded park bench, or relaxing in a beer garden. We ate some fantastic meals, like fillet of pork in creamy pepper sauce at a Greek restaurant where throughout your meal they brought a total of three complimentary shots of ouzo PER person, and also a strange meal where, as a garnish in my bowl of pea soup, I recieved an entire sausage.

Back in Magdeburg again, Jared and I spent our last few days together relaxing (I'm still not sure I'm recovered from my 19 straight days of work followed by running around town with my visitor). We checked out movies from the library where the entire collection consists of English-language movies dubbed in German anyway, so all we have to do is switch the language track. When I watch movies alone I attempt to watch in German, but since Jared had so far mostly only learned to count and say "Guten Tag," that didn't seem fair.

One day we rented bikes from a shop in the market square and rode up the beautiful Elbe river one day and back down the next. We spent an enormous amount of our time eating. We tried sushi (I had not yet tried it in Germany) and Chinese food, as well as Czech food and a lot of ice cream. I hope that most of this was offset by the fact that when we weren't eating, we were usually walking, either through one of Magdeburg's many gorgeous parks, or to one of the city's well-known sights, like its monastery, cathedral, or the medieval city wall.

Another task that was not so exciting or relaxing was preparting Sophie, my fuzzy companion, to return to the U.S. with Jared. I decided this would be best because of the mess involved with traveling during the holidays, which is when I will be coming back to the U.S. In addition to the inevitable flight delays and cancelations etc. of flying in December, there is also the problem of my apartment, which I need to give up the keys to several days in advance of my departure. It is not worrisome for me to sleep in a youth hostel for a couple of nights, but they don't take pets, and I felt it would be less stressful to send Sophie home earlier rather than board her or have her stay at Shannon's for a few days. Additionally, in the event that I made a mistake in the paperwork, at least I would still be in Germany to come pick her up if the airline rejected her, whereas if I were leaving the country for good and made a mistake, there would be no way to keep her with me. In any case, we took her to a handsome German vet with an insincere smile, who actually turned out to be extremely helpful.

Earlier today I took Jared and Sophie to the train station and sent them on their way to Berlin to catch their flight home. When the train pulled away from the platform and I walked the three sad blocks home. Not only was Jared gone, but Sophie too, making the apartment seem very empty. I keep expecting to see her jumping up on the bed or running in from catching bugs on the balcony. And of course I miss Jared too.