A bi-annual update!

So… the last time I wrote anything was in February. A lot has happened since then, and I will do my best to fill you in.

March
My mom visited us for Emma’s 2nd birthday! It was so nice to have a few days to spend with my mom, but I was very anxious about her flying (over Istanbul, no less) with a broken arm.

At the end of the month I started a crafting blog with my sisters, which has sadly not been updated since… August?

April
One of my friends had complications with her pregnancy and hired me to be a nanny/cleaner/extra set of hands until she was in the clear. I worked about 25 hours a week in the afternoons watching Emma and her daughter. It was fun, but made me very much appreciate that I don’t have twins! :D

Over Easter, my mother-in-law invited us to vacation with them in August! Thinking about the upcoming trip really saved my sanity over the summer.

At the end of April I had my first German interview for a job (that I didn’t get). If nothing else, it was a learning experience.

May
I started volunteering at the German American Institute library in Heidelberg. As if I didn’t already have enough to do.

Fabian got a random student job where he had to count people on busses. The company gathers statistics and works with different transportation regions to help them update routes and make service more efficient. Kind of cool, but he ended up having to work quite a few times overnight staying in random small cities at the French border. It was nice that he had the job, but it was unpredictable and left me with little free time.

June
Happy summer! Fabian was still working that job. The highlight was taking a daytrip to Wissembourg, France. We hadn’t been able to have a lot of time for each other, and it was nice to have an excuse to go somewhere together. :) Emma also learned that it was OK to play in fountains…

July
The good parts of July were defined by playing in the rain, a visit from a friend (Jacob), and my 27th birthday! Fabian spent a lot of time writing his thesis, working, and we were both pretty stressed.

August
At the beginning of August, I got a new temporary contract from one of the companies I’ve worked with three times before. It was beautiful timing.

Shortly after, one of my best friends (Stevie) came for a visit! It was a very fun visit, and my in-laws said that she was a “real American!” They especially loved her accent. :)  Stevie is one of those friends where you always pick up exactly where you left off, and it doesn’t matter how much time has passed since you’ve seen each other. It was so nice to have a visitor and not feel like I was changing my life to accommodate her - it was relaxing!

A week later, we went to Dolcedo, Italy (a beautiful town built in the  early Middle Ages) with Fabian’s family for a week, and it was an excellent trip to decompress. We were in the middle of the mountains without internet. I really needed to disconnect, it was very good for me. We took day trips to Nice, France, and Imperia, and Genoa, Italy. We went hiking! We celebrated our 3rd anniversary on vacation with his family for the second year in a row (and this year he didn’t get food poisoning!!) It was so much fun!

The drive to Italy was very easy, we just had the expected hour-long traffic jam leading up to the Gotthard Tunnel (it’s more than 10 miles/16.5 km long and is the third longest road tunnel in the world!), but the rest of the trip was uneventful.

On the way back however, the 8.5 hour trip took 14.5 hours. (Yes. you read that right.) First, we had traffic along the coast getting out of Italy. We later learned that Italians were starting their summer holidays, which meant that the roads were extremely full. Combine that with the torrential rain… it took a while. Then, we got stuck for more than an hour in Milan waiting to pay the toll. So, after waiting for that long, Fabian’s dad decided he wasn’t going to wait in traffic at the tunnel, so, we detoured over the Alps taking the San Bernardino Pass. The views were gorgeous, and were the only thing that made the detour worth it.

We ended up driving next to Lichtenstein, through a corner of Austria, and then around a corner of Lake Konstanz, up to Ulm, and finally back over to Karlsruhe to get to Heidelberg. We were constantly met with traffic and construction. It was SO long.

(Thank you for illustrating my point, Google Maps!)

Aside from the visit and the vacation, Fabian was still working on his thesis, and we were both applying for jobs all over the place. At the end of the month I found out that I got into an English-language study program, but I am not going to go  because it’s located in a dumb town far away from everything useful and the likelihood that Fabian would also get a job there is pretty much non existent. 

The only thing I regret was that the trip to Italy overlapped with when our friends were meeting up in Amsterdam for 5 days. I would have absolutely LOVED getting to visit with them.

September
September also went quickly. We kicked the month off by taking Emma to get her first haircut! It was very exciting, and she was wonderfully non-wiggly when the stylist had the scissors near her face! She looks so much more grown up now!

In the middle of September, the daughter of my mother-in-law’s friend invited me for an “interview” at the marketing/advertising agency she works at. The job was to edit websites based on the templates they provided. The “interview” was a test to see if I could do the job. I went in at 10:00a, and walked out at 4:00p with a job! :) It is on a freelance basis, and I am waiting to see if there is more work for me in October, but I really enjoy the job, and the fact that I have an excuse to go into the city wearing nice clothes!

September was also the month my sisters visited me! We had a wonderful sister trip, the cousins could play together. Emma kept singing a song saying that Kira (my niece) was her best friend. It was so sweet! After they left, I felt very sad that I live so far away and that the cousins don’t have the chance to know each other very well. I miss my sisters very much. :(

October
On October 2nd, Fabian had an interview with the chamber of commerce in Passau. We are anxiously waiting to hear whether or not he got the job (but it does look hopeful).

I am getting my passport renewed (name change, y’all!) and collecting documents to renew my visa, which expires on November 1. I am crossing my fingers that my passport comes back in time!!

Aside from that, Emma decided she was (finally) ready for potty training!! She had had a few accidents during the week, down to one accident on Thursday and then no accidents on Friday. She’s a big fan of helping with the whole process.

I will leave you with a silly story:

Emma really likes her privacy on the potty, which usually means the second the door is closed she says, "Peepee! Finished!" and I go back in. So last night she was peeing before bed, and I was waiting for her to say she was finished, it took a surprisingly long time, and when I opened the door she was mid-pour emptying her potty into the toilet. Of course I surprised her and she got pee all over her hands, which she promptly wiped on her pajamas... but, it was HILARIOUS! :) She looked so proud of herself!

She also fought a night diaper last night, so we said what the heck, let her go without one to see what happens. The most amazing thing happened, SHE STAYED DRY!!! Which was extra good since I spent half the night in her bed with her. But seriously. It's been a whopping 6 days since we started potty training. I feel like I have won the lottery!

 

Until next time…!

Growing up

We had a semi-productive Monday. We did things that were fun, like rearranging furniture, but not things that we needed to do...

First, we took an authentic 60s chair from Fabian’s grandma, and needed a better place for it until it gets reupholstered, and second, I said enough was enough, and the crib had to move! I wanted free access on my side of the bed again. The problem was, where to put Emma’s bed?! We live in a 2-room (1br) flat, and there isn’t a whole lot of extra space. Fortunately, we are in his grandma’s basement, which means free storage! So, things got shifted around, the desk in the bedroom (aka the dumping ground) got kicked out and into the basement. Next, it was goodbye crib, and hello big-girl bed. So we assembled the kid’s bed frame that one of our neighbors gifted us last year.

Emma was having so much fun watching and helping us. One of us left the basement door open when we were going back and forth, then all of a sudden I hear Emma sounding distressed from somewhere, and when I found her, she was stamping her feet at the top of the stairs (which lead to Fabian’s grandma’s kitchen), looking very upset about the fact that she couldn’t descend by herself. She was also covered in cobwebs from exploring--it was SO funny and cute! :)

So, naturally, the first thing she did was jump on her new bed.

Going to bed was the usual hassle, but she was relatively willing to sleep in “her” bed. Big win! She slept okay, but kept waking herself up coughing. Everything was fine until we were in bed, almost asleep, and hear a big thud. Emma had rolled out of bed! I got right up to see if she was fine, and she was just sitting there trying to get comfortable on the big polar bear pillow we’d laid out to catch such falls. She was still half asleep, and in the end I just took her back with me.

I didn’t realize JUST how much extra space the crib had afforded us! Emma spent a half an hour tossing and turning, kicking Fabian in the face, laying on my head, trying to get comfortable. She was so squirmy I was paranoid she would fall out of our bed, much higher and with nothing to soften the fall.

She didn’t fall out of bed. But, after I woke up this morning she was comfortable laying with her legs completely dangling over the side of the bed. When I tried moving her back into the bed, she wriggled back, but left one foot up… This morning I turned that mini crib so that the long side was against the bed, and I’m hoping that will help keep her off the floor tonight.

So, there you have it: Emma’s “room.” That chair on the left is the one from his grandma, which I am going to make marvelous!

First date

Three years ago today, Fabian and I had our first date. We met after Polish class at Centrum, walked to a copy shop, and printed out patterns to build paper robots. We went back to Fabian’s flat, cut out robots, listened to music, and had awkward conversation. Who would have guessed we’d end up here?! :)

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Emma is growing up in a big way!! She is able to express what she wants with words (in both languages) and by force (taking your hand and putting it on what she wants). She still babbles a lot, but her vocabulary has grown in a big way. She still sings a lot, too.

In the last week or so, she’s started calling Fabian and me by our names. “Er-ca!” “Fa-bi-an!” She gets the tone so perfectly, too. I hear my exasperated voice coming out of her mouth. Oops… One friend told me she’d heard that kids parody their parents. I can definitely see it.

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We haven’t been affected by the artic weather that has affected a lot of the US. Instead, we had one of the warmest Januarys on record! It only got below freezing on a handful of days (mostly overnight), and the rest of the time we had a pretty nice average of 40° F. A few days ago, it was full-on SPRING weather!! It was so sunny and was something like 50° F! Emma is definitely happy to be outside more often.

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Life in Erica-land has been bittersweet. I don’t know; generally speaking, I’ve just been feeling lost. I don’t know what I want, I don’t know where I want to be… it’s all making me depressed.

For the better part of the last three years, I haven’t had a clear picture of where my life is heading. First it was not having a real plan when I moved to Germany, then it was having a baby, after that it's been Fabian’s grad school. I’ve definitely wasted time, I’ve definitely not been as motivated to fully establish myself in Germany and/or fully commit to learning (more) German as I should be.

Even after being traumatized by the kindergarten job with the employer from hell, I’ve still been applying for jobs, but so far nothing has worked out. Next week I am going to inquire about the twice weekly job at the outdoorsy store down the block from Emma’s daycare. It’s run by foreigners, so maybe I have a chance!

I started volunteering as a translator (German > English) for Watching America. I get to pick a German-language article that somehow pertains to the US and translate it. I really just signed up so that I could practice reading in German, and something must be working because the translations are slowly becoming easier. I wish I was able to take German classes along with it, I think I would really be able to make some progress that way.

I also started “teaching” English this Thursday, which is hilarious. I have two students: I am meeting one on a weekly basis, and the other is a two-day intensive kind of thing the first week of March. Both of them need practice speaking and correcting pronunciation. My first lesson was fun, and the woman is very nice, but I am just making it up as I go along. Can any ESL teachers out there give me some tips? :)

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Back in the middle of January, Fabian’s great aunt died. She had throat and tongue cancer; it was very sad, but most people were relieved she wasn’t suffering and in massive pain anymore. She was such a sweet lady, but I only ever understood part of what she was telling me. The funeral was sad, and incredibly somber. In Germany they really go all the way with the black clothing. I wore a dark blue jacket (or my normal winter jacket) and felt out of place because my jacket was too cheerful.

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Fabian is in the final semester of his MA and has started working on his thesis. I’m excited that he’s almost done, and proud of him for having done so well in grad school! He’s started looking at jobs all over the place, too. We’re both all over the map and keeping it complicated. We’re both having mid-life crises and we’re only in our twenties.

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Until next time…!