Milestones

Happy December everyone!

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgivings in America. German Thanksgiving, spent with my "Fulbright Family" was a huge success, and I'd love to tell you all about it, but I feel like we all might be experiencing a post Thanksgiving food coma. Or is that just me?

Instead I'd like to talk about life milestones, which is really just a way to talk about Thanksgiving without really talking about it if we're going to be honest here. But really, of all the cool things I've done this year and of all the culturally significant experiences I've had, Thanksgiving was the most profoundly moving experience to date.

I used to fear that I would never be able to cook a turkey. Next to my irrational fear of fish and fire (if you don't believe me ask anyone who has ever accompanied me in an open body of water or seen me try and light a candle) this was one of the bigger fears in my life.

I'd sit in the kitchen on Thanksgiving admiring the smells and warmth, thankful for any little job that my mom would give me, and wonder to myself, "how does one learn how to do that?" I could not imagine ever having thanksgiving without my parents, and therefore feared that I would never NEED to cook a turkey on my own, and would therefore never learn how to do it.

When I'd bring this up to my Mom, or when I'd mention my fears that I'd never learn how to cook or be a mom, she'd always tell me "You'll figure it out, and for better or worse, you'll probably end up doing what I do".  Don't we all get a little bit more like our Mother's everyday?

The answer never seemed sufficient, and on top of that I still wondered about when I would be old enough to have Thanksgiving on my own. Are we ever old enough? Will I ever have my OWN thanksgiving and simply invite my parents? What about Christmas? I always saw people in the movies celebrating Christmas alone or with one other person. When do we become old enough to do that?

I guess I answered a few of these questions this thanksgiving as I celebrated with good friends and great food in Cologne Germany. And much to my surprise, I cooked EVERYTHING--stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and a TURKEY and gravy--just as my mother said I would: just like her.

I sat in the kitchen, admiring the warmth and the smells, and I couldn't help but think: wow. Life just happened. What joy!

I'd like to make some sarcastic quip about how I've become my mother, but I'm proud to have absorbed and inherited some of her strengths, and apparently her cooking skills, and I couldn't have asked for a better Thanksgiving.

So without further ado: The turkey...and the stuffing... and the friends... and for a bit of humor you can watch my vegetarian friend marie bravely and boldly clean the turkey. Stay tuned for more adventures abroad....

Turkey was 13ish pounds. Ceramic was...heavy. 

Marie gets major credit for the cranberry sauce. It was delic. 

Loving the process.

For these Mashed Potatoes I give full credit to my Nana

And thank you Ina Garten for the butter recipe

Proud and joyful.

The Spread.

The celebration.

And with that I wish you all a Happy December. 

Love always,

Mere

Happy Thanksgiving from Denmark/Germany!

In fear of sounding like a 13 year old self who is just SO excited that Robby asked her to dance!!!!!!!! I usually try to keep my use of exclamation points to a minimum. The events occurring in the last 10 days of my life, however, warrant the abundant to excessive use of exclamation points.

For the sake of this blog entry, let's pretend that . equals ! and ! equals !!!!!! If you actually see more than 4 exclamation points in a row it's probably best to picture the situation through the rapid heartbeat and big smile of a three year old who managed to eat a giant pixie stick before walking into a room filled entirely with presents waiting to be opened.

Now that that's settled: I LOVE JULEFROKOST (dansish thanksgiving)!!!!!!!!!!!!

What might be even cooler is that this Danish Thanksgiving (hence to be called by its true Danish name Julefrokost), though spectacular and fabulous, was just a highlight in the reel of my exclamation point filled week.

Other high points of my recent life include (but are not limited to):

·      German Karaoke where I astounded English challenged Germans with my ability to spit mad rap in the form of Nelly “Hot in herre” while my roommate added her, uh, dance moves in the background. Tequila helped.

·      WG party [translation: apartment gathering, casual, byob, but beer and pretzel sticks provided] where I met 2 new friends. The first, named Lisa-Marie Ploog, and I made dinner and went to Harry Potter with the rest of my group of friends on Tuesday. Yes, I said group of friends. I have one. It’s awesome. They’re all Germans, and I might not have all of their telephone numbers, but my piece of poop 20 euro pay-as-you-go phone doesn’t really work anyway.
          

·      The second person I met is a Norwegien who is in Flensburg from Sunday-Tuesday getting private German lessons. His dad imports cars from Germany to Norway, so upon finishing his lessons he drives a brand new, to be imported, Mercedes or BMW back to Norway. I DO have his number. Hitchhike to Norway in a brand new luxury car anyone?

·      In my school life, I gave lessons on “table manners and small talk” by baking the class a pumpkin pie from scratch and stuffing from scratch and having them try it. My students were not as willing to try new foods as I was to cook all these things for them and sadly, much of it went to waste. BUT I got practice in for real Thanksgiving which I will be celebrating in Köln, Germany with my American Fulbright friends. Can’t wait!

·      In other school news I also led a discussion on Kafka’s “Vor dem Gesetz” or in English,  “Before the Law” in a GERMAN class.  Auf Detusch, natürlich. I’ve now led 2 full classes in German and hope to lead more. I wonder if Fulbright can give me a raise for teaching in 2 languages? Maybe?

·      The last bit of cool stuff before I get to Julefrokost is mentioning that my apartment had a WG party ourselves on Friday. It was a great success, though the apartment smelled like smoke for a good 3 days afterwards and my boy roommate (Christoph), who is in most cases boring and just super German, invited his crazy, loud, how-the-heck-are these-people-in-any-way-connected-to-Christoph, friends. They were loud and obnoxious until 2am when they finally went to the Club, and then they were loud and obnoxious at 5:00am when they returned. It made for a rough start to my Julefrokost day, but I was only grumpy because I didn’t know what magic awaited…

So now: JULEFROKOST!!!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. And again, and again… I LOVE DANISH PEOPLE. I’m pretty sure I studied the wrong language, and God knew precisely what he was doing when he placed me in this random tiny town on the Danish border. While I know I can’t use the limited experiences I’ve had and the few real Danes I’ve met to make a judgment for an entire country, I’ve been pretty darn impressed with the general friendliness and willingness to have a good time by every Dane that I’ve met so far.

Julefrokost was a nice example of this. SO what is Julefrokost you ask? Or not? It’s a Danish Christmas lunch that celebrates the beginning of the advent season.  The sentiment is similar to Thanksgiving, but unlike thanksgiving, they can celebrate it every weekend of the advent season if they want to, and often do.

The meal is served in 4 courses with a main dish of “Aquavit” which is a nasty licorice tasting shot. Don’t worry, it gets tastier by the end of the night.

The first course is freshly baked bread and cold cuts. For the Danes “cold cuts” include roast beef (yummm) other unidentifiable meats (yum?) and pickled Herring (oh hell no). Unimpressed by my students lack of courage for trying new foods I had already vowed to try everything. I regretted that decision when I saw the grayish fish looking stuff on a plate before me, but with some Curry sauce it actually was quite tasty! Who knew!?

It should be established and understood that throughout these courses, anytime someone says something funny, or breaks into song, it is accompanied with a lifted shot glass, yelling “SKOL” and drinking what might as well have been gasoline. The shot glasses are then immediately refilled so as to be ready for the next time someone says something remotely worth laughing about. By the end of the night we were laughing a lot. It was a vicious, but very entertaining, cycle.

The nice thing about Julefrokost is that in between each course, the next part of the meal has to be cooked, so there is sufficient time for digestion and story telling. I got to know the 5 families who were also there very well and if I didn’t feel like family right when I walked in the door (but I did… ) I certainly felt like family by the end of dinner.

The second course was the “hot meal”. It included Wurst, Potatoes, and the second excuse-me-you-expect-me-to-EAT-that, cultural experience of the night: Green Cabbage. Green cabbaged is loved and cherished among northern Germans and Danes. It looks like overcooked, hard to chew, spinach and is served in heaping portions. Again, surprise surprise, it actually tasted pretty good. Touche Danes.

Continuing the pattern of rest, digest, and drink, we rested and laughed our way through several youtube videos before eating a dessert of tapioca pudding, and the final course of cheese and crackers and coffee.

All in all the feast lasted from 5:00pm to 3:00am.

With that I wish you HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Celebrate like and American, drink and laugh like the Danes, and know that I am thinking of you while I’m here in Germany.

Love always,

Mere

Becoming a German

My new fulbright friend Emily Johnston said it best when she said "[being a fulbright] is so roller-coastary. Somedays I'm like 'whoa! I can't believe I'm here!' and other days I want to punch myself in the face"

Wise words of a scholar... for sure.

A prime example of this would be the difference in my blog entry from yesterday and my blog entry from today. Now, you didn't get to see my blog entry from yesterday as my computer accidentally gobbled it up somehow before it was published, but as things tend to be, it was a blessing in disguise. It would have been a shame to let you read what I thought was a 'culturally enlightened' entry, when really, I knew nothing about Germany compared to my perspectives after today's culturally enlightening events.

I guess I'll begin with my hypothesis of adaptation in a foreign country. While it is only my third time spending significant time abroad,  I consider that enough to create a best fit line, so I'm going with it.

This is how it typically goes: The first 2 weeks are full of shock and awe. Most of your observations start with "WOW!" or "Hmmm interesting..." but that is about as far as your observations go. A combination of jet lag, newness, being generally lost, and grateful for any type of help you get leaves you unable to go any deeper than that.

After these first 2-ish weeks of shock and awe wear off, mere observations and survival instinct turn into comparisons and frustration.  The newness of riding the bus, and the joy of simply finding your destination wear off and you start thinking to yourself... "hmm... busses? Well AMERICA (spoken in snooty comparative internal voice) has cars, and VIENNA has subways". Subsequently you become frustrated that you arrived at your destination late because not only has the joy of simply arriving and surviving worn off, you have yet to actually master the timetables. You have only been here for a few weeks.

Somewhere between this point and about 3 months you turn a corner you didn't even know existed and suddenly things that were worth noticing before (for example: wow these milk cartons are small... or, hmm I guess germans DON'T j-walk...wait, I have to recycle that?) simply are. It's like taking a super-highway exit that has tons of signs and curves and you have only a slight hope of where you are or where you are going and pay extremely close attention to ALL the signs until you look around and realize you've made it to the correct highway and are going in the right direction. When you finally arrive on this highway it feels really good. You can finally relax and enjoy the ride.

That's where I thought I was yesterday: here and enjoying the ride. That is, until today when I got too comfortable and merged without looking and almost crashed (I'm going to stop talking in this highway metaphor now).

My day began with my first period class. They had a small vocabulary test for which about 1/3 of the class prepared. I quickly found out, that's about all the kids that needed to prepare in order for the class to pass.

 I'd heard about the prevalence of cheating before, but I had never seen it in action. As the main teacher read out the words aloud I was SHOCKED and sickened by how many people were quite inconspicuously looking off their neighbors papers. I mentioned something quietly to my advisor/the teacher giving the test and he LAUGHED, stopped the test, and had me explain how cheating just doesn't happen in the US, to which the students responded by laughing, and nobody stopped cheating.

 I guess it does happen in some places in the states, and probably a lot more often than I think, but having graduated from 2 schools where honor codes rule and where cheating is quite possibly the worst offense you could commit as a human or student, my view of the cheating world is quite niäve. When I told my roommates about what happened they ALSO laughed and then proceeded to tell me some of the coolest cheating tactics they knew. Not the sympathetic response I was looking for, and it took all my strength not to plug my ears and run away screaming "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU".

So that was life lesson number 1 of the day, which was quickly followed by German lessons number 1,2,3, and 4.

For the sake of general information giving, I'd say the stereotype of germans being "ordentlich" or, needing to have everything in the right place and the right time and you follow rules simply because they exist, is pretty darn accurate for anyone above the age of 40 and/or people acting like they're that old. Young people tend to be rebellious punks (probably in response to this strict rule following forced upon them by the older generation) but they'll probably turn into superstitious, über-cautious rule followers when they turn 40 too.

Germans are also extremely environmentally cautious, doing things like washing the dishes in yucky dirty water that hasn't been drained instead of keeping the water running, and unplugging the microwave so we don't waste electricity when we're not using it (except for the fact that I want a CLOCK in my kitchen, thank you very much...) and having several small trash cans for all of our recyclables. And let me tell you, dear Americans, everything is recyclable. woof.

It should have come as no surprise to me that I got yelled at big time for forgetting to turn the water off after I did the laundry last night. Germans don't have dryers (they're obviously environmentally unfriendly) so their washing machines go for a SUPER long time and do their best to wring out your clothes of all excess water by the end of their 2+hour cycle. Not only does it leave your clothes still wet and very wrinkled, it makes the washing machine obnoxiously loud.

I put the laundry in a 9:00pm. I thought it was a little late, but I was out of socks, so whatever... warm feet? Bending the not-established-but-probably-existant- rules? ... warm feet win. Somehow, before 11:15 when the laundry should have been done, I fell asleep. I had to get up at 5:15 to get ready for school, so I was able to sneak away without getting caught hopefully for forgetting to turn the water off and unplugging the machine after washing... or so I thought.

I also had to hang all of my clothes to dry really quickly because I had to run out the door to class, and in the fog of being late, and it being too early to be awake, I left my space heater on. I was also OK with that a little bit, because my room has no real window and no heater in it, so when I got back from school 2 hours later it would hopefully be warm and a bit less damp than if I had just let my wet clothes sit. BUT My über-german roomate christoph was not a little bit ok with it.

He was waiting for me when I got home from class with a list of things I had done wrong: You have to unplug the washing machine when you're done, you can't do the laundry after 10:00PM, you can't leave the space heater on because it could melt something AND it uses a lot of energy (sin of sins). Also, since you were out of town this weekend, he told me, you forgot to wash the steps.

I looked at him at this point with an apologetic (for the inherent environmental unfriendliness of my past 14 hours), but clueless look. Wash the steps?

Yes, once a week each tenant has to sweep and mop all the steps in the apartment building and shake out the mats. Knowing better than to question silly rules and/or "ordentlich-ness" I grabbed the mop, grit my teeth, and cleaned the stupid steps.

I'll leave the cultural enlightenment to that story. So now you know, if you ever come to germany, FOLLOW THE RULES. And hug a tree.

And that's my roller coaster. I went from thinking "wow I'm here!" to wanting to punch myself in the face (only a slight exaggeration)  in a few short hours. Welcome to Fulbright! I'll let you know when I officially become a german and these things don't happen to me anymore.

love always,
mere

Cozy November and my new life

I am sitting here in the warmth of my apartment (thanks to my most necessary space heater) looking out at the seagull sitting on my neighbors chimney and the colorful leaves falling against the rainy, dark sky. It's 3:25, so I have about 35 minutes to enjoy this scene before darkness rolls in, and I can't help but thinking, "Wow, how did I get so lucky?" and "hmmm... rain again. Do I really want to leave this space heater and walk through that slop to go to the gym?"

This blog is the answer to that question.

Since my parents visit, my life has truly begun. I have joined a gym, started taking classes at the University and have almost officially taken over an upper level english class so I am no longer the "assistant"; rather, the teacher. My roomate Wiebke and I have become good friends and I FINALLY have a routine in my life, which is better than birthday cake and christmas and chocolate chip cookies combined. (Not better than Thanksgiving though...)

In the short and sweet: Life is good, because life is settled. Now that I have a settled enough life to comment on, I will tell you all about it. Then we can start with the "research" blog posts. (I hope you all are hungry for some cultural knowledge!)

Of the "I'm officially settled" things I've checked off my list, joining the gym has been the most life changing. If the extreme increase of endorphin dosage in my daily life wasn't enough justification to join, then the massage room that comes with my gym membership certainly was. Yes, you read it correctly: In addition to unlimited classes like "boxing aerobics" and "Bauch Beine Po (stomach, legs, butt), THERE IS A MASSAGE ROOM THAT COMES WITH MY GYM MEMBERSHIP.  I'm waiting for Jesus and St. Peter to make their grand arrival to tell me that this is all a joke and welcome me to heaven, but so far they haven't showed up.

That is not the only cool part of my new life; nerdily enough, taking classes at the University has been really nice too. I'm in 2 big lectures which are nice because I can blend into the background and/or talk to my new friends who also go to these lectures, and 2 small psychology seminar classes. One is called "teaching and learning from a psychological perspective"... which fits pretty nicely into my interests of psychology and temporary profession of teaching.. and the other is called "The Psychology of the Media and Social learning processes" Which fits nicely into my interests in Psychology and advertising. WUNDERBAR!

The other coolest part about that? It only cost 50 euro for me to be a student at this school. It cost me more to go to the gym than it does for me to take unlimited classes and learn for the rest of my life. OH, and did I mention that that 50 euro covers the cost of my bus travel for the rest of the semester? Score.

And the last cool thing about my settled life is my new role as official teacher of the "11th grade" english class. I'm pretty sure it's not allowed that i have the class by myself, but I'm not complaining. I feel lucky to have some purpose in my life and glad to know that the teachers think I can handle it after only a month of observation. My first official class all on my own was the day before break (3 weeks ago) and we discussed the topic of "home" as seen through the eyes of foreigners. It's an interesting thing to ponder, and a question I never really had to deal with until I came here.

The question is this: how do you describe your home to someone who has never been there? What are the important details for them and what are the important details for YOU?  Can I call that what I've experienced in my life "typical american?" I get asked all the time "what is the typical american way of blah blah... what was your high school experience? Is that typical?" Well actually, what IS typical? I lived a life of privilege, and I'm pretty sure that by the numbers I am far from "typical".

So I turned the question on them (my students). Having introduced them to the vocabulary of "stereotypes and national identity" a few days before this first-on-my-own lesson, I asked them to think of what stereotypes of Germany in general were. I showed them a funny video of what American thought of germans (nazi's in lederhosen with full frothy beers singing on tables with pretzels and bratwurst). They laughed and said "that's southern germany!" Their northern experience is so different. They think typically german is sailing and fishing and surfing... but that IS what is typical for them. I asked them, "what do you think is typical Germany?" Can you answer that? What is "home" and when a foreigner asks about Germany, what would you tell them? It's a tough question...

I then showed them a map of the US and a map of germany. I put the map of germany ON the united states and showed them how Germany only covers the states of North Dakota and South Dakota, and followed that with "If it is hard for you to describe with is typical GERMANY and the differences in North and South are that big, how do you think you could describe typical 'America?'


I'll admit, I was proud to have my first "teacher" moment and it felt good to see the perspective change in the eyes of a few students. Some of them really are just straight up punks and could care less, but the ones that got it... man, that was a cool moment.

This week we are talking about stereotypes in a bunch of big American cities... it has been fun, especially with this new perspective of each-place-is-uniqe. I think I like being a teacher, but I think I'd like a lot of things.

That's it for now. In talking about the massage room I've managed to convince myself that going to the gym is definitely doable...

Til next time,
Mere