The best bus ride ever!

So today started off nicely. Tara slept until 6, yeah, and we had our early breakfast, we sang some songs, danced and colored, then had second breakfast. I was told that there was some sort of flea market in town on Saturdays, so I went looking for it. Alas it managed to elude us, maybe we'll find it next week. I had to do a bit of grocery shopping, since nothing is opened on Sundays. We got back to the bus stop and it was a 25 min. wait. The longest we've ever had to wait, and usually Sat. buses are quite regular. So I went in to buy some coffee, which Tara kept saying was "mine", and I had to remind her that only mommy and daddy drink coffee. That touched off the 'daddy'???daddy...daddy, daddy!!daddy??? comments. So when the bus pulled up, the driver got out and I told her to go get on the bus while I finished my coffee (I'll stop you right there, no the bus did not drive off without me). She was playing around in the front seat and then went and was looking and drumming on the drivers area. So the driver looks at me and I think that I should run and get her, but he holds up his hands like he is asking if he can pick her up. I motion that that would be fine. He places her at the helm and she starts driving and pretending to beep the horn, she is good at these sound effects, beep-beep, she repeats over and over. So I put my cup in the trash and notice it is time for us to go. That is where the 'best bus ride ever' ends and the tantrum begins, she has no idea why she cannot really drive the bus, she was not ready to reliquish her post :) I finally get her looking for trucks, her favorite thing right now, and this makes her settle down. That was our fun for the day, she fell asleep as we were walking up the hill and took a 2hr nap like the good little girl she is.
I decided that it was time to make another batch of mac and cheese, this time with broccoli, hence the second picture. This is what to give your child when you are busy cooking! I was cooking upstairs, so I had to get all the ingredients in a bag. Tara took one look at the flour and said 'eat this?'. I told her no, flour is for baking with, not eating, you may have a banana or yogurt. She did not like my alternatives (small tantrum inserted here), so I decided that she could have the flour. I asked her how it tasted and she took a second lick. So apparently flour is not all that bad to eat plain. The third pic is Tara 'cleaning up'. We had a great time putting our foot prints into flour and making rainbows...
Now it is 9:30P and I'm enjoying a beer. I feel like I should start another book so that I could say that I read four books in my first month in Jena. We'll see if that happens :)

First Full day without Nate

Our day went well, I was hedgeing (sp?) between going to the library or pool. The pool won out. I wanted Tara to get really tired and sleep two hrs. Of course this did not end up happening, she slept for 1.5, and woke just as I was falling asleep. It is quite hard to have lunch and realize that you've been awake and playing for 7 or 8 hrs. We had a great time at the pool. I took her into the deep water, had her hold me around the neck and I floated around on my back, she giggled a lot.
I was noticing the insects here, as I am want to do in any place that I am. The first week we sat outside eating and millions of aphids were swarming. There were atleast three different spp. Green, Black and yellow bodied with different wind colorations. THey looked like nats at first, but once I looked closely at Tara's hair, which had collected at least 20, they were aphids. I love aphids they are by far the cutest insect out there. I always imagine the sound of their cute little legs, deedly-deet, deedly-deet :)
The flies up at our apartment are quite interesting too, most seem to have the coloration of yellowjackets, I wonder what the drive is behind that?

I endevored to bake tonight. I tried to make tortillas and they were by far the worst I have ever made. Germany only sells baking powder together with baking soda, so I had to start off with an ingredient that was for sure going to affect taste, but then I kneeded a bit too long and the only rolling pin instrument I could find was a juice glass. So, I ate a couple and maybe I'll rip them up and throw them in a soup or something. Also there was no cast iron, or grill, so I had to put them in an aluminium pan.
Lets see, all in all it was a great day. I skyped with Carrie and my mom on thurs and have chatted with lots of people yesterday and today. I have also just gotten in touch with almost everyone from Waldorf. A person from my class posted our 6th grade picture on facebook, and it got all of us talking and friending each other :) Very exciting! Tanja is in Germany and we will most definately get together this year.
I'm thinking of starting another book, but now it looks like the Mommy Mafia is going to try another book club, so maybe I'll wait to see what they are going to read and read it too.
Goodnight :)

Jul21-29, 2010

So, we've been in Germany for just over three weeks and I've finished three books Sorry Taylor, the kindle has been a blessing. Everyone said we'd be able to buy books in English at the main train station in each town, but Jena's train station is only lg. enough to have a coffe/juice place. Nate does not share his Kindle, but the company is nice enough to offer to let you put the books you've bought for a kindle onto your computer. So I read on my wee-one. I've now named my little computer! Yeah!
Well we've been busy as I hope you can tell from our pictures in picasa. Two weekends ago we visited Weimar. It seems to be the place where Germans go for vacation. One woman we met at the train station said that everyone goes there b/c of Goethe and Lotte, his love. There is a concentration camp just out of town, one of the only in Germany proper. It is called Buchenwald, wald means forest. And it was just that, a beautiful forested area. We were surprised that the area did not seem to have a heaviness to it, somber sure, but it seems that nature has reclaimed the area and hopefully now it can be a place of peace. Tara was good enough to sleep through the whole visit, not that she would have understood, but she is a loud child. There were about 20 headstones in a room in the crematorium, that was the only thing I did not understand. Did just a few family members get to place headstones there?

Back to Weimar for dinner in the shakespere district, where Tara ate spagetti and we ate more pig. Germans rely on pork as their mainstay. It is hard to get used to. I feel like if I did not have to eat another salty thing in my life I'd be just fine, but the Pils washes it down nicely. We came back to Jena and enjoyed another week. I got the nerve up to walk to the library, where there were four doors and not very many people around, so I could not figure out how to get in, so went to the park instead :) (Nate took us to the library today, so now we know where to go and also have our application for a library card to fill out :) )
Oh, if there are typo's sorry, everything is highlighted red b/c the computer thinks I should be typing in German, which I cannot come close to doing yet, hehehe
The day after the library, I got the nerve up to try the swimming pool. I managed to find the bus route, with a little help from Nate, get off the bus, find the door, hand a woman some money, who then let us in and gave us a token and told us to do something with the kindercart (stroller). She mimed a locker and somehow I figured out that the token was for the locker, but I still don't know what she said about the stroller, so it got carried up and down stairs with us :( We stayed for over two hrs and had a great time. Now I have two things to do with Tara while Nate is off in Colorado, the pool and the library! Yeah
So last weekend Nate left work a bit early and we headed for Nuremburg, 2hrs by highspeed train, the ICE.
Nuremburg is also a lovely town. Aparently it was basically leveled in WWII, but they built everything back up with their (mostly) original stones. So there are many cathedrals, castles and museums from the 14, 15...20 centuries. We stayed mostly in the old town, and one of our dinners was in a brewary built god knows how long ago.
Sunday morning we took Tara to the Tiergarten, the Zoo, she seemed to have a great time. All birds were called ducks and she told us that they all say quack, quack. The tiger was, kitty-meow, and she even got her nerve up to touch a goat. They had an extensive petting zoo for the little ones! As we were walking through the center of the zoo, we passed a biergarten, who would have thought, beer and the zoo!
My only complaint this week has been the smoking. EVERYONE smokes, especially if you are pushing a kindercart, it seems to be mandatory :( Have they not heard how bad it is for you? Well now that I don't have a book to read and Nate is out of town I'll probablly keep up with this a bit better and not feel like I have to write a book each time :)
We send lots of love from Europe! Who wants to come visit? When Nate returns we'll be moving into our 'real' house. It is a three bedroom apt!! Who know there were such large apt. in Germany! Yeah, a guest bedroom awaits!

movie

I've been meaning to try to get a few videos up, so here goes

Reading

Hi all, We've had an uneventful last few days :)
I've not been writing because I've been reading. Nate gave me 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' and I did not put that or the second in the series down. Tara needed to learn to play by herself anyway :) We'll I've been staying up late every night reading and napping or reading during Tara's naps, so in my mind, I've had a great last few days!
Trash fiction is a habit for me. I should not read it. I've spent the last 18 months trying everything I could to get Tara to sleep through the night and now that she is, I'm staying up till 2 reading and still only sleeping 4 hrs. There is one more book in the series, so I'll try to put off starting that until I've had at least one good nights sleep.
I'm quite jealous of my mommy friends today, they're having playgroup and hanging out in what sounds like the best place we've ever been invited to! Aside from all of our oh so fabulous houses, that is :)
Today we started an art project, well maybe a save the birds project. We live on the fourth or fifth floor up and most of our wall is a window. Most of our windows have heavy duty venetian blinds outside the the window. One door does not. This is where the little songbirds like to commit suicide. Many places I've been has put up black paper silhouette (sp?) of birds to keep them from dive bombing open glass walkways and the such. I cut out six birds and put tape on them while Tara chose to place them all over the door. As you can see from the picture, Tara was not done when the birds were up, so she decided to put up the extra paper scraps too.

Riding a vierrhad (four cycle)

Today I took Tara out for a ride today, we had a lot of fun with her trying to get around, Nate taught her the three point turn and she was perfecting her skills today. She ate her first sandwich a few days ago, this makes lunch a whole lot easier! I found a shop that sells cheddar cheese, this was my excitement for the day :) We decided to take a walk at 5 after work, Tara rode her bike down a considerable hill, she seemed to hesitate only slightly when Nate was not close enough, I hope she has her moms love for a daredevil descent.
Shopping is getting easier, we still don't get out of the way quickly enough. They set it up so that there is no room to pack your groceries at the end of the turnstyle. I think they set it up this way because most people buy one or two things(there are no baggers), but we have not figured out how to first pay, then get Tara out of the way, then get the groceries into the bag and onto the stroller. Today the lady just kept pushing our things past her and three things ended up on the floor, maybe we were doing something inappropriate and she was trying to let us know that we were being rood for holding up the next person in line, hmmm, I see no alternative plan. I simply need to buy more than three things at a time :)
But our walk was wonderful. There are large farm houses that look like from early 19th century, still with stone walls and mortar, standing right in the midst of modern apartments. This area really must have been protected somehow from the two wars.
Another thing that is hard to get used to is 'fresh fruit'. Since the fruit I have eaten all my life was picked while still green and ripened later, I'm used to harder fruit with no obvious marks. Fruit here is soft and has lots of bruises and knots. It is like eating fruit from your grandmothers backyard. It tastes great, but having brown spots is something that I'm just going to have to get over. I'll try to start with letting Tara eat them. If it does not kill her, then I think I'll be okay :) Also it means that fruit is only good for a couple of days, so more trips to the store for us. Which is also good since it gets us out of the house.

Oh yeah, have I not mentioned the weather? Well before I left, as some of you know, I was lammenting the fact that we'd be freezing our asses off with max temps of 70F. How wrong I was, people are saying that this is unusually hot, but thank god I decided to pack a few 'summer' outfits for Tara and I for while we'd be in Berlin! It has been over 90 every day. Tara has three short sleeved shirts, two pairs of shorts and two lighter dresses. Needless to say, I'm doing lots of laundry. I was thinking of suffering through, but I think I'll be going shopping for a few more clothes tomorrow :) So much for the cold, well, we'll just have to see what it gets down to in the winter (at least I'm prepared for that :) )
So whoever reads this, comment, I'm getting lonely out here.

Playtime

So for the last few days we've just done mundane things, shopping, eating out and playing at the park. I saw a park on our bus ride into the town center and so today we got off the bus and played. We met a woman with two children who spoke five words of english, but we had fun exchanging toys on the playground.

Blogs seem weird to me, like you might feel like you are snooping into another persons life, but for me writing it, I think about all the people I'd like to be talking to and write stuff that I wish I had an ear to hear.
I'm sitting looking out of the windows and just loving our view, I posted two new pics of our view from our apt. on the picasa site. One whole wall in each room is floor to ceiling windows, it is just breathtaking!
Tara got her first bike yesterday, I'm sure you'll be seeing lots of pics and videos. I'll be adding lots of videos here so that our family can see Tara in action.
I mainly got on today to download these, so I'll sign off. I've started reading "The girl with the dragon tattoo" and now I can't put it down.

Saturday-3rd Place

I'm writing after watching Germany win 3rd place in the world cup, so excuse the typo's :)
Over the last few days I've been surprised at how many words we use that are german: supermarket, kalt = cold, klinik = clinic, fur = for, kindergarden, there were more, but I cannot remember them now, climate sounds like climate, however I don't know how they spell it. Chemie is chemistry and biologie is biology. Most science words are the same, but lots of nous and verbs are the same as well. There is only one that confuses my brain; that is schnell or quickly (hurry), it sounds like snail to me so I always think it should mean slowly.
I'll move on.
We went to the Botanical gardens today, garten botanic. I had wanted to see what the names were to the native plants, but I was deterred by the hot weather (wetter). We started off in the greenhouses hosting rainforest plants and from there we were too hot to take much else in. Tara was sleeping in her stoller (kindercart), as it was nap time, 12:30, and we were trying to enjoy lavender, and asteraceae families. We decided on returning when it is kalt and enjoying the greenhouse sauna. I wonder if they call it a sauna?
My other biology excitement today was watching a group of birds on the rooftop, all the rooftops here have 'gardens' or native species habitats on them. I was admiring this tundra looking expanse, when I happened to see five or six birds that seemed to be working together to flush out insects. The birds were too far away to see what species they were, my thoughts drifted to dolphins hearding a school (schule) of fish. I watched until Tara took my focus elsewhere.
On the family: we skyped with Pam and Dale and with Corinne, Jante and Ethan; it was nice to talk to family and 'show' them around our new apartment.
If anyone has any knowledge of the flora or fauna of the area, please let me know. I've googled it, but have not found a great site.
Tomorrow we are thinking of going to the next closest town, Weimar, it is known for being the center of philosophy in Germany!

Oh, my last comment: we got lost today looking for the botanical gardens, and this was due to the fact that all the maps we have been given are somehow printed with North not being up. This is confusing to Americans, anyone reading this think this is a normal way to print a map?

First chance to sit down

Hi all,
Here are my words, the pic's are on picasaweb.google.com/nbrunsell
But if it is easier here than on picasa, I'll add the videos here.

We've successfully managed the move to Germany and I am only feeling like I'd really have liked to bring the backpack for Tara. So we packed pretty well.
We flew into Berlin and stayed for a few days, which was hectic but fun. Tara slept about four hours on the plane and we managed to keep her up until 10:30A, berlin time, so her first day was really quite good. Her napping schedule got off a bit, and we were always out during nap time, so once we arrived in Jena I had to sleep next to her for a few days to get her used to laying down.
Well, we saw many great things, but what I took away from Berlin was the feeling of how old Europe is, it is quite different to have such a long history compared to the US. Walking around a city is a great way to get to know a culture, so we walked and tried to keep Tara from a:getting in the way, b:getting run over by a bike, c:being too loud in restaurants :)
Our train trip to Jena was fun, we got to watch the countryside for an hour while Tara slept, (I forgot to ask Erika if it was socially acceptable to nurse an 18 mos. old in public, too late now). We managed to get on the train, but did not get a seat, so we stood, and sat on the floor for a while, which turned out to be nice since we got to stare out the door window. There were few animals and lots of little farming villages and many wind power turbines. Tara was awoken by something right after we got a seat when people got off in Erfurt or Weimar, I can't remember which city we passed through. There is a picture of Tara waving bye-bye to our taxi who dropped us off at MPI-biogeochem. We found ourselves in quite a large apartment. The kitchen, living, dining room is about the size of our living room, so I was quite pleased. I think I was expecting concrete floors and eastern block housing, but everything on the northwest side of town was built in the 90's.
Tara has her own room! and we are sleeping on two single beds pushed together. We are however in the office building, just in the 'guest apartments' upstairs. So I feel like we need to be out most of the day, so we are not too loud. The up side is that I don't feel like we disturb people at night :)
We found out upon arrival that there is an apartment in the city center that we might get as soon as a month from now. It'll actually be too large, with four rooms, but we can manage, a family with three kids is moving out.
It is beautiful here, we are right on the edge of town overlooking tree covered hillsides, with lots of walking paths to explore. The city center is a bus trip away, maybe 30 min walk down, but back might take and hour (all up hill). There are many shops and cafes, we've tried three restaurants in our five days here and all have been good, two have had a kids menu, so Tara has eaten pasta. Her main diet has consisted of my milk and yougurt. She will occationally eat pasta with cheese and spinach, but I have not gotten flour, so it does not taste like home.
Yesterday we spent an hour or so waiting to get registered, Brigitta, the MPI (Max Plank institute) secretary took us and translated for us. We are now registered with the authorities and Tara will receive her first paycheck soon (the gov't pays for all children in the country). Next we set up a bank account, which might or might not be activated in the next week or so.
My fun story for the day was finding a new 'bus friend'. For those of you who don't know this, I make bus friends, some sane, some not so sane, but all sweet and friendly. I had a few in Lawrence, one I did not even know. Johannes, Nate's colleague, was on the bus one morning with Tara and I when Tara was about four months old. After I got off, a man sitting next to Johnannes said that he felt like he had been through my whole pregnancy with me. I still wonder who that was, there were many regulars. Anyway, I digress. We got on the bus back to our apartment, sat down with Tara next to an old lady (maybe only 60, but looked worn) who started jammering off in German. I smiled a lot and so did she. The few things we understood we laughed about, Tara was enthralled! She counted to 10 in english and told us that she only had to learn german and russian in school, NO ENGLISH (more laughing). She was the first German to tell us that Tara looked like the sun :) Germans are not ones for looking at or complementing you on your baby :(
She said who knows what which lead to a belly laugh, so I laughed right along with her. I then tried to get Tara to count to three in German, something she is perfecting after I start with einse and hold up my thumb. Tara just moved her fingers around, but this impressed the old lady. We got off the bus and Nate turned and said 'hey, you made your first bus friend!' Now I feel like I belong, thanks bus lady.
I have very few issues, other than breastfeeding and trying to shop everyday. Tara is up to 5 or so times a day, but is sleeping through the night, still up at 5A. (It gets dark here around 10:30 and the sun is up at 4:30, we are quite far north). Hence the blog started now, Tara is taking her morning nap from 9-10:30'ish. I'll let her sleep again for an hour around 3P. Shopping is difficult when you can only buy things that will fit in the bottom of your stroller. We go every other day, so we eat a lot of leftovers and pb&j (we found peanut butter the first day!!!).
This felt good, hopefully I'll get to write during nap time every other day or so. Lots of love and smiles,
Kistie

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