gijasue's blog

Here I am, after almost seven month, breaking the silence. Not that I meant to be silent, but it was just hard to write with everything else going on in my life.

Many things have happened in those months, one of them was that my writing contract expired mid-Dec. Since then, the powers that be have no chosen to renew it or hire anyone else. I don’t know why they’ve done this — they have yet to even contact me whatsoever. But, the upshot of this is that I’ve got much more time on my hands.

So, I’m trying to get organized (it only took me a month and a half of being out of work) and do some of the things I should have or meant to be doing before. One of them is writing in my blog. Some of the others are keeping a regular exercise schedule, sticking to a better diet, keeping up with the housework and going to a Bible study.

For those of you not in my family, here are some of the things that have been going on in my life in the last seven months.

– My daughter started Kindergarten, unfortunately we also found out that she may have ADHD. We’re now going to a Dr. who specializes in this and working out what we can do to help her.

– A. turned 5.

– We took our first family trip to Berlin in Oct. J. had been there up until about 6 months before the wall fell so this was a quite different Berlin than the one that he had known.
– We also went home for two weeks over the holidays to catch up with our families and spend lots of money on books and buying clothes for A. It was also very good for A. to meet many of her cousins and reconnect with the family that she already remembers. Now she wants to go back to the States and live near Grammy and Pop Pops.

– We also had a Valentine’s Tea Party for A. the Sunday before Valentine’s day. She loves them and it’s a great way for her to connect to her friends that she doesn’t see outside of school or church.

Many other little things happened but things are moving along. J. still does a lot of business trips — the most recent ones have been to Armenia and Albainia — not exactly the best tourist destinations but he got me some nice gifts.

On everyday stuff, this year had been a no snow year in Garmisch and it is beautiful but still very odd. But I’m not complaining because it’s allowed me to run more than any other winter here.
I’m hoping to keep everyone updated from now on — at least until I start working again — then we’ll see.

I know it’s been a while since I wrote.

Anyway, I just had a few thoughts while I was driving to Munich today. I think this was my first time driving alone both ways.

After a year here in Germany, I’m still amazed by the fact that I can drive as fast as I want on the autobahn. It’s something I think about a lot when I’m driving by myself on it. Actually, I don’t get to drive on it very often because I’m usually in the passenger seat when we go on long trips.

And that’s part of the fun of the autobahn. In a way, it’s not a really long trip when you can drive as fast as you want. It’s about 60 miles, give or take a few. And for the first ten or 12 miles, going away from Garmisch, and the last five or so coming into Munich, you can’t go much faster than 50 miles an hour — and that’s only outside the small towns where you have to go about 30.

What I’m saying is that when you’re driving on a no-limits autobahn (they do have speed limits in certain places and in construction zones, which can be pretty large, too) the only thing to keep you from going certain speeds, is your own car (and gas ecomomy, if you’re worried about that).

Now, I love my little Subaru Outback. It’s actually pretty speedy and handles very well (four-wheel drive and all that). But, coming out of Munich today, it was pretty clear what class my car was in as I “put the pedal to the medal” and watched four Mercedes fly by me while I slowly inched my speedometer up to 100mph.

And Mercedes aren’t rare in this country. I could have said the same about the millions of BMWs and Audis that have flown past me on the road but it just happened to be the Mercedes.
What I’m really saying is that, although I know that my car will do over 100 (when Joe and I are in the car sans A., we regularly get it up to 105 or 110 without thinking about it), it’s really no “competition” when it comes to what those other cars can do that my car can’t.

That said, it’s nice to be able to open up and drive the way I want to drive and not have to worry about the police stopping me because I’m over the speed limit — because there is none. I know that my American driving training is still alive and kicking because it still kind of tickles my fancy and makes me feel like a schoolboy when I drive that fast.

Of course, reality does poke it’s head in every once in a while and tells me to be careful. And I think I am. But I think inside I’m still that young girl my parents were afraid to put into a car because they thought I would drive too fast. And they were right. I do. But over here, it’s allowed.

Tonight we went out to the “moving food” place. That’s A.’s name for the sushi place that we go to every so often. The reason it’s called a moving food place should be fairly obvious, but for those of you who don’t get it, it’s one of those places where the food goes around on a conveyer belt.
It actually may not be the best sushi ever, but it’s basically the only sushi place that I know of around here. I didn’t eat sushi enough before I got here to really know the difference between average and great sushi. It was just too expensive where I lived in Maryland, and when I lived in Korea, they had there own way of doing food wrapped in rice and seaweed (it was called Kimbab: Kim, meaning seaweed and bab, meaning rice — simple but explanatory). I think it was much better in Korea, even if it was simpler, and it was a heck of a lot cheaper.

Anyway, it’s good enough in my opinion (I’m sure some sushi snobs around here would say something different) and the best part of it is, we don’t have to wait for the food. When you have a pre-schooler, that makes such a difference. No whining about being hungry or when will the food come or having any low bloodsugar tantrums. And when it comes, well, A. just loves it. She can see it moving over to where she’s sitting, she can choose what she wants and she can pick it up herself. Entertainment and a meal, all in one fell swoop.
OK. I know a lot of you might be saying, what kid likes sushi? Now, I have to say that A. doesn’t like the sushi as it is. But take off the fish or push out the veggies and what do you have? Rice or rice and seaweed. It’s one of her favorite things. Add a little soy sauce and she’s right there.

Yes, it is a little weird that she likes rice and seaweed but, we had left Korea less than a year before she was born and we still ate a lot of our rice wrapped in seaweed. We even went to a Korea restaurant every so often while we were in the states. She likes picking up her rice with seaweed and for her it’s a normal thing.

And there are other things she likes to eat there. They have their version of chicken fingers and she absolutely loves the rice chips. And they usually have sliced oranges or some kind of fruit bowl going around almost the whole time and she tears into them, too. Sometimes there’s other things that she’ll try but the novelty of the moving food covers for the lack of variety in the food she likes.
Overall, it’s a win-win situation for us. Yeah, it maybe a little on the pricey side but the convenience and speed of this place covers a lot of other faults it may have. I think the “moving food place” is moving on up to a spot at the top of our favorite places to eat list.

Ok, so it’s the 2nd today. We stayed up pretty late on New Year’s Eve (until 3 a.m. watching movies) so I took the day off yesterday to recover. But we had a great time on New Year’s Eve. We invited some friends over for movies, food and fun. As J. said in his blog here the friends have a four-year-old, too, so we let the kids play or watch their movies in our bedroom, while we watched the adult movies in the living room. And, of course, we went out on the balcony to check out the music, people, fireworks, etc.

Actually, the fireworks we pretty amazing considering most (or all) of them were private fireworks and not set off by the city. People were setting them off as early as 9 p.m. and they just kept coming more and more often. There were three main areas that were set up for fireworks. Someone (and maybe it was the city who did this) had set up firework holders in three or four different spots so that everyone could use them for their own fireworks and everyone also knew to stay away from those spots.

And, of course, the crowds and the firworks escalated exponentially in the last 20 minutes before midnight. People packed in along the walls of the buildings surrounding the square where our house is and the fireworks ran continually for about 45 minutes. It was a pretty great show. I have to say that I love where we live. I know that we wouldn’t see half the thing we do, if we didn’t live here. It would just be too inconvienient to come here to see it otherwise.

Well, I hope that your new year was as fun as ours was. It’s been nice having two days off of work after New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow, we’ll both have to go back to work. It’s kind of weird for me to think about going back to work, after not working for more than four years, but since I’m only working 25 hours a week, I think I’ll get used to it pretty easily.

I hope your new year is as good as or better than the last.