my life in a suitcase

Wheels, heels, flippers. Bathing suit, yoga pants, sports bra. Grey suit, resume, two budweiser beers. Pijamas. Running shoes, tshirt. Underwater hockey stick, towel, sweatshirt. Just packing my normal bag for a normal trip to work.

Monday morning. I have so much stuff I can barely ride my bike to the train station, the bike basket is brimming with sporting equipment and corporate attire. The plan: to work. Then, to Artur at work to leave my mounds of stuff with him. Then, to yoga class. Then, to blade night. Then, to Arturs, then job interview at 10am, then press action at 1pm in Marienplatz: soccer game between the renewable energies and the radioactive elements. It's just another day in the life...

Yoga class! A challenge for my german anatomy knowledge. Blade night! A marvel.

15,000 Münchners, rollerblading 15 km through the city, streets blocked off to car traffic, and I work at the group that runs the thing! We float by cafes, roll down Leopolstraße, can smell roasting Hops from the various breweries, and have to watch out for the tram tracks. I love this city.

A perfect prelude to my job interview in the morning—a gateway to stay! Job interview! Fantastic. I am basically hired, and can start right away teaching a sort of test course after I get trained. I can earn a bit of money right away and see if I like it enough to do it full time when I come back in September. Plus, I have two more interviews on Friday.

Marienplatz! Where the glockenspiel is...if you know anything about munich this is probably what you picture, if it's not beer and lederhosen. I helped the work colleagues carry the various protest items, and then took the train there—a sunny, spectacular day. Artur was already there, in the line of regally yellow rikshahs...that's right, I am dating a rikshah driver =) Could my life get any better?He took me on a short ride around the center, and then feeling already pretty cool, I headed to the protest. To commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, we did a „soccer game" between the „renewable energy" and „nuclear power". Needless to say, the renewables won and it was fun to sit in marienplatz for two hours and watch soccer players from my office goof around

Flipperybladeyenvirorikschahridinhappygoluckyineuropelivingjoyjoyjoy

Bud...weis...errrrrr....

There was a river, and there was budweiser, but there were no frogs. Although there were strange creatures with webbed feet, glossy eyes, odd plastic breathing appendages, and bizarre wooden sticks clasped by silicone encased hands. The sounds to be heard were the oddly extraterrestrial and deeply marine noises of churning water, grunts of struggle, and an occasional odd metal clanging.

The Unterwasserhockey tournament had come to Budweis, Czech Republic. Teams from Croatia, Slovena, Belgium, Poland and Germany met up to compete in the world's most absurd sport. And as I would soon learn, also one of the most dangerous. The Munich team toughed its way through 5 twenty-minute long brutal losses to highly skills teams from eastern and northern europe. I got battered by flippers, brutalized by pucks, pinned to the wall, the ground, strained my wrist, can't really use my mouse any more, and have more bruises than I can count...it was wonderful.

The sun shined the whole day, and in between each brutal beating, we would take a break on the balcony overlooking the river flowing through this ancient colorful town, eating a banana or two, refueling ourselves with short naps in the sun to prepare for the next slaughterfest. And after it was all over, we opened our warm-welcome-present budweiser beers (the real, czech variety) and celebrated our survival.

What we weren't quite prepared for was the party. Yearning for our sleeping bags-on top of-czech-probably-sweatcovered-gym mats in a soviet area gymnastic hall, we trudged on to the after party and award ceremony, hungry and beaten yet glisteningly exhuberant. A veritable united nations of the unterwasserhockey world-- french being translated to german being explained in english to a czech player, polish being spoken to the attractive czech waitress in hopes of a date, broken italian trying to cross the french-english border, flemish, slovenian, croation, and beer. We received our 6^th place award graciously, tossed beer coasters, danced to the hungarian heavy metal band, and ordered extravagant icecream sundaes, wowed at the non-euro prices. As we trudged home in the rain, across the bridge that shuddered as we crossed it, past the romancing couples in the park, the factory near our gym-hotel that seemed to produce mostly steam, through the old-tire-paradise-gokart-park, and then collapsed on our mats under the swinging rings and ropes, I thought...this is what Mark Twain meant when he said „Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.“

ribbit ribbit...

A crowded noisy party with my best and biggest dreams

Two! Two! I have two job interviews! They're with two different language schools, which in itself is exciting, but additionally they both have world-wide focuses and would give me the chance to take translating classes, other languages, keep up my italian...wow, the opportunities are endless. Hopefully these interviews go well, the one thing we be seeing if they are willing to promise me a job so much in advance, but it could be the case that I could work at both schools. And then if i could get some of this type of experience under my belt, I could really work anywhere! Experience teaching English, maybe master another language, maybe get training to be a translator..then go to grad school and get a masters in development work or somethinf of the sort, and then..go! I really feel like this is one big qualification that's missing for me, some hard core teaching experience. And I could really build up a cool life here! Teaching, being a counselor for a kids english camp on the side, doing environmental work and volunteering, maybe spending my free time trying to put together a project between the veneto and bayern... wow. Cool, the future is looking bright again.. I feel like all I ever need is a jump start and then I'm off...ideas ideas ideas.

What else..I'll let my mind run. I could do this for a while and see how I like it and what direction it takes me in, of course taking advantage of any educational opportunities that come my way (wouldn't it be great to take free language courses!? Spanish! French! Portuguese! Then I'll have the qualification as a teacher plus the ability to speak new languages, and some really important working with people skills, as well as particularly organizational ones. And then..well who knows. A masters program in Germany, in the US...maybe I could look into Rotary again, or maybe all of this will lead me to a logical subject for a big research project for a Fulbright or just for fun.

I'm so...I don't know, I guess because I'm reaching the end of the program here I was starting to feel like I was... done? But more like not wanted, or not qualified, or something. Maybe because I haven't had a new job every three months like in the U.S. And I finally made it here, to Europe, and I love it, and dammit, I want to stay but of course it's not that easy... so it's exciting to feel like maybe there is some hope, more because then I feel like it is really true what I believe, that if you really want to do something you can really do it. My optimism can live!

It's so sunny here, it's finally spring, I'm going to Budweis in the Czech Republic this weekend to play unterwasser hockey and my co worker gave me a bike so now I have a bike in the city too and monday is my first yoga class and first blade night and the next week is full of job interviews and meetings and I love it when my life is so crowded with wonderful exciting diverse things, it's like being at a party filled with all your friends who are all so different from eachother but you love them all, and it's a bit crowded but every time you turn around you see a different smile, hear a different voice, are challenged in a new way, reminded of your different passions.

WAHOO!!

tadddaaaa

And the following note from Artur:

and today....

a treck to olympia swim hall from work. 6.76 Kilometers (if i don't get lost) a true test for my sense of direction (it's just north, emily!!! follow the giant television antennae!!)

and then, an evening of unterwasserhockey

but i'm not walking back to feldafing...

solar musings

The sun makes me so happy. Anyone who knows me, understands that on a sunny day, I can't stay inside. A pull of obligation floats me out the door, to pursue whatever activity I had planned somewhere in the sun. Essay writing on the lawn with my laptop, textbook reading, knitting, listening to music, singing, yoga, sleeping—and then the more absurd—organizing my desk (yes, I have actually brought my belongings outside to do this), job applications, heck, I've even considered showering (bucket, deserted patch of grass...) When the weather is nice, the things around me that usually fill me with a muted joy when it's cold out (hey pretty building brr snowy wind hey nice tree ahh my hands are freezing off have to get inside cute bundled up baby ahh i want to be wrapped in a down sleeping bag in a cozy stroller too...) absolutely emanate joy, especially because I actually have time to appreciate them. It's a fantastic feeling, to practically explode with joy because a tree is beautiful. Yeah yeah yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, right? I mean no one is so cheery all the time, and if they are then they are just annoying. Right? I guess the flipside is the ephemerality of it all. My prophets, the Beatles, have quite a bit to say on this front: here comes the sun, it's alright, all things must pass all things must pass away live and let die but tomorrow may rain so i'll follow the sun.

And now it's warm here. And although it hailed yesterday, it looks like it's pretty much here to stay, and that we're about to experience and explosion of green and lawns and sunbathing and waterbathing and a few of my absolute favorite things. And here it is. It's one long stretch of sunlight and I don't even have anymore bitter cold weather to numb my passions for this city before I leave, it'll happen in the heat and height of it all. But as they say, better to leave loving it and not wanting to leave than to leave gladly.

I am currently completing a puzzle of the Matterhorn. I already put together the hut and the two hiking people and the border and now I have the sky and the mountain and the grass—those indistinguishable hard parts. Yesterday I worked on it for an hour and got two pieces. I guess just as you think the picture is becoming clearer, it's the final details that turn out to be much more complicated than you thought. I joked with my host family over dinner yesterday that if I don't finish the puzzle before I leave, I'll have to come back. The metaphorical connotations of such a statement abound. In fact, enough metaphors for today, I'm supposed to be reading the bicycle stand plan for Munich. Vorradklemmen, Anlehnbuegel...I never knew I would learn the technical terms for bicycle stands in German (I don't even know them in English!!)

And now I'm off to enjoy my sunny day as it should be enjoyed...moment for moment.

And now, a smile:

Q: Did you hear about the guy who stayed up all night just to see where the sun went?

A: Then it dawned on him.

ahahahahaha

spiderwoman

The days are longer, the flowers are out. My scenery is constantly changing, and the city feels suddenly like a new place. And yet, my co worker still whistles jingle bells are work. Have you all seen the movie „fallen“? It's about a devil, that lives inside people, who always sings „time is on your side“ by the rolling stones. And when someone carrying the devils bumps into another person on the street, that persons starts to whistle or sing the song. Yesterday, on our way home from a fantastically relaxing evening in a heated outdoor pool, artur and I were whistling a tune, and as we approached his new apartment door, a man walking towards us picked it up and whistled along. I cant remember anymore if it was Sousa's „Stars and Stripes Forever“ or Darth Vader's imperial march (frequent performances of ours) but caught on quickly, and before we knew it, our friend was following us into Artur's apartment building—apparently he lived there too. The whistling didnt outlast our smiling, of course, because just like sneezing with your eyes opened, whistling and smiling just dont work simulteneously. Whistling and smiling while sneezing might be worth a try, however... Our third instrument left us as he trecked to his fourth floor apartment and we entered Artur's on the third, but there was that residual feeling of a funny, unspoken connection. Like those little strings of spider web that invisibly crisscross paths in the woods in the morning and catch in your face before you can see them, little delicate connections form constantly between people and people, people and animals, people and billboards in the train. And in my more-self-reverted form, that inner reflection euphoria that a bit of language confusion and cultural amazment brings, I feel virtually webbed in, new strings being formed each time we walk away and break the old ones. A successfully coaxed smile out of a fellow grumpy ubahn rider, a door held, a baby smile, a tail wag... or the surprising visit from two obviously romantic ducks to the heated pool last night at 11pm, drawn not only by the warm water but also probably sensing the otherworldy human romantic pull of lighted steaming water and a crescent moon... Slowly but surely, I am webbing myself in here, zapping connections like spider man here and there, to that beautiful fountain, that baby with the banana, the alps and my book and my nap and the funny upsidown swan, and they zap back, with a smile, a quack, a splash, a magnetic kiss.