The way it looks now

I found out yesterday that I am being offered a job at a biligual kindergarten in Munich! (http://www.lerchennest.de/indexe.html) This is fantastic news because 1) it's a full time job, with full benefits and a guaranteed salary, plus insurance and basically all the rights a normal german citizen would get and 2) this place is really cool, and i am excited to try my hand at something this new and exciting! A pro and con is that my hours are 7:30-2 daily, which is a realllllyyyy early time to have to be there, but being done at 2 is also pretty great. I am currently in the process of working through the paperwork with the kindergarten to get my work visa and residence permit, but it's looking good. I also have an apartment which according to all my munich friends is amazing, in a fantastic place and really cheap—which I didnt quite know when I found it, but now i am pretty excited about.

And I will also be teaching business english classes to adult professionals a few evenings a week, to try to haul myself out of the debt hole from northwestern and/or give me some extra cash to travel around with. Plus, the school is fantastic and they are offering to pay to certify all the trainers under the „Common European Foreign Language Exam" which is exciting. Plus I am currently discussing a possible very part time position on a project with the group where I am doing my internship now, Green City. They are planning some environmental projects with Italy and I obviously am a good resource in this case, with both knowledge and language, plus anything to do with italy makes me really happy =)

Soo...things are looking really good. I am actually planning on booking my ONE WAY ticket back to munich tonight, then things will pretty much be set. I have a fantastic boyfriend named Artur (picture on his birthday, homemade crown!) who is coming to the US in August and will be traveling around with me to my various reunions and peanut butter buying missions.

My exact schedule is the following:

US: July 17th-August 24th

The weather in Munich is...cold. It was warm, for a little but, but now it is cold again, which makes me want to whine but then I look out the window at the mountains and I think ok, if this is the punishment for living with an alpine view then I guess I can stand it, as long as it EVENTUALLY gets warm. I am going with artur to his parents house this weekend in the mountains and we just hear that it snowed six inches today. Ayayay, and we were planning to go hiking...maybe sledding would be a better idea.

I was however in Florence for the weekend at a Unterwasser Hockey tournament and the weather was FABULOUS (35 degrees Celsius) we drove down from munich, a beautiful drive in itself through the mountains and then down through tuscany, and we camped and had and amazing view of the city and played in an outdoor pool. So my memorial day weekend was actually quite similar to yours, only mine involved pasta and not hamburgers, and wayyy more snorkels.

Florence Team!!!

because i can =)

here

is where I will live

here and here and here and here and here

is where I will work

wahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

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: