That Parent That Friend

Since moving to Germany I have become "that" parent.  You know the one.  The one who signs up for something and forgets all about it or better yet just doesn't really sign up for things at all.
New friends at school told me to just give it 6 months.  In 6 months you will feel settled and then you can step up and help.  They were absolutely right.  We are coming up on our 6 month anniversary and for the first time I'm starting to feel on top of things.  But this process has helped me to understand "those" parents when I had very little understanding or sympathy for them before.  I always wondered why there were 18 hundred reminders for things regarding school.  Why would someone need so many reminders?  I could have used all those reminders here.  Here they just assume you've got it.  But in Seattle I was very frustrated by the parents who didn't show up for things or didn't seem to be invested.  Now I get it.  But sadly, I don't really get it.  I probably don't know the half of what a lot of families are going through both here and back in the US  but I surely do have more empathy and sympathy.  For most of the past 6 months I've felt behind the 8 ball. Somehow I've been able to let a lot of this go.  I didn't let myself get too bogged down in what I was not doing, about who I was not writing back (sorry to all of you that I owe an email or a text or a call or a letter - in addition to being "that parent" I know I have also become "that friend") Out of self preservation and survival really, I just had to let a lot of that go.  I can't even explain why it was all so hard it just was.  It is strange though because it wasn't a "that's terrible" hard it was just that everything took 10+ more steps than it took at home.  It often felt like I was swimming up stream or walking through quicksand.
Up until now I was the parent who continually forgot to send Benjamin to school with his library books, that forgot to sign reports or permission slips or didn't even know that one of my kids had a huge Thanksgiving feast and parents were supposed to bring in food.  I did it for one child but never knew the other one was having a party until he came home and told me that not only did he have a feast but that he rode a bus to another students house and had the feast there.  All without my knowing.  The best "that" parent came when I had apparently signed up to help clean the class room and I didn't show up because apparently I forgot to put it on my calendar and then the teacher sent out an email to the entire class saying that we really need to do a better job coming in when we sign up for things.  There must have been other parents who had forgotten to go in too, right?  It was directly to me but a bit passive aggressively it was.  Then the other parents wanted to know if the sign up list could be made public so everyone would know their date and guess who was right there signed up with fat letters on the very day the email was sent.  Yep, KARRIE RIEMER!  Yay, me.  Seriously, this was the one area in my life in Seattle I had down.  I volunteered, maybe too much, in each of my children's classroom.  I definitely wouldn't dream of not showing up when I said I would and I would have most certainly not only known my child was going to a party but I would have hosted it or at least brought in a bunch of stuff for it.  But... 6 months, give yourself 6 months they said.  And you know, they were right.  I'm feeling so much more settled and on top of things.  9 times out of 10 (or more) the kids have their library books on library day, their tests are signed (yes, that is a thing here) their permission slips are signed  and I have a chance to redeem myself on the next classroom clean up day.  I signed up for March 16th.  Here's to hoping I will remember this time.  Six months in and things are starting to feel pretty settled and pretty good.

Full Head; Sore Butt

My German classes continue to enlighten me and frustrate me in equal measure.  I am SO SO far from being fluent or anything even close and yet I keep at it.   Along with the other 16 of my fellow classmates we keep at it.  And often I laugh a little to myself at how childish we sound and how far FAR we have to go before we can actually even hold a simple conversation with a grocery store clerk. I know what it was like to go from knowing very little to no Spanish to becoming somewhat fluent and very comfortable with the language.  It was a ton of time and even more importantly a lot of excitement and passion and desire to know it.   I know I will not become a fluid German speaker, I just know it.
I often wonder how many of my classmates feel the same.  The other day one of them, out of frustration, asked the teacher "when we will learn x,y and z" And the teacher made a good point, they said German is a marathon and we need training and you can't run for 5 minutes and assume you are ready to run a marathon.  But then he said that he could understand that student and the rest of us in the class could understand him.  We all agreed enthusiastically that yes, we could in fact understand him perfectly even if his German wasn't perfect.  And that is when I told myself to always remember that the goal of learning another language is to communicate and that it doesn't always have to be perfect in order to communicate. But I continue to be truly impressed with my classmates.  They seem to be taking it all so seriously.  They have different colored markers and highlighters and are making charts of the verbs and the die, der, das',  and are really invested in the language.

Just look at the length of some of these words!!  German is Kuh-Ray-Zee

I'm definitely making progress but let's just say I've run maybe 400 meters of a marathon.  I'm impressed with myself that I sit and listen to 4 hours of nonstop German every day and understand probably 95% of it.  Granted the teachers speak very slowly and clearly and I know the context and I have a couple of text book to look things up. But still 4 hours of a foreign language everyday is a lot.  Not to mention the actual sitting for 4 hours everyday.  My body is feeling the lack of movement and the constant sitting.  We get a 15 minute break and a 5 minute break but that still breaks down to 220 minutes of nonstop German and sitting every day.  Sadly I noticed that my step count has gone from an average of 7-8 miles a day to roughly 3-4.  No wonder my body is hurting.
And my brain.  Today at the end of class I just kind of shut down. I was full. There was no more going into my brain.

I have noticed though that since starting the class I am engaging in the language around me so much more. I try to read the signs on storefronts and advertisements and break out the verbs and nouns and mull over the words I know and don't know, I overhear conversations on the street and on the bus and I understand some of it.

I sometimes feel that skipping the very first class, (A1.1) I have done myself a disservice.  There are things that I know I should know from this first class that would make my learning so much easier.  Not so much so that I would give a full 5 weeks to it but I feel like there was one step in the ladder I missed on the way up.  It is funny because I have always felt this way about my Spanish learning. I learned Spanish mostly by living in Mexico and loving the culture and the people so much that I wanted to learn how to communicate with them. It wasn't until later when I decided to teach Spanish did I go back to school and take a few classes just so I could get my endorsement.  But I've always felt a bit insecure with my Spanish even after over a dozen years of living in Spanish speaking countries teaching it for nearly 8 years.  It really makes me want to take some Spanish classes now that my Spanish has become so rusty due to lack of use.
I don't NEED German now the way I needed (in my heart and soul) Spanish then.  But I will keep at it.  I just signed up for the next 5 week course so at the very least I will have 10 weeks of German under my belt and will be able to look to my husband and children for the answers to my German questions from here on out.

Resist

On the way home from the swim meet when we were on the first of two trains getting home I realized that the Berlin Women's March was taking place right at that very time.  I had written off being able to go because Josie's swim meets normally go until 2PM.  But because she was sick and we left early it was only 11AM and just the right time for me to catch it.  The train we were on was going right past the meeting spot for the march so I called a very uncharacteristic and spontaneous audible and told Marty I'd see him at home in a couple of hours and jumped off the train at the Brandenburg Tor stop.  He and the kids continued on and he put Josie to bed while I joined thousands of other people who care about Women's Rights  - or at least that is how the whole idea started last year with an estimated 3.2-5.5 MILLION people taking to the streets to peacefully protest. 

The 2018 Women's March, which took place in hundreds of cities all over the world, was for people who care about Women's rights, sure but this march has turned into a place for people to raise their voices because they care about, in addition to Women's Rights, Rights for people of color, Rights for those in the LGBT community, Rights for immigrants, Rights for all.  And because it happened right after the presidential inauguration last year and over half of the US was pretty upset about who the new president was (Complete understatement!) It also turned into a protest against Trump.

I was moved by the speakers at the Berlin March who spoke in English with a variety of accents.  They talked about freedom for all, rights for all and how we need to rise up and use our voices against the injustices that are happening in our communities and around the world.  It was not lost on me that I was standing in a city and country that has known what it was like to be run over by a man and his government that was clearly carrying out atrocious injustices everyday and those that spoke out at the time were not heralded as heroes until long after. 

I realize that while atrocities are happening it is not always easy to speak up and speak out but I have come to a place in my life where I cannot remain silent about what is happening in this world at the hand of the president who was elected in my country.  I cannot sit idly by and just say that we can agree to disagree. It seems way too light of a statement for things that are going on today that are anything but light.
The march was a good step.  But I really want to do more, speak up more and find a way to make a change.  Two of my favorite quotes by one of my favorite men Martin Luther King Jr. are quotes I want to live by:
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter"
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

I truly and honestly cannot understand how it is possible that 38% of the US population can approve of what is going on, of how Trump is acting and the changes he is making.  I actually had to look this figure up and in looking this up I read something interesting.  The majority of people who approve of him approve of him BECAUSE of his behavior and not despite it? 

All of the things that I would think people would want in a president I find lacking in Trump:
1) Intelligent - nope
2) Compassionate - nope
3) Diplomatic - not even close
4) Honest -what a joke
5) Humble - Ha!
I could go on and on and on.
.
I can break it down into the people I think support him and I have to chalk it up to a very limited new source or sources and being surrounded by like minded people (which, yes, I am guilty of as well.)  I cannot believe that 38% of the US is that mean and selfish spirited.
The list of supporters must start with the true blue Republicans who will support anyone who runs under this party.  People who have money and would like to keep a president in office who will help them keep their money. Somehow, they must turn a blind eye with his stance on everything else are able to justify his behavior towards immigrants and people of color and women and our environment, and, and...  Likely there are large pockets of Christians who also support him and I'm guessing this is mostly because he is a Republican.  I don't know when the Republicans highjacked the Christians and claimed their party the "Christian Party"  I do not get this at all.  Most Christian Republicans I know talk about the "liberal" Democrats as if "liberal" were a dirty word.  I don't get this! I cannot think of a more liberal man or liberal example than Jesus Christ.  He was liberal with his love, with his acceptance of all, with his fight against injustices and fierce about protecting the "least of these."  None of these characteristics do I see in the current Republican party.
I think of the "talking points" that people who support Trump use and a lot of it, I'm assuming, voted for Trump because of his stance on abortion.  I do not understand those who are passionately Pro Life and who are not equally furious that thousands of mothers and their children will lose healthcare under Trump.  You cannot claim to be Pro Life just when it pertains to the life of a fetus, it HAS to carry over and you MUST continue to be Pro Life once the baby is born. 
So, I don't know where this will take me and I realize I probably have a lot more to say on this topic but I will leave it for now because I have to go get dinner ready.
But again, I would love to understand where the other side is coming from.
I am not looking for a public debate but I really honestly would like to understand how one can approve of anything that has gone on since Trump was elected.  If you are reading this and want to enlighten me my email address is: karriemg@hotmail.com
I truly want to know!  And for the time being I will use my voice and my actions to speak out against the wrongs that are happening to the "least of these" around the US and around the world.

Happy Birthday, Mom!!

Birthdays make me realize how far away from my family and friends I truly am.  On the 20th my beautiful mother celebrated her birthday.  I'm not normally with her on her birthday but it did make me miss the fact that we are on the same continent and especially within the same time zone.

I love you, Mom!!!  Hope you enjoyed your day!
Love and hugs from all of us in Berlin.

Sickie at a Swim Meet

Josie had her 4th home swim meet on Sunday.  Liz and Stephanie wanted to come and watch her swim and were very interested in seeing our day to day life.  It was cool that a swim meet just so happened to fall on the weekend they were here.

Josie has been suffering through a pretty bad cold - deep cough, low energy, low fever and all over fatigue.  But whenever you ask her how she feels she says adamantly "I'M FINE!!" So it has been hard to tell if she is sick or just a moody preteen or what.  We made her rest as much as possible around the Cottbus and shopping trips on Friday and Saturday.
On Sunday she and Marty had to get up at 6:15 in order to get on a bus in order for her to get to her swim meet on time.  I have to say that these early morning Sunday swim meets are truly the one and only time I wish we had a car.  On Sundays the buses run much less frequently and especially at such an early hour.  So we have to catch an extra early bus and if for some reason you miss it another one doesn't come for an additional 20 minutes or so.

So she had to get up extra early and Benjamin and I followed about 90 minutes later.  He loves to drink coffee.  His mostly has half milk and some sugar and other half coffee.  But this morning he and I shared by second cup of coffee while riding the Sbahn together.
When we showed up she was sitting on a heater just shivering.  The pools are SOO incredibly warm that nearly of the adults bring beach attire (shorts, tank tops, flip flops) just to bear the heat so the fact that she was shivering told us something was up.  She swam her first race and came in 2nd place by a split second.  Then she went right back to sitting on the heater and shivering.
After maybe half an hour more of this we just decided it was silly to keep her at the meet and push her when clearly she was sick.  We had to find a replacement for Marty because for the first time he actually was the one and only announcer... just in time to bail out early!!  There is one more swim meet so we will see if he actually does the entire job by himself.

Stephanie and Liz gave one last hug before we headed for home an they headed for the train station.  They had to take a train that day to Frankfurt for their early morning flight back to Seattle the following morning. It was SO SO nice to have them here.  They were so easy going and enthusiastic about our life here.
After our goodbyes we walk to the first of two trains and a bus to get us home.  Josie is pretty lethargic and warm and ready for a long nap.  Normally swim meets aren't over until 2PM but since we left early it was only 11AM.  She would have the whole day to hopefully rest and recover.

Liz and Stephanie Visit

On Friday we were all excited to see Liz and Stephanie.  Apart from my sister, Kim, this was to be the first family to visit us since we arrived. 
Stephanie is getting her PhD at Davis but will be doing a Post Doc in Bristol England starting in September 2018.  Liz and Stephanie spent a few days there before arriving in Berlin.

They wanted to see what our life was like here but also Liz and Stephanie have been to Berlin several times and Stephanie even studying in Berlin for 6 months back in 2012.  So they wanted to see some of Berlin too.
We met Benjamin at school and all ate in the school cafeteria.  We met some of the kids teachers and hung out until Josie got out of school a couple of hours later.  Josie and Benjamin received a "shopping spree" with Liz from Liz and Oma for Christmas and they were looking forward to cashing in.  They still have their Christmas money from Grandma and Papa to cash in on as well and they are hoping to go shopping again during their winter break in a couple of weeks.
After school Liz, Stephanie, Benjamin and Josie hopped on a bus while I headed home with their heavy school backpacks.  They spent over an hour at a super cool toy store and then I met up with them for more shopping.  We had to wait for Marty to finish his radio show and then he met up with us at Benjamin's very favorite Indian restaurant.  Yum!!

Christmas 2.0. They had so much fun playing with Benjamin's new toys 

Josie got mostly art stuff as per her usual.
I swear we should have bought stock in Mcpaper - the local office school supply store.  The kids could spend hours and tons of Euro here!

The train ride is a lot more fun with friends and
card games

The next day we met up with Stephanie and Liz again on the train to Cottbus. Marty had set up a meeting the apartment manager so we stopped by the apartments and then we were all starving and wanted to go to our favorite German restaurant - Kertofflekiste. 

Unfortunately a very "German" interaction took place as we walked into a nearly empty restaurant at the very busy meal time of 3:30PM.  The guy working rushed to the front of the restaurant as we walked in and said I'm sorry but the restaurant is all reserved. 

What??? It was nearly empty, it was 3:30 on a Saturday and in Cottbus!!  He was so rude and didn't expand on his explanation just stared at us as if we were stupid.  Typical.
So we went to a Greek restaurant that turned out to taste more German than

Josie and Stephanie look so much alike!!  It is like twins separate by 14 years!

Especially when they don't show their teeth!

Greek especially after just returning from Greece where the food was amazing but we were all full and ready to head back to Berlin on the train.

But not before a couple of photos with the Spremburg Tor in the background.  And that sky is NOT photo shopped.  Isn't it amazingly blue??

Fruit Stand and More Sherpa'ing

The kids have been coming home together, solo, several days a week.  They have been begging for this since school started and were getting used to the commute from our other house but since we moved to our new apartment which is along completely different bus lines I was a hit hesitant.  Not about Josie.  She goes back and forth on the public buses to swim practice several times a a week.  And I wasn't even that worried about Benjamin doing it solo as he has become really pretty confident and competent on public transport but the two of them together sometimes can get heated and then they do something stupid and ....well, you know.  I worried.
I shouldn't have. They have stepped up to this challenge they way they have this entire move to Germany.  With grace and confidence.  Josie goes to Late Birds and signs him out.  They walk to the Sbahn station together (about a 7 minute walk) where there is a fruit stand.  They each get up to 1 euro (they bring home any change) to pick out a piece of fruit.  Josie now makes Benjamin do it by himself.  He has to ask for the piece of fruit he wants and then ask the person working to wash his piece of fruit.  Because the people working at the fruit stand do not speak any English he has to do it all in German.  Josie, apparently, has taken to just waiting outside while he does his buying and talking.  Haha!  She is so funny.  I didn't tell her to make him do this.  It was all her doing.  And somehow he listens to her.  He does get himself a pretty tasty apple that he eats while they wait for a bus that makes 4 stops before it gets to our stop and then it is a 5 minute walk from our house. All by themselves and they are quite happy and proud of themselves when they arrive home.
And now that I'm in classes nearly every day for 4+ hours, it is super nice to have an hour or so in the quiet house to get a few things done before they arrive. Since I just go straight to class right after school drop off I have very little time to get household things done these days.

On another note. 

We continue to sherpa things here that we would never even dream of carrying if we were in Seattle and had our car with us.  We are all really addicted to the sparkling water here.  It comes in 4 strengths and we get the most fizzy.  I bought 12 bottles before Christmas and my good friend, Fiounnaula, took me so that I didn't have to schlep heavy bottles.  Well we were out and we wanted more and I didn't want to ask to borrow a car, even though I KNOW she would have said, OF COURSE! So Marty and I - but mostly just Marty because he said one in each hand balanced him out and who was I to argue - took our empty bottles and carrying cases back to the drink store.  Like the shopping carts, you just pay a deposit on these and get money back when you return them.  So we walked the half a mile to the drink store.  They were obviously much, MUCH heavier on our return trip when we came home with 12 full bottles.  But like most groceries and things, we appreciate them so much more since we had to actually carry them home.  Happy to have my Sherpa with me for the heavy stuff!!