Updates and things

10 Mar 2013

Oh gosh… Um, hi there. I feel like you’ve dropped in on me with a messy home and no advanced warning. I’ve definitely been meaning to tidy up [the blog] for quite some time. Not to mention our header says we’re in Slovakia and our photo marks our visit to Jordan; I guess a photo of us working at separate desks in separate offices is a little less enthralling so those will have to stay for now.

I have so many updates since my last post SIX!! months ago I don’t even know where to begin.

If you for some reason weren’t aware, we’re still living in Berkeley, and yes, it does still feel weird to live in the US.
One of my videos was featured here. Scroll down to day 25.
We fostered a cat. To call the experience a disaster doesn’t even scratch the surface. Maybe more on that in a future post.
For lent this year I gave up sweets (read: dried fruits (extra-read: dried mango- I ate the stuff like it was my job)) and watching tv through the week. I feel much more productive, healthy and focused, which is a great thing because I’m doing a half marathon in honor of Kristen’s birthday.
We have finally found and settled into a great church. We’re the white couple, and we’re cool with that.
We’ve gone to a handful of pretty great shows/concerts. Sufjan’s Christmas tour pretty much blew my mind.
Although most of the necessities of an apartment have been met (dining table, sofa, trashcan…), it’s still a little hard to buy material things.

Oddly, I guess that about sums up the last six months. Our lives are clearly less exciting now that we are stateside, but we are living it up nonetheless.

January- Berkeley’s summer? or fall?

Prettiest bride ever!

We are hoping to welcome Katie to the Bay semi-permanently soon. Prayers lifted/fingers crossed:)

NO blog post is complete without a photo of this guy.

Gave my dad this book for Christmas…

Can you see what I’m saying or what?

Hats off to 2013!

In order to sell luxury vacations you have to take thoughts of Africa/philanthropy out of the equation altogether.

I think many of you know, but my grandma passed away in January. This world has been a little less happy of a place since that day. It breaks my heart to write this post knowing she won’t read it. She was my biggest fan.

Ruth Swartzel, 1921-2013

A trip back to Ohio and, OH YEAH, JoLyn’s wedding!!!

18 Sep 2012

The week I have been waiting for is finally here! Female readers rejoice along with me, guys get out your tissues, because my beautiful best friend Joro is getting MARRIED!!!

JoLyn and I got the luck of the draw when we were paired as freshmen roommates; we continued living together throughout the rest of our years at college seeing our friendship as a match too good to mess with.

We did all the sorts of silly things that college freshmen do; I’m not going to pretend we are unique in that. But I do think some of our charades topped the scales.

We duct taped our names outside of our windows every semester since the fall of our second year. Sometimes we’d come back from break and it just wouldn’t be there anymore. But we always put it right back up.

We stapled fabric to our curtains and stickied fabric to our walls to decorate. Despite the pain of the fabric always falling, we affectionately called it “The Blue.” Visitors we knew and others we didn’t came by just to see how we decorated. What they didn’t expect was to see a recreation of Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple.

We’ve been together on birthdays…

party days…

hot days…

cold days…

memorable days (top of the eiffel tour)…

sisterly days…

graduation days…

and, up til now, just one wedding day.

Now that JoLyn’s wedding is finally here I can feel the excitement of five Christmases! I hope and pray that JoLyn and Shaun’s marriage will be amazing, but I already know that it will be. I call dibs on being the first person to cry at their wedding.

PS, if you’ve never watched this Laverne and Shirley video we made in 2006, it is definitely worth checking out!

PPS, her fiance stars in THIS VIDEO.

Some call it “Re-entry”

24 Aug 2012

I promised you a post on culture shock and boy are things different. It’s evidenced right now as I’ve reduced what used to be one of my favorite hobbies –blogging– to typing out a post on my iPhone on my morning commute.

Culture shock number one: time. While we were in Slovakia and even India I had ample time to pursue my hobbies, whether I did so or let time idle by is another story, but I’ve honestly never experienced time going by so fast in my life. Entire weeks seem to blink away.

Culture shock number two: food. When i drafted this post in my mind (what has somehow turned into a month(!!) ago, see culture shock number one) I literally was going to say that bread in America never molds. We had one loaf for WEEKS. I’ve since experienced the reverse of that because we eat so few meals at home. Even packing lunches I barely make a dent in the food that I buy at the market and lots of things end up going bad. Bummer. (Obviously the solution is to by less. I’m working on that too.)

Culture shock number three: drugs. Yep drugs. Living in Berkeley this shouldn’t surprise anyone, but I’ve been offered drugs on multiple occasions. My favorite just happened yesterday when a little old Mexican lady walked up to my office door with a lunch box saying something about coca. Of course my first thought was this lady wants something to eat for lunch (I may have even translated her request to chocolate in my mind), but she didn’t fool Tamara who quickly told her no gracias and to move along.

Culture shock number four: germs. Pesky American germs combined with my heavy use of public transportation have brought me down four times in the last six weeks. No fun at all when your immune system just isn’t used to the everyday bugs floating around.

Culture shock number five: health care. Burke and I have health, dental and vision insurance! And I’ve used it! Twice! I was so pleased the first time I went to the doctor and went right in to a nice, new facility without having to wait. And then I talked to the doctor in English!

Culture shock number six: playgrounds. I ran by a playground the other day and it looked so futuristic, especially considering what we had in Slovakia.

Culture shock number seven: money. Mostly spending money. Burke and I became so accustomed over the last couple years to not spending money that it is incredibly difficult to readjust. For three years before buying anything I’d ask myself, “Can I live without this?” you probably think that sounds normal, good even, but let me tell you it was extreme. We went weeks in our new apartment without a trashcan because a bag hanging on a knob would do, without a bath mat because we could live with just drying off really, really well in the shower or without a second set of keys because as long as the elevator wasn’t propped open on a different floor I could usually access the laundry room. Now after the initial “Can I live without this” thought passes I ask myself, “Is this something that is found in a modest American home?” And now if for no reason other than keeping up social norms, our home is equipped with a few more things that have brought us into this modern century.

And while the culture shock comes and goes, whether funny or overwhelming, I sometimes find myself in situations where I feel like I am in my old home again. Sometimes I’m in a market where no one is speaking English or I hear someone call something red that’s actually orange…

The other day a man approached me as I was walking my bike towards the elevator to the subway and asked in a thick accent for directions. I told him sorry, I didn’t know but he lingered as I waited for the elevator. as the doors closed behind me he whispered, “Goodbye, I love you.” It brought me back to this guy in India who without a doubt would have asked me to marry him, had he only known the words. Maybe something’s aren’t so different after all.

A New Beginning

22 Jul 2012

I’ve been trying to chisel out some time to write a blog post, but somehow that hasn’t happened for what has turned into months. I came across a surplus of time this morning by accident, thinking church started an hour earlier than it does. Lucky for us both, I have time to tell you what we’ve been up to since we left Philadelphia.

If you don’t already know, we have our very own apartment in Berkeley, CA. We were helped immensely by a few friends who let us stay with them before we got our own place to live. We also got to dog sit some of the best dogs ever.

Does it ever sicken anyone what an animal lover I am?:)

While we have spent just about every weekend since moving in shopping for things to fill our apartment (that is another post entirely) we have had some time to enjoy California living. We live fairly close to the Marina and we like to go there on occasion. We are close to a lot of other natural attractions and I am excited to start checking them out soon too!

Not long after arriving in CA, we attended not one but TWO weddings, on a Tuesday no less. Funny huh?

During which we got to spend some long overdue hangout time with Scarlet, Jon and Carrie’s adorable baby.

San Francisco has been good to us since we’ve been here and has actually had nice weather overall. My main reason for not wanting to live this far north in the Bay Area was the weather, but it hasn’t been too bad. If you aren’t familiar with the quote, Mark Twain once said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco.”

Another reason I’ve decided living in Berkeley/San Francisco isn’t that bad is that it is a tourist destination! Specifically for three of my friends who have already been here! It was so great to see Becca, I hadn’t seen her since college!

Burke’s dad visited a couple weekends including Fathers’ Day when we took him to an Oakland A’s game. The next weekend he came up he was helping us move into our apartment!

If you’re curious about the details of our apartment, stay that way. We are still getting settled and far from ready to post any photos. I can tell you it’s in a fairly nice area of Berkeley (not too nice, obviously, since Burke’s bike was just stolen) and it is spaciously small. Small because it is the most basic floor plan, but spacious because we are struggling to fill it.

The other biggest aspect of our lives right now (and for the foreseeable future) is our new employment. I’m working at an interior design firm in San Francisco and Burke is working with a company that contracts with Google. All in all, AMAZING.

In our next post I’ll tell you about how reverse culture shock/ “reentry” back into the US may have caught up with us.

The Midwest

18 May 2012

I can’t even call the post “Ohio” because we actually went to eight different states (including states in the Northeast, Southwest and Southeast ) during our six weeks in the area. It was pretty amazing. All of our travels took place during the last two weeks, but we put the first part of our visit to good use too!

Hung out with this guy All.The.Time.

Met my cousin’s new baby!

Visited with my grandma frequently & celebrated her 91st birthday!

Continued to deny having allergies while Burke visibly suffered…

Now, don’t judge me for the next photo; I’m looking particularly rough. Dad and I took the dogs for a bike ride or a run just about every day. One day I thought it would be extra fun to put both the dogs on the bike. Marley (the black one) really liked it because about every time after that he got strangely close to the bike, as if he wanted on again.

This is a recumbent bicycle, definitely not made for a person and two dogs.

We also made good use of our time helping out with Corner Shack, the amped up version of the youth group I went to in high school. It was fun to see some of the kids that I remembered from when I volunteered at Kidmunity (sunday school) and kids that I coached on the swimming team.

The week we spoke was a record high for number of kids, but there are 50-60 weekly.

Then we routed through Indiana to go to Chicago. It was the best weekend ever.

Then we went to Missouri to hang out with a lot of Burke’s family. My parents came along, and it was the first time they had seen each other since the wedding.

It’s about an eleven hour drive from where we live in Ohio to Joplin, MO. On the way, we stopped at the St. Louis Zoo and on the way back we stopped and had dinner with Burke’s cousin Rick and his family!

Shortly after returning from Missouri, we went to Harrisburg for one of my college friend’s wedding. Julie looked so beautiful, and we had a great time catching up with other friends at the wedding!

Our last stop on the tour lead us to Philidelphia, where we flew out to San Francisco. Fortunately I know a lot of people who live there including my friend Marilyn! She hosted us so well during our couple of short hours there and even prepared a lovely picnic lunch.

Picnic basket packer extraordinaire

It was so great seeing friends and family while we were in the Midwest (and Southwest, Southeast and Northeast!). We loved visiting with you all and are already looking forward to next time!

Bye bye Europe

06 Apr 2012

We had a mangled array of activities during the last few weeks of our program. It was pretty fun, I love organized variety. We went to Austria for a couple days.

When we came back it was just a couple days until we had our graduation!

Maybe you know, but our last few days in Slovakia were actually spent in England. When we came back, our friend Janko picked us up from the airport.

Despite having made at least four or five trips through Bratislava before, Burke felt like we’ve never really seen the city. So he asked Janko if he’d give us a tour before we went back to his apartment with him. Since Janko is such a super nice friend (and single, fyi ladies), he agreed to give us a midnight tour of the capital city of the country we’ve called home.

Janko was a great tour guide. For some buildings and streets he knew the details and history, but other times he met my questions with colorful answers.

Me: Hey, Janko, what’s that a statue of?
Janko: A soldier.

Me: Janko, what is this building known for?
Janko: People work there.

A bridge.

While we were finishing our program, I spent most of my free time working on two videos and going to the gym. If you haven’t watched the videos yet, you can find them here. The gym was small, primitive, and inexpensive, so it worked out just fine. I really got a kick out of the power button on this machine.

Here’s my last funny thing from Slovakia. When we came back, there was a sign out at the bar across the street from our home. They were having a happy hour-type promotion where you could pay only 45 euro cents (60 US cents or so) for a shot of hard alcohol between the hours of 8 and 9 am.

For those of you who like to get an early start on the day, I guess…

Maybe you haven’t heard this story yet, but on our way home we were asked if we would like to be bumped to a later flight meaning we would get accommodation in London for a night AND 500 USD each. Boom, sign us up. In the end, they didn’t need to bump us, but they gave us first class seats for being willing. It was amazing, especially since it was the longest leg of our journey.

I decided riding coach is for chumps and I’m never going to do it again…. yeah, I wish.

In the next post, I’ll tell you about what we’re up to in Ohio; but for now, this concludes this portion of our amazing overseas adventures.