Okay I am attempting to figure out this very long piece of mail I got in German. Well as you all know from my last blog (sorry it was such a rant), I really don't speak and certainly don't read German all that well. Matt and I have all our reocurring bills set up to auto pay and so when we get mail that isn't a bill we go through it every couple of weeks unless it looks important. This one looked important to me. When we determine the mail is important we then have to try and read it. I tried but it is 3 pages and I know it is important because it is about "Ihres Kindes" (my children).

 

So now that I know it is about my child I quickly see that there is some big number in there 2500,00EUR monatlich. Ut oh....what does this mean? Something I am not doing could be 2500.00 euros a month. Hmmm....In order to determine what it is regarding, I typed the first paragraph into Altavista Babelfish translation. This could take  a while--there are 15 paragraphs with very long sentences full of very long German words. The first try at deciphering this letter reads back "

 

 

Yes I am an idiot when it comes to reading German and the translator isn't helping. So now I have to suck up my pride and ask someone to help me translate this document. It clearly is important but I have no idea what I am supposed to do with it. I am guessing it is not about electrodes at all. But it is about my children and most likely is about my son because I know "Geburt" is to be born and that is all over this document.

 

I suspect it is about Kindergeld or registering our son with the German government or something, which we couldn't even register for until now because it took us 5 times to get our birth certificate from the Stadthaus and you can't do anything until you get the 5 copies of the birth certificate from the Stadthaus. You see Matt went down there two times and the woman refused to speak to him because she couldn't understand his German and to a fault, he went a half hour before they closed. Then the third time he figures out she is saying something about our marriage certificate not being okay. What? He asked her what she means and she says in perfect English I will not accept your marriage certificate becaues it doesn't look official enough. Then she proceeds to tell him he needs something blah blah blah in high-paced German...to which poor Matt asks her if she can slow down because he is learning German and his German is not so good. No. She will not slow down. Bring someone who speaks German next time. Bye. The thing is we don't really care that much about the damn kindergeld but we need the German certificate in order to get our son's American citizenship. If I needed to leave the country, I could NOT leave because my son does not exist. Finally we beg someone to help us and they tell us that we have to get a new marriage certificate with a more pronounced stamp on it because she doesn't believe that I am really married to Matt or that this child who was born here in Aachen for which I have the hospital papers to prove that he was born here might not have been born here in Deutschland afterall. WHAT?! I gave birth in the hospital here. Unless it was a dream or more like a nightmare? I got stuck 16 times in the back after the pain got bad enough during birth because they gave me some stuff to induce my labor and I could not control the pain. So I gave in and had an epidural but the person giving it to me didn't know what she was doing and literally stuck me 14 times before calling her more experienced boss who stuck me only twice lucky me. I still have a few spots on my back to prove it. But no, my son was not born HERE evnethough I have the documents that he was born here. (Now the birth part was not so good but the way they handled the complications my son had was excellent I must say...on a side note the healthcare here is  better and coverd everything as opposed to the US. Germany has better healthcare in many ways and the experience was good in the hospital except the terrible experience of being in a teaching hospital and having the shots and being offered headcheese for meals--yuck!).

 

So my 80-year-old grandmother goes back to the small town in America where we got the marriage certificate and begs the woman to please stamp the stamp extra hard and make the document look extra official so we can get our son his AMERICAN citizenship. Finally the fifth time Matt goes down there the woman refuses to see him and he says in perfect German, LET ME SEE YOUR BOSS. THe boss looked at the second marriage certificate we had overnighted here and finally agreed it would suffice. Last week we went to the Embassy (we both have to go with our son) and we got his baby passport pictures and now THANK GOD he is now a citizen of a country,, the good old USA. I don't care about the German one. We have 5 more forms and 5 more offices to go to with these forms and we haven't done it because all we care about is he gets his citizenship.

 

So anyways Um I don't want Outer ground electrodes being around my children or affecting my child's education especially after all I have been through just to prove my child exists (see the bold text above). Laugh Out Loud! If you can't have a sense of humor about these things well then life is too serious...I am laughing a bit. Yoga has once again made me realize that yes I may be unhappy  here but there are a lot of nice things about being here and I especially love the Kita my daughter goes to and the staff there rocks. They have been so nice and so helpful I will miss them tremendously. I guess either I bring it to one of them and ask if they can help me or poor Matt has to bring it to work and bow his head in shame after he waits for someone to translate for him. This is what I mean when I say living in a foreign land where you don't speak the language keeps you humble, very humble. 

Okay. When you move to a foreign country, you tell yourself that everything is going to work out. You convince yourself that it is not a big deal that the place you are moving doesn't speak English because surely they will speak English for you (yes, the English-speaking world does tend to be this arrogant). You downplay the cultural differences and pretend they don't exist because you truly want to believe that it will work out. You move here and expect that overnight you will be so smart and learn the language--BAMN!- just like that. You buy the software and the books and then you get your confindence and go out to try out your newfound knowlege. And then you get to the cash register and the cashier asks you the simplest thing and you freak out because you have NO IDEA, not even the slightest idea what they said. You smile and hope that smiling is the correct response. When smiling doesn't work you say yes and hope this is the right response and when this is clearly this is not the response because it is not a yes or no question, well then you take your things out of there and run. RUN. You think you are on an extended vacation, a fun little holiday excursion and at firstyou travel like everywhere and then...reality sits in. The funny looking signs you can't read: they are your reality now. The person asking you a question while you smile stupidly not knowing what they said: they are your reality. Oh and no they don't have your favorite tv show on in English...you see it on the tele but it is dubbed. That's right. Reality sets in: YOU ARE A FOREIGNER IN A FOREIGN LAND AND YOU MY FRIEND DON'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE.

 

These experience used to happen all the time in the beginning. And then I started to learn what the right response was even though I couldn't explain the exact translation nor could I even begin to spell and sometimes I didn't even really know what I was saying. But I learned the right response nonetheless and it helped me feel a little bit more normal being here. And that is where my language learning stopped. I can say all kinds of expressions: alles clar (all is clear...i understand); exactly; let's go; we are going home; what are you doing?; what's wrong? I would like some bread and water please (seriously just like in Goodmorning Vietnam). BUt at the end of teh day when I run into my neighbors or I see a parent from the Kita and they start talking, I barely undertand what they are saying and I have to guess. It is like a jigsaw puzzle or one of those fill-in-the-blank word puzzles except I never get the whole puzzle. I almost never understand everything completely but I understand enough to get the jist of it. At this point that is okay with me.

 

I could even deal with the rules that we have here. There are rules for everything and people will let you know. Like when our neighbors in the beginning gave us lots of "friendly" (being sarcastic) advice about where to put our trash (I have some "friendly" advice for those old hags too). Or like the complete stranger who came over to the car and told me to turn off the engine and gave me a terrible how dare you waste look because my husband left the car runnng fo a minute while he ran in to get something during the middle of a snow storm while my daughter was passed out in the back and his pregnant wife waited for him in the cold. Or how about the buy and install your own kitchen for the apartment you rent thing? Yah. I can deal with that too. Or how about the whole birthing experience of having some bitch of a midwife yelling at me in German to deal with the pain of birth and just Drucken (push). Fine. Point taken...I wanted to smack her when she told me it is supposed to hurt (yah I know that Ihad one already) but maybe I needed someone to be harsh to get me through it? And folks the taxes are so high and so wide that we had NO IDEA they take taxes from stock Matt was awarded for being a good employee 5 years ago. We had no idea that they could take money from that. No one told us. That was our money down on a house and savings for our kids. So yah we have a hard time. NO doubt. Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans. And boy we tried to plan. We asked these questions and no one could answer them. No one can tell us even to this day what all the deductions are on our paychecks...no one knows what all that "mumbo jumbo" is, it is just what Germany takes in taxes you silly American. Why do you need to know? Hah! Because it is our money and we would like to know where it goes. I don't believe in black wholes in the sky, especially when we both had to bust our asses to put ourselves through college and are still paying back loans. That's why.

 

We are ready to move out of here but we aren't going to just yet. We are here for a year or less but most likely we are here for another year. I have stopped freaking out about what I don't know or can't change about being here. I have released myself from the stress of not knowing and have both fortunately and unfortunately released myself of the responsibility of being an expert in German. Learning a language takes years and I am just doing the best I can. I haven't put my best effort forth and as a mother of a baby and a toddler I have got to say I am not going to be trying all that hard to learn tons more. I just don't have the time or energy. I am tire.d I am tired. Tired of being misunderstood and tired of not understanding. I want to make jokes in my own language and have someone not only understand the words but understand that it is funny (or at least I hope SOME of the time I am in fact funny). Yes folks I miss the English-speaking world and no longer how long I am here or how much German I learn, THAT is NOT going to change.

 

The icing on the cake that broke me the other day and made realize that I miss home and my family and friends for gods' sake I miss human, real human contact with real conversations, was when that damn lady yelled at us for sitting down to eat the icecream we just bought from her. I am DONE. Done. Sure I have met some nice people here that I am "friendly" with but you know what it has been DAMN hard. I am DONE. ANd so now I just have stopped caring if I am wrong when I try out German. I have even stopped speaking in German unless I absolutely have to or I know the person will be okay with me not sounding okay. I am just going to try and enjoy this place for what it is: a cute little town with cobblestones and cafes and flowers and fountains with kickass bread and awesome meat (and I am not a huge meat eater but must admit that here the salami is soooooooooooooooooo good).  I plan to pretend to be a tourist for the remainder of my time here. So yah that is it folks. Wish me luck.

 

 

Today was the first day I got a whole stream of giggles from Taylor. I was thrilled. He has the cutest little laugh in the whole wide world. As soon as I came over to pick him up I always say hi and give him a huge smile. He just started smiling back a few weeks ago. Well today he gave me a huge smile and then went agooooooooooo and then I laughed because it was so cute. Then he laughed back. I copied his agooooo and he did it back again and laughed. Colick and all the things I have had to give up are so worth his smiles and so worth his little laugh. He just did it again for both me and Matt and then he got so excited that he was overstimiluated and had to be picked up and rocked down to sleep. The long nights, the crying, all of it is worth it just to see him happy. It is all worth it.

Okay sorry for the imflammatory beginning here but I guess I am just a wee bit overtired and well fed up with some of the cultural things here. Matt and I just had a lovely rude experience which has left us both feeling a little perplexed. There is an Eis Cafe (an icecream shop) literally down the street from us across from a small playground. Matt was one of their first customers when they opened a year ago and has been there many times since. We took Olivia there tonight as a special treat and ordered a small strawberry  in a cup for her, a cone for Matt, and a coffee to go. I had the baby in a baby carrier and he thankfully had fallen asleep. So we figured that since sometimes Olivia can get freaky after dinner it was best to order all of it to go in case we needed to get out of there. They have tables outside. We paid for our things and then sat down at the tables outside for a minute. The owner came out and yelled at us in German that the tables are for customers who don't order things to go and that we couldn't sit there.

 

What?! Hello, we just bought icecream from you and now we cannot sit in your establishment? What? It is a rule thing I am sure. I am sure that this woman made some sort of rule that "to-go" items have to be taken away promptly and the tables can only be for ordering the icecream and eating it there. Sure. Okay. Maybe they want to be really good to the environment. Maybe they don't want small children messing up there tables. Maybe if it gets busy (there were 7 open tables), then I can understand that you want the tables for people who want to linger and buy more stuff. Okay. If you really want to chance that very pretty glass you put your icecream in with a toddler then be my guest. In fact I can even deal with your silly rule. I am used to rules--this is Germany afterall. But why the hell was she so rude? That I can't deal with. The most frustrating thing is this is not the first time we have been treated this way by a business establishment that we have frequented before. And I assure you Matt and I always try our best in German when we go to businesses and we always stay polite. So I really don't think it is US being rude. The thing is customers are NOT treated with respect at all sometimes and it really makes me scratch my head. The customer is not always right and some places really don't care if you never come back. There are several shoe stores, a few pizza shops, a few restaurants and other places that I have boycotted because of how rude they were to me. ONe time a man shoed me away from the outside of his pizza shop because I was standing outside with Olivia singing to her while we were waiting for Matt to pick up the pizza we just ordered. Yes he actually shook his fist at me and shoed me away. He cringed when he realized his mistake once he saw that my husband was inside getting pizza from his place.  I have never gone back and I scowl at him often. He tried to have me come in and smiled really big and told Matt that he didn't mean me but he did. He was looking right at me. IN fact I even pointed at myself when he did it a second time and he shook his head yes and then shoed me again. Dah! It was not like I looked like a dishelved mess either...I had on a nice pair of pants and my red business-style raincoat and who shoes a mother away when she is playing with her child outside anyway? And so the icecream place is yet again another place that I will boycott.

 

But really I just have to know why? Is it because we don't speak perfect German? We did order in German and we did say thank you. I did smile at the other owner (he was nice...not sure if he knows his Frau is a B!). Is it because sometimes people think my husband is Turkish and I hate to say this but the poor Turkish people get treated pretty poorly here. Or is it because we are Americans? I guess we will never know. Really stupid on their part because we live UP THE STREET and we have TWO YOUNG KIDS. Dah!@ Karma baby. Karma!

It's 12:18 PM on a Monday here in somewhat-sunny, very muggy Germany. My floor is covered with Legos, doll clothes, and the dirty socks my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter took off yesterday. I am covered in spit-up. My hair is a mess. I have been carrying my two-and-a-half-month-old son around in a sling for two hours now and he has woken up to nurse twice, spit-up, cried, refused the pacifier about 50 times. I am desperate for just a half-hour of quiet time to finish of all things unproductive, one or two chapters in this book, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

 

Oh I know how ridiculous it is that I am trying to read anything at this point...hahahah I got like maybe 3 hours of sleep again last night because yesterday Matt and I got out for a date and I decided to go ahead and try cheese again thinking that my son's milk allergy might have worked it's way out of my breastmilk. No! Dah! He still has the allergy. No wonder he is fussy. And where is he right now while I write this? Well I am so tired and my neck hurts from carrying him around, my ears hurt from hearing him cry, and so I had to do what many a mother before has had to do and I had to put him screaming into his crib so that I could take a break. (ANd no I cannot let him cry it out. Besides having it break my heart and soul--he doesn't do that...it just makes him more upset and vomit more and thus the cycle goes round and round in the world of colic.)

 

I am drinking my decaf tea ( Believe me I want the fully caffeinated but  if I have more than two cups of caffeine a day my son shoots milk out of his nose, projectile vomits, and then screams) and I am  pretending that I am at the beach. I am trying with all my might to not hear him crying. Anyone who claims having children isn't hard or is foolish enough to think that babies are little dolls that are docile and to be dressed up with little work or frustrations is seriously wrong or dimented. Little mother wannabees beware! I love my son. I DO love my son. But I also have to say that I truly have a colicky baby and it is not  something I would wish upon my worst enemy. Believe me carrying him in a sling and holding the pacifier in his mouth is what has to be done for my sanity. And folks, this is how I am doing with the help of a very expereienced mom.

 

how will i do tomoorrow alone w/toddler and screaming baby?

 

The reality? Well, Matt's mom is going home tomorrow and this is my last "break". She took Olivia out with her this morning. You see Olivia gets a little fussy herself when Taylor is crying because naturally I have to fuss over the baby more than her if he is crying. So she too starts crying sometimes or holding onto my leg or throws things around the room. I mean how dare I not play with her because I am HER mommy. I know this is normal jealousy toddler behavior but it is not easy.

 

So why not just give up on nursing? Good question...well besides wanting the antibodies and other stuff I can give him through breastmilk, unfortunately it is looking more and more like my son cannot tolerate formula. It makes him projectile vomit and shoot nastiness out of his nose. It causes more fussiness, more sleeplessness for both him and me (naturally if he is not sleeping then neither am I). I just should not have had the cheese and should not go out of the house unless I have breastmilk in a bottle.

 

I say this and yet Matt and I are going out tonight again I hope. We are going to give him a combination of breastmilk and formula if need be. This may mean I have to deal with fussy baby tomorrow but it is our last night out alone together for a while...can't leave newborn with stranger, especially since can't find someone who speaks English to watch our children. So yah there is mother madness. People do have breaking points. I would love to take my crying son out on the balcony for fresh air but my German neighbors would be appauled (this is not how to spell the word but my mind is broken--forgive my mispellings)--my appearance is beyond repair at the moment and crying babies are not tolerated. Also cannot stomach idea of having to converse in German right now or answer questions like Wie Geht's? (How are you?). If I had to answer I might either cry (which is not something you do in a stoic culture) or scream (clearly a sign I am as mad as the Mad Hatter!). Yesterday I made it through 9 minutes of Yoga. Who knows maybe today I can make it through 10! LOL.

little hard to do yoga w/screaming baby! Keep me sane. THAT is how I am doing.