i am sitting in our almost empty house. today is our last day living in germany, and tomorrow night will be the first living in england. very sad, and very exciting.

this place has been wonderful to me. i only hope that we will have such wonderful experiences and wonderful friends in our new home.

bye, deutschland. i'm going to miss you.

leaving on a jet plane...

tomorrow i fly back to the US for the first time in 2010, and the first time since april. heading to colorado to visit my mom and dad and celebrate my mom's birthday! happy birthday, mom! can't wait to ski, shop, and eat! not necessarily in that order! when i get back, i've got a month until the movers arrive, and a lot of prep work to do.

God Save the Queen

So we're moving. I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone who reads this blog (if anyone even bothers to stop by anymore - hi mom!), but I'm making an official expatty announcement. As of February 2010, I'll be drinking tea, wearing wellies, and attempting to speak the Queen's English. To be fair, I already drink a lot of tea and wear wellies almost daily...

I also want to apologize to a new blog reader (welcome!) for anything I say about your home country that may offend you along the road, should you decide to come back. I'm sure I'll love it. But I guarantee you there will be days when it pisses me off.

Stay tuned for the story of the house-hunting trip, folks.

everybody was facebook fighting...

so it turns out all you have to do to get me to blog is piss me off. please, someone read this and tell me that not everyone is so intolerant of different religions and so quick to pass judgement. because evidently, in the forum in which the conversation is taking place, i'm the only one that is disgusted by this. and i'm so mad i could scream.

are YOU salvatore's daughter?

wanna know what an idiot i am?  read on...  i'm posting this because at least four of you who read this blog (or who are forced into reading particular posts by your spouses - hey dad, hey ryan) actually know salvatore.

so one day we are sitting outside, drinking some wine, when salvatore, the owner of the place where we stay, comes over and starts speaking to us.  as usual, with his italian and my english, we're not getting anywhere.  so he says, in italian, that georgia speaks english, and calls georgia over.  this young woman in her 20's walks over, and having had english conversations over the phone in previous years with salvatore's grown daughter, i said "oh, are you salvatore's daughter?!"  she didn't understand me, i repeated myself, and she said "no, i'm his wife!"  

so i just kept going with the conversation and played the whole awkward thing off.  okay, lesson learned.  right?  you would think.

the next day sean comes in and wakes me up and tells me that salvatore's daughter is outside...  i laughed and told him it was his wife.  he said unless his wife was 17, it was his daughter.  i went outside to investigate, and sure enough, this girl looked younger, had darker hair in a different style, and was much cuter than the girl i had seen yesterday.  so what did i say?  you guessed it.  "are you salvatore's daughter?"  once again, she didn't understand me, so i repeated myself AGAIN, to which she replied as she took off her sunglasses and revealed her familiar face, "no, i'm his WIFE!"  

wife.  got it.

so i'm updating my list of questions never to ask a woman.

1.  never ask a woman if she's pregnant unless you can actually see a baby making an exit.

2.  never, ever, ever make the assumption that someone is the daughter of the older man standing next to them.  

which reminds me to buy those "who's my daddy??!!/eeeew, she's my DAUGHTER you freak!" t-shirts for my next solo outing with my own dad.

i dreamed a dream...

i actaully had a dream about a burrito last night.  i woke up before i got to taste it, thanks to DHL's speedy delivery of Sunday's order from Amazon.de.  

i promise to write more about my trip soon and post a few more photos (yes, the burrito above was actaully consumed in it's entirety, by me, in austin)...  it was an amazing trip, i can still hardly believe i was able to cram so much into two weeks.  i had a hard time when i came home, and for some reason it took me about two weeks to get back on a decent schedule and feel like myself again.  perhaps it was two weeks of stuffing as much mexican food into my face as was humanly possible, dozens of margaritas, and trying to convince my body that shopping IS exercise?

It's not my birthday...

So today is my birthday, but I don't turn 33 until tomorrow, May 5th.  Here's how. 

 

I was born on May 4th, 33 years ago, at 8:35PM CST.  Making my exact birth time here in Germany (GMT +1) 3:35am on May 5th.