Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

So, Matthias has headed out for 3 weeks to do test drives in Sweden. He arrived safely, and seems to be working a lot.

In the mean time I am here in quiet solitude. I am just working a little on the websites, doing some applications and networking about some job stuff and working a bit on the direction of my yoga practice.

Our friends Cliff and Sarah joined the gym over the weekend. It’s cool to know some people at the gym now! It gives me another excuse to go more often if I know they’ll be there.

I discovered some things I can do when Matthias is not here:

• I can listen to Krishna Das loudly as I putter around the house;
• I can rent “hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as Matthias refuses to watch it (he thinks it will be dumb and he’s right, but its Hitchhiker’s Guide, what does he expect?);

OK, but in the end, I prefer Matthais to all of these great benefits.

On a political note, the Minister of Family in Germany, Ursula von der Leyen (successful politician and mother of 7), proposed new legislation intended to encourage Germans to reproduce. It’s basic idea is that women in Germany are opting out of children because they are expected to quit their careers once they start a family. One of the more controversial proposals is that men would be REQUIRED to take off two months if they wish to qualify for full well-fare benefits. Some of the politicians (men) in her own party are furious over the notion that men should have to take time off from their important career to “change diapers” (in their words). Imagine that, men would actually be required to make a small sacrifice in their career to start a family! She mentioned that their strong reaction exemplifies the underlying contempt with which child rearing is regarded in Germany. Interesting.

So, hopefully the new dns name worked, and you all found this site. I don’t have much to write about, but as I am making this so family and friends know what’s going on in our lives, I should keep it updated.

Just to clarify for future reference. There will be spelling mistakes and typos in my blogs. Just deal with it an move on. I am not working on improving my spelling, so feel free to correct me, but realize that I will not learn from it. I usually depend on MS Word to think for me when it comes to spelling, but I am not using word to type this, and I will probably miss some things or honestly just not know how to spell something properly.

So anyway, Matthias has been finishing preparations for test drives. He leaves for the polar circle next week for three weeks! A big truck carrying all of their gear left today, so he might be able to chill out a little before heading out on Monday. All week he’s been doing a lot to come up with tests they can perform on the ice.

I am still doing a lot of yoga studies and looking for jobs. The yoga class at the Regensburg VHS (people’s high school) is great, and the students are working really hard. I spent the morning looking over a sutra from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I am looking to understand a major obsticle I face in the development of mental clarity. How’s that for a joyous morning?

I also called the one perspective employer today to see if he made a decision. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in, and I had to leave a message with his secretary. I had a plan in my head for what I would say to the guy (as I was going to speak German), but his secretary answered and threw me all off!! I did manage to leave him a message though… I think. The secretary probably wrote “some babbling woman called asking about a position. Please tell her not to call here anymore.”

Our big plan for the weekend is bowling. We haven’t gone bowling in years, and we finally organized ourselves to go with our American friends Sarah and Cliff. We called to book a lane on Tuesday, and there were no open lanes! The guy told us to show up anyway in case someone cancels. Actually, the original plan was to see a play called “Copenhagen” about the physicist Niels Bohr and a secret talk he had with Oppenheimer before the development of the atomic bomb. However, we called to reserve tickets a week ahead of time, and the entire weekend was already booked. I can believe how much the Germans plan ahead here! I think we need to be more clever if we want to go to anything other than a movie.

Here is our first blog message from Regensburg. Things will be changing on this site until I figure out how to do this website/blog thing properly. Wish me luck!

This week is pretty uneventful, but I (Tammy is doing most of the writing) am trying to get in touch with life in the town so we have more activities to chose from every week. The dinner and movie night out are getting boring. There is a lot of music in town, and there is even a bowling alley in town, so there are some possibilities.

In the mean time, I am working on figuring out the blog/website stuff so we can get this up so friends and family can read about things.