Munchkinland

Hi Everyone,

In my next to last update, I addressed the topics of work, soccer and the cat lady. Sticking with these themes, I'll give you all an update.

I have met with Ute and her blind cat, Mattias, 5 times so far. Ute is 84 years old and Mattias is probably that old in cat-years. I have since learned that the both of them are CRAZY, something I should have figured out earlier (mushroom season is in the fall). Anyways, every meeting with the pair gets progressively weirder, and last Tuesday a cheery Ute answered he door with a new hairdo. Apparently, her hair had just returned from a trip to the fiery pits of hell, where it had caught fire and had not yet been extinguished. It was bright orange, like the color of Tang®. I don't know if all elderly German women go through an experimental hair color stage or if it is a simple confusion over which dye number to use (# 666 perhaps?), but from what I have witnessed so far in my time here, it is an epidemic of extreme proportions. Anyways, Ute and I usually sit at her kitchen table and talk about the weather, American politics, and to my utter horror, men (she is having relations with Herrn Müller, whomever that is). There is some comic relief to these sessions though, and it is probably the reason why I keep coming back. See, Ute likes to put Mattias up on the table while we are talking and the cat, for one reason or another (maybe because he is blind), consistently walks the plank. Whether Germany has made me evil, insensitive, or both- I am not sure, but watching that cat walk right off the edge of the table never gets old. He always walks away a little ticked off, until Ute picks him up...and the vicious cycle continues.

My job is still great, however I have been on the receiving end of some food-harassment lately. It is company policy that everyone who brings a lunch to work eats together, so it's usually my boss and I that are the brown baggers while everyone else goes out to eat. Now I usually eat my leftovers for lunch, and one day I brought in a confetti of black beans, corn, tomato, cucumber and pepper. My boss looks at my lunch and says, "Eliza- your food is too colorful, maybe you should try eating more like a German." A few days later, over a salad containing black eyed peas, he asks- "Do all Americans eat as many beans as you do?" I tell him that I eat a lot of beans because they are cheap and nutrient packed, and we leave it at that. Then last week over a meal of chickpeas and rice, he tells me: "Eliza, I have been doing some calculating and I think we can afford to pay you more- so you don't have to eat beans everyday for lunch." Ha! This is great news, but little does he know- I am on a fiber crusade and beans are the answer. In the meantime, I am going to halt lunchtime bean eating until I get my paycheck.

On the soccer front, I am finally a card-carrying member of TSV Alemannia-Zäringen's women's soccer team. Playing with them is like walking into a high school time warp, where the image one projects on the soccer field is every bit as important as performance i.e. -they use ample amounts of hairspray. Despite my unwillingness to spray down my mass of hair, i'm generally accepted as team elder and have been invited to team events such as Alex's Fuhrerschein Party (Alex got her drivers license party. We had our first league game last weekend against the women of Haslach- a tiny team from a tiny town nestled in the Black Forest. Not a single player on that team was over 5 foot 2. Their heights, combined with knee high soccer socks and the occaisional grunt-and/or-giggle made me feel like I was Dorothy in Munchkinland. Despite all this, they proved to be a pretty good team and beat us 1-0.


Well, that is about all that is going on with me. My living situation is still great and I discovered that there is a wood oven bakery around the corner from my house- so I couldn't ask for anything more. I hope everyone is great!

-Deutscheliza