Dear Fans, 
1 January 2003
Happy New Year!! I never got out a Christmas letter--much too hectic--so thought I'd aim for New Years, instead. This has been an exciting and wonderful year, full of unexpected surprises (can a surprise be expected?), some good and some bad. So I'll write this on New Year's Day, instead. Basically, we moved! The program Jim was working on in Japan closed, so he was sent back to the States and laid off 'til he found a new job in a different program (they had promised they would place him somewhere, but sort-of forgot about that part of the agreement).
We spent the summer in the States, bumming off relatives and trying to travel in a used motorhome that kept breaking down. The best part was making it to the Cook family reunion held this year in the Sierra mountain range in central California just north of Yosemite. It was great to see everyone, meet some new cousins and relax and play for a while. I love that area of the state. We also went up the coast a ways to check the Santa Maria/ Vandenberg area. But while we were there, I got a call about a job, so we cut it short and headed back to LA. I had searched around and finally found a great l job at a junior college in VA and, while we were there, they called and offered me the position of distance learning coordinator/webmaster. But then Jim was offered a job in Germany, pending approval of his status with the German government. Reluctantly, we started for VA, but just as we were starting (actually, while sitting in a garage waiting for the cursed motorhome to be repaired again), DoDDS called up and offered me a job in Germany, too! After some deep soul-searching lasting about 15 seconds, I accepted and we returned to our moms' houses to prepare for the big move here. It took a month to get herenew, "official" passports, packing out all our goods (most of which was still in storage), selling the cursed motorhome, and saying our goodbyes.
Last night we had a surprise visit from one of our neighbors, a guy about my age, named Klaus, who turns out to be another computer fan with satellite DSL, like us, and who speaks English really well. He brought us some Sylvester pretzels (very large, soft, and with a sweet-orangey flavor, not hard and salty) in return for the Christmas cookies we had passed out by way of introduction to all of our neighbors last week. Sylvester, by the way, is German for New Year's Eve, since in the Catholic Church calendar here, it's the feast of St. Sylvester, a pope about 1000 years ago. So if there's some NYE event, like a dance or party, they call it a Sylvester Ball or Sylvester whatever. Anyway, Klaus explained that every year in our town, the local innkeeper (know as a gasthaus, not an inn) throws a party for the whole village (all 31 houses!).
So at 11:30, we put on our gloves and coats and boots, since we were having the first and last snowfall of December (only about 3 cm deep by this morning, but enough to make everything pretty); gathered up the fireworks we had purchased a few days before; and wandered down the street to join in the fun. Sure enough, there were about fifty people in the gasthaus and everyone had free drinks (juice or wine or beer) and was having a great time. Luckily, there were three empty spots right next to our next-door neighbor whose daughter married an American and who speaks English. We settled in, met some more neighbors, and drank our juice while we waited for midnight. At midnight, everyone went outside and a brass band played while we sang (I think this is the English name), "Now Thank We All Our God" to welcome in the New Year. It is so nice to be in a place where we can openly practice our Christian faith and everyone else does, too. One of the ladies down the street had the words so I could sort-of sing along. Then everyone went around wishing everyone else a Happy New Year and shaking hands.
After that, the kids set off fireworks for about 20 minutes. The have great rocketslots of zoomand flying mice that shoot up about 50 feet, too! I was amazed at the number of kids setting off the fireworks but, luckily, there were no obvious accidents. They also have HUGE sparklers, about a meter long, but on a sturdy wooden stick so it doesn't bend as it burns down. I would imagine the street in front of the gasthaus is a mess this morning and I'll bet the cows around there give sour milk today from all the explosions!
When we tired of the fireworks, we wandered back inside to find a delicious buffet of sausage and cheese and bread along with champagne (no formal toast that I noticed) and juice. Everyone sat around and talked and ate. Families with kids left first, of course, so I don't know how long they stayed open. I did find out they'll be closed for the next few days to recover from the holidays! Apparently, they killed and dressed over 400 geese in the last couple of weeks (no wonder it's been so quiet lately--the geese are gone!). 200 they cooked and served there and 200 they sold as take out for people to cook at home. What a job! Plus, he apparently raises his own pigs and makes all his own sausage and meat. At any rate, it was a great start to the year 2003. We'll pay them back by eating there frequently throughout the year--it's a good restaurant, so that'll be easy to do!
Anyway, as you can surmise, we moved and are now in Germany. The girls and I are in Ansbach, about an hour from Nurnberg and halfway between Frankfurt and Munich. I am teaching computer science at a Dept. of Defense Dependent School called Ansbach Middle/High School. It's a smallish school, 320 students in 7-12 grades, about half in middle school and half in high school (because so many military quit or retire, elementary schools are very big and it dwindles after that. Most high-schoolers' parents are career militaryeither high ranking enlisted or officeror civilians working for the military. It's a great school--very friendly administration and staff and good kids. Right now I only have three classes of computer applications in which we're working our way through MSOffice. My other three classes just have a few, independent students who are either doing Office, HTML, or distance learning courses. It'll probably all change, though, with the new semester in January. I'm still teaching for CSUH online, which is nice and helping to pay for the move, although it was very stressful during the summer and fall while we were moving to find decent connections.
Our house is about 11 km north of the base in a small village called Zellrüglingen, just outside the town of Weihenzell where our landlords live and where the closest shopping is. We have a HUGE three story house with a big yard and a two-car garageactually divided into two, one-car garagesone for the car and the other for storage and, now, the dog's heated outdoor home for while we're at school. You can easily fit three more cars in the driveway/front area. Upstairs, the girls are two huge bedrooms and they have their bathroom with a shower. On the main floor is the front/TV room (with our new sofas), a spare/guest/piano room, computer/dining/living room, bathroom with double sinks and shower and tub, guest half bath, and kitchen. Apparently, most German homes come with no cupboards or sinks built in, but ours already had them from previous American tenants who left them since we couldn't very well take them home with us. Germans would move them to their new house. The kitchen cabinets were skimpy, but luckily we had some from Japan--a hutch and a microwave table and stuffso we're doing fine for space. Downstairs is my refugea two-room bedroom suite, storage room, full bath, the laundry room (4x3 meters at least! so it'll also have the sewing machine table and ironing board permanently set up), and the furnace/hot water heater/oil tank room. There's also a big solar panel on the roof and the landlord sells the electricity to the government. I have to take some readings from that every month and send it to them. We're still working on getting our household goods put away after a traumatic move in which they managed to "misplace" all the hardware for the furniture and most of our bookshelves and cabinets were damaged, so it's taken us several weeks to get the stuff built and organized. One nice thing here is the Army provides all the furniture you want for freesofas, beds, dressers, wardrobes (German houses don't have closets, either), appliances, etc.with no time limit, so we're well set. We did, however, buy a new sofa/loveseat combo the other day, since the Army's was rather utilitarian. The new (used) one is beige with sort of a bluish Indian pattern and four of the five sections are recliners, so we can all relax and watch TV together. Jim has his big rocker/recliner we brought from Japan at his house. Luckily we've had LOTS of help from our ward, which is much smaller than Misawa, but just as wonderful. The Primary President is also the band teacher at the high school and they are our official sponsors. They've helped so much, even babysitting our cats for a month 'til we moved to a really nice B&B hotel that allowed pets. The bishop and his family are our closest neighbors (about five km) and they have really been looking out for us, even inviting us to dinner on Thanksgiving Day when they heard the movers came that day. The Relief Society president is really sweet and regularly sends cheerful e-cards which I enjoy. Her son is the translator for the ward (it's mixed German and American) and is amazing! He's also really nice and good with computers. The Young Women's leader and her family have moved furniture and unpacked boxes and vacuumed the whole house and just been wonderful friends. Her 10 year old son is Marie's best friend in her class at school and her daughter the only other girl in Achievement Days. They have six kids, so when they aren't there, the primary is depleted! The YW counselor has come over, too and helped us meet our neighbors, cook German food, and do errands. Hopefully, she'll be able to do that regularly once the New Year and her new job starts, so we can get more settled and start learning German. The kids and I get along great with her, so it'd be wonderful if she could be our new German teacher like we had Japanese teachers there.
Jim is far, far away at Bad Aibling. Actually, it's about a 2½-hour drive from here, half way between Munich, Germany and Salzburg, Austria. We've been there twice, most weekends he comes up here on Friday afternoon and goes back Sunday afternoon. We just bought bahncards (bahn is train in German) for discount train tickets, to make it easier, especially with all the rain and early darkness here. We're at about the 50th latitude here, so it gets dark MUCH earlier than LA and quite a bit earlier than Japan. The sun's just coming up when we are going to school at 7ish and going down about 4:30. We're happy we're on our way to longer days now! Anyway, he's working for a different part of Lockheed/Martin now, but doing the same thing as in Japan. He has a beautiful apartmentthe second floor of a farmhousewith tile and hardwood floors (same as ours) and big rooms. Apparently they used to tax on the number of rooms, so people had fewer, larger rooms instead of many, smaller roomseven hallways are big with un-doored recesses for storage, so they didn't count as rooms! It's just a one-bedroom apartment, but the living space is about 2/3 of our house in Japan! Unfortunately, there's no garage or other outdoor storage space, but we have plenty of that here. His house is about the same distance as ours from his work, so it's convenient, and is also in a small town. He does, however, have a nearby train station, although it's probably faster to drive to the nearby (10 km) town of Rosenheim and catch the train there, since it has an inter-city train stop and Grosskarolinenfeld's just a milkstop. We have cell phones and house phones to stay in touch and as soon as we can, we'll hook up video-cams for better communication via the computers.
TV and electricity...Jim has TWO TVs, since we found the American TVs are not compatible with German TV. You have to have one TV for AFN and American TV/videotapes and a second for German TV/videotapes or one that's specially made for both. Since we had American TVs, we just bought an older, used German one for him, so he has two, nowone for his German TV shows that come by satellite and a second one we bought here with a built-in video player for American videotapes (he doesn't have the AFN satellite dish like we do). Ours is a just an American TV, but the DSL satellite dish pulls in most the German TV stations, so we're set that way, too. Unfortunately, Germany does not allow British or other stations on their system, so we don't even get CNN or a weather station except for what's on AFN. Strange. Apparently it's a recent change for the worse. To add to the excitement, everything here is 220v. So we've invested a small fortune in transformers and new appliances (luckily, the government gives us a $1000 to cover that). The computers and TVs are on transforms, but we bought a new vacuum cleaner, toaster, MW oven, clocks, etc. Someone said the housing on base has 110v plugs, as does the school, but off-base it's all 220. We're getting used to all the extra wires. We have to have two satellite dishes, tooone for German TV/DSL and one for AFN. Armed Forces Network's costs $600, but that includes the service forever rather than paying a monthly fee. You can also have a monthly deal, but since we plan on being here, buying it should be the better deal. Almost all the German houses have satellite dishes, too.
Danielle is in the eighth grade at AM/HS and doing pretty well. She got on the honor roll the first quarter and is hanging in there, despite some organizational problems, the second quarter. She's taking algebra, science, US History (studying almost the same stuff as Marie, though at a deeper level, of course), world literature in English, art (hurray! and with a GREAT teachernot that the others aren't good, but she really gets along well with Miss Blachly), journalism (they write articles for the school paper) (this will become choir next semester), computer technology, and seminaran all-school study hall that they have every other day. The school's on a full-block schedule, which means all classes are 90 minutes long and meet every other day. It's great for those of us with activity classes, although the math and language folks aren't too happy with the schedule, as they prefer shorter, daily classes. Maybe they'll switch to a modified block, but we'll see.
Marie is in the fifth grade at Rainbow Elementary School. She's having a bit of time switching over to English, but hanging in there. We're working on her spelling and math so she can do better. We got a spelling program into which I put her assignments every week and she works on it daily. She's gone from F's to C's, so that's good. She still ahs trouble, though, because she doesn't understand the teacher's pronunciation well (she's from Florida and her accent and dialect are different from ours). Math is hard because she doesn't understand the directions well, won't ask questions, and they don't let the ESL teacher help, so she gets it wrong not because she can't do the math, but because she does the wrong thing or is rushing because she's behind. We're working on it. She really likes her classmates, though, and I like the uniforms (the semi-uniforms like in the States you can buy at Target or Mervyns) and better discipline they have there. It's still quite a step-down from Japanese school, though, as far as discipline and dedication to learning!
Germany is a great place for birdwatching. Right outside my window right now there are at least 25 birds or several different species. One group is five uso, a finch with a very beautiful rosy chest, that we saw occasionally in Japan (went and got my bookit's a Gimpel (German) or bullfinch (English)). Another few are amsel, a fat blackbird common around here, much more deserving of the "four and twenty blackbirds were baked in a pie" song than the skinny, American blackbirds! The jays here (Eichelhäher) are also very prettya dark brown with black and white on their wings and a white strip across their rump. The rest are lots of chickadee-types (they call them great tits here) and little sparrows and finches of various types. We get lots of birds 'cause we brought our big feeder from Japan and I keep it well stocked with seed and sunflower seeds. Need to get some suet and try for some of the red flickers they have here. There are feeders all over the yard from past folks, but I've only filled the one by the kitchen door. They like the berries that are left on some of the trees plus whatever else is on the trees. I've seen some checking out some of the empty boxes, though, so as soon as I re-supply (I'm almost out), I'll stock some more. We've also seen lots of cool hawks, a big whitish owl, crows and ravens, and many others around. There's a birdwatching group here in Ansbach with monthly outings. Unfortunately, they're the second Sunday of the month and the second Saturdays we always go to Frankfurt to go to the temple, followed by shopping and a late lunch at the huge PX in Würtzberg, so don't know how many Sundays we'll be up for a five hour hike. Hopefully they'll have some non-Sunday walks, too. And we're just a few miles from a famous bird sanctuarythe Naturschutzzentrum Altmühlsee (Nature Center Old Mill? Lake)which we've so far only seen at night, but which we're going to check out this week.
Other things about Germany...It's very much like the places we've lived in--both Japan and the USfriendly people, green and full of plants since we're in a rural area (ok, Colorado wasn't green), lots of modern and old things mixed up. Houses here look just like the typical first grader's housepeaked roofs with lots of squarish windows. Usually on the southern side there are lots of windows--some quite big--and/or sunrooms --enclosed balconies. Someday, I'd like to enclose our second floor balcony so the cats can go out there (without us worrying that they'll fall off the rail!) and we can have the doors and windows open without worrying about bugs, but then it might ruin the view if it gets dirty.
Water...The water here is very hard and no hot springs. There are lots of water parks, but none have hot pools--the warmest is about 35 degrees--just barely warm enough to stay in without getting cold. They're very popular, though, and all have at least one water slide for the kids, swimming pools for exercise, and a variety of other pools and activities and a snack shop. Locker rooms here are very different! They're semi-separated, but very coed. They have individual dressing rooms, but still there is quite a bit more wandering around partially clothed or just in towels than we're used to. And apparently, if you go into the separate sauna areas (extra payment and no kids) you're expected to shed your suit there, even if it's a coed day. Needless to say, we haven't done that! Water is heated in big water heaters and piped throughout the house and but not to the washer, so the washers heat up their own water, greatly lengthening the time for each wash! A load of dirty play clothes can take over two hours! Luckily, most of ours are less. I think the minimum is about 40 minutes. Everything gets crusted with the dried lime, so you have to keep everything wiped off and/or use special salt to keep the nozzles from getting clogged up. Houses have central heat (HURRAY!!!) and are heated with either natural gas or fuel oil (ours is oil) and the oil tank is HUGEI think they said it's 5000 litersabout 2x2x3 meters. So far the level's dropped about 30 cm in six weeks, so, I guess we're doing ok. Our friends with families say they go through 1 ½ - 2 tankfuls a year (at about $800 a fill-upwhich is, thankfully, included in our reimbursed housing payments!). It is so nice, though, to come home to a warm house after four years of houses with individual kerosene heaters in each room. Generally we just keep it around 70. Apparently, the heater goes off at night, but the change in temperature is so slight, we barely notice unless we're sitting at the computer for a long time (we should be in bed, anyway!).
Driving...Germans are CRAZY drivers and very dangerous!!! They pass at the slightest opportunity and drive as fast as possible, except for the slowpokes who cause everyone to brake and swerve around them. It's a really crazy system. In town, the strictly observed speed limit is 50 kph, with occasional 30 kph areas by schools or narrow shopping areas. Between towns (town limits are clearly markedeverything is clearly marked! It's very easy to find your way) you can go 100 kph and you'd better believe they do iteven if it's only a few hundred meters 'til the next village! On the autobahn (which are freeways, not toll ways (hurray!)), there is no speed limit, although the recommended one is 130 kph. If you drive that, though, you are going faster than the trucks and buses, who are supposed to stick to 100 kph (about 65 mph)a respectable speed). However, at 130 kph, you are passes like you're standing still by about 25% of the drivers who are going at least 200 kph. American and Japanese cars, and especially tires, would never survive here! You can see why the Porsche was invented, though, because you can really use it here. I've gone 150 kph (100 mph), just to try it out, but it's not very relaxing for me, especially after living in Japan where the speed limit on the expressway is 80 and the fastest most folks went was 110 (our car had a alarm that went off at 100 kph!!). I'm getting used to it, though, and my time to school has dropped quite a bit as I find the best routes and get used to the corners and all. You do have to be on the constant lookout, though, for farm machines and SHEEP moving from one field to another with real sheepdogs herding them and pedestrians. Not as many bicyclists as in Japan, but more than the Statessome recreational touring types and a lot of older folks using them for shopping plus the families and kids out for fun.
Schools...I haven't really had much contact with German schools, since the kids go to the base schools, but there are lots of them, so this might not be accurate, but it's what I've gathered so far. Most towns have a primary school1-5th grade, I think. All kids go 1-9th here, starting first at age 6. Kindergarten and pre-school are private. Kids here are bussed to school, since Zellrüglingen is very smallprobably 15 kids in the whole village. There's a primary school in Weihenzell, only a km away, and no clue where they closest middle school is. High schools here are very tracked by subject and your grades plus an entrance exam to get into them. I don't know if it's separate for each school or one exam for all. Jim said the tracking starts in primary school with your fourth grade scores determining which middle school you attend and that, of course, influencing your high school chances. I wonder about that here, since it's rather small for that sort of thing, but it's possible it's more prevalent in more populated areas. I haven't heard of cram schools here or seen kids walking all over with their packs late at night like in Japan, so I think school is much less emphasized. They definitely have shorter hours, 'cause I used to see the primary bus coming back at about one with all the kids, not just the first graders, when we lived in the hotel.
Stores and shopping...Prices are MUCH better here than in Japan. Regular store prices are about the same as discount stores in the States. It's convenient to shop on-base, but if you shop off-base, it's no big deal, not like in Japan where you could spend a small fortune on your day's groceries. They don't have tons of convenience stores like in Japan. Most gas stations have convenience stores and most of them have decent hours, but the closest gas station to here is about 10 km away! In Weihenzell, there's an ActivMarkt, which is one of the more common small grocery chains. It's pretty well stocked with groceries and sundries, but it's only open 7-7 on weekdays and 'til 1 on Sat. EVERYTHING (except gas stations and restaurants) closes here at four pm on Sat. and doesn't reopen until Monday!!!! It's very annoying. Apparently, they just started staying open 'til four on Sat. a couple of years ago, until then they all closed at one. It's nice for the workers, but awful for the customers. Near the church are a discount grocery store and a regular one and a discount clothing store. There are tons of shops and a really nice partially indoor shopping mall (the Brücken Center--built where there were barracks 'til they took out about half the troops for the Persian Gulf War and never replaced them). The center of downtown Ansbach is closed to traffic (except deliveries) and people walk around to all the old shopsmodern shops but in very old stone buildings. There are two huge churches there that dominate the skyline and a couple of bridges across the river that goes through town. It's all very beautiful. There are also a few good hardware storesHome Depot type (one is obviously a clone with the orange banners and everything!)so it'll be easy to fix things up. I still need to finish getting curtains.
Houses...German windows are all shuttered, either with wooden shutters that you pull shut (Jim's house) or roll-down covers (rolladen) that are controlled by a strap built into the wall (our house and most other houses I've seen). They really make the room DARK, but you can open them partially, of course. If the rolladen is up, it's nice to have some kind of curtain on the window for both privacy and looks. Another interesting feature is that most of the windows and some doors (our patio doors, for example) open with handles/hinges that allow the door to either swing completely open like a regular door or just swing open a few inches at the top. There's no key for these doorsthey're either open or locked. That's handy when it's rainy or if you just want to let in some air and don't want the cats to get out. There are lots of skylights, too. Marie has one in her room and there's another in their bath, entry, and a huge one in Jim's bathroom. Bad thingNO screens on the windows or doors. Jim brought a roll of screening material, so he'll put screens on all the windows before the spring. Last fall the place was full of flies and other bugs. Another bad thingall the major outside doors lock automatically, so if you forget your keys, too bad!! Some have a setting that prevents the door from latching, but ours doesn't. We'll have to change that eventually. Our garage door isn't automatic, either, but hopefully they will install a garage door opener before it starts snowing in earnest. The landlords are arranging that.
Other cool things this year...we spent a wonderful spring vacation visiting Thailand and Singapore. In Thailand we went birding with some really good guide and got to see all sorts of neat wildlife. Then we went to Phuket, on the southern peninsula of Thailand, and learned to scuba dive. Don't know we'll do a lot of it here in Bavaria, but if we go to the Mediterranean for vacations, we could probably go scuba diving there. Thailand is very third world, but Singapore is very modern. Singapore was scary, thoughtoo overcrowdedbut very nice people in both places and beautiful countries to which we'd happily return. We also spent a last few days in Tokyo, so that was nice, too. Marie, finished her third year of Japanese school. Both the girls are very fluent in Japanese. Luckily, we just met the only Japanese person in Ansbach and she invited us over to practice our Japanese whenever we want. I think she's homesick, too. We also had a fabulous final tour of Aomori Prefecture with the birdwatching group there. They were so cool and even made a CD of all the photos from the trip with music and everything as a going away present. I really miss them and all my students. Saying goodbye to everyone after such a wonderful time there was really hard. We had lots of going away parties and my students took me out to several wonderful restaurants. They gave us so many beautiful gifts, too. I was totally overwhelmed. I will always remember them with love and gratitude. As a final torture, five of my favoritest friends came to see us off at the airport!! We cried and cried!
I'd better get on with the day. It's 15:00 and we're all still in our pjs! I just realized I haven't seen the roasting pan I usually use for the hamwell, there's always aluminum pans. And I'd better get the salad macaroni going, too. I'll work on updating our website over the next few days so you can see some pictures of all these things. Our new website address is: http://www.4cooks.org You have to put in the www, too, or it doesn't work (at least not on our computer). There's some stuff there now, but I'll add more over the next week. Hope you all have a wonderful year.
our cats, annie and ocelot and jake, the dog
