An Austrian in Chicago

How It's Like To Be A Mommy

2011-06-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

This little girl is my daughter - I will call her Little L on this blog. As of yesterday she is 8 weeks old and she is the most amazing thing that ever happened to me.

A question I have been getting a lot from my childless friends since she was born is "How is it REALLY like to be a mom?", "Come on, be honest!" they'll say while looking at me expectantly as if any other parent they ever asked that only told them lies.

So this is why I am writing this blog post here. Of course, motherhood is different for everybody. What I am experience is going to be very different from a single mother, living on welfare. I am aware that I am extremely privileged to not have to rush back to a 40-hour work-week after only getting to spend one month at home with my new daughter. I am privileged to have a husband who tries to share the job of parenthood as much as possible. I am privileged to have a healthy child and a safe home. I am privileged to have had an easy birth and health insurance who paid for most of my hospital charges.

You can pretty much say I had a baby in the best, possible conditions. Still, it's not easy. So I am going to give it to you straight. I am not going to dilly dally around. I am going to cut to the chase. And I am going to tell you how it's like to be a mommy.

First off I'd like to say - I love being a mom. I really do. I love every minute of it. It is the best thing that ever happened to me and while giving birth isn't a picnic and pushing out a little human was the most physically challenging thing I ever did (note to self - work out more during the next pregnancy and don't forget to do your kegels!) I still have very fond memories of giving birth. And if you find yourself pregnant and terrified of giving birth right now I'd like to tell you that - so was I. I was so scared. But nature has it's way to prepare you for giving birth. With me it was 5 days of constant early-labor contractions. By day three of not-sleeping and being in nearly constant pain, I was ready to give birth whatever it takes.
Anyway - back to what you can expect after you give birth to your very own mini-me:

*You will sleep less than you ever thought possible.
About a week after Little L was born I started to hallucinate. Apparently that is a side effect of being extremely sleep deprived. It wasn't anything serious. I didn't see a dancing baby or white rabbits hopping around the apartment. But I did see doors closing out of the corner of my eye even though nobody was there to close the door and when I checked, the door was still open. I thought I saw something move and when I looked straight at what I thought had moved, there was no movement. A friend of mine told me "Wait till you are seriously sleep-deprived - you'll hear your breast pump starting to talk to you!". And she was right. Mine says "We like her". Though E insists the breast pump says something else.
But there is hope. After a while baby will start sleeping longer. I still haven't had a solid seven hours of sleep but I have had the occasional five or six. Whenever I wake up and I see that I got to sleep five hours straight, I get all giddy. But as everybody will tell you - it get's better. I am the girl who used to need eight hours of sleep to function properly. Now I do ok with five. And if I get a nap in during the day, bringing the total up to six or seven hours of sleep, I do really, really well.

*You will feel a kind of love that you have never felt before.
The first week with Little L was intense. I felt such an overwhelming amount of love, it was incredible. And the love you feel for your child is different than what you feel for you partner or your parents. Nature made you love your baby so much, so you don't mind taking care of it (and you don't bring her back to the hospital, asking for a refund after the third sleepless night in a row). This love makes you so happy to be around your baby. It's deep and wonderful and a bit scary. After a few weeks, when the majority of the post-pregnancy hormones left your body, your feelings somewhat normalize. Though a friend and I were discussing if you actually start feeling less or if you are just getting used to the feeling of being so in love with your child.

*You might not want to have "me" time anymore.
Before Little L was born I was worried about how it would be to have something attached to you (outside of your own body) 24/7. What is it like to never be able to just go to the hair dresser whenever I want to or go for a spontaneous bike ride on the beach. Well, honestly, this is hard but a lot less difficult than I expected it to be. Yes, you can't just get up and do whatever you want. Whenever we leave the house it involves planning and about an hour of preparation (my little one happens to not be a huge fan of being outside. I am working on changing this though). And then there is always the chance that she will have a melt-down and scream for 30 minutes straight when you are at Target and everybody looks at you like you are the worst mom that has ever lived and really, why can't you shut up your child, can't you see she is not happy? ... Uh, where was I?
But anyway, I was surprised to find that I really don't like to be apart from her. Like, ever. I do take a break once a week when E stays with her, either to go on a bike ride or to get some shopping done that requires several stops and would be difficult to do with Little L. I enjoy those breaks - mostly because it's a lot easier to get stuff done when you don't have to hold and shush your baby to sleep while using your teeth to try to get your credit card out of your wallet in the check out line. But after a few hours (usually two hours) I start to really miss her. I look longingly at other people's babies and wish she was here with me. Every strangers baby's cry is like a stab in my heart, reminding me that I really should be home with Little L. What is she doing right now? Is she crying for her mommy? Does she think I abandoned her? Does she know I love her and that I will be back soon (with new curtains!)?
I know there are new mommies out there who can't wait to get back to work and that's also ok. But I was surprised to find that I am very happy to not have to go back to work until I am ready for it.

*You can eat later. Or not.
I am not the kind of person who forgets to eat. I just am not. I love to eat and good food is very important to me. When I was pregnant I was hungry constantly. I would eat dinner, then a snack before bed (which I never used to do) and I would still often find myself lying awake at 4 in the morning, unable to sleep because I was so freaking hungry. I thought it was just me. I though, I just don't have any self-control and that's why I am eating so much. It go so bad, I had to have snacks with me at all times in case I was out doing something for longer than two hours.
And then I gave birth and the hunger stopped. I know a lot of people only really start to have this feeling of hunger after they give birth because of breastfeeding but for me, even though I am breastfeeding, this has not been an issue. Quite on the contrary - it happened to me a lot in the beginning that I either couldn't find time to eat during the day or I simply wasn't hungry. I often only ate twice a day and I was fine. The problem is - when you don't eat enough, you don't produce enough milk (or at least, I didn't), so it's very important for me to eat healthily and regularly. It's getting better now but I still don't get very hungry.

*You learn how to do almost everything one handed.
Little L likes to be held. All. The. Time. I have a very emotionally needy baby and while I don't mind that most of the time, because I LOVE holding her, it can be annoying when you are, say, in a store. Or when you really, really need to go to the bathroom or when it's 4pm and you haven't had anything to eat or drink yet. Or if you just want to take those vitamins you were supposed to take with food, three times a day but you neither had food, yet nor can you reach those vitamins with your one, free arm.
This has only been getting better this past week since we've found some new nursing positions that don't require me holding her with both hands but it's still difficult. I have a huge pile of unread magazines and the newest book from the Sookie Stackhouse novels (that I have been waiting for almost a year to come out) lying next to me - all pretty much untouched because it's really difficult to hold a book up with one hand while holding and nursing a baby. I now wish I would have gotten every book that I bought in the last 6 months on Kindle because not having to turn a page really would make my life much easier.
So since I've been pretty much sofa-bound most of the time, nursing my little one, I have gotten very acquainted with the On Demand feature on my DVR. I have watched more reality TV in the last month than I have in the whole past year together. My IQ has probably gone down 50 points. However, I have learned a lot about editing to make people look stupid/cool/desirable/hated/... . If I ever get sick of being a mom and a photographer, I might have a future in reality TV production.
By the way - that Bachelorette Ashley is completely delusional.

*You get obsessed with the color of your baby's poop.
Did you know your baby's poop can be green, yellow, black (in the first few days) or even orange and that's all normal? However - brown is not. Well, now you know.

*My baby is a genius!
People who talk about how their baby is so advanced are really annoying. Aren't they? So your baby could walk at 8 months, big deal. That will be very useful for him when he is 18.
That's how I used to think. Now that I have a (very advanced, of course) baby myself, all I want is to talk about how amazingly smart she is. She socially smiled at us when she was 4 weeks old! She can already roll over! Well, our pediatrician thinks it's cool. You know, I don't want to be "that mom". The one that always compares her baby to other babies and who can't stop bragging about how amazingly developed my child is, so I am trying really hard to just shut up. But man, it's hard.

*You know what Little L did the other day?
Related to the baby bragging is the "I can't shut up about that cute thing my child did yesterday". I have a few friends who still went out with me occasionally even after they had a baby and I loved them for not constantly bringing up the kids in conversation. I foolishly thought that was because they were happy to get to talk about something else then dirty diapers for a change. I now realize that I was wrong, at least partly. Of course it's nice to get to talk about other stuff but when you are the mom of a baby or even a toddler, your child is the most important thing in your life. You can have a really amazing job but you'll still want to talk about how your baby had the cutest smile after she farted the other day or how she said something that sounded like "Mama" last night. I now wonder if it took a lot of restraint for my friends to not break out the baby stories. This has been another tough one for me. Hopefully I'll get better at it soon before I alienate all my childless friends.

I could probably write a whole book about the subject on how it feels to be a new mom but I'll leave it at this.
It's a wonderful experience and much easier and at the same time much more difficult than I ever expected. But I wouldn't want it to be any other way. It's awesome and fantastic and it makes me happier than I've ever been.

I Want to Ride My Bicycle

2011-03-31T11:56:00.000-07:00

De Salamander - a windmill I used to cycle past on my way to work

I've been very lucky so far to have a very healthy pregnancy. I had a few scares but they all turned out to be false alarms. I have the typical late pregnancy aches and pains but so far (and I am just a little over four weeks from my due date) I didn't develop any of the scary pregnancy diseases like pre-eclampsia or diabetes or even simply high blood pressure.

By far the worst pregnancy symptom I've had is being very, very hormonal. Don't get me wrong. I am trying hard to not be one of those pregnant furies who people don't want to come around. I try to be reasonable and friendly, despite getting so annoyed by the world, some days, that I just want to dig a big hole and hide in there until this whole thing is over.

To people who don't understand how it feels like to be hormonal (like, for example if you are a man) - it feels like any feeling you have is 100x intensified. I wonder if that's how bipolar people feel. I've cried more in the last 3 months than I've cried in the last three years together. A song that reminds me of something - crying. Bad news - crying. The baby I used to babysit doesn't stop crying - neither can I!

According to what I've read this is only going to get worse after the baby is born. At least for a little while.

I've been trying to find ways to deal with this abundance of feelings. I found one good way to deal with it is to turn on some music and go into full nesting mode - cleaning, organizing, planning. I do it for hours until I collapse onto the sofa to spend the rest or the day watching re-runs of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" and "House Hunters" on HGTV.

Another way is to get lost in a really, really good book. Unfortunately I never know what I am going to be in the mood for. Last summer I plowed through all the books from the Sookie Stackhouse novels in about a month. Last month I finally found something as captivating - I read "The Hunger Games"-trilogy in about a week. I am still looking for a worthy successor to these amazing books. Every book I start now seems boring to me.

But when I am really upset and I need a quick fix I turn to something I learned from meditating. Not classic, sitting down closing your eyes and saying "ohm" meditating. I am too impatient for that. When meditating I imagine the most beautiful and peaceful memory I have. The most beautiful memories I have are of my wedding, my bachelorette party and my honeymoon but the most beautiful and peaceful memory I can come up with is of me cycling to and from work in the Netherlands. For a while I would cycle to work and back two or three times a week - an 18 mile bike ride through Dutch meadows with grazing, black and white spotted cows, next to canals and tulip fields. If it didn't rain, the weather was always just right - since it hardly ever gets too hot in Holland. You could smell the grass, the morning dew and the blooming flowers in the air. I chose a bit of a longer route to be able to be solely on bike paths and far from the roads. I could feel the sun on my face and the wind, coming off the canals, in my hair. I would go as fast as I possibly could. For some reason the Dutch are not fast cyclist even though they are practically born on a bike, so I would almost always be faster than most people - sometimes even faster than the racing bikers. The Dutch approach cycling like they approach everything in life - you'll do what you need to get there but it doesn't really matter how long it takes.

Me and my purple bike Hilda and our early morning hour of solitude. Hilda was and will always be the best bike I ever had. She was comfortable but fast at the same time. She was the exact right size for me and even though I had to have her fixed more often than I had to fix my other bikes, I'd still always chose her above any other bike, would her brand of bicycles be available in the US.

I've tried to develop the same kind of relationship to my bikes here but I couldn't even come up with a name.

Since cycling gives me so much joy, I continued cycling when I came to the US. But it's not the same. Part of the problem is the lack of bicycle paths in Chicago. Though Chicago is actually very good when it comes to having bike paths for US standards - it is very lacking compared to the Netherlands. And even though we HAVE bike paths, that doesn't mean the cars honor them. And then there is the ever-imminent danger of being "doored" - meaning that people who park their car are not looking out and might open the door right into your face. Many cyclists have had accidents this way - some have died. I've had a few near accidents like that myself.

This is why I decided to stop cycling when I got pregnant. So I haven't been cycling in about 8 months and I really miss it. Of course, this is Chicago and the last 5 months it's been too cold to cycle anyway.

I learned to cycle when I was 4 years old. My family didn't have a car, so public transportation, walking and cycling were our only means of transportation. We did a lot of bike tours to the surroundings of Vienna or to the city beaches of the "Old Danube" on the weekends. I've always seen myself as one of these women with a kid car or bike seat attached to my bike, cycling around town with my baby but now I am not sure if that's something I will be able to do. It's just too dangerous here. And really, there isn't too much nature to enjoy either.

So maybe cycling will become "me-time" and something I'll mostly get to enjoy when I have an hour to myself.

Nevertheless, I'll always have the memory of me cycling through the fields of Zuid Holland. I hope one day I can cycle this stretch with my husband and our kids and show them why it means so much to me.

What is your happy memory?

What's Going On

2011-01-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

My kitty Anouk - just because she's cute

It's been a long time! I don't think that anybody is actually still reading this but I'll post anyway.

There is a reason for my extended absence - well - a few actually.

Number one reason for me was that I had gotten really annoyed by myself. I felt like I was repeating myself constantly on this blog and I really had nothing new to write about.

And then something happened that I could have written about but I decided to keep this a secret for a little longer, maybe because I am a bit superstitious, or just because I felt it was private and I was not ready to share these news with the world.

So here is the big reveal to all of you who don't know me personally (because those of you who do, would most likely know this already). I am knocked up! Preggers! Bun in the oven! I am having a little life growing inside of me!

The little girl is expected to make her appearance in late April/early May and so far it's been going great. The first trimester was a bit of a drag, as I think it is for most expecting women but I am almost done with my second trimester now and I am doing really well and so is the baby.

Only a handful of people knew about it until I was 20 weeks along which is when we told "the world". The response has been pretty positive so part of me thinks that it would have been nice to come out with the news earlier but at the same time I am glad I got to avoid the "Don't forget to take your vitamins!" and "Take care of yourself - don't forget you are not responsible just for yourself anymore!" for a little bit longer.

Seriously, I don't know why people think it's ok to treat pregnant women like 4 year old children. I am going to be 30 this year! This pregnancy was planned - which shouldn't come as a surprise given that I have been married for a few years now and we are financially stable, so why would people assume that I don't take my vitamins and don't eat my vegetables? I could understand if my doctor would tell me these things but my doctor doesn't because my doctor actually knows that I am a grown up.

I am often tempted to respond to "Take good care of yourself" with "Oh yeah, I am going to, right after I get done with my bungee jump - I am going to have a few drinks for courage though!".

Also - I have never been in touch with my body like I am now. I don't know if it's the same for every pregnant woman but I can feel when I haven't been taking care of myself as well as I should have. If I forget to take my iron pills for a day or two, I get cracks on the side of my mouth. When I don't get enough fruits and veggies in my diet (like around Christmas) I get little, painful blisters in my mouth. No work-out has ever made me feel as great as my prenatal work-outs make me feel now.

I used to have this exotic, rainforest plant that would look really sad if I'd forget to water it one day. That made it really easy for me to not forget to water it because you could see immediately if the plant was suffering. Well, my body is like that plant now. It is very unforgiving. I hope it stays that way after I give birth!

What else is new? We are house hunting and I have been spending way too much time watching House Hunters on HGTV. And then we found a condo we love and everything seemed perfect but now there are problems, so we don't know what will happen with that for another few weeks. With the impending birth of our child we do hear a little clock ticking in the back of our heads. If we'd know that we definitely don't get the place, we'd start to try and make due with what we have in our rental apartment but like this we see no reason to turn our cluttered office room into a baby room. People keep on telling me that this is stuff I can worry about once the baby is here but usually people who tell me this have no kids and thus have not experienced the terrifying force of the nesting instinct. Right now I feel like a starving mouse, trapped under a glass jar, with a bunch of cheese right there on the other side of the jar, unreachable to me.

So I am trying to focus this nesting instinct in another direction. I started my photography business last year and following the advice of a photographer friend, I now got myself an accountant. This accountant is great and her tips on taking care of my finances really inspired me to completely re-organize my little office space. I got myself Microsoft Office for my Mac and I am a little bit embarrassed about how excited I am about this. Spreadsheets! Organization! Tables!

I learned how to use Word/Excel/Powerpoint in school 15 years ago and had been using it for work for years. It feels strangely comforting to use it for my own business now.

I think it reminds me of my school days. I ended up going to business school even though I really wanted to go to Art school. Designing flyers and posters for my marketing classes, making fancy Power Point presentations and having my Excel tables look really professional was the only creative outlet I had in school which is maybe why I am so attached to the Office package now even though I am strictly a Mac person otherwise.

Pregnant, in the market to become a first-time home-owner, my own company and my own accountant. I feel pretty grown up right now!

On getting old as a 28 year old

2010-08-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

Recently I have found myself doing a lot of old people stuff.

I first noticed it when I was in Amsterdam. My friends there (who are all a few years older than me) were in a party mood. They went out every night until the sun came up. Not so much E and I. We'd go home at 2am at the latest. 5 hour sleep nights just don't play well with me. Don't get me wrong, I still like to go out, drink and be merry but I also like to be home and in my own bed not too long after midnight.

I couldn't even blame the jet lag - according to the jet lag I should have been able to stay up until the early morning hours with no problem.

On Queensnight - the party-night before Queensday - the day that everybody goes wild and orange - I even got a bit bothered by the crowds that had gotten to an uncomfortable level of drunkenness. Aggressiveness, mixed with touch of horny was buzzing in the air. I was wondering if there ever was a time when I liked that and I am pretty sure there was. Maybe I was just too waisted to notice back then.

I remember the first time I felt like I was no longer a spring chicken. It must have been 3 or 4 years ago. Two of my best friends and I went to Vondelpark with a bottle of wine in hand after dark. I spent every summer in Amsterdam, in my early 20s that way - wine in the park on a blanket. Cheap and romantic. When we tried to find a place to sit on the grass that day we found that wasn't a good idea. The grass was a bit wet and we didn't want to get grass stains on our nice pants. So we were looking for a bench to sit on. We found a bench but after about 5 minutes on the bench, mosquitos started attacking us.

Defeated, we decided to go to a bar instead.

But not only do I find myself not wanting to go out as much, I also have started talking like an old person. And I am realizing - I am not turning into my mom (as the world keeps on telling me I should) - I am turning into my grandma.

It is very odd. I had never been a fan of using sayings but now old Austrian proverbs pop up in my head like mushrooms in a forrest. My favorite one is "The only thing I HAVE TO DO is die!" as an answer to "But you HAVE TO!". Let me tell you one thing though - do not use this proverb on a 3.5 year old. It is apparently a very disturbing thing to say to a toddler.

Another favorite of my grandma, that I have to force back the urge to use: "A soccer player/indian (native American) doesn't know pain" in response to "Ouch!".

Another indicator that I am getting old is the reminiscing. Sometimes my husband and I reminisce back to times when there were no cell phones, no internet. One of my proudest teenager moments was when I aced an essay on evolution in my biology class. I wrote a five page essay on my old typewriter, I cut out pieces, I photocopied pictures of amoebas and monkeys and cut and pasted all of these manually into a, if I may say so, nicely written article on evolution of mankind which I then photocopied again to make it look like a magazine piece. I got the best grade in class and after that on every essay the kids in class (who had actual computers and color printers - but not the internet because people back then didn't have the internet yet) tried to outdo me with their presentations and their cutting and pasting. Today these things are not the same. I see it with my photography - I used to shoot film until only a few years ago and you can't do nearly as much editing with film. Nowadays you can be a mediocre photographer and still have acceptable photos if you know your editing (however I don't believe that you can cancel out bad photography all together by good editing).

I remember a conversation some friends recently had about the internet:

Friend 1: "What did people do when they had an argument about who is right back when they couldn't google it?"

Silence. Thinking.

Friend 2: "I don't know. I guess they went to the library and looked it up in a dictionary?"

Good old times.

Achtung Baby

2010-07-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

I have been writing a lot about how it feels like to move to America as a European. There are good things and bad things and I'd say despite the obvious, cultural differences between the US and Western Europe - everybody will have their own experience, their own way of seeing things and experiencing life.

But what I want to write about today is something that is going to be important for everybody who moves to America and lives here for the first time - especially for people, who like me - come here on a spouse visa. I am talking about credit score.

In America if your credit score is bad, you can't get a loan, you can't buy a house or a car. If your credit score is really bad, you can't get a phone either. If your credit score is good, your life is going to be a whole lot easier.

I knew about the whole credit score thing when I first moved here but I didn't know that you have to work on it. In Europe (at least the countries I have lived in) you either have credit or you have bad credit. If you screw up a few time, like pay your bills late or not at all - or worst - get sent to a collection agency - you are being put on file, which means you have less chances of getting a loan or you will be getting a smaller loan. You get the picture. But if you never get in trouble but also never get a credit card - well - that's good. You don't have to have a credit card to have good credit in Europe.

This is different in America. While I kind of knew the principles of that when I moved here, it took me almost 2 years to fully realize how much I have been impacted by that.

I had my first experience with my credit score not being good enough at Old Navy. I buy most of my clothes at Old Navy and GAP which belong together and share a store card (don't judge - I need comfortable clothes as a nanny). As always, the girl at the check out asked me if I'd be willing to sign up for an Old Navy/GAP store card to save 10% on my purchase that day. And since I had bought a lot that day I said, ok, why not? I put in all my info. We were waiting for credit confirmation and 10 minutes later the shop girl got a call, turned around and faced me with a look of embarrassment "I am sorry but I won't be able to give you the card today. You haven't been rejected but we can't give you a card.". I was very embarrassed but I thought maybe I gave her the wrong social security number. At that point I sometimes still mixed up the numbers in my social security number.

I got home and there was a letter from my bank, asking me to sign up for a credit card that would get me air miles. I had just talked to a friend about that exact kind of credit card and she told me that she had recently been able to get an airplane ticket to Hawaii with her saved up air miles. I though, that would be a good thing for me. Of course - I was rejected. The reason "You recently tried for a store card and were rejected."

Alright, that must have been because of the mix up with the Old Navy store card.

I waited a few months and then again tried to apply for a GAP card. This time - online. A week later, I received a letter. Another rejection. The reason - I didn't have enough credit history in this country. Finally - at least I knew what was going on!

Fast forward a few more weeks. After almost two years with the crappiest phone in America, I wanted to upgrade to the new iPhone. I stood in line at the Apple store for 4.5 hours - not something I would normally do but I had decided I wanted it and I waited. Finally, I got to fill out my data. A small part of me was afraid that there was going to be a problem with my credit. And - of course there was. AT&T wanted me to pay a $500 deposit to get my phone.

Now, imagine this - you waited in line for 4.5 hours to be told you have to pay that amount of money. What would you do? I tell you what I did - I agreed. Because before that I shared a phone contract with my husband. In fact EVERYTHING was on my husbands name - the electricity bill, the cable service, the phone, the bank account. For some this might sound like a wonderful, liberating thing to not have to care about anything and be completely taken care off.

Not for me. This is a woman who took care of a sick mother and grandmother since I was a child. At age thirteen I personally went to social services and got us social help money so we wouldn't be homeless. This is somebody who moved out at 17 years old to be independent from my family and still managed to finish school. I am not somebody who enjoys being a dependent, helpless person. And please - this has nothing to do with me not trusting my husband who is one of the kindest, most caring people I have ever met. This is about me being a grown up who takes care of herself.

So I paid this fee, I got my own phone contract and I made an appointment with my bank to discuss how to improve my credit rating (and how to get a business account - since I am now a business owner).

And here is the funny thing - it turns out that through a bank error my social security number had never been connected with my bank account (the one I share with my legal, American husband). I find it borderline hilarious that in a country that is so afraid of illegal immigrants, somebody could have and use a bank account, a credit card even - without having a social security number added to it. I was also surprised how the bank clerk acted like this was not a big deal. I lost almost two years on collecting positive credit rating thanks to a bank mistake and it means nothing?

So my advise to everybody who is coming to this country as a legal immigrant - make sure your social security number is entered. Make sure some utilities are on your name. If your bank offers you a credit card, take it and use it. You'll save yourself a lot of grief later.

A Chicago photo a day

2010-06-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

When was on holidays in the Netherlands I asked my closest friends who live there why none of them had come to visit me in the 1.5 years I have been here. Some of them really can't afford it and I understand that. It was really expensive for me to go to Europe and I didn't just visit one friend when I went.

But some of them took other trips to far away lands which were just as expensive as a ticket to Chicago. So I asked some more questions and I realized that it might have been partly my own fault: I had made Chicago look pretty bad. One friend asked me if there was enough to do in Chicago for a one week stay!

I must have made Chicago look like one of the worst, most boring places on the planet!

I know I have had a few posts where I was talking about all the stuff I love about Chicago - the lake, the people, the different cultures/neighborhoods, the festivals, the newly emerging foodie culture, the live music! Chicago is a pretty awesome place to live. The problem I had was that I didn't have much of a social circle to enjoy all of these wonderful things with which made me not enjoy Chicago the way I wanted to.

Well, I am slowly starting to build that social circle and I am enjoying Chicago more than ever.

For those friends of mine who for some reason can't come to visit me or for people who would like to know more about Chicago or for people who love Chicago already and want to see as much of it as possible - I created a second blog:

One Chicago Photo A Day

I won't write much on that other blog. This blog is for writing and musing and complaining. The other blog is just to show what I get to see ... to enjoy ... everyday.

Please, please, please ...

2010-06-25T10:12:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine had this status update on Facebook the other day:

"Is having a really good week and can't help thinking something extra crap is lurking to compensate for it!"

It initially annoyed me. And then I started wondering why. I believe that often when traits in people annoy you it is because it is a trait that you don't like in yourself. And this was definitely one of these cases.

I used to be really superstitious about these things. I always thought bad things happen to me all the time and if I'd have a good day something bad would have to happen to even out the world. Also - if I had a really bad day and I was wearing a new piece of jewelry I'd brand this necklace or ring or whatever "evil" and I would never wear it again. Needless to say, I now realize that was really stupid.

You know that Smiths song "Please, please, please, let me get what I want"? It goes like this:

Good times for a change

See, the luck I've had

Can make a good man

Turn bad

So please please please

Let me, let me, let me

Let me get what I want

This time

I have been really into the Smiths recently and I especially love this song. I was driving around with E and I played this song for him and he said "That's such a whiney song." and I thought that as much as I love that song - it is quite self-indulgent. And I don't feel that way anymore about myself. I don't feel like only bad things happen to me. In fact - I think my life has been pretty kind to me in recent years.

It's not always been easy though. Living in Amsterdam was fantastic. My social life was out of this world, my friends were my family and to see the beauty of this city every day was breathtaking. But it certainly wasn't easy. I moved houses about 10 times just in Amsterdam because the landlord decided to raise the rent or they tore down the house I was living in or I couldn't stand my roommate. Me and my cat against the world. Working a call center job I often didn't make ends meet. I had one month I was living on nothing but ramen noodles because I couldn't afford anything else. But even then this song wouldn't have applied to me (even though, I probably would have thought it did) because good things did happen to me.

I have been having a few bad days after having months and months of good stuff coming my way and it's been bringing me down (I might or might not write about that later) but I use that Smiths song as a reminder that good things do come to me.

So please, please, please you guys - do me the favor and don't think that you are doomed and don't use the expression "FML" just because you have to work overtime that day or something doesn't work out the way you want it.

Good things will come your way if you let them.

USA vs Europe

2010-06-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

Amsterdam

This is absolutely not going to be a post about the world cup.

Just to warn you.

Yesterday I had lunch with a new friend that I met through my networking (making new friends who do the same stuff you do is a very welcome side effect of networking). She used to live in New York and has been in Chicago about as long as I have been here. She is originally from the mid-west though, so I expected her to have no problem to get used to the cultural differences.

To my surprise she told me that she experienced some of the same issues I have encountered living in Chicago. People are super nice - I mean really - ever since I have been living here, my standards for good behavior and friendliness have gone way up. So you meet somebody new and you feel like you have a connection and you'd like to hang out with that person more but they are just not interested. You get to know a lot of people but ... not really. People don't open up as much.

I was very surprised to hear that from an American who has lived in the US all her life and even is kind of from the area.

Funnily enough I heard the same thing from my friends in Holland (who are all expats) about Dutch people. And I heard the same thing from my friends who have lived in the US as expats - all over the US.

Which brings up the question - is it just harder to make friends the older you get? I was fortunate to get to experience the whole expat circle for seven years because now I realize that it was a very special community. I met new people almost every week and I stayed in contact with a lot of them.

The day we arrived back in the Netherlands for our trip abroad, we went to a bar to meet up with some of our old friends. We had invited everybody we know in South Holland and to our surprise - most of them showed up. There was a whole bar full of our friends, waiting for us. It was pretty overwhelming (thank you all for coming out, you guys!). I had tears in my eyes walking home that night and I couldn't walk past our old apartment without touching the front door and peeking through the window to see if the new inhabitants made it as homely as we once did.

The following two weeks were a whirlwind of social engagements. My phone rang more in these two weeks than it had in the 19 months I spent living in the US all together. I felt loved and missed and it really was everything I could have hoped for.

One highlight was seeing my old boss again who was now no longer my boss but a friend. She came out for dinner and a drink despite getting her wisdom teeth out that day.

Going out with my girls I felt like the 21 year old I once was, dancing and singing, uninhibited like I haven't been in years. I no longer was somebodies boss or even somebodies employee. I didn't have to behave. I could be myself and it felt so good.

The first week was pure bliss. We had nice weather - which shouldn't really make much of a difference - but it does, especially in Amsterdam. I was still high on happiness from seeing all my friends again.

The second week was still great. I am so thankful for any minute more I got to spend with these people that I love so much but slowly the things that annoyed me when I lived in the Netherlands started seeping through - the bad customer service, the rudeness, the people who cut in line, how stuff just doesn't work.

Part of me thinks I should not have waited a year and a half to go back to Europe, another part thinks that it might have been a good thing because things have been going ok for me recently and I have felt less homesick to Europe then I did in 2009. I am starting to meet people, I am starting to develop a business (by the way, I registered my photography business a few days ago - I am now a business owner!) - I am going were I am meant to go and I am doing things I like.

Since I have been back in America I have been feeling much, much better about living here. I think I am finally ready to settle down. Will we be living in Chicago for the rest of our lives, I don't know - maybe - maybe not. But right now I am ok here.

If you are in an stable financial position (meaning - you don't need any social help and you have a place to live/stable income) - life in the US is worlds easier than it is anywhere else (ok, I can really only speak for Europe here since I have only been to Europe and the US) because everything is catered to your needs. Stores are open all the time, customer service is wonderful, you can pretty much do all your shopping online, if you want to find a restaurant or a hair dresser or a dog groomer or whatever - you can go to any of the websites like Yelp and find the best. Everything seems easier here. And I have to say this is something I have come to value.

Of course it is also summer and even though we've had a lot of rain and scorchingly hot, humid weather here - summer in Chicago is a wonderful thing - festivals and the lake and BBQs and Cubs games and building sandcastles on the beach with the child I am watching instead of playing tea party for hours and farmers markets and ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon and cycling and streets with canopies of trees and fresh tomatoes and Lollapalooza ...

Enjoy your summer - wherever you are!

No Longer Just Aspiring

2010-06-11T11:23:00.001-07:00

IMG_2200-2
Aline Stern Photography

So, I went to Europe and then I went to San Francisco and I had two amazing holidays and I am going to need to talk about that more but right now - I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about dreams and aspirations.

One thing I have learned since living in the US is that you have to have a goal. Something to aspire too. And then you need to make a plan and you need to talk to people and find information on it and then you need to work really hard to get to were you want to get to.

For the first time, maybe in my life, I know exactly what I want.

The last six months I spent taking classes, updating my equipment and taking a million and one photographs. Of everything - my coffee cup, my friends, the cafe in Amsterdam I used to hang out at a lot ... I also went out and talked to people. I forced myself to get out of my shell - and believe me - I am still forcing myself every day. This is not something that comes natural to me - as I have said before. I am not an introvert person - I am just shy. Once I know people a bit more, I am actually quite extrovert but being in a group of 30 people and I not knowing them - it's tough. But it's necessary.

Taking those classes did wonders for my self confidence. Do I think I am all that now? No. I have to work a lot harder to get where I want to get to. What is my ultimate goal? I want to take pictures like Annie Leibovitz. Obviously she has 20 years of experience on me. She has better equipment. She is most likely way more talented than I am but if I am going to aspire to something, I am not going to chose somebody who is just a little bit better than me. Because, whats the point?

The thing I like most about my photography is that it gets better with every shoot. What I can do with lighting after taking several classes on lighting, compared to what I could do in November last year - is WORLDS different. And the mere fact that I am not afraid of taking pictures in low light situations anymore - it opens a whole other world of photography for me.

But as I said - I am still working and learning and taking classes and while I am starting to get some paid work (and hopefully it will be more and more) - I don't think I will ever stop learning and hopefully continue to improve.

Don't get me wrong - it's all a slow process. I have been taking pictures for 15 years. I took my first class when I was 13 or 14 years old. And only now am I getting to a stage where I feel comfortable enough (sort of) to ask people to pay me for my work. And now I am in the process of having the people around me to take my photography serious. I have had a lot of people tell me "So you are taking this whole photography thing serious now, huh?" and to be honest - that bothers me a little bit. Because I have been taking it "serious" for years - I was just not confident enough to point it out. I have called myself an "aspiring photographer" for way to long. I am a PHOTOGRAPHER, dammit.

But at the same time I have gotten so much support from friends and family. It's really overwhelming and I am so thankful to have such great people in my life!

So - the bottom line is - find a goal and find a way to get there! It might take years, it might take me 20 years to get to the stage I want to get to with my photography. But I won't give up.

One volcano, four countries, three different stories

2010-04-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

(Don't try to figure this picture out if you are not caught up on Lost)

Unless you just woke up from a coma, you probably have heard about the whole volcano-out break-flight situation. I mean, even my mom heard about it and she doesn't have TV or radio and she doesn't read newspapers.

On Friday afternoon E and I are scheduled to take a flight from Chicago O'Hare to Amsterdam Schiphol airport. And while it looks pretty promising right now with flights seemingly going back to normal, I am only going to be happy when the plane I am scheduled to board in two days, safely lands on Dutch soil (and I am on it).

Ever since I first heard about the volcano eruption, I wanted to be/stay as updated as possible. I was watching American morning news at that time and I was sure they would report about this. After all, when Michael Jackson died, hell, even when Corey Haim died, they had ample coverage on that. But apart from Al Roker doing his weather forecast from Iceland, there wasn't really anything. Some channels mentioned it but nothing that gave me more info then I already had - that a volcano had erupted in Iceland and that there was restricted air travel in Europe. Clearly most Americans aren't that interested in what is going on over there in Europe (or that's what the news channels think).

Next stop - CNN. I don't really watch CNN that much. Funnily enough I used to watch CNN a lot when I was living in Europe. Towards the end of my time in Europe, I watched a lot more Euronews than CNN but for a long time CNN Europe was one of my favorite news sources. Unfortunately CNN is not what I remember it to be. I am not sure if that is because I have changed and become more critical or if CNN has changed. A bit of both, perhaps. Anyway - CNN didn't only have news they had THE news. According to CNN - Europe was in chaos. And that Eyjafjallajokull wasn't even that much of a problem. But what if the volcano next to it erupts? Because according to CNN that was almost definitely going to happen and then, folks, then we'd really be in trouble. How much trouble, CNN didn't want to say but it would be BAD.

This got me so scared, I decided to forego American news altogether and instead focus on European news. After all, Europe was a bit more personally invested in this whole schlamassel.

Of course this meant I didn't check The New York Times - which I usually consider a good news source.

Next on was the BBC. BBC News, while still having a bit of a sensationalist edge to their news reporting ("Watch interviews with angry, stranded people! Are you stranded and want to tell us your story?"), was a lot more informative.

But still, they didn't give me the info I wanted.

Next on, I went to read the website of the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. I'll be honest with you - I don't really keep up with Austrian news that much, not even the politic news. I decided to leave the country a long time ago and even though I am still homesick for it sometimes, I pretty much decided when I left, that I would probably never go back to live there again and with that I lost most of my interest in their politics. But I still read Der Standard sometimes - because it's a good newspaper. And it didn't disappoint this time either. They were the first to inform me that all Austrian airports had re-opened on Monday. They also kept me updated on the "hight" of the ash and all that without being sensationalist about it.

For good measure I also started reading the Dutch website Nu.nl and of course KLM (the airline which hopefully will fly us to Amsterdam on Friday). Both websites, while not providing you with pages and pages of info, did provide me the most necessary facts.

While I understand that reading about the volcano situation is not as important for Americans as they are not as impacted by it, I still think that it is somewhat condescending of the mainstream, American media to shut out international news as they do. I am not just talking about the case of the volcano - I found out about the earthquake in China by trying to find news about the flight situation on European news websites. I remember about a year ago when that earthquake in Italy happened - I was in New Orleans at the time - without internet connection and I was trying to find out more about what happened through TV and newspapers. But there was nothing about it except the mare mention of the fact that there had been an earthquake! I truly believe that Americans would be interested in what is going on in the world even if it happens on the other side of the planet.

It has been 1.5 years since I left Europe and I NEED to get back, if just to burst my "Europe is so great"-bubble. Because while I often sound anti-American - I am totally aware that nothing is as good as you remember it.

So wish us luck that everything goes alright for us in the next three weeks!

Where I'm at

2010-04-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

There are the kind of New Years resolutions you make and you know the moment you make them that you won't be able to stick to them - like "Cut out cheese and alcohol" or "work out every single day" or "call your mother every other day" (obviously those might not be a problem for you but I was never able to stick to any of those). But if you set yourself goals, it's different. I think the difference between a goal and a resolution is that you have to actively plan a goal to make it happen. And in the long run, this is what will enable you to achieve these goals. And of course, you'll need a little bit of discipline as well.

For 2010 I had four main goals:

1. Live a healthy lifestyle - which means learn how to cook better, learn how to use seasonal ingredients, cook organic, work out more - especially get some upper body strengths (as a photographer one has to be able to move quickly and lift heavy equipment)

2. Learn to love myself

3. Make friends - make a conscious effort to stay in contact with new people you meet and you like (this for me is still the most difficult - I have met a lot of interesting people and I have had a much more active social life in the last 4 months than I had all of last year but I am having difficulties to get these new friendships to a deeper level)

4. Become a professional photographer

I have talked about 1. and 2. a lot already and I feel like I am doing ok in these departments.

Both "Make friends" and "Become a professional photographer" kind of go hand in hand I have found. But more about that later.

Three years ago I started to take professional photography classes (via correspondence) at the New York Institute of Photography. I'll be honest with you - the first two years I got hardly anything done. I was still working full time, I had a very active social life and I just couldn't be bothered. If you have a working life - even if it's not the working life you want - it's difficult to motivate yourself to change that.

Last year I made the decision to work as a nanny and to use the time that the kid I am watching is napping, solely as studying time. I was able to make great progress and I am now done with these classes. It took me about 6 months to get the last 5 Units in. I still have to send in my final project but it's all done - I just have to find an envelope pretty much.

Still, I didn't feel nearly confident enough to try and make it as a professional photographer even with this education. I frankly had no idea where to start. But luckily that changed when a friend introduced me to Angie, a professional photographer. Angie invited me to a meeting called "The Fast Track Photographer Chicago Group". It was only their second meet up. The group refers to a book by a guy called Dane Sanders who wrote the book called - you might have guessed - "Fast Track Photographer". This book is being re-written right now and I am on a waiting list for it on Amazon but unfortunately I haven't been able to get my hands on an old version thus I haven't read it. But anyway - one of the main principles of the book is that while the photography business is very competitive, we will still be more successful if we co-operate and network with each other as photographers then if we bad-mouth or ignore each other.

Thus this group formed. The first time I joined I was at their second-ever meet-up in Chicago. There were about 20 people (by the third meet-up the number of people in attendance had doubled), it was at somebodies house. Everybody was extremely welcoming and open and for the first time I just felt like, I can do this. Some of these people had studied photography but a lot of them just started doing it because they like it. They had less photographic education than I had and they had become incredible, professional photographer nonetheless.

I did also realize though that if I wanted to feel completely at ease and comfortable with what I am doing, I would have to take more classes. A correspondence class can give you a lot of knowledge but some things are just easier if somebody shows them to you. So I singed up for two evening classes at the Chicago Photography Center. One was Fundamentals of Lighting - it covered mostly studio work - a topic I knew hardly anything about, the other class was "Lightroom". I have taught myself some Photoshop but for an aspiring portrait and wedding photographer "Adobe Lightroom" is much better and easier to use.

On top of these classes, I took a few more workshops and seminars. I can tell you that the last two months have been super-busy for me. Especially considering that last year I pretty much did nothing at all except occasionally volunteering and my part-time nannying job. I finished my last class last Sunday and I had a seminar last night but this is going to be it for me until after my trip to Europe in a week. I am a little bit relieved to get a break from all this learning since I feel like I can't focus on anything but photography right now but at the same time it feels absolutely amazing to be a step closer to doing professionally what I have always been wanting to do professionally.

One thing you need to know if you want to become a photographer - you will always need to invest - in yourself and your equipment. I am shooting with a Canon 40D right now - an excellent camera and ok for portraits and most weddings but it has it's limitations and I will eventually have to upgrade to a better camera. I also just invested quite a bit of money into a professional lighting kit that I can easily take with me in the car for shoots. I can use it to build a studio pretty much anywhere (except underwater I guess). But keeping yourself educated is just as important. The seminar I was at yesterday was on how to be a good 2nd shooter at a wedding. A second shooter is a not-so-experienced shooter that basically is a mix of a photographers assistant (who does stuff like fetch the primary photographer a sandwich and park the car) and an associate photographer who takes pictures that the main wedding photographer might not be able to get. I was surprised to see a lot of established photographers there who shoot a lot of weddings as "primary photographers" - but as I said - you have to keep yourself educated.

So, I already decided to sign up for another class for when I come back from my trip and I also decided to volunteer as an assistant to the photo teachers at the Chicago Photography Center as this is an excellent learning possibility.

Having done all of this I haven't really had much professional work yet. A big part of getting business is networking and this is one thing I haven't been great at. The photographers I know network all the time. They go to events and parties constantly. They all know each other. For me to go out there and talk to people I have never met is really difficult. I have been forcing myself to do it more but believe me, it's not easy.

I wish it could just be like "Look, I do good work, if you like my style - hire me!" but unfortunately networking is a big part of this game. So I am working hard on that.

I also found that there are two groups of photographers - the "mainly wedding" people - who are all super-outgoing and hug-y and sweet and who smile a lot and the more artistic photographers who usually end up becoming photography teachers to fund their artistic photography. Both kinds seem happy though but I am at a point where I wonder in which group I belong and if I can ever be the hug-y, smiley person that people like to hire as their wedding photographers.

So, sorry for my long rambling here. But this is where I stand. For those of you who read this blog because you are interested in what is going on with me - now you know.

All in all, I have to say my life made a complete turn in 2010. It is so different from last year, it's incredible and I love it, even if it is a lot of work and I have to make myself do things that I am not always comfortable with. But that's what you have to do if you want to get further in life, isn't it? Being comfortable won't get you anywhere.

About organic chicken

2010-04-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

Since I have started this blog people have found it a lot of different ways.

1. I read a lot of other blogs and comment there and then people check out my blog.

2. People search for a picture of Genesis on Google - I linked to a Genesis picture in my blog post "Prove Yourself" - how exactly that works, that I get about 3-6 hits a day through this picture, I do not know but if I ever start a blog for my professional photography stuff, I might have to link to that picture on there too.

4. People put me on their blog roll on their own blogs (thank you!)

3. People Google something and find my blog. Those can be all kinds of stuff like:

"How to become a nanny in Italy" (Sorry, no info about this here but I can help you if you ever want to become a nanny in Chicago!)

"Cup of coffee" (I do write about that!)

or weird ones like "bad boy anal beads" (seriously - I don't know how somebody found my blog googling that but the fact that I just wrote this down will probably bring more people googling that term to my website)

But one search term that leads a lot of people to my blog is "Organic chicken" or "Pasture chicken in Chicago" and so I thought it might be a good idea to give you more info on the subject. I have become a lot more knowledgeable since my last post on the subject, so if you are still looking for an organic, pasture chicken (who are allowed to run freely, outside, eat grass and bugs instead of seeds) - here are a few tips:

*Go to farmers markets - they are the easiest way to find pasture chicken - ask the people who sell the meat - they are usually also the people who raise the chicken. If you don't get straight answers, it's probably shifty and not what you are looking for. If they seem like they don't know what "pasture" means, find somebody else to buy your chicken from. If they can show you pictures of how their animals are living or if you have a chance to look up their farm online and you see that the animals are running around freely - you have a winner.

*Go to www.eatwild.com - this is a website that will show you which farmers in your area sell organic and/or pasture meat, eggs and diary. It will also tell you when the farmer is where, so you can track them down.

*Once you find an organic farmer but you don't live right next to them - find out when and where you can find them, where they have drop-offs - and then stock up. We have a tiny freezer but I could easily fit two whole, big (5 pound) chicken and a pork shoulder in there. And that didn't even fill up half my freezer. If I buy a big thing of bacon, I freeze it in bags of three or four strips which I then defrost when needed.

*If you have a chance - go to local food fairs. I went to one about a month ago and I got a ton of information. I even bought some stuff there (there were about 4 meat vendors).

*Consider joining a CSA - you essentially buy your way into a farm and you get part of whatever they reap - veggies, fruit and often also meat. Just make sure it's a good farm and you can afford it in the long run.

*Be careful and consider what exactly you are looking for. What is important to you? That your family doesn't eat food that contains antibiotics or that the animals you are eating had a good life? For me - both are important and thus I make sure I know both are covered. But if you are mostly concerned about what goes into your body, buying amish chicken or normal organic chicken from the butcher or grocery store will do. Make sure that it says "Has never been fed antibiotics". As I have said before - Amish chicken is NOT pasture chicken! If you buy a chicken in a grocery store and it doesn't say "pasture" or "grass fed" on it - it is not "pasture" or "grass fed" because you can be sure they would want you to know about that and have you pay extra for it if it was. Also - I have never actually seen a pasture chicken in a store in Chicago.

Now - eating pasture diary, eggs and chicken is a lot more expensive than eating normal chicken - I won't lie. But it's a decision you have to make for yourself. I went years saying "Yeah, I am all for animal rights if it wasn't so expensive to eat organic". And then I read Michael Pollans "In Defense of Food" and I thought to myself, I keep on talking about it, why don't I do it? At the same time I was sick of eating the same food and feeling like crap and not knowing what is going into my body, so I changed everything.

You can do it too if you want to. It costs more but it will also make you less wasteful. I use every part of the chicken. I even use the intestines that come with it (I bake them and then put them in with the carcass when I make chicken stock). I get about 8 servings of chicken out of one bird, plus about 8 cups of condensed chicken stock which is better than any store bought stock. I cook big amounts and then freeze for the days that I don't have time to cook. I cook vegetarian a lot. I plan out meals for the week, including lunch and breakfast. In the end, I am not sure it costs us that much more because we waste a lot less. I used to throw tons of stuff away all the time because it went bad and I hardly ever do that anymore.

So if you want to do what I (and a lot of other people) decided to do - give it a go. You can always ask me if you have any questions about it!

Now I am going to go and try to find out more about objects to put up your behind, so I am prepared for any upcoming questions.

My five favorite blogs

2010-03-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

I have around 100 blogs on my Google Reader, so it's safe to say that I spend a lot of time reading them. A lot of them are more "visual" blogs - fashion, interior, design, cooking blogs. What can I say - I like to look at pretty things.

But there are a handful of blogs on my Google Reader which get me all giddy when I see that they have been updated. Here is a list - maybe you'll find a new favorite blog there too:

- Post Secret

Post Secret is an ongoing art project in which people send in their secrets on a post card. I have been reading this blog for about six years now and I support it by buying post secret books for friends and family as gifts. It sounds like a silly blog but it does so much - showing people that they are not alone.

- Jezebel

I only started reading Jezebel a few months ago but it's already one of my favorites. It is a feminist website which discusses everything from politics to celebrities and fashion. The discussions remind me of the discussions I used to have with my friends out in Amsterdam. The comments are moderated and to be a commenter you have to "prove yourself" by delivering a few funny, interesting, smart comments. If the moderators like your style (which doesn't have to mean that they agree with your opinion), your comments will be approved and you can become a commenter. This is one of the few politically minded websites where I actually read the comments.

- Polish or Perish

Ok, here is a little secret - I am a nail polish fanatic. And there are lots of us out there. There are even blogs where people take pictures of their nails (I might have been known to do that myself sometimes ...) and post them on their blogs. In fact, there are very many blogs like that. And I have a lot of them on my Google Reader. With most of the blogs, I just look at the pictures. If I really like a color, I will read what people wrote about it. But I almost always read the blog posts on Polish or Perish - a blog written by seven PHD/Masters students who are all nail obsessed like me. They write about nail polish but also about how their studies are going and their personal lives. My favorite is "Kittytokaren" - her name is a Cake reference and at least in the beginning a lot of her blog posts had Cake references in them. And Cake happens to be one of my very favorite bands.

- The Kitchn

I read a lot of cooking blogs - especially since I started cutting out processed foods and eating organic/locally/seasonally. There is just something comforting about reading cooking blogs. There are never any nasty comments on their posts. The pictures look beautiful. And to see what people cook is like getting a peak into their personal life. The Kitchn is a bit different. It is part of Apartment Therapy (which I read long before I discovered The Kitchn). It's written by several people. It is not a very personal blog. Recipes are only a small part of the posts on The Kitchn. There are posts and video tutorials about how to properly cut onions, how to take a whole chicken apart, how to re-finish cast iron skillets, ... I also love the posts where readers ask a question and the commenters answer - I have learned more about cooking from the comments on The Kitchn (which I have only been reading for about two months) than I learned in my 4 years of home ed classes in high school.

- The Kim Challenge

Kimberly Miller is a smart, cute, young actress/writer from New York who posts pictures of everything she eats. That is pretty much it in a nutshell but she also writes about her personal life, her life in New York, her fitness challenges, ... I first started reading her when she was one of the writers of "Elastic Waist" - a blog that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore (if it would, it would be on this list). When Elastic Waist folded (they were sponsored by Self magazine and I guess the magazine was making cuts), all the writers posted their personal websites and that's how I came to read The Kim Challenge. Not only is it interesting to see what other people (who have similar food principles to myself) eat every day but I have also come to really like Kim personally. Yes kids, this is 2010 and now we read peoples blogs and feel like they are our friends even though they might know that we exist.

I know the people who read my blog are not really avid commenters but if you'd like to come out of the lurking status, please let me know what your favorite blogs are! Because my Google Reader is always open for new additions!

The life of Special K

2010-03-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

I still remember meeting my friend Ketil for the first time. I was sitting in Vondelpark in Amsterdam with my friend A who had just gotten me a job in a call center where she was working as well. It was my first real job. It was a sunny day. I felt excited and happy. Ketil worked at the same company I was about to work for. He was walking his bike through Vondelpark, a friend by his side. He stopped and said "hi" to my friend A who was really good friends with Ketils best friend. I thought: Wow, that man is beautiful. But not in a sexual attraction way - I somehow knew immediately that K was into men, even though he was not the kind of man with who you could just "tell". He was nice and had a British accent even though he was Norwegian (I later found out that he had lived in London and that's how he picked up his nearly perfect British English).

Three months passed and my company had a Christmas party. It was at this design-y place that had areas set up like different rooms in an open space. I immediately noticed the "Scandinavian corner" on the black sofas - everybody was wearing black, everybody was smoking and everybody looked incredibly cool. I wanted to be one of them. Of course, Ketil was one of them.

At the end of the night, before I left, K came to me and said "I heard from A that you are really into photography. I am too! Maybe we should take pictures together sometimes!".

And that was the beginning of a really special friendship.

We spent nearly every weekend together - either in the darkroom printing photos, out taking pictures or at a bar or coffee shop, Saturday or Sunday afternoon, drinking beer and smoking. The summers we'd be sitting at the canals and drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers or in Vondelpark, with some of our other friends. Through Ketil I learned that cheese, crackers, wine, tapenade and pate make the perfect meal. He taught me that all you need to be happy is a blanket, sunshine and good company.

A few years after we first started hanging out, we created a little photography club with two other friends. We'd be meeting up every few weeks in the evening to seriously discuss photography but we just ended up drinking a lot and smoking pot and telling each other how incredibly talented we are.

K always knew how to make me feel great. He was the first man who ever made me feel beautiful. He would compliment me constantly. One time he just looked at me and said "Wow, you look JUST like that girl from Lost in Translation" (he meant Scarlett Johansson - I don't look like her but I used to have long, blond hair and I have blue eyes, so it was at least a little bit believable). And whatever he said, it didn't sound phony. It sounded really genuine.

In all those years that we spent so much time together we never once had an argument.

I hadn't seen Ketil in a few years. He left the Netherlands to move to Spain. I missed him so much and even though we tried to meet up a few times in Spain and the Netherlands, something always came up that prevented us from seeing each other.

When I heard that he had died, I was surprised how much I am grieving and how I just can't stop thinking about him.

I haven't really lost a friend before K. So I am not sure how this is supposed to work. Like tonight I am supposed to go out to two parties. Part of me is afraid that I am going to get drunk and won't be able to stop talking about my friend. Another part of me thinks I really need distraction.

All of a sudden it feels like I can remember ever single conversation I had with Ketil. And I am realizing how often I think about him - even before I learned about his untimely death, I'd think about him every time I say "cool" - because he would never say cool - always "coolio" which was funny because he was not the kind of guy who would ever use slang or say something pretentious. Or every time I go to the dentist I think about when I met up with him right after he had had a root canal and he told me that whenever he goes to the dentist he feels a little bit like he had been "raped in the mouth".

I also remember one evening we spent talking about death and dying and how we think we are going to end up dying. And this is not how he was supposed to die. And when.

Losing a friend is like losing a part of yourself

2010-03-05T09:00:00.001-08:00

Rest in peace Ketil.

You were one of the most beautiful people I knew. Inside and out.

You always made me feel like a million bucks. You were smart and funny and creative and inspired people in so many ways.

I will miss you more than words can express.

Woman vs. Chicken

2010-02-19T08:39:00.001-08:00

I hate making roast chicken. It just really grosses me out. But I started making my own chicken stock about a year ago and once you have made and used your own chicken stock you can never go back to using bouillon cubes.

So about every three month, I buckle down and make a roast chicken, use the meat for tasty risottos and stews and curries and use the carcass to make stock which I then freeze in one cup portions.

Sure, there are other ways to make chicken stock, some people say better ways. There is Ina Gartens famous chicken stock recipe which is supposed to be fantastic. Or The Amateur Gourmets chicken stock recipe. But wasting that much chicken and not even getting to eat it, I morally just cannot get myself to do.

On top of that I found a new recipe - Jamie Olivers "Chicken in milk" which I have been wanting to make since I first laid eyes on it and since we also just got ourselves a brand new Lodge Dutch Oven (the poor man's Le Creuset) that I had been dying to try - I knew it was time to face the chicken.

Since starting to follow Michael Pollans food principles I found that when it comes to meat - it is relatively easy to find grass fed beef in most grocery stores (I guess it has become somewhat of a foodie staple) but it is nearly impossible to get pastured chicken in Chicago, in the winter. In the summer, a lot of local farmers can be found at the farmers markets but there are only one or two weekly farmers markets which brave the winter. Through the Eat Wild website I found out that there is Farmers Market which sells pastured chicken but that's not happening for another 10 days.

So I made my way down to Chicagos biggest Wholefoods which apparently is the 3rd biggest Wholefoods in the world. There were three different kinds of whole chicken: Amish, "natural" (Wholefoods own brand) and Kosher. I checked all the labels and none of them said "pastured". A Wholefoods employee asked me if I needed help, so I asked him if Wholefoods sold any pastured chicken. His answer:

"Erm, we have the Amish, which are Amish raised and the natural and then we have the Kosher. And erm, yeah, all our chickens are, you know, organic and all pastured and all that stuff."

Clearly he didn't understand what pastured meant because I am pretty sure that if the chicken were pastured it would say so. A lot of people who buy their food at Wholefoods would spend extra to get a pastured chicken, I am sure.

His response reminded me of the response I got from a Trader Joes employee after asking him if any of the beef they were selling was grass-fed. He had to go ask. When he came back he said:

"Yeah, all of our beef is organic which means it is grass-fed." - Again - if the cows were grass-fed, I am pretty sure it would say. In fact, I had seen beef at a bigger Trader Joes that said in big letters "Grass-fed only beef".

Anyway, I ended up grabbing one of the Amish chicken, hoping that this would be the best choice of the three.

When I got home and I checked the recipe, I noticed that it asked for a 3 1/2 pound, organic chicken. I noticed that the chicken I had bought was 4 1/2 pounds. According to Michael Pollan pastured chicken are usually smaller, since they are outside and have to find bugs and grass to eat.

Had I, after all my extensive research, chosen an obese chicken?

After doing some research now, I found out that Amish chicken are

NOT free-range, they are antibiotic free though, at least.

The thing I hate most about preparing a whole chicken is sticking my hand up its behind to get out the insides. In most cases the insides are in a bag but I have had cases where they were just thrown in there loosely.

In the case of this Amish chicken - this is what was inside:

I am not sure if it is visible from the picture but this bag is chicken-head shaped. Now, a headless chicken is disturbing enough for me to look at but the head? I know - it's most likely just the neck which people like to throw in the pot when they are making chicken stock but let's just say I was not brave enough to open the bag. It is in my freezer right now. I don't think I could have eaten the chicken if I would have seen its face.

The headless chicken itself looked like a headless baby. For me - roasting chickens always kind of look like headless babies but this chubby chicken even more so:

I actually ended up apologizing to the chicken and thanking it for giving us its meat. I realize that probably sound somewhat nuts but I mean - look at it:

And this ladies and gentlemen is why I eat mostly vegetarian these days.

(The "Chicken in Milk" was very tasty though and I can highly recommend it - especially if you like lemon - but make sure to read the comments under the recipe, since they give some good tips)

Life changing

2010-02-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

I'll be honest. I sometimes wonder if I wasted a year of my life in 2009. Part of me believes I needed it to recover, to get strength and so on but then, I really didn't get anywhere last year. I spent a year mourning losses - the loss of my friends in the Netherlands, the loss of my career (even though I didn't like my career but at least it was something to be proud of), the loss of my independence (since I am not making enough money to be self-sufficient which is something that I am not entirely comfortable with, despite fully trusting my husband), the loss of my social life, ...

I don't know how but with the end of 2009 I could finally stop mourning and start living my new life. I made a few "new years resolutions" but they are really much more than new years resolutions - they are what I need to do to get back on track and to get a life started that I feel is worth living.

I already talked about one of the resolutions - to respect myself. And to give you guys an update on this - it's going great and it has probably been one of the best changes I have ever made in my life.

Respecting myself means a lot more than to stop telling myself I am worthless (even though - just doing that already was a huge improvement to my life). It means respecting my body as much as respecting my mind.

Deciding to eat organically, to only eat animals and animal products like eggs and diary from animals who I know were treated with dignity and got to eat grass, like they were supposed to made a HUGE impact on my life. Seriously guys - if you have never had eggs from a farm where the pastured chickens are allowed to run around freely, eat grass and bugs instead of kernels, you are missing out!

My breakfast most days of the week:

A green smoothie

How to make it:

1 cup of almond milk (or soy or rice or hemp or regular milk but my favorite is unsweetened, vanilla almond milk)

1 banana

frozen fruit of your choice: I either make a "berry" one with frozen cherries, strawberries and blueberries or a "tropical" one with frozen mango, guava and pineapple. Sometimes I add peaches to either

one or two cups of dark green, leafy vegetables like spinach or kale

protein powder of your choice

- put everything in a blender. Blend. Ready. The taste of the greens takes a little bit of getting used to and you can leave it out if you really don't like it but it's so packed full of nutrients that for me it's really worth to add it. I found that chocolate protein powder masks the bitter taste of the greens better than vanilla.

One of the best things I read was "Cheap food might be cheap right now but it is too expensive in the long run" - meaning the effects that cheap, mass-produced food have on the planet and on your body in the long run are just not worth it.

And even though I spend a lot of money on food now, I waste a lot less. Our fridge is only half as full as it was before and I really try to use every morsel of food I buy. This involves a lot more planning but I don't mind. I also freeze a lot of food.

And completely unrelated - we booked our flights to Europe and we'll be in the Netherlands and Austria in less than 10 weeks. I can't wait! But more about that another time!

Tales of Mere Existence

2010-02-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

I couldn't have said it better myself:

In Defense of Food

2010-01-14T19:13:00.000-08:00

One of my New Year's resolution is to cook more and especially - cook better. My goal is to use vegetables and spices which I have never used before and make dishes I have never made - or even tried. I also wanted to start cooking with better ingredients and start using local and "in-season" vegetables and fruits.

I have always liked to cook but somehow I lost my cooking-groove since I have moved to the US. Stuff tastes different than it tastes in Europe. I didn't quite understand how all the recipes that I used to make in Europe with great success all the time didn't come out here. I just finished Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food" and things are a lot more clear to me now. For example - the butter in America is white - that was one of the first things I noticed in terms of food. In Europe - especially in Austria and Ireland - the butter is yellow, not white. I now know that American butter is white because the cows are corn fed. If cows get to graze on grass the butter will be yellow. There are a lot of reasons why it's better for cows to eat grass than corn but I am not going to go into it all now - if you want to know I recommend you read Pollan's book.

So I realized instead of trying to make my old stand-bys taste like they used to be I should just try new stuff. I decided that nutritionally and taste-wise it would be best to start eating food that is in season where I live. Right now a lot of different greens like Kale and Chard and squashes are in season. To be honest I have never really tried those foods. In Holland you can get whichever food you want whenever you want since most foods are either raised in green houses or imported from warmer places so I never thought about eating seasonally.

Well, let me tell you guys - this New Years resolution was probably the best New Years resolution I have ever made. In the past two weeks I have been in culinary heaven. For the first time since I have moved here I feel like I can cook. I have tried new recipes every night except once - when we went to a restaurant - a restaurant which follows the same food principles which I have been following (thus the food was incredible). I have cooked butternut squash, spaghetti squash (a squash of which the flesh looks like pasta and surprisingly tastes pretty similar too), kale (in many different ways), winter soups and my favorite - oven roasted grape tomatoes with rosemary, garlic and olive oil. I also try to cook mostly vegetarian and if I use meat, I try to use really good quality meat.

But not only have I really enjoyed every bite I have eaten in the last couple of weeks, I have also felt great. I am starting to think that those winter vegetables contain exactly the vitamins and minerals one needs to get through the winter without getting depressed and sick. One of the first dishes we made was a "green" soup with kale and spinach. The next day E and I felt energized and alive like we just got back from a long stay at a spa.

In short - I have been feeling fantastic.

If you are interested - here are Michael Pollan's 7 rules for eating - but please keep in mind that these make a lot more sense if you have read his book which I can very much recommend:

1. Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2. Avoid foods containing ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3. Don’t eat anything that wouldn’t eventually rot.
4. Avoid food products that carry health claims.
5. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
6. Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmer’s market or CSA.
7. Pay more, eat less.
8. Eat a wide diversity of species.
9. Eat food from animals that eat grass.
10. Cook and, if you can, grow some of your own food.
11. Eat meals and eat them only at tables.
12. Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me.

2009-12-31T09:22:00.000-08:00

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me. That was what I wrote on my desk in high school. And kind of a life-long motto for me.

I was always a bit obsessed with feeling like people don't respect me enough. I have had heated discussion with superiors at work who I suspected didn't respect my work, I have dropped friends who didn't respect me enough to show up on dates, I have not gone back to stores where I felt I wasn't treated with respect. Treating people with respect and being treated with respect is important to me.

But in the last few weeks I had a light bulb moment when I realized even though I expect to be respected - I do not treat myself with any respect. In fact, if any of my friends would treat me the way I treat myself, I would have dumped them a long time ago.

The 3 year old girl I am watching - L - has a book called "I'm gonna like me - Letting off a little self-esteem". She has asked me to read that book to her a lot recently. And one day I asked her "Do you like yourself L?". I had asked her the same question about 3 month ago and back then her answer was "Yes! I am great!". Well, now the answer was "No ... I mean ... I don't know.".

Of course I started listing all the reasons why she should love herself - she is witty and smart and funny and cute and lovable.

But it's sad that a 3 year old is not sure if she really loves herself.

If it is so shocking to me that a 3 year old doesn't love herself, why do I think it is ok that I do not love MYSELF? And how do I expect my future children to love themselves when their mother doesn't manage to even LIKE herself?

And that is when I decided I would start to work on that. Loving and respecting yourself if you haven't loved and respected yourself for at least the last 20 years doesn't just come naturally. You don't wake up one morning and are like "Yeah, I am great". And loving and respecting yourself doesn't mean that you can stop working on yourself.

But self-hatred is destructive. And thinking back - nothing good ever came of self-hatred. I guess part of myself thought that if you hate yourself, it won't hurt as much if other people don't love you. But that's not even true.

So really, there is absolutely no reason to not love yourself.

As I said in my last blog post - I have big plans for 2010. Learning to respect myself is the most important endeavor though. I am writing about this because I think a lot of people don't respect themselves and maybe this will inspire them to make this their big endeavor for 2010 too.

And I'm feeling good

2009-12-27T11:28:00.000-08:00

You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me..
And I'm feeling good

I hadn't been feeling so good lately. I actually felt really, freakin' bad for a long time. I didn't know, I still don't know what was going on with me. But sometimes it just happens. Sometimes you just find yourself in a deep hole and you don't know how to get out of it. And most of the time this just lasts for a day or two. Maybe you've had too much to drink. Or something bad happened. But you get over it. But for me this has been taking a long time. Weeks. Maybe months. I don't remember. I had a few good, happy days (or should I say nights) in between but the next day everything just went back to normal. And in my case, normal was the deep hole that I couldn't pull myself out of.

But then, out of nowhere, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. And everything gets better. Despite things not really being better. Despite the things that you thought made you so depressed in the first place still being very much present. You feel better. And better. And all of a sudden - you feel GOOD. And you can't believe you are feeling good because you thought you didn't remember how it was like to feel good. Not an alcohol or fun evening triggered good but a genuine good. A good that you expect to still be there the next day.
And maybe even the day after.

I have big plans for 2010. 2009 was a year to get me sorted out. To find myself. To get some sort of sense to my life. I am not saying I have it all figured out but I have a plan. I have goals and I know what I want to do.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T11:38:00.000-08:00

Today is Thanksgiving in this big country that is the US of A.

The thing I might like best about living in America is how people here celebrate the holidays. Decorating and cooking and dressing up and ... well ... celebrating.

I grew up in a household with hardly any tradition. I don't know if it's due to my mom being a buddhist (though she only converted when I was 16 years old) or my mom growing up in my grandparents restaurant where I am sure they had to work on all the major holidays. What good is it that your mother (my grandmother) is a trained chef when she has to cook for 400 people that night and you are not one of those people.

So Christmas for us was usually frozen pizza. I liked pizza and my mom always said that on a special day you should just eat what you like and not what people tell you to eat. I remember one Christmas Eve we went to MacDonalds. A special treat since at that time the only MacDonalds was reachable by car and we didn't have a car. That year, my aunt drove us to the drive through and got us our Christmas meal. I had a quarter pounder and a chocolate milk shake.

I never had carp or goose for Christmas (or any other time) - which in Austria is a traditional Christmas meal.

We also didn't have a Christmas tree. My mom, a friend of the trees, literally (and yes, I know how to use that word, my mom speaks to flowers, she is literally a friend of the trees), didn't want us to kill a tree for Christmas. One Christmas when I was very little, we won a living Christmas tree in a flowerpot. That was the one year we had a Christmas tree.

So I think it is because of this lack of tradition that I grew up with, that I now crave it. This year I even put up Halloween decorations (we did have a Halloween party though).

I always hear people complain about how commercialized the holidays are. Oh my god, it's November and they are playing Christmas music in the stores! And they are already selling decorations!

I don't think this way. I think this way I get to enjoy the holidays a little bit longer. Ok, usually by the second week of December I am pretty sick of hearing "Last Christmas" but apart from that I am a happy camper when it comes to all things holidays.

It's a time where I start cooking and crafting and knitting and sewing and baking. Winter here (and pretty much every place I have lived) is dreary and depressing. Glitter and bright colors make it more enjoyable.

The Netherlands doesn't really do holiday celebrations. One reason is that they are celebrating "Sinterklaas" which is happening in early December instead of Christmas itself. Another reason is that they are just a lot more sober in general. I really missed seeing people decorate their houses. I missed seeing Christmas trees in windows (some people have them but a lot less people than in the US and Austria where almost everybody has a Christmas tree). There is this department store in the Netherlands called "De Bijenkorf" and I loved going there before Christmas because it was the only store that had made an effort with Christmas decorations.

Today is Thanksgiving and I am very thankful for so many things. I am thankful for my husband who is really the perfect person for me. I don't just love him. There is nobody in the world that I LIKE as much as him. If you have been together for almost six years and you still like being around each other and you miss each other even when the person is only gone of to work for the day, then you know that you are with the right person.

I am thankful that at this moment we are both employed and that we have enough money to live comfortably. We might have a TV that's 30 years old but we have a roof over our head and heating and we don't have to worry that we will lose all of this soon and that is more than a lot of people in this country can say right now.

I am thankful that both my husband and my parents are still alive and are not in a life threatening situation. I can't imagine anything worse than losing a loved one.

I am thankful for finally making big steps towards my dream career of being a photographer.

This year E and I will be spending Thanksgiving with just the two of us. We made enough food for 8 people but that is all part of the celebration. Cooking such a big meal together was fun and I am sure eating it will be too.

Enjoy the holidays, no matter which holidays you are celebrating! And when you get annoyed by the decorations and the music, think about February and how much you could use a little bit of the sparkle then.

One year in Chicago

2009-10-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

Exactly a year ago E and I took our cat, four bags and a big poster box and made our way to Chicago.

When I moved here I was expecting a lot and nothing at all. "You are so social, you make friends easily", "You will have so much fun!", "Americans are so open, it will be really easy to meet new people" my friends in Holland were telling me. Of course, as you know if you have been reading this blog it has been a lot harder for me to make new friends than I could have imagined. It has been harder to find a job. A lot has been harder than I had expected.

That doesn't mean that it hasn't been great. Not all the time but a lot of the time.

The biggest change was probably the change in myself. I have gotten calmer and friendlier and more like myself. More like I want to be, at least on the inside.

Six years of Customer Service really did a number on me. Especially the last year when I managed a team. I hadn't realized how hard I have become, how rude and snappish.

Of course I didn't enjoy having to look for a job for such a long time when I moved here. It made me feel like a loser. But it's also what I needed. I needed the time off to just become a normal person again. To be sane again. And to realize what I want.

Here are some of the things I discovered that I like and don't like about the US. Let's start about what I don't like:

*Feminism or the lack thereof

I have always been an advocate for women's rights. As a teenager I first joined an Amnesty International group for women's rights. I tried and still try to educate people about all the horrible things that are being done to women around the globe.

When I moved to the US I was shocked how many people here still live in the 50s when it comes to emancipation. I just saw a report on this on TV where they said that since the 50s the number of American men who help in the household has doubled - from 15% to 30%. They thought this was a great development. I say SERIOUSLY? You think that's great? This number should be much much higher.

In Holland I would not have called myself a feminist. My views are moderate. I believe in equality for all people, women, men all races, all incomes, no matter what sexual preference you have. I think everybody should be treated fairly and the same way. I don't think women are better at anything just because of their gender. I don't think women should have more rights than men. I believe in EQUALITY.

Well, in America my views make me a raging feminist. I read a few American feminist websites and I am surprised how many women on there think that the 50s were a much better time for women to live in. Who want to live in the world of Mad Men.

I am getting pissed off just looking at the commercials. There is one commercial for a dust cleaner in which they lock a woman into a glass walled, dusty room. She begs her kidnappers to let her out of the room because she has to pick up her children from school. Of course she can't help herself but start cleaning when she sees all the dust. When she is finished she has a satisfied look on her face, as if she had just made love.

There are NO commercials showing a man clean. Or cook. Or do something with his children (unless it's with his boys and they are playing sports outside).

The "Girls Only" toy cleaning set will surely show your girl her future place in the family!

Of course not everybody is like that and there are plenty of emancipated women living in the US but compared to the Northern European countries - even to a lot of the Southern European countries the US is still behind. And unfortunately - it's the women's own fault. Because it's more important to be appealing to men for them than to stand up for themselves. And this is what bugs me most.

*Social/racial differences

Chicago is a segregated city. We have the white North of the city. The safe side.

And we have the black and hispanic South side. The poor side. The criminal side. Did you hear about the young boy who was beaten to death in front of his school? That was on the South side. White people don't go to the South side. With a few exceptions - like my friend who happens to be a one of the teachers of this boy who got beaten to death on the South sides.

The stories I have heard from my friend, the teacher are horrendous. See, that boy was just one of many students who die of violence in this neighborhood every year. The kids - high school kids - can barely read. They grow up not expecting to have any future. The main funding for schools are from the taxes from their neighborhood. Since most of the people on the South side are unemployed and live in poverty of course they are not getting many taxes from them. What a great way to keep the poor people in poverty and the rich people rich.

And you have this happening all over the US. About a week ago we drove up to Milwaukee, along the lake. We saw some gorgeous villages with perfect little houses, perfect lawns, perfect trees, perfect school. Beautiful. Whitey towns. And then in between those gorgeous little towns you had run down villages. Houses that were falling apart. Dirty streets. Liquor stores on the main square. On the streets you only saw black people.

I have heard people say that it's their own fault. America - the country of unlimited possibilities. Well, your possibilities are very limited when you never really learned how to read in school. When you are just trying to survive everyday. When your world is full of violence. When you never really knew anything else.

I myself come from a very poor background. Of course - in Austria being very poor means you still have food on the table most days and you still get to go to any school you want (we don't have many private schools and they are not necessarily better than public school in Austria anyway). I didn't have things like birthday presents or parties and I spent maybe $50 a year on clothes (which is probably why I am somewhat addicted to shopping now) but I still lived. I had problems at home and moved out when I was 17 years old. Thanks to the Austrian social system I could pay for a place to live and with the help of summer jobs I managed to provide for myself enough to finish school. I didn't have it easy but I had a future. Here in America this would have been a lot harder. My life is NOTHING compared to what so many people have to deal with here every day.

*Health insurance

This is the country where a one year old, solely breast fed baby was refused health insurance because apparently he was too fat! At the same time a two year old girl was refused health insurance because she was too skinny. The health system is run by the insurances. People have no rights. It's ridiculous. It needs to be changed and I really, really, really can't fathom how anybody could not agree with this. But so many people don't. I don't get it.

I hear a lot of Americans saying that the European social system (of course there is not just one) is flawed and that they are afraid that Obama will make America "just like Europe" (oh the horror! They might end up with 25 holidays and the right to health insurance even if they have a pre-existing condition!). I have to say - I hope Obama does JUST that (but he won't).

*Body image

I don't get it. So many American women look up to French and Italian women. They admire how they age gracefully (no Botox!), how they don't wear much makeup, how they don't blow dry their hair, how they are so wonderfully and seductively imperfect.

Yet, they do everything to be perfect all the time. To conform. Everybody in America wants to look the same. Everybody wants to be 5.6 ft (or taller), skinny, with big boobs, with blow-dried light colored, shiny hair, perfect nails, perfect teeth, perfect, tiny noses, wrinkle-free skin - flawless.

When did we forget that people don't all look the same? And that this is ok? We don't have to be perfect to be beautiful.

TV and magazines are full of photos bashing people for not looking like they are supposed to look like.

About a month ago this picture (NSFW) caused an uproar in America. It was published in Glamour magazine. Most people said that they loved it. Finally a woman in a magazine who is not perfect but who is still beautiful. And then you had quite a few people who said that it is damaging to put a picture like this on a website. That it glamorizes obesity. What a bunch of crap. This woman is normal. She would have been normal in the 50s. She would have been normal in the 1820s. She is normal. She might not be what people are used to see in a magazine but she is not obese. Just like really skinny women are normal. Women have come in all shapes and sizes - always (except in times of famine). So have men.

I think the yearning for conformity not only creates a bad body image in young people but it also makes life a lot more boring.

But of course it's not all bad. There are a lot of things I like and appreciate about the US:

*Culture

On one side there is this really conservative part of American culture that I really don't like but on the other side there are the liberal, open-minded people who I like very, very much. And there are more and more of them. There are so many things I am interested in that most Europeans are not interested in. I started so many conversations in the Netherlands, talking about TV shows or music or fashion or home projects and people had no idea what I was talking about. In Austria nobody ever knew what I was talking about. Since I have moved here I have found quite a lot of like-minded people when it comes to my interests. It is strange that I had to move to a different continent to find people who are interested in all the same things I have always been interested in. All my life I have looked for a culture that I fit in - goths, punks, hippies, alternative, fashionistas ... I am not any of this but I am a little bit of all of them and so are a lot of people here.

*Manners

On Sunday we flew back from New Orleans. We did a curb-side check in. When we stood in line - just when we were going to be next, a young woman pushed right in front of us. She said she was late for her plane and she wants to check in her bag. The woman at the counter said she would help her - right after she helped us - since we were next in line. The woman complained a little bit but eventually stood back.

I'll confess something to you - I am kind of anal and moments like that give me great joy. I really hate when people don't adhere to common rules of society. I think most rules are there to make our life easier and if everybody would follow them everything goes much more smoothly.

And in America most people think just like me. When this woman pushed in front of me, I was surprised. That doesn't happen to me in America. This is not common here. It is in the Netherlands though. In the Netherlands people push, forge ahead, elbow wherever they can. It's all about them getting somewhere first. I have had times when I couldn't get on a train a. because the train company neglected to send a train long enough for all the people who wanted to get on and b. because people were so brutal, pushy and forceful that I decided it would just not be worth it to get to work black and blue. Standing in a line, waiting for anything, you can be almost certain somebody will try and push ahead of you. It's pretty stressful when you have to keep an eagle eye out in the grocery store because people just don't respect the fact that you stood in line ahead of them.

Not having to worry about this is a big stress relieve for me and I often remind myself of this when I am standing in a line at the supermarket - or at the airport.

*Customer Service

What can I say. I like not having people forget about my orders. I like that things get done in time. I like that if I send a letter complaining about something I can be almost certain to get an answer. I like that if I send a letter of cancellation to a company - whatever I want to cancel actually gets cancelled!

Those are all things that seem very normal in America but are not normal in the Netherlands (Austria is not like that though! It doesn't have anything to do with the social system).

I don't care if waiters and waitresses work for tips, I like to be smiled at and to get my food in under an hour.

From experience I know that it will take me much longer than one year to really get to know and understand the American culture. But I do feel at home here. Bad stuff and all.

Last Days of Summer

2009-09-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

As you probably have guessed, the fact that you haven't heard from me in a long time means that I have been busy.

In the last month I have been to Indianapolis, Ohio, Northern Michigan, I have gotten certified in CPR and First Aid, I have finally gotten my American drivers license and most importantly - I found a job.

I am now a nanny. Maybe that's not something you expected but it works really well for me, especially since I only work two days a week (I am still hoping to get another job for one or two more days).

I started working as the nanny of a beautiful, well-behaved almost 3 year old little red headed girl three weeks ago and so far I enjoyed it more than any other job I have ever had (granted I haven't actually had a lot of jobs that I enjoyed).

It is amazing what having a job does to you. I am way more organized, motivated and I got more done in my Photography studies in these last three weeks than I have in the whole year before. I tell you guys - having a reason to get up in the morning completely changes your life!

I have been in the US for almost 11 month now and I finally feel integrated. I finally feel like this is my home.

The decision to become a nanny didn't come naturally for me. In fact, when we first moved to the US a few friends asked us, I think jokingly, if I wanted to be their nanny since I used to be an AuPair 8 years ago. It was my first job in the Netherlands and I have to be honest with you - while I had a great time not having to worry about housing and food and I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with other AuPairs (I met some of my best friends that way) I didn't really enjoy it. I guess I kind of didn't like children that much and what I liked even less was working for families - in particular Dutch families who are famous for always feeling like they are paying you too much when really, they are paying you less than the minimum.

But I grew up and I changed and I started liking children which was more surprising to me than anything. I still don't like ALL children but I like most children and I LOVE the little girl I am taking care off. If I could adopt her, I would. I like her that much. I hope the parents don't read this. I don't want them to think I want to steal their child.

Anyway - when our friends (jokingly?) asked me if I'd be interested at all to be their nanny, I said "No, no way". I still don't think I would want to be a (paid) babysitter for friends (babysitting as an auntie is a different story), it would be awkward to get paid by your friends and it would be equally unpleasant to give or receive negative feedback. Well, maybe that would work for some people but I wouldn't like it.

Also - I have to say - in Europe going from being a manager to being a nanny is something very embarrassing. In America this is much less of an issue since having no work usually means having no income. That's why you have people with PHDs working at Mac Donald's right now. In Europe you can usually afford to be unemployed for six month or a year because the government gives you enough money to comfortably live on which gives you enough time to keep looking for a job you really want. When I first moved here I just couldn't possibly imagine going back to something I did when I first started working. It would be like climbing down the career ladder.

So, why did I decide to become a nanny? Well, when I was having trouble finding a job, I made a list of things I want in a job. And nannying turned out to tick all the boxes.

Things I am looking for in a job:

*No drama

In my previous job I was managing six women. Three of these women were older than me. It was constant drama. There was always something going on: bitching, back stabbing, gossiping, people not doing their job, other people overdoing it with their job and being angry at people who didn't do their job ...

I was in this managing position for one year and I decided that this is not for me. Even when I wasn't the team leader there was constant drama. I had mild anxiety attacks and insomnia. I started knitting every evening for an hour to get my mind of all the drama. It worked. The winter of 2007/2008 I made four scarves.

*No customer service

After being an AuPair my first job was working for a telephone company as a call center agent. In the beginning I liked it, as crazy as it sounds but I like talking to people, I like solving problems and I am actually quite good at calming people down. Well, after six month I had had enough of being yelled at all day. Still, I stayed in the business of customer service and complaint handling for six years. The last three years I was working with stores though, which is a little more professional than talking to people who call in to complain that their phone bill is 2 cents more than last months, when really, they didn't call any more than the previous month!

Unfortunately I was working for a clothing manufacturer, providing to individual stores and I didn't know that at the time I started but people who work in Fashion are not necessarily the most reasonable crowd.

I don't think a lot of people can stand working in customer service for six years, so I definitely have had it. I was overdue. Never again.

*Earning at least $10 an hour

You wouldn't believe it but most office jobs I looked at wanted to pay $8/hour! I used to earn a lot more. I am OK with not earning nearly as much as I used to but I am not OK with earning $5/hour after tax. Being a nanny pays more than these office jobs. It doesn't come with any benefits unfortunately (I does though if you are a full time nanny) but I heard that most part-time jobs in the US don't come with benefits. Oh and I will be paying tax on my earnings, in case you were wondering. I am a good immigrant.

*No sitting around in an office all day

I really wanted a job I could be a bit active in. A few of my choices were mail woman (but you earn very, very little and you have to wear ugly, uncomfortable uniforms), bike courier (I had been thinking about this a lot but I am just too slow on my bike, especially compared to the crazy cyclists here) and dog walker/cat sitter (this was my number one contender until our cat sitter gave me six forms to sign, afraid I would sue her if something happened to one of the cats while we are gone - too much trouble, also you only earn about $8 per walk). As a nanny I get to be a bit active - we go for walks, we run around the apartment, playing tag - there is always something going on.

It turned out nannying full-filled all of these requirements - plus - when the girl naps and once I have done a bit of cleaning up - I get to study for an hour or two which is how I got so much studying done these past few weeks.

Luckily I realized that having a job you enjoy is much more important than the status a job comes with.

I am probably not going to be a nanny for the rest of my life but until I finish my studies and until I am starting to get some business in as a photographer, I will be doing this.

Because I chose to.

10 Things I Love About Chicago

2009-08-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

I have had my fair share of negativity when it comes to my new home. This transition hasn't always been easy for me.

Maybe I just entered stage 3 of culture shock, maybe it's just because the sun is shining almost every day but on some days, Chicago feels like the greatest place on earth. So here is my top-10 list of things I love about Chi-town:

1. The Lake

I won't lie to you. The lake was one of the big draws for me to move to Chicago. I told E my requirements for where we would move are: at a big body of water, easy to cycle, big city, good public transportation and not as much rainfall as in Holland. Chicago fulfilled all of those requirements, so did San Francisco, New York and Boston. But in the end Chicago is not only cheaper than those other places but we already knew a lot of people which makes life a lot easier.

And Chicago has the lake. The beautiful Lake Michigan.

I had no idea how beautiful the lake is. I didn't know that the beaches here are much, much nicer than the beaches of the North Sea in Holland.

When I feel down or stressed, I often go for a long bike ride along the lakeshore. Nothing relaxes me more. Unfortunately it's forbidden by law in Chicago to drink alcohol outside (unless you are in your own garden or on the terrace of a bar or restaurant) because nothing would be more perfect than a cocktail at North Avenue Beach.

2. Bikeability

According to my spell check - bikeability is not a word, neither is cyclebility (which I found out IS a word but means something else). Anyway, if walkability is a word, then so should bikeability be.

Chicago is definitely not the most bike friendly city in the US. I remember when I was planning to buy a new bike here, I was talking to a guy from a cycling meet up group, asking him how he likes cycling in Chicago. His word were "It's great, I mean, I cycle all year round and I love it. I mean, it's not very safe of course. I have had a lot of accidents and I have a near-death experience pretty much every day but you know, it's still fun."

After hearing that I still bought a bike and four month later, I am still using it almost every day to get to almost anywhere. Sure - it's definitely not as safe to bike around Chicago as it is in Holland. There are even a lot of American cities that are way more bike friendly than Chi-town. I have had a lot of car drivers threaten and yell at me even though I follow traffic rules religiously (unlike most other cyclists here who don't even know what a hand sign is. Seriously - I saw a Chicago cyclist giving a hand sign for the first time yesterday. I was so impressed, I tried to follow him to see if he would do it again but alas he was way faster than me) and I try to stay out of the cars way as much as I can. And for the first time in my life, I am wearing a helmet even though it gives me really hideous helmet hair.

But what makes cycling in Chicago fun is the cycling community. The people who cycle here are proud to be cyclists. They help each other out and I haven't seen cyclists trying to cut each other off or be mean spirited against each other. I have seen this sense of community before with joggers. Many years ago I used to be a jogger. I ran between 30 minutes to an hour a day, almost every day and whenever I ran past another jogger they would wave or say "hi". I tried to start jogging again in Holland, about two years ago and I saw the same thing there. I quickly found out that I prefer cycling to running though and I am glad I have the same feeling of community here with cycling, that I used to have with jogging.

3. Art

My pictures hanging up at Logan Bar&Grill

I just got myself a membership card at the Art Institute of Chicago. This place is definitely one of my favorite art museums and it's so big that even after having been there quite a few times now, I still haven't seen all of it. Chicago is full of art. Most cafes and bars have art from local artists hanging up (for example the Logan Bar and Grill which has MY photos hanging up), there are art walks all around the city. If I am ever going to make it as a photographer, my chances are definitely better here in Chicago than they would have ever been in the Netherlands. It's a very inspiring environment.

4. The Neo-Futurist Theater

My husband found out about this place through a friend who was visiting and we have been back a few times since. Two weeks ago I helped out with some admin stuff they needed done and got to meet the crew and some of the actors which was fun.

Their main show is called "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" and it consists of 30 plays, 2 minutes each, which change weekly. All those plays have been written by the people who perform them, they are personal and touching and sometimes funny, sometimes sad. Seeing one of their plays is an experience and a treat.

5. Lincoln Square

Lincoln Square is the German neighborhood of Chicago. I am sure I have written about it before. There are German shops, a German/European cafe, there is a German spring festival and a German October Fest. It's easier for me to buy German food in Chicago, than it was in the Netherlands!

But even if you ignore the German influence Lincoln Square is just a lovely place. It looks like a village in the middle of the city. And they have a wonderful farmers market every Tuesday morning which is much cheaper than a lot of the other farmers markets.

6. Culinary Chicago

If you have ever been to Chicago you have probably heard or even tried the famous Chicago Deep Dish pizza. I am personally not a fan but luckily Chicago has a lot more to offer than pizza. In recent years Chicago has become a culinary mecca, people traveling from all over the country to visit some of the best restaurants of the United States. Most famously - as I have mentioned before - Alinea. Alinea is not only one of worlds top ten best restaurants but it also has a very touching story to it. In 2007, Alineas chef - Grant Achatz - was diagnosed with tongue cancer. He went to different doctors and all of them told him that his tongue needed to be amputated. He wouldn't have any of that. Imagine having your tongue amputated when you are one of the worlds best chefs! Not being able to talk or taste is as depressing as it gets but he would also not be able to do his job anymore. After a long search he finally found a doctor who was willing to do chemo therapy first and only amputate the tongue as a last resort. The radiation worked and Grant Achatz is now a cancer survivor with a functioning tongue and a world class restaurant. Of course after I heard about this story I started panicking about tongue cancer myself.

The large ethnic diversity in Chicago also provides beautiful ethnic foods from flavorful Korean food to fresh Vietnamese to authentic Southern Italian cuisine. Who wants a Big Mac if you can have Bánh mì made with freshly baked French bread? I know I don't.

7. Free festivals

In the summer there is always something going on in Chicago and almost all of it is free. There are the local street festivals which celebrate the neighborhoods with music and food and little stands that sell home-made stuff. There are free dancing classes with an orchestra playing, so you can try out your new moves on the spot. Almost every day there is a "Movie in the park" where you can sit on a blanket or a camping chair in a park and watch a movie for free.

In Chicago there is always a reason to celebrate.

8. Fashion

The first two times I was in Chicago I was pretty underwhelmed with the Fashion choices of people. I saw a lot of black and grey and boring. But Chicago has really taken it up a notch in the last few years. I LOVE the style of Chicago women. Because everything goes.

Let's have a look at the rest of the US: You have New York style which is very high fashion, Prada, Burberry, it all screams rich and perfect. LA is all lazy and relaxed, sweat pants, hippy style, lot's of jewelry. Boston is preppy and styled but not very inventive. New Orleans is hip and funky all the way. Miami is as little clothes as possible with hints of vintage.

Well, Chicago is all of those things. You go downtown and you see women in power suits as well as soft, feminine Michelle Obamas (who is definitely a style icon for a lot of Chicago women). If you go to other parts of the city you see all kinds of people. Fashion in Chicago is something more personal. Having your own style is appreciated. There are people who follow fashion, people who create fashion and completely unfashionable people and that mix makes it such an eclectic, interesting place. In the Netherlands I often felt overdressed (even though 90% of the time I wear American sports wear like the Gap, because I think it suits me and it goes well with my lifestyle - cycling everywhere). If something in Holland was in fashion, you could be sure everyone would be wearing it. There was no space for individuality. So I absolutely LOVE that people here just wear what they want.

9. Thrift Stores

I know I have mentioned this before and it kind of goes with fashion but I think it deserves a place on its own.

Thrift stores are awesome. I got so many cool things from thrift stores. Granted - you need to look around a bit. Clothes are difficult because often all the sizes are all mixed up. I got two silver watering cans at thrift stores for $2 and $5 dollars which are each worth about $100 and look really good with flowers in them. I am also buying most of my books in thrift stores. I am very lucky to live in a neighborhood populated with people with the same taste in books as my own. I can get new bestsellers for $1.50 and I always find a book I want to read whenever I go to a thrift store (however I don't always allow myself to buy it).

10. The fact that I live in the middle of a giant city and I can grow tomatoes in my backyard

Chicago has trees and gardens and parks and probably much more greenery than most other American cities. Right now I am sitting in my living room, looking out of the windows to the street and all I can see is green.

The lake is surprisingly clean and you can swim in it most days without getting trash stuck in your bathing suit. The many, many farmers markets around the city enable you to buy fresh, home-grown produce that tastes like it came from your own garden. Yet at the same time you do get that urban feeling that only a really big city can give you.

And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I am glad we chose Chicago over all those other interesting place. Sure, all of those cities have some of the things I mentioned but only Chicago has all of them.

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go to the valley below

2009-07-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

"Everybody in America is addicted to coffee. It's disgusting. They can't do anything before having their first two cups of java in the morning." E told me one day, years before we even decided to get married and move to Chicago. We were watching the Gilmore Girls. Lorelai and Rory had just entered Luke's Diner, asking for coffee, proclaiming they wouldn't be able to function without the delicious dark brew.

Like with beer, I started to drink coffee somewhat late in life. My mother never drank coffee, neither did she drink beer (except one year, when her doctor told her she needed to gain weight, she drank a bottle of alcohol free beer every night). I was robbed of the childhood memories of waking up to the smell of freshly ground coffee brewing. I didn't spend my Sunday mornings begging my parents for a sip of that black magic juice, like so many of my friends did.

I had my first cup of coffee at 19 years old. I was studying for my finals. I had always been better studying at night, only opening my books at around 8pm, often going until past midnight. Well, if you have to study 200 pages of Marketing, Accounting and Business Administration in two nights, studying from 8pm to midnight won't cut it anymore. That's when I bought my first jar of instant coffee powder.

It wasn't very good (I wasn't used to the bitter taste and I did not know how to make it, ending up using way too much instant powder) but it did the job. At that point I was a clean slate. My adenosine receptors were open and welcoming to the caffeine and I was able to spend the next few weeks studying for long hours and surviving on a very limited amount of sleep.

I only started to actually enjoy coffee when I moved to Holland. My first host-family who I was nannying for had a coffee-shop-grade coffee maker which would make you the most amazing cappuccino just by pressing a button. They also drove an hour to buy their coffee beans.

You know the term social drinker? Somebody who only drinks alcohol in social situations? Well the next seven years in Holland, I was a working drinker - working coffee drinker that is.

Sometimes I would drink 8 cups a day, arriving at work in the morning shaking, craving my caffeine fix. Other times I gave up coffee for months after my friend promised me giving up coffee would not only eliminate my cellulite but also give my skin a beautiful, peachy glow. Well, it didn't.

But my weekends were mostly coffee free. I was too lazy to make it myself and it never really turned out tasting the way I liked it anyway. Also if I didn't have to get up at 7am, I didn't really need something to wake me up.

I was sure that once we did the move over the big pond, at least until I found a job I would be caffeine free.

But I was wrong. What my husband told me back then is absolutely true. In America drinking coffee is more than enjoying a beverage you like or simply needing something to wake you up. It's a lifestyle. It's a fashion accessory. Holding a cup of Starbucks in your hands makes you instantly cool. Since smoking has become a big no-no in the US, coffee is the new smoking.

I wish I'd be above all of that. I wish that seeing my favorite Michelle Williams with a cup of Starbucks in her hand wouldn't make me crave a cup of joe. I wish that if when somebody says "Oh, I could so go for a coffee right now!" we'd go to a cafe and I'd order green tea instead of cappuccino.

But I am not. One of our wedding presents was a beautiful coffee machine which I have been utilizing every day for the last few month.

Despite still not having a steady job, I have two big, hot steamy mugs full of coffee with breakfast every day. I even bought a coffee grinder, so I can grind my java beans freshly every morning (which made an amazing difference in the flavor of the coffee).

At this point I am not sure if I need the coffee to get me going or if it's the taste that I can't live without. Or maybe it's the feeling that you belong to the club? The exclusive club of coffee drinkers which is really not very exclusive at all here.

I am not sure what it is but one thing I am sure of - that America has a contagious obsession with coffee.

Independence Day

2009-07-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time! I know! I just haven't felt like writing at all. And I know if I don't feel like writing my posts will be very uninspired.

The weather has been mostly great here. It's humid and somedays it has been so hot that it was almost impossible to do anything outside. But luckily we have many beautiful beaches, only about a 10 minute bike ride away.

It is quite amazing how the city changes with the weather. The one thing people often tell me they like about Chicago is how unique the different quarters of the city are and this is definitely much more noticeable now that the weather is more pleasant. There is Lakeview - where

we live which in itself has like three different sides to it. We live all the way in West Lakeview, almost North Center. It's all families and cute neighborhood cafes here. But Boystown (the gay neighborhood) and Wrigleyville (the frat boy and sorority girl party neighborhood) are also part of Lakeview. A bit more South you have Lincoln Park and Wicker Park - full of expensive shops, fancy bars and rich girls wearing tiny sundresses and oversized bags and designer sunglasses. Even more South (but still North of the Loop - downtown) there is Old Town which is more urban and funky. It reminds me a bit of the Village in New York.

Downtown is downtown. Busy, bustling, crawling with corporate workers and tourists during the day - dead at night.

And then you have the whole South side. I honestly haven't seen much of the South side as it's supposed to be the "Bad neighborhood", dangerous after dark, don't go there wearing your expensive jewelry, don't look too white. Bladibla. But there are definitely parts of the South side that I am interested in getting to know better. Pilsen for example. A good friend of mine lives there. It's a poor neighborhood but also an artsy neighborhood full of galleries and street art. According to my friend Pilsen is not dangerous at all but the people who live there don't want their area to be turned into the hip new neighborhood. Because that has happened to a lot of parts of Chicago. Yuppies discover the area, move there and soon the area is so expensive that people who originally lived there can't afford it anymore. Apparently the gang signs on the street corners and people running around with knives in their pocket are mostly there to scare the yuppie-crowd off.

I personally can't confirm if this is true but it does make sense.

I also got to experience my first 4th of July celebrations this weekend. Strangely the big party was happening on the 3rd.

We started the day (the 3rd) cycling down to Grant Park to visit the "Taste of Chicago" festival. This is a yearly food festival where restaurants sell small "taste" amounts of their food for very high prices.

Later we were invited to a BBQ party, close to the lake. According to what I have heard there were about 1 million people BBQing and waiting for the fireworks that day. We were right next to Lake Shore drive - which is a 3 or 4-laned Autobahn - usually closed off even for cyclists. Well, at around 5pm they closed it off and people were allowed to walk on it, play on it, cycle, whatever you want (except driving). It was a strangely liberating feeling to stand in the middle of an Autobahn.

Kids playing on Lake Shore Drive

Our bike ride home on Lake Shore Drive

The fireworks weren't bad either.

My life here has been an up and down. I have good weeks and I have bad weeks. I am glad to say that it's mostly good weeks at this point. I noticed that there are mainly two things which turn a bad week into a good week - sunshine and good company. If I have a week were I am out a lot, spending time with my new friends I feel very much in love with the city of Chicago.

If the weather is bad and my friends don't feel like leaving the house, I usually get really homesick (to Holland).

And then of course there is the whole career thing which also depresses me. I am still looking for jobs every day. But I'll talk about that some other time.

Subterranean homesick blues

2009-06-03T15:16:00.000-07:00

As you could most likely see from my last post, I have entered the expatriate state of "culture shock". I had a bit of an outburst of hate there. I am sorry about that.

I am usually not one to put people in categories and just because I had a tough week and I was angry at the whole world does not mean I get to condemn all of America as flaky, rude people. Because they are not.

People sure are busier here than in Europe but life is tougher here too. You have to fight a bit more for having a good life and ... you know ... basic things like health insurance ... but the rewards for fighting the fight and winning are higher.

Soooo ... culture shock. I think on a deeper level the Americans are not that different to the Euros but it takes a bit longer to get to this deeper level.

I am pretty good at reading people. Usually my first impression of people is always correct. I can also tell if somebody likes me or not, if I annoy somebody or if they are really delighted to see me, when somebody says "Hey, let's hang out" I could tell if they meant it or not ...

This "talent" helped me a lot when I was managing a team, I would even go as far to say that it got me the job in the first place. I think this ability even helped me with my portrait photography because I could make people feel comfortable in front of the camera.

Well - strangely - in America I can't do that. I can't read peoples faces and body language. I don't really get it. I talked to my Euro-friends about it and they have the same problem.

This makes me feel like a dog who lost it's sense of smell and is trying to find home. I don't know if somebody is being serious or sarcastic, I don't know how far I can go with my jokes until it's too late, I don't know if I am saying the right thing ...

So I am asking myself what this is all about. Can I simply not read people because people show their emotions differently or do people see it as rude to show their emotions on their face or is there something else I am completely missing?

Only now I am realizing how much I depended on this "talent". It really helped me a lot - to make friends, to get jobs, to get people to help me, to get people to like me ...

What I am getting at is that I still have a lot to learn about this country. I might be interpreting things that people do or say in a wrong way. I must keep that in the back of my head because it's not their fault that I am absolutely incapable of "getting" them.

The Dutch culture is pretty different to the Austrian culture but I guess I already kind of was more like the Dutch, so that was an easy transition. This transition will be more difficult I just have to deal with it. There will always be times when I am doing really well and times when I am not feeling so great.

Talking about culture: Last Sunday I got to part-take in the German-American culture. I worked as a beer-wench in my Austrian dirndl at the German Mayfest. It was a lot of fun, especially after I had my first beer! All of my friends from the library were there too. Good times! I didn't think I'd enjoy polka music an drunk people that much but it was great! On top of that people loved the dirndl. I got a lot of compliments and people who wanted to take pictures with me. After I finished working there E and I went to Home Depot to buy some soil for my tomato plants. It was fun to go soil shopping in my dirndl!

So things are looking up even though I still have the occasional bouts of home-sickness. Bear with me. I promise I won't turn into a hater. And adjustment is next on the list.

You can't always get what you want

2009-05-25T12:58:00.000-07:00

You know how you sometimes wake up and you are instantly in a bad mood? People call it "Getting out on the wrong side of the bed" and I am sure lots of other synonyms which I do not recall at this very moment. I think this happens to most people, right? But you get over it, mostly after your first cup of java or a morning cigarette if that's how you roll.

Thursday morning I got up and I have been grumpy ever since. Ok, to be fair there have been interruptions to my grumpiness (mostly when I talk to people which distracts me from my moodiness) but the general state is "grumpy". Everything annoys me, I do not feel fully functional and I most certainly am NOT enjoying myself.

Being moody is nothing new to me, everybody who has ever worked with me knows that but I was never really in a bad mood for more than a few hours. Something would happen and I would forget all about it and usually grumpiness was followed by really good mood. Call me crazy and bi-polar, maybe I am but it has not been officially diagnosed.

What I am missing here is the distraction. My days are pretty eventless and nothing really ever happens that gets me out of my mood. So I have had the longest grumpiness streak I can remember.

Now don't get me wrong, I can behave myself pretty well. I am not some crazy fury going around yelling at people but I continuously feel slightly annoyed.

So this is why I haven't written anything in a while, I just didn't feel like doing it.

But since this is a blog and not a diary and I haven't really written much about how it is to live in America as an Austrian in a long time, I will tell you what annoys me most at the moment, specifically about the Americans (not all of them of course but a lot of them)(and for the Americans reading this - I am sorry - I know you are not all the same but this is just a general feeling I get sometimes):

*"We should totally meet up/hang out/go for dinner/do something together!"

Blablabla. Yeah, you all want to hang out but don't I dare actually taking you up on your offer because, you know, you are an American and as such you are always busy. But maybe you'll have time in six weeks, tentatively?

*Manners

A little story: When I grew up we didn't have a car, I think I mentioned this before. My mom was too short sighted to be allowed to drive and we didn't have the money for a car anyway. Growing up in a small town, any time I wanted to go anywhere after 6pm or on the weekends, I had to have one of my friends parents drive me home because there was no public transport. One night one of my friends mom drove me home and I got out of the car and didn't say "Thank you for bringing me home". My friend asked me about it later and I was SO embarrassed. After this happened to me I made sure I would always say please and thank you.

In Austria having good manners is very important. I think it's part of the "old world" thing - in many ways Austria is much more old fashioned than the rest of Western Europe.

We take our shoes off before we enter somebody's house. If we are invited for dinner we bring flowers or dessert and we make sure to thank the host as much as possible. If you are at a party and people don't know some of the guests, as a host, you introduce them to everybody. You eat with your mouth closed. You do not chew chewing gum loudly into somebody else's ear. If you have lunch or dinner with other people, you make sure everybody (including the host) is seated and ready to eat before you start eating. If you receive an invitation to something, you answer (to the person who sent the invitation) and you don't just ignore it or tell somebody who didn't send the invitation if you can come.

There are even more "rules" like using the formal "You" (Sie) when talking to strangers and often even to your colleagues which is something I am not so fond of and I have kind of gotten used to not doing but those basic manners mentioned above are something I grew up with and I am shocked to see are not necessarily the norm in America. Maybe people are just too damn busy to be friendly and courteous. I don't know.

As I said, not everybody behaves like that, luckily. But more people than I expected seem to have grown up without learning simple manners. Or maybe they did grow up with manners but decided that those manners are antiquated? This is something that just really bugs me when I am not in a good mood.

*"The economy is so bad, so we have to ask you to do this for free but we might be able to pay you later"

So I have decided to go for it - to change my career path. I am not applying for data entry jobs anymore. I am actually trying to become a photographer. I am however also looking at other things, as long as they don't make me want to kill myself (like data-entry would - I hope I don't offend anybody here ...). There are actually a lot of jobs that make me "not want to kill-myself". I wouldn't mind being the "girl for everything" for a little, new company (even if part of the job would be data-entry), I wouldn't mind being a cup-cake baker in a cute bakery or sell pretty fabrics in a crafting store. I wouldn't mind doing admin stuff for a web-design office and learning a little bit on the side.

On my search for jobs there are so many unpaid jobs. It's unbelievable! Since I am not quite a professional photographer yet, I don't mind doing some shoots for free, especially when it's a new subject for me - like I am going to do some product photography for a friends website for free but there are people who look for everything for free:

"We are a new food magazine and are looking for experienced food photographers who would like to take pictures for our next issue. Please be aware that we cannot pay you at this point but you will get plenty of exposure!"

"Looking for a young and upcoming fashion designer who wants to dress me for the next few events I have to attend. I will not be able to pay you but if people ask me I will tell them that you designed the dress!"

"Looking for an intern, working 40 hours per week. Work includes data-entry, customer service, sales and some general office duties. Internship will be unpaid but with chance of some payment after having worked for us for some time. College graduates and bi-lingual/Spanish preferred! Must be available on Saturdays."

I mean, come on! One of my friends pretty much just lost her full-time job to an intern. And not because the intern is doing better work but because the intern is much cheaper. I mean, seriously, where is this leading to? When will people realize that a happy employe (who can afford to pay rent) is a better worker? This is a trend that I started to see when working for American companies in the Netherlands. Get one person to do the job of three because why not? It's cheaper! Well, it might be cheaper but you also take all will to live from people.

The worst is that the situation here is so bad that companies which offer those unpaid jobs get hundreds of applications.

And another thing which annoys me which is in the same spirit:

*We don't actually want to hire, we are just checking out the market.

When I first started applying for jobs I was surprised how I never got answers. I mean, I have 6 years of work experience, I have worked for reputable companies, I have references, I have a green card and I am fluent in three languages, at least give me an interview. But I didn't even get a standard rejection email. Recently somebody told me that most of the job offers you find on the internet are not even real. There are not many position available right now so companies just send out their HR to "check out the market", see what's available and how desperate people are. You know, in case they might really need somebody some day.

In America the "letter of motivation" - the letter or email which accompanies your CV - has to be very specific. For almost every job I applied to I had to change my motivation letter to match it to the job, to point out all the stuff I can do. This takes time. Knowing that 90% of the jobs I take the time to write this stupid letter for don't even exist makes me very unhappy. Sometimes instead of going through all the pain of writing the motivation letter and sending my CV, I just want to write "Is this job even real? If you are indeed searching for people for your company, let me know and I will send you a proper motivation letter!".

I know that this is just the way the economy is right now. In terms of jobs it is definitely a buyers market. There are too many people with fantastic qualifications who can't find a job and of course, companies are taking advantage of this.

But it is still disrespectful, it's inhumane and it's simply a waste of my time.

This is by the way a big reason why I decided to try to change my career now when I originally just planned to find a job "for now" until I had settled. I figured if I have to go on my knees and beg for a job I might as well do that for a job I actually want.

On a more positive note - until today the weather has been gorgeous here. Spring is pretty much gone and now it's summer (yep, we had only about three weeks of spring). We had temperatures up in the high 20s (Celsius) this week, I planted about a million tomato plants and we did a lot of BBQing in our backyard.

Now I am going to put on some of my Eels CDs and sew curtains for the kitchen and maybe that will lift my mood.

Back to basics

2009-05-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

It seems like Chicago becomes more and more beautiful as summer nears.

Our street is in full bloom now, the tulips are flowering, the cafes put their outdoor seating up and my face has turned a much more appealing shade of light golden brown.

Despite all of this loveliness I have been very homesick to Holland recently. There is one thing in particular which triggers those emotions: the Amstel Light commercial.

The first time I saw this ad on TV I cried. Yeah, I know it's sad. I didn't expect it to happen either but you know - I have a lot of memories connected to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is where I first could be who I wanted to be. Where I met people who understood who I am. It's where I realized that I could be a photographer. It's where I changed from being a little wallflower who was too shy to order a beer into a person that people want to hang out with. It's where I learned to appreciate alcohol.

It's where I first kissed my husband.

And it's also a lot of other things which are too TMI to post here.

The reason why I miss it more than ever right now is that it's the most beautiful time of the year there - Spring. Spring in Holland is when the sun is shining, when everything is colorful and pretty. People sitting outside and having a beer. Queensday and more importantly - Queens night which I have very fond memories of. The Amsterdam parks are full of people with cheap bottles of wines, sitting on old blankets until the sun goes down or at the beaches in Scheveningen in one of the many beach bars.

But I do realize that it was time for me to move on. As much as I loved living in Holland there was one thing that always bothered me (apart from the weather). I felt like I was stuck. I had wanted to do a creative job all my life but I was stuck in the jobs for German speakers. Boring office jobs. And while I met a lot of fantastic people that way I felt like it was eating at my soul. I was very unhappy doing what I was doing. I could have gone back to school and then maybe move into marketing but this is pretty much the hight of creativity I could have gone for. To make a living as a photographer in Holland is possible but difficult. It's a small country with a lot of creative people so the possibilities are limited. I met a lot of professional photographers and I know they were all having a difficult time unless they were Dutch or famous in their field BEFORE they had moved to Holland. I met one photographer who was working as a cook at night to be able to work as a photographer during the day. I also met a few non-Dutch photographers who were successful like my mentor Wanda Michalak but she had been famous for her landscape nudes (check them out) long before she moved to Holland.

So I am trying my luck here in Chicago and I am surprised how things have been working out for me so far. I mean, I am not actually doing paid work but I have been working on different projects and it's been a lot of fun.

One thing which I am very proud of is that I will have some of my pictures exhibited for a few weeks at the Logan Bar and Grill for a few weeks. So far in my life I have only had my pictures exhibited once - that was in Amsterdam at the Amsterdam Center for Photography - thanks to my former mentor Wanda Michalak who I mentioned above. Those pictures will be available for sale and I will also open an Etsy shop for my pictures. I have checked out the competition and found a Chicago based Etsy shop which funnily enough has pictures very similar to mine (same locations - Italy, Chicago, ...) but mine are (and I hope that doesn't sound really arrogant) way better. And that woman sells!

So after opening my shop I will have to start promoting as much as I can. I am not sure how to promote an online shop but I'll read up on it.

My photography classes are also teaching me how to do studio work and I am in the process of building a little photo studio in our dining room. I have been studying a lot recently and it's been very helpful. I am now pretty confident that I can do professional work once I finish my studies (which will still take me at least 6 month even with me studying about 10 hours a week right now). Looking at other peoples work on the internet I see that I am better than some people who call themselves professional photographers but that I still have to learn if I ever want to become as good as the people I look up to.

So things are very good. I have made a few new friends through the German center I have been doing volunteering work for and I am actually really enjoying my time here.

This might sound strange to you since I started this post off by saying how homesick I am but you know what - you can be homesick and still be happy. And happy I am.

And a big shout out goes to my friends A+M who got engaged!! And my friend L-A who is pregnant with a baby boy! I wish I could be there with you guys to celebrate!

I left my heart in New Orleans

2009-04-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

After we left Memphis we went on a six hour long road-trip to New Orleans. The drive itself was pretty nice - it was all green and pretty in Mississippi. The last 20 minutes or so on the highway before you arrive in New Orleans the highway goes over swamp land.

I had never seen swamps before, not big ones like this at least. It's pretty much lots of water with trees growing out of it and of course the water is alligator infested (I didn't see any on our drive though). And then to my surprise there were houses in the swamps - even little villages of swamp houses on stilts. It was quite fascinating really. Next time I go get to Louisiana want to take a boat tour around the swamps. It must be really creepy growing up in a swamp house. Google swamp house and you'll know what I mean.

I saw one house in the middle of a swamp, far, far away from any other kind of civilization, which had clearly been destroyed by Katrina. It made me wonder - who lives in the middle of a swamp, all by themselves? I doubt this person even got electricity or running water. You could only reach this house by boat.

We were very lucky and got to stay in the French Quarter. E's uncle owns a house there, with adjoint "Slave Quarters". See - a lot of the houses in the French Quarter had a separate house for the slaves to live in. It is the South after all. We learned however that the slaves were treated much better in New Orleans than anywhere else in the South - their "owners" were not allowed to abuse them physically, the slaves had the right to buy their freedom by paying their original price, they were allowed to own property, they had to be provided with an acceptable living space, they had to be trained in the three main languages of the city - French, Spanish and English and they had to learn how to read and write. People of African blood were not allowed to marry white people but they were allowed to make babies together and those babies inherited part of whatever the white daddy left. According to what we learned pretty much every rich, white man had a black or mixed race lover.

On the night we arrived we took a ghost walk tour. This means we walked around the French Quarter and were told stories of what had happened in the different houses which are now haunted. This is also where we received our New Orleans history lesson. It was pretty interesting but I didn't see any ghosts. I did however get to see the LaLaurie house which is pretty creepy. I took a million pictures hoping to capture something but the ghosts were not very social that night. Still - it got me scared enough to have us sleep with the bathroom light on for the next five days. Some of the ghost activity that our guide was talking about happened just a few houses down. I also kept on hearing noises at night. And in general - I was just creeped out by the place. I know I am a wuss. The city is very mysterious at night - maybe it's all the voodoo shops around town. I am not sure.

Apart from the ghost activity the place we stayed at was really nice though. It even had a beautiful pool in the yard.

The weather was great except the first day when it was sunny but really cold. The rest of the week it was in the mid 20s and I got a sunburn. I am embarrassed to say that after spending seven years in Holland I have become a bit of a sun worshipper. I don't really care so much about getting a tan, I just want to feel the sun on my face, I want to soak up every little ray of sunshine.

My in-laws are originally from New Orleans and we had a big family meet-up with them and all the aunts and uncles and my sister-in-law, her husband and my nephew. It was very nice to see them and I could see part of myself in my in-laws - that sparkle in their eyes when they devoured the foods they had grown up with and walking down memory lane seeing places they were once so used to. This is where they first met each others, started dating, ... before they moved to Ohio and started their little family. In a way they are expats just like me and no matter how much you love the place you are living now, no matter how long you have been living there, you always have a connection to the place where you grew up. And I saw the connection they had to New Orleans - which is in so many ways different to the rest of the US. It made me feel really close to them.

One thing I could not agree on with them was the food though. They LOVE the food. Typical New Orleans cuisine consists of seafood, different kinds of sandwiches made with white bread and brown stews (Gumbo, Jambalaya). I don't eat seafood, so I was left with the white bread sandwiches. In retrospect I should have eaten more Gumbos and Jambalayas but a lot of them are made with seafood too. At the end of the week I was so incredibly sick of white bread, ...

My mother-in-law kept on going on about how great the bread is in New Orleans - to me it tasted like stale french bread. And I am also not a big fan of white bread. You should know that Austrians and Germans will never be happy with bread which is not German or Austrian (we can live with Polish bread though). We are by definition bread snobs.

So I just politely nodded.

However I have a new found love for sour-pickle flavored potato chips which are - thank god - only made and sold in the South. Otherwise this would be part of my daily diet and that would not be healthy.

Of course people tried to make me eat seafood and I gave in one night - eating a fried oyster and some lobster risotto. I threw up all night. And this confirmed my theory that often people are disgusted by foods they are allergic to. No more seafood for me.

The French Quarter in New Orleans is amazing. It is by far the nicest architecture I have seen in the US (although whenever I say that people tell me I should go to San Francisco). The houses are old and very colorful with iron balconies much like you see in Barcelona. New Orleans was both French and Spanish in the past so it shows influences of both cultures.

Do you remember how a few blog posts ago I posted about the self-sufficient, alternative feminist movement which started in Portland? Well, New Orleans is full of those kinds of people. These kind of girls often wear 50s style clothing, have Betty Page-style bangs and lot's of colorful tattoos - oh and retro-bikes. I think it looks beautiful and even though I don't have any tattoos, I do have a lot of 50s style dresses. So I am not sure if New Orleans had always been such a hipster city but it is now. A lot of people, hipsters or not, cycle in New Orleans which is another reason for me to love this city. Maybe they cycle because it is quite flat there, maybe because there is no place to park in the French Quarter.

Alternative hipster girl

Hipster bike (well, in this case - tricycle):

The French Quarter has been almost untouched by Katrina. The areas around unfortunately not so much. E's aunts house had to be completely rebuilt - they had to live in a trailer outside their house for a long time. You still see a lot of trailers in front of empty houses but there is a feeling of upturn in the city. The people of New Orleans are fighters. They go about what happened to them with humor and they just - well - they just move on. I have no doubt that if something like Katrina was to happen again, most of them would just come back and rebuild - again.

You might know that a lot of people DIDN'T come back last time. The poorer, mostly african-american citizens of New Orleans couldn't afford to rebuild. A lot of them moved to Memphis or Houston. Most of them found better jobs there, better lives.

To me the city of New Orleans is almost magical. The spirit, the history, the people, there is just something about the place that I really love.

We are definitely going to be back there. We are invited to Es cousins bat mitzvah in October so we might be back then already. And if not then maybe for Mardi Gras in February which E's aunt described as "You stand in a big crowd and people throw stuff at you! It's great!".

I think New Orleans is one of the most underrated cities of the US. If you have any chance of going there - go.

Another quick update on my situation

2009-04-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I started working at a German library. The library belongs to the Dank-Haus - a German association just a bit North of where I live, in the German part of town. So far, it's more a room full of books than a library. And that's why they need us - a group of German speakers. We are there to re-organize the library, sort out all the doubles, eventually sell them, find out which books are valuables (we have a lot of books that are more than 100 years old - some of them with beautiful Art Nouveau illustrations). It's all non-profit, low-budget so I am not getting any salary out of it but they do give us free take-out lunch and beer. And the guy who is organizing it will be one of my references for my job search AND I can put librarian on my CV AND I think it is a big plus to have a job in America on my CV. On top of all that awesomeness I get to work with really nice people - so far I have met the organizer who is a movie maker, American but with a German wife, a German woman who has a masters degree as a German teacher and apparently a few other masters degrees plus 20 years of experience as a teacher but can't find a job here and an Austrian guy who it turns out went to the same school I went to in Austria, which is such a coincidence, I can't even comprehend it. Oh and he has a masters degree in economics and also can't find a job in Chicago. This made me feel so much better. First of all to meet some really nice, open, fun people to hang out with and second to see that I am not the only person who seems qualified but can't find a job. I have been feeling like a doofus for so long. I lowered my standards so much (I mean, I was team leader for a team of seven people at a prestigious company in Holland and I applied for data entry jobs here) and didn't even get an interview for any of those jobs - it's relieving to see that people with even higher education have troubles finding a job.

My outlook has changed though. I am using this time to collect as much experience as possible. I am talking to a few different people about different stuff concerning photography - everything unpaid but hey, the more experience I get the more employable as a photographer I will be eventually.

A good friend sent me a long email telling me to not apply for jobs I don't really want since it will suck the life out of me and keep me from doing what I really want to do. Another friend told me to be persistent about writing and Photography because often persistence is the most important thing, more important than talent or experience or education. I took both of these advices to heart and that's what I will be doing.

From meeting these other German speakers I now see how incredibly lucky I am to not really have to worry about money. We might not be able to go to Europe this year but the people I met (who are also married to Americans) are struggling from pay check to pay check. One of them lives in a neighborhood in which it is advised not to leave the house at night.

I have the luxury of pursuing my dream and it would be a crime not to use this opportunity.

This afternoon I will cycle down to my favorite coffee place and give you that blog post about New Orleans and hopefully get some studying done too.

What's going on

2009-04-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being absent for a while again. I still owe you guys at least one post about my time in New Orleans and Florida and I promise - it will come!

But I thought I give you a quick update on my life - for those of you who actually read this blog because they want to know how I am doing. By the way - sorry - I know I owe some of you emails! And I will get to it! I am not angry at anybody, that's not why I have been bad with writing!

The biggest news I have by far is that I sort of witnessed a crime.

We have a little under-walk that goes between the street and our back yard. It's very dark and kind of creepy down there (but then I am also kind of afraid of going to the basement by myself). This place belongs to our house and when you walk through there you can see our basement. In the winter we noticed foot steps in the snow leading up and away from this under-walk. That was creepy and for a while our landlord closed one of the doors (the other door could not be locked).

I guess we forgot about it. Well, last week E and I woke up at 4.30am. We heard a male voice yelling. It sounded very much like a drunk so we just went back to sleep. Well, turns out it wasn't a drunk. A 72 year old man who was walking around, distributing leaflets (that seems to have been his job) had been pulled down in our under-walk, robbed and beaten up. By talking to neighbors I later found out that this man was at the hospital in a life-threatening situation. And apparently the cops are expecting the criminal who did this to come back to our street.

This scares me for several reasons: First - I haven't really witnessed a crime like this. Especially such a violent crime - I really believe you don't have to beat a 72 year old guy to a pulp just to get his wallet. I believe this was done because the criminal had a desire to be violent and this is very scary.

Second - the police did not investigate a whole lot. Our landlord noticed police in front of our house and went outside asking what is going on - only THEN did they tell him what had happened. I mean this happened in HIS HOUSE and they didn't even bother telling him? They didn't interview anyone. E and I are the only people who actually heard the screams (this is what I found out by talking to people in our street) and they didn't bother to ask us or anybody else about it. Our next door neighbor has a freakin' camera on his doorway which could have very well recorded some of what happened - he told me that they did NOT ask him for a tape (the camera it turns out - was not on - but they didn't know that).

I wonder if the lack of interest in this crime is due to the fact that it's some old dude who probably doesn't have much family or anybody at home who really cares - if you are still working a crappy, underpaid job at 72 then obviously you don't have anybody to take care of you. And this just makes me mad.

It reminds me of the story our friend told us in New Orleans. Just around the corner from where he lives in New Orleans a Columbine like massacre happened. A guy walked in and shot four students. It was a school with mostly black students. The thing got next to no media coverage.

And this PISSES ME OFF. It pisses me off that the police doesn't do their job. It pisses me off that you get different treatment because of your social status. Peoples lives are not worth less because of social status!

And of course - most of all - I am scared. We live in one of the safest neighborhoods in Chicago. There are nothing but families living here. I wouldn't be surprised if we were the only childless couple in the street from what I see. And still something like this happens. I wouldn't care as much if this would have happened on the street in FRONT of our house. But the fact that the criminal pulled the victim down our under-walk makes me believe that this was planned for a while, that this guy had been investigating.

So obviously there is nothing I can do about it but be more careful, make sure that all the doors are always locked, lock the windows and right now - I'll be honest with you - I am sleeping with a knife on my bedside table. I want to find a different solution for that though. I want to get a pepper spray. I am very much against having weapons in the house but I don't feel save walking home here alone at night (not that I do a whole lot of this since my social life is still not very happening). I also want to take a self-defense class. I have been wanting to do this for 15 years or though anyway just because I want to feel strong and confident. Our landlord also put a big pad lock on the door and nobody is going to be able to use our under-way for criminal activity anymore (except our landlord).

But anyway, I know things like that could really happen anywhere, they are just more likely to happen around here.

Alright, what else has been happening.

Well it's finally spring here in Chicago. The weather has been a bit crazy. Last Monday it was about 4 C - by Friday it had warmed up to 28 C. We had a lot of sunshine last week and I went cycling pretty much every day during the week. I even got a tan! I also cycled to the lake every day, just to see it. When the sun is shining the lake turns a beautiful turquoise shade. I love the water and could just sit there and look at it for hours. It makes me really happy.

The trees in our street finally got leaves which improves my mood immensely. I missed the green.

Saturday E and I went to our first farmers market this year. Since they only sell stuff that is in season they didn't have a whole lot yet but I did end up buying an heirloom tomato plant. This year I am planting four different kinds of tomatoes. I am a really bad gardener but I hope my love for home grown tomatoes will overcome this. Now I just have to wait till August and then I should have lots and lots of tomatoes. If you want some - come visit me in August!

Last week was a good one for me - even though I was more home-sick to Holland than I have been before. I made a to-do list and for once I actually followed it. I got a move on in my Photography studies, I upholstered a chair, I painted another chair, I applied to some jobs, ... it feels good to get your life back on track. I already made a list for this week. I am also expanding my job searches. I decided in this economic situation I should also be looking into other kind of jobs. So I have been looking at local food places if they are looking for help. I don't want to work for a chain like McDonalds but I wouldn't mind working at the cute cupcake place or at the Italian ice cream store - at least until I finish my studies. I don't want to end up working full-time unless it is a really great job though because I really, really want to finish my studies in the next eight month or so.

Last Friday we went out with one of E's coworkers - who is a year younger than me (I feel so old)! His wife had her 25th birthday and her and all her BFFs were all cute and dressed up (I didn't know it was her birthday so I showed up in flip flops and a tank top). I ended up having a really good conversation with one of her girlfriends ... until she excused herself and never came back. But I totally get it. I have been there. I have been the girl who had so many friends that I felt uncomfortable when new people tried to befriend me - even when we got along really well. I also now understand that the reason why I didn't have many Dutch friends was not because the Dutch don't like to befriend foreigners but that they already HAD their group of friends and weren't particularly interested in making new friends. It works the same way here in Chicago as it worked in Holland.

Since arriving here I have signed up for about 10 different meet-up groups (for example "The knitters meet-up group, the beer lovers meet up group ...) and I have been to only two meet-ups. And both I went to with E. The reason why I didn't go to more meet ups is because I am shy and because I am not used to this situation. Meeting people in Holland was so damn easy. You always had one thing in common - you are a foreigner. It wasn't a big deal that you were from a different culture - because everybody was.

Here I have to give the whole background - I am Austrian, I lived in Holland for 7 years, am married to an American, yes I like Chicago, yes it is different to Europe, no I don't know more about the Fritzl case, yes I do realize that Hitler was Austrian, no I am not a racist, yes I do speak English and yes I CAN understand everything you say - no need to speak so slowly, yes I have absolutely heard of Jay Leno and I know Wholefoods too, ...

What I really wish is that I would have a female friend going to those kind of meet-ups with me. The week before we went to New Orleans my friend D visited me. She is Austrian like me and she is living in Florida right now. We had such a good time. We can relate to so many things because we are in such a similar situation. It's also very comforting to have somebody around who has known me for 14 years. I am trying to get her to move to Chicago for the summer. Unfortunately the weather was disgusting when she was here. It even snowed - in April. For somebody who moved to Florida because she loves hot and humid weather - this was not a very good time to come. I hope she still considers it because we could have the best summer ever together. You know how people apparently see their life passing in front of them in pictures before they die? I saw pictures of how our summer together would look like - us cycling down the lakefront, us eating Italian gelato and shopping in Roscoe village, us sitting outside in the sun, having lunch at the Meindl Cafe on Southport, us going to the gym together, us sitting in our back yard, late in the evening, us sitting in the park, the sun on our faces, gossiping about the people we met at one of the meet-ups that I finally am not afraid to go to anymore, ...

I still have a little hope that it might happen but well, not so much.

But life is not bad right now. It gets better with every ray of sunshine hitting my face and every new leave on the tree outside my window.

Walking in Memphis

2009-04-12T15:35:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends! I am back from my holiday!

Obviously I didn't manage to blog from New Orleans or any of the other places I went to. It was mostly due to a lack of time, we had a pretty tight schedule.

I am going to divide the trip in three posts for the three stops we made - Memphis, New Orleans and Pensacola/Florida.

The trip was pretty great even though I had some health issues. I will try to explain in a short paragraph what happened:

About a week before we left I got really sick. I hadn't been sick like this since I was a child and I am putting it down to having no anti-bodies for American flu viruses. I had a fever, I couldn't even move for a few days and I had a really bad cough that hurt. I couldn't smell or taste but I wasn't hungry anyway. We left for our road trip to Memphis on day 6 of this flu. The fever was gone but I was still coughing. I awoke from our first night of the road trip at 4am in our hotel in Memphis, coughing up blood. I did what I always do and googled it. A google search for "Coughing up blood" told me to go to the emergency room immediately which we did. Let me tell you - if you want to see the true state of a city - go to their emergency room at 5am on a Saturday. Let's just say there are a lot of poor people in Memphis and the hospital I went to was in a bad state. Anyway, turns out I have a bronchitis but at least not pneumonia. I got some antibiotics and an inhaler spray. A week later, I feel better but still cough a lot. But the meds were good enough to make me able to enjoy my holidays.

Alright - let's move on. So as I said we first drove down to Memphis/Tennessee. Memphis is actually a really beautiful city. I found that I really like the South. First of all of course the weather was great. We did have a few cooler days but it was in the mid 20s (Celsius) during most of the trip. I even got sunburned in New Orleans.

The landscape is great. It is so green! I expected the South to be all dried out. Maybe that's just because it's spring, I don't know but it was very green, everywhere we went.

To get to Memphis we drove down through Illinois and Missouri. The landscape of southern Illinois and Missouri was a bit of a surprise. You drive through the middle of Illinois and it's actually pretty - hilly and green and then all of a sudden you are in this bare country full of black, broken trees, run down looking houses and depressed land. We had to fill our gas tank and the first town we went to we decided we wouldn't stop because it looked like right out of one of those movies were the natives of the town kill and eat every stranger that passes through. I am serious. It's not pretty. We also didn't stop in the next town. What we saw of Missouri wasn't any better. I really can't imagine how it must be like growing up there. I was briefly imagining my husband back in 2004 bringing me home for to introduce me to his family to Cairo/Illinois instead of A kron/Ohio. I don't know if I would have ever agreed to move to the US.

The landscape got much better once we entered Tennessee. One thing that Memphis is famous for are their ribs. They are prepared differently than in the rest of the US and they are GOOD. They fall of the bone, they melt in your mouth. It's pretty incredible. The most famous ribs place is "Rendezvous Ribs" but it was closed when we were there so we drove down to another place called "Central BBQ" which was great too. It is in the middle of a residential street and you can sit outside, they have a little beer garden right there and they had some live country music playing. It was really cute and felt very local. And of course the ribs were heaven. And trust me - I am normally not a fan of ribs but these won me over.

The other thing Memphis is famous for is Graceland - Elvis Presley's mansion. Graceland is full of tourists and a very organized operation. You arrive at a house which is actually on the other side of the street from Graceland. On that side of the street you can see Elvis' planes. He had two of them. The "Lisa-Marie" is the most luxurious plane I have ever seen (we got to go inside). There is also a museum with all of Elvis' cars. If you want to see Graceland you have to wait in line to get on a bus which then brings you to the other side of the street. Graceland itself looks like a cute, little colonial style house but wait until you get inside - it is one of the weirdest and over the top places I have ever seen. Here are some pictures:

The mirror ceilinged basement with the creepy, white monkey

The lavish living room

The pool room

The jungle room

The center of Memphis is old and beautiful and incredibly clean. Memphis is right on the Mississippi river and the river banks are green park areas. They have some really hip bars downtown too. Girls dress up when they go out (which they don't do in Chicago a whole lot unless you consider wearing a really low cut top dressing up) - it feels like you are in Sex and the City - girls in high heels, with perfect hair and make up and cute dresses. And then of course you have famous Beal street. Beal street is the Blues/Jazz street of Memphis. They have live music on the street, little, cute shops, lot's of neon signs ...

When we drove to Central BBQ we got to see a really pretty part of Memphis. Big, colonial mansions in cute, little streets with lots of green and trees which were blooming in red, white and pink. This is what I imagined a southern City to look like.

To sum it up - I really liked Memphis. Unfortunately due to my health situation I couldn't really experience Beal street the way I wanted to but I will probably be back sometime.

Things I like: Americas obsession with food

2009-03-25T09:33:00.001-07:00

When I say America is obsessed with food I am not talking about burgers and fries and Coca Cola. I am talking about good, healthy, gourmet food.

I actually wrote a whole blog entry about it a few days ago but didn't publish it because I wasn't happy with the way I wrote it and then today I see this article from the New York Times. And they did a way better job at describing what is happening here in the US right now.

I have always believed there are two kinds of people in this world - people who love food and people who don't care much about food. Those people who love food are usually also into cooking or of they aren't into cooking they at least go to very good restaurants. People who love food are picky - not with the kind of food they eat but with the quality of food that they consume.

People who don't care much about food think that a Big Mac makes a good dinner. They can eat the same food for two weeks in a row and not feel deprived. They don't see a need in trying new foods, new cuisines because they are quite happy with what they know.

I believe that wether you love food or not is 50% determined by your personality and 50% by your upbringing. I believe you can learn to love good food. There are also of course various stages of food love.

In my "research" (which consists of having lived with many different kinds of people) I found that people who like food and people who don't care about food come in all shapes and sizes. I did find that people who don't care about food are often very skinny or very big and that they are very often not healthy because they don't care about the nutrition they put in their body, they just want a quick fix and thus resort to ready meals and fast food.

People who love food most often are a normal weight, sometimes a few pounds overweight but usually still quite healthy. But of course - there is no "standard".

One sign of Americas obsession with food is the Food Network. This TV channel used to have a viewer-demographic of mostly 50-80 year olds. In the past two years this has changed drastically. Not only did they increase their ratings by 10% - just this past year - they now also appeal to younger people. Maybe it's just that they have insanely hot cooks like Giada de Laurentiis and David Lieberman but I have another theory. I think in an attempt to not get fat, a lot of food lovers deprive themselves of what they really would like to eat. Watching the food network is like window shopping for eating.

Chicago especially is a food mecca. You have Wisconsin close by - the Diary State - which produces wonderful cheeses (even though I still prefer French cheeses) and the German influence is definitely noticeable (I have never been to Wisconsin but I have had a lot of food made in Wisconsin).

One of the best restaurants in the US - Alinea - is in Chicago.

There are a few different food festivals in Chicago.

There is a Korea town, a China town, an Italian village, an Ukranian village, a German neighborhood, an Indian neighborhood ...

And let's not forget about the farmers markets.

Personally I really enjoy that. I am one of those people who love food and America's obsession with food has really pulled me in. I love that I have a fantastic German butcher close by. I am all over Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. I feel like the use of Kosher salt has seriously improved the quality of my food and making and freezing my home-made chicken stock has revolutionized my cooking.

When I first moved to America I wanted to try everything. I tried the processed foods like Hamburger Helpers and Rice-a-roni but I didn't like it. It also made me feel kind of ill. American ready-made food is stuffed with bad stuff like high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fat and MSG.

It is really funny how split this nation is on the topic of food. On one side you have to check all the labels to see what you are eating and on the other hand you have a humongous selection of healthy, organic food, readily available and much cheaper than in Europe.

When New York announced a ban of trans-fat I saw people on the net complaining how this would eliminate all tasty food - this is how used to processed foods people have gotten. They can't imagine food being tasty without all those evil ingredients!

I for one hope for the food revolution described in the New York Times article. I want my future children to get healthy food in school. I want to be able to go to a non-organic supermarket and not having to carefully observe all the ingredients because I can't trust a label that says "all natural". I want more farmers markets and less genetically enhanced food.

And America seems to be with me on that one.

Springtime

2009-03-23T11:08:00.001-07:00

Spring has arrived in Chicago.

Long anticipated warmth. The sheets of ice on Lake Michigan have finally yielded to the glistening rays of sunshine and ceased into the cold waters. The lakeshore beaches look so deliciously inviting that only reminding yourself of the consequences a jump would cause keeps you from immersing into the icy waters. People are playing with their offspring in the long neglected back yards. Beautiful bourgeoning trees adorn Lakeviews streets. Children are playing catch and basketball in the alleys. The lakeshore cycle/jogging path is crowded with Chicagoans soaking up the light, the warm air and the smell of the fresh, sweet water.

A phenomenon I have always liked about Holland and that I now like about Chicago is how incredibly thankful people are for the warm, sunny days they receive. Of course there are many more sunny, warm days here than there are in Holland (thank god, otherwise I would be seriously disappointed) but we do have the grueling, hostile winters and of course Chicago is not called the "Windy City" for nothing. So when it got warmer and sunnier about a week ago everybody wanted to enjoy the weather.

Remember the job I blogged about last time? Well, I didn't get that job - not surprisingly. But I did buy myself a bike and I did enjoy the weather, biking around Chicago. And this is why I have been absent from blogging for a while.

Whoever would have thought that getting a bike could change my outlook on life so much? I feel like I can go anywhere now. I know I could have just used public transport or drive if I finally bite the bullet and get my American drivers license but none of these ways of transportation give me the feeling that I get from biking. It makes me feel like nothing can stop me. It is kind of scary to cycle in the city I have to say and I am using a bike helmet for the first time in my life. And that - even though I learned how to cycle when I was three years old (and I should have really used a bike helmet then but it was the early 80s and people didn't use those then). I learned how to cycle this early for two reasons: My mother couldn't afford a car and even if she could, her eyes were too bad and they didn't allow her to get her drivers license (she was however allowed to ride a motorcycle. So did my grandma. I am the first woman in the family since the 1950s to not know how to ride a motorcycle but I am the first one to know how to drive a car). So when I was a kid in Vienna and my friends and their parents would drive down to Italy for the summer holidays or fly to the US to go to Disneyland my mom and I would stay in Vienna and instead take bike tours to Schloss Laxenburg or the Old Danube.

Maybe this is why cycling makes me feel so good today. Maybe I associate it with holidays and family time.

The weather hasn't been as good today. But I know it will get better again eventually. I know that I can expect a hot summer, maybe too hot for my liking. But that's ok. Because how can one not be excited about what is about to come - picnics in the park, outdoor concerts, outdoor food festivals, swimming in the lake, ...

I often hear people say that Chicago has those harsh winters to keep too many people from moving here because if it would always be as lovely as it is here in late spring, summer and fall, the city would be as expensive to live in as San Francisco.

And I can believe that.

I am pretty exited about a few things apart from the weather right now - first - one of my best friends ever is coming to visit me this Thursday - unfortunately only for a few days but I am looking forward to showing her all the Austrian and German places (she is Austrian too) and maybe even get her to fall in love with Chicago (and maybe get her to move here!).

And Saturday in a week we are going on holidays! We are driving down to Memphis and staying there for two days and then move on to New Orleans - which is where all of E's family is from. We get to stay in a fancy apartment of E's uncle in the slave quarters (doesn't that sound incredibly inviting?) which I think is in the French Quarter if I got that right. There will be a lot of family bonding time (my in-laws, my sister and brother in law and their baby are also coming down from Ohio - so I get to see my nephew again), Beignet eating (in which I will gladly participate) and seafood munching (from which I will refrain since I don't eat seafood).

Since I am kind of into the paranormal a little bit, I also want to take a ghost tour or at least see the Delphine LaLauries house. I am also interested in checking out a voodoo shop. So I am pretty excited about that! And it should be very warm there too since it is very far south.

So wherever you are - enjoy spring and if I have time - I will post live from New Orleans!

The Sound of Silence - Warning! May contain whineyness

2009-03-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

My life has been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster these past two weeks.

It all started with my cold. I don't know if that's just me but I always get more emotional when I am ill. I spontaneously start crying at that diaper commercial (and at the life insurance commercial. I love old people). Seeing my cats being affectionate with each other gives me goose bumps and watching a re-run of "The Bachelor" on TV makes me want to throw my water bottle at the TV set (but a lot of women in America feel this way about the bachelor right now).

Being in this fragile mental state, still no luck with the job search, missing my gals and boys back in NL (and Florida and LA and Barcelona and Austria) more than ever - it's been a tough time.

On top of that there has been this whole internal struggle going on inside my head since moving to Chicago. I have been wanting to be a photographer for a long time. I am not saying it's the only job I would enjoy but it is one of those few things I feel like I never get bored of doing. But Chicago is a financial center. What I always really, really wanted to be was a magazine photographer. I also feel that's what I am best at - portrait photography. I was thinking about becoming a wedding photographer but the working hours are horrible. You work weekends and evenings and pretty much all summer but get almost no work in the winter. Taking a holiday in the summer would mean a considerable lack of income but that would mean I would be confined to visit Europe in the winter - something I don't really want to do. On top of that - having a husband who has a day job - when would we see each other? Right now I am NOT working and I feel like I don't see him enough.

And on top of all of that - so many people want to be photographers and there are so many great photographers out there who didn't make it. How could I be successful when I am just now studying it and at the end of my studies I won't even get a fancy title like Bachelor of Arts or anything like that.

Anyway, realizing that my chances of becoming a photographer are very slim here I started thinking about alternatives. Maybe studying web design? Or Fashion merchandise? I am sure there ARE jobs out there I would enjoy.

Two weeks ago I was basically at a point were I had given up my dream of becoming a photographer completely.

And then I saw these Annie Leibowitz for Vanity Fair photos online. To be honest it first caught my attention because Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen are in it and I love those two. But seeing these pictures reminded me of why I wanted to become a photographer. I thought to myself "Why am I not pursuing this? How could I ever just give up without even having given it ONE SHOT? THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO!".

It was almost a magical moment. I was still on Dayquil on that day so that might have had something to do with my euphoria but it did change something in me.

The same day I went on Craigslist - my preferred place for job searches. But when going through the job section instead of clicking on "admin/office" I clicked on "art / media / design". And there was a job ad for a photography job. It was for a beginner photographer and a chance to grow and be trained to be a certified photographer. And they didn't even ask for money (like so many of those ads do)! The ad was 4 days old and I was sure that the job was gone. The Chicago job market right now is like the Amsterdam housing market when I first moved to Holland. Anything that looks remotely ok will be gone within hours of being posted. Sometimes even before it gets posted.

I sent my application anyway. I got an email back the next morning - the job is still available and could I send some online samples of my work. In a frenzy I went and put a bunch of my pictures on Flickr and scanned in another whole bunch which I didn't have on the computer. This is how I created an online portfolio. I sent the link to the lady who I would find out was the manager of a baby photography studio and a professional photographer herself. This company is a business that specializes in taking pictures of new born babies in the hospital. You know, the ones that are being sent out to all the friends and family.

Five minutes after I sent her the link she sent an email back telling me she wants to meet.

I had an interview with her the next day and she told me that I was one of hundredths of applicants - only 10 had made it to the interview.

Now, I don't want to give you wrong hope here. The fact is that I had my interview on Thursday - she said she would get back to me on the weekend and I have not heard back from her. At this point I am actually pretty sure that I didn't get the job. The adrenaline from having my first job interview in the US and having it be for a job I actually really want has worn off and I can now see how she rushed me through the interview and didn't really ask all that many questions about me. This indicates to me that she wasn't convinced.

A year ago at this time I was the one to interview people who wanted to work for ME. I know how it is. I know that if you want somebody to work for you, you'll ask them a lot of questions but if you decide that this person doesn't stand a chance than you will try and get over and done with as soon as possible.

Another indicator for me not getting this job is that the training is supposed to start tomorrow. If she really would want me she would have contacted me already.

The weather is bad and I am feeling down in general but I am at peace with probably not getting this job. It was pretty amazing to be invited for an interview and being told that I do have some talent by a professional photographer. It also forced me to get some kind of online portfolio up. And looking at similar jobs made me see that I would profit enormously from taking classes in Photoshop. There are a whole lot of jobs out there for people who know how to use Photoshop well.

So my plan is now - try and stay in a field you like to work in. That doesn't mean I will completely pass up the admin jobs but I will also not cut out the artsy jobs (or the artsy admin jobs), focus more on my photography studies and go take Photoshop classes and become a Photoshop bad ass.

If anybody is interested in seeing my online "portfolio", let me know and I will send it to you by email.

How to become famous as an Austrian in America

2009-03-03T08:48:00.000-08:00

If you ask an American to come up with three Austrians, there is a good chance that this is what they will come up with:

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Governor of California, actor, fitness advocate, Terminator

Wolfgang Puck

Famous cook, entrepreneur, caterer to the stars

Josef Fritzl

Kidnapper, rapist, pedophile

It's funny. We had Mozart, we had Freud, we even had The Sound of Music but it doesn't matter. Because there was some horrible guy in Austria who did a horrible thing and that's all that matters now.

Even though I always felt more European than I felt Austrian I was still proud to be from a country with a history of Art and Music and exceptional Architecture, a country with a landscape so beautiful that people from all over the world visit to experience it.

Before we moved here E and I were trying to guess what I would be asked upon meeting new people. He guessed that people would ask me really stupid questions like "So, Austria, which country is that in?" or "So you speak French there?". I have been asked those questions before but not just from Americans but also from Europeans and Australians. In general I give people more credit than that though. I think especially people living in big cities like Chicago are usually more worldly and educated than that and I am glad to say that I was mostly right.

I often try to avoid the topic, not even mentioning that I am Austrian. But I have an accent that I will most definitely never get rid of completely (and I am fine with that) but that people can't place immediately. When I talk to somebody for a while and it eventually comes out that I lived in the Netherlands for a while I can almost hear a sigh of relief "Ah, so you are Dutch!" (the funny thing is that they react the same way to E, after 5 years with me they can't place his accent either). There are times when I just leave it at that. If it's somebody that I know I will never see again, I might as well leave them in the believe that they guessed where I was from all along. But if I am going to keep on talking to them I will tell them that I am originally from Austria. And recently the reaction to this confession was often "So what do you think about the Fritzl case?".

Well, what DO I think about the Fritzl case? What do you think? E suggested I should say "Yep, that happens all the time in Austria. Happened to me ...".

And funny that people should ask me that here, in the mid-west of the United States, a place where some of the most vicious serial killers of our time are from - Gacey, Dahmer, Gein, ...

Five years ago I bet the first questions I would have been asked would have been "So what do you think about Haider?" and ten years before that it would have been "So Hitler was Austrian, huh?".

I wonder if my country will ever recover from it's crimes. Even Germany gets more credit than the Second World War. When talking about Germany Americans mention beer, food, how nice the Germans they met were and that the Germans make good cars and good products in general.

When talking about Schwarzenegger, the accent and his heritage are long forgotten. He married a Kennedy and is now as American as one could be. Wolfang Puck is so americanized that I had to google him to find out if he really WAS Austrian - I could hear it from his accent and Wolfgang is one of the most Austrian names ever but it was never mentioned that he is in fact Austrian. He also does not serve Austrian cuisine in his restaurants.

Maybe the secret to being a successful Austrian in America is to try and forget where you come from.

Sorry for being M.I.A recently. I have been pretty sick with a bad cold. I am starting to get better now but am still on DayQuil and NyQuil.

Prove Yourself

2009-02-20T13:02:00.000-08:00

Along with not having a job to go to comes a lot of time on my hands.

I was hoping that my freedom would slowly make my creativity come back. After 5 years in business school and 6 years of non-creative work my creative bubble has shrunk to the size of a pea.

And come back it did. My creative bubble grew and grew and finally burst with a loud bang.

My brain is like an over-soaked sponge dripping with ideas I'd like to pursue.

Since coming to the land of plenty I have been:

*Taking a sewing class

*Taking a class in which I made an ottoman

*Painted every wall in every room in the house (except the storage rooms) in a different color

*Renovated at least three pieces of furniture

*Made one scarf and started a new project

*Sewn a bag

*Made my own chicken stock and two roast chicken

*Tried out at least 10 different cookie recipes

*and many more normal dinner recipes that I have never made before

One of my newest projects is to make my own face cream. I have all the ingredients and just have to get started. I actually I don't know if this all counts as being creative but it feels like it. Luckily I don't start a project and then get bored of it. I want to do all of those things and keep on doing them.

Most of the stuff I am learning to do has to do with the house. I was confident that I could turn this apartment into "me". Into a place I would love to be in, a place that is unique and different and reflects my own and Es personality.

I think I managed pretty well so far. But there is one thing missing.

Wall art.

I could buy it. Sure. But I feel a tad too old to hang my Klimt posters on the wall or a Van Gogh print of Starry, starry night. I was looking at original art. I could be an art collector!

Unfortunately I quickly found out that original art that looks good starts at around $500. Maybe some other time.

Or - I could just make my own. I am studying Photography after all, so it might be a good idea to hang up some of the stuff I made. Only that most of my best work is semi-nudes of people I know. Hanging those up in my living room would be awkward. To say the least. And it's not like my photos look particularly artsy either. They are just plain nakedness in high contrast black and white.

I decided that I will do one room of my tame pictures (landscapes and such) but for the other rooms I will have to come up with something else.

After some thinking I decided I will now dabble into painting. In my excitement I spent some money at an art supply store. I bought a book on watercolor painting, some paint, paper, water color, oil color. So now the only problem is that I haven't painted a thing in about 12 years and I am not very good at painting either.

It wasn't always like that. Until I was 10 years old whenever somebody asked what I wanted to be when I am all grown up I would say "painter". I was mostly drawing, not painting so much but I did it all the time. At three years old I couldn't write but I wanted to write down the fairy tales that I had made up in my head, so I drew them. My mom kept on telling me I was incredibly talented which made me think I would eventually become the next Picasso. I did not yet know about the "My mom says I'm cool!"-factor. Since I really like to draw but didn't like painting so much I eventually decided I better become a graphic designer. This was my plan until I was 12 years old (except that I also wanted to be a professional wrestler and a movie star. But who doesn't). I had always been the best at drawing in my class but then we had that assignment. The assignment was to draw a poster, either about a movie or a pop album. The young, smug, show-off I was I painted a movie poster for "Dead Man Walking". Nobody (not even my teacher) knew what the movie was about and nobody was impressed. Another girl, let's call her B. had painted a picture of Genesis doing their dance from "I can't dance". It was awesome. It looked great and realistic and people KNEW Genesis and were impressed!

There was somebody who could clearly draw and paint much better than me and that didn't even want to be a painter. How could I possibly want to do this as a career if there are people who do a way better job than me and don't even appreciate it? I gave up and ended up going to business school instead. Today young B. has a career as an insurance sales lady. Oh the wasted talent!

I did however take up Photography as a hobby. I am not sure why I didn't give that up because the first few years I was an absolutely awful photographer! I tried to do artsy and took pictures of eggs, covered in shaving foam on our washing machine. You'd think that this would at least look interesting but it didn't.

I just found one of the old pictures and scanned it in - so this is an "The Austrian" original from about 1994:

Yes, this is indeed and egg on top of a curler surrounded by other curlers on top of a washing machine

Don't ask me what it means

But I kept on trying and taking many, many classes in Austria and Holland and I got much better at taking pictures.

If I would have not given up drawing and would have taken classes, maybe I could have become good at that too, who knows.

But I didn't. And now, more than 10 years later I am excited to take up painting and drawing again. I am not expecting to be good at it. I just want to have something that looks good enough to put on our walls.

And if it doesn't work out, I'll always have the Klimt posters.

Work It

2009-02-20T11:37:00.000-08:00

Lake Michigan, Belmont Harbor

A few weeks ago I decided it's time to do something. It's time to seriously look for a job. I really miss the structure of a day job and just the general feeling of contributing to society.

So I updated my CV and started applying. I applied for a lot of jobs and got exactly one answer (I had sent a blind application to the Goethe Institute but they had no jobs to offer at this time) - a negative one. I mean, come on, can't you even find the time to tell me that I am not good enough for your damn job?

Now, I know that I had been lucky in Holland. The job market was very good. It was easy to find a job. A lot of people were looking for native German speakers so I had that in my advantage. In some way the jobs always ended up coming to me. The two jobs I've had the longest I both got through friends. And that's what I keep on reading about the American job market too - you need to network. Maybe I just haven't met enough people yet but that hasn't worked for me at all.

There are some things I won't do. I won't ever go back to working in Customer Service. I'd rather do a mind-numbing data-entry job for a year even though I know I could do better than that. Having pretty much 5 -6 years of Customer Service on my CV - even if I did lot's of things in my job - admin work, training, even translating - makes it that much harder to get anything outside this field. I wonder if I should modify and fake my CV around a bit to get a job. First of all, maybe I have to dumb it down? I wonder if my last employed year that stated "Supervisor" makes people think I am going to be bossy or not happy in a secretarial position.

I also won't do Sales (I am way too honest, I could never do sales) or a financial job (I am not good with numbers and Accounting was my worst subject in school).

I applied for one job that just seemed perfect. It was a job to be a photographer for an Ebay-shop. People would drop of whatever they wanted to sell and they needed a photographer to take nice pictures of whatever people wanted to sell on that Ebay-shop. This job however was only for 15-20 hours per week and the pay was $9 per hour. That's not much money. This is a lot less than I earned in my first real job and that pay had sucked already. Still, I wanted that job so bad. I was going to actually be a photographer! And they wanted somebody who was a bit fashion savvy - hellooo! I worked for a fashion company for three years! Score!

This company like all the other ones didn't even get back to me. I am still thinking to myself what I did wrong in my application. I mean for those hours and that salary I cannot imagine that they got an experienced photographer to do the job. I know times are hard but still. If they would have at least invited me for an interview, you know? But to not even answer me ...

I applied for an admin agency too. A JOB AGENCY! I remember when I was living in Holland, looking for a job, putting my CV on Monster I got at least 8 phone calls a day from agencies that were desperate to hire me. This agency, like all those other companies didn't even call me. Not even an email saying "Sorry but we don't deem you employable".

I am utterly flabbergasted by this hostility.

So I am continuing to apply for jobs and hoping to score an interview. I have always been pretty good at interviews so I think if I could just get to talk to them I would have a much better chance to get the job.

Also I will try to be better prepared. Maybe that photo-job would have been more interested in me if I had made an online portfolio and included a link with my email. Or maybe it would have been like that writing job I applied for who asked for a link to a personal blog as a writing sample. I sent them the link to this blog and they never even looked at it.

Slow and steady wins the the race, right?

Detox - The Analysis

2009-02-12T21:04:00.000-08:00

Today is the last day of my detox. I have to admit that my dinner today wasn't quite detox anymore. That's not because I couldn't do it anymore but because we had some food in the fridge that needed to be eaten before the weekend.

Anyway here is an overview on how it went:

Health: In general I have to say I didn't feel much better. One reason I did this was to find out if I might be lactose intolerant or allergic to preservatives or anything like that. I have had some nervous stomach problems for the past few years and this was my way of finding out if they are food related or of a different nature. Well, seems like they are not food related. I don't feel "cleaner" like the people on the websites I read feel like when they detox, I didn't particularly feel better either.

Mentally: The first few days I felt awful. I am not entirely sure this had to do with the detox or something else but fact is that I felt really, really bad. I felt exhausted, so exhausted in fact that I only went to the gym once and that was on the first day of the detox. I was so tired after the gym that I didn't move much for the rest of the day. This is not how I usually feel like after the gym. After that experience I was a bit afraid of the gym and since I did a lot of physically challenging work in the apartment, like paint walls and I went for lot's of walks in this nice weather we were having, I didn't think it was so bad that I didn't make it to the gym. I'll definitely be back next week.

Strangely I felt so bad last weekend but then come Tuesday I was almost ecstatic. I felt so great. At that point I had started taking supplements like iron and multivitamins and maybe that influenced my mood. I don't know. I am just glad I am feeling normal now. I was afraid I was becoming bi-polar.

Appearance: That didn't change at all as far as I can tell. I expected to get this really wonderful, glowing, healthy looking complexion but nah. Nothing happened. The rings under my eyes still compete with Uncle Festers. I am still pale as a ghost. My pants are a smidgen less tight but that's really it.

What did I get out of it? I think the best thing I did was to reduce my salt intake and cut out my sugar intake. I didn't miss either, strangely. And now I can get away with salting much less and still like the food. It's funny how quickly your taste buds get used to something like using less salt. And the sugar I didn't miss at all. I am not a "I really would always prefer chips over chocolate" person. I like sweets and cookies and ice cream but it's not something I need to have everyday. So not having it for a week wasn't such a big deal. I read somewhere that it takes your body three days to get rid of a sugar addiction. Well, I had no withdrawal symptoms at all.

And I found a really tasty way to make smoothies - throw some frozen fruit (my favorites are pineapple, strawberries and mango) in the blender, together with a banana (not frozen) and some soy or almond milk. Turn on blender. You'll get something very similar in taste and look to fruit ice cream. It's delicious.

The last few days I found better ways to make tasty meals and I actually didn't mind the whole vegan thing so much anymore. The only thing I really don't like about it is how damn complicated it is. You need to read all the labels to see if there might be something animal related or processed in it and since there are less things to put into your meal to make it tasty, you really need to watch what and how much of what you put into it. It takes a long time to cook a vegan meal and it's not very practical. So that's one reason why I won't become a vegan. Well and because I love cheese and milk and yoghurt.

But I might throw in a vegan detox day every once in a while.

Delayed New York post

2009-02-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

About a month ago I had the pleasure of meeting two of my friends from Holland - Beate and Maria (let me now if you want your names taken down) in New York for a long weekend trip.

We had a great time doing all the girly stuff like shopping and walking around and doing the Sex and the City bus tour ...

The Sex and the City tour was fun if a little silly. Our guide showed us video snippets from the show and then made little jokes like "That guy has some serious anger management problems, hallooo!". So that got a bit annoying after a while. But we did get to eat a cupcake from the Magnalio bakery (which I already did at my last trip to New York) and we went to the sex shop where Charlotte bought the "Rabbit". We also got to have Cosmos at the place that in SATC was owned by Aidan.

One of the most unexpected, fun experiences I had was at the big Toys'r'us on Times Square. It's a crazy place!

They have a life sized spiderman hanging in the air:

A giant t-rex that moves and really scared me (and a lot of other grown up people):

And a barbie dream home - big enough for people to walk around in. On the bottom of this house there was a floor with all the barbies currently available on the market and a few special ones. I was especially surprised to see:

Dominatrix barbie:

and Gold-digger barbie:

Times sure have changed since I was begging my mom for Totally-hair-barbie (called Ultra-hair-barbie in Austria). I guess girls today just have different goals in life.

We also ended up eating at a Michelin star Italian restaurant in Little Italy. The food was pretty great but we were kind of annoyed that they added a 20% tip on the bill themselves. That's something pretty common in Italy and all the people working there were Italians so maybe that's why they did it but I still prefer to decide what I want to tip myself (but I usually do tip pretty well, so it's not that).

So to sum it up we had a really great time and it was wonderful to see two of my friends again!

And a quick update on my detox: Yesterday I felt so exhausted, I thought I couldn't do anything. I guess in general I feel a little bit less achy but the having no energy is really annoying. E suggested that maybe I am lacking Iron (I also have the tell-tale raw edges at the corners of my lips) and other vital vitamins, so I took a multi-vitamin and an Iron supplement last night. Hopefully I will feel more active today.

I also don't really feel hungry or have an appetite and almost have to force myself to eat. I am in a bit of a vicious circle. I am really not the kind of person who can eat the same thing more than twice in a row (unless I really, really like it) but I have been too tired to make new things, so I ate lentil soup and nothing but lentil soup for two days, after that I ate vegan Chili for three meals in a row - I am so BORED of it!

Hopefully the extra vitamins and minerals will help me have more energy and inspire me to cook more.

Also I have been feeling really depressed, like, very, very depressed. I don't know where this is coming from but I wonder if it has to do with my body getting rid of toxins? Because there is no other reason for it. If it's the toxins then I expect to get better soon.

I am halfway done with the detox and I will see it through the end even if it's not really working the way I was hoping it to work so far but sometimes symptoms have to get worse before they get better. Also this is a challenge I set for myself and I am not the kind of person who just gives up.

So, three more days and then I am done!

All by myself

2009-02-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

Today was a gloriously beautiful day in Chicago. The sun was shining, it was about 12 C but felt like 20 C in the sun. Everybody was out on the street enjoying the beautiful weather.

I decided to go for a walk the moment I woke up. It was so warm that I actually walked down half a block and turned around, swapping my pea coat for my thinner jacket (which I had worn all through the last Dutch "summer") - and I was still a bit too warm!

It was one of the first really pleasant days this year, so I wanted to make my walk a long one. I decided to go down to the Belmont area. The area is cute and full of little, nice shops and cafes and young people.

On my way there I saw at least 100 dogs being walked by their owners. I am not exaggerating here either - I have never seen as many dogs in a city!

As I walked down Clark Street and got closer to Belmont, I saw more and more young people and with young I mean under 24 years old. The cafes and pubs and restaurant were filled with hip, young boys and girls, having a nice big, greasy hangover breakfast. The people who weren't in cafes were wearing work out clothes and walking around with their friends.

I hadn't really been homesick to Holland at all so far and I do miss my friends but keeping in touch with them via email and Skype has helped a lot. I haven't even really felt lonely, I was pretty ok by myself and of course I have my husband come home to me every evening ...

But walking down Clark Street and Belmont I all of a sudden felt all of those things. I felt old, lonely and unfashionable. The smell of the streets reminded me of the streets of Amsterdam on a Sunday. It reminded me of Saturday afternoons spent with my friends, discussing the night before, having the best hot chocolate ever at Cafe Aroma on Leidseplein or shopping down Kalverstraat followed by cappuccino with my roommate at the time or letting the weekend ring out with a beer on Nieuwmarkt, next to a canal. Today I missed all those things and oh I missed them so much it hurt.

But my nostalgia is not for the life I left behind when I left the Netherlands on 22nd October 2008 - it is for a life much longer ago. A life that me and those friends that I miss so much have left behind a long time ago. And though I know that almost all of my life now is much better than it was then, I still miss the old life sometimes.

And the thing is - when I have my husband next to me - I don't think about the old life. I don't miss it so much because you know, I have him and he is the best thing that ever happened to me and he makes me happy. But he wasn't here today and that's why all of this came up.

But just so you know, at the end of this long (3 1/2 hour) walk, I started feeling much better already. I might just be too old for that area. Tomorrow I'll go for a walk on the lakeshore instead.

Maybe it's also this detoxing thing that is bringing me down. I have been good and not eaten anything that I wasn't supposed to eat so far. I managed to make a really tasty, all-veggie lentil soup last night. I had a craving for cumin, so I used lot's of cumin and garam masala. I also put lemon in and some balsamic vinegar at the end. It was pretty delicious and the sourness of the lemon and vinegar made up for the fact that I didn't use much salt.

Today I am making veggie chili, topped with avocado.

I was really tired yesterday but am feeling better today. I don't know if that and my strange mood has anything to do with detoxing but it might. Who knows? We'll see if I start feeling really good soon. That's really why I am doing this - to feel clean inside and out and not feel so tired anymore.

New Year clean-up

2009-02-06T06:43:00.001-08:00

This might come a bit late since it's already February but inspired by this blog post from The Kim Challenge I decided to do a one week detox.

I have been trying to cut out processed food as much as possible recently - for example - I just made my own chicken stock last Sunday. It took me about 10 hours but no more bouillon cubes for me! I boiled the stock down and froze it in handy portion sizes. Anyway - I am trying to cut out as much processed food as possible but it's more difficult here in America, where everything is processed and enriched and somehow modified to taste better than in Austria and Holland - where you can buy a yoghurt that is just that, a yoghurt.

On top of that it is so common to go out for dinner in America. I never thought I would get so used to eat out but we eat out at least 2 times a week, most of the time more than that. When you go to a place that isn't a fast food place you would expect to get nutritious food, right? Well, I found that every place (that's not some sort of Asian cuisine) serves burgers and fries.

So to sum it up - I have had much more meat and unhealthy foods in t he last 3 month than I ever used to eat and that even though I am making a much bigger effort to avoid those foods.

Today is my first day of a 7 day detox. The rules:

* No dairy - that will be difficult for me because I love cheese more than anything. Soy and almond milk are OK though.

* No processed foods. Everything has to be in its original state and only I can make it into something else. That cuts out pasta for me.

* Everything has to be organic. I had been eating mostly organic anyway though, so that's not really a big deal.

* No meat. I am going to eat vegan for a week. However I am wondering if I should include fish into my detox plan. What do you think? Obviously if I include fish it wouldn't be vegan anymore.

* No eggs.

* No sugar. Honey is ok but not more than a teaspoon a day.

* Cut out salt as much as possible. This one will probably be the most difficult for me as I have been salting my food like the citizens of Chicago salted their streets recently. However this is also the most important change I feel I need to make.

* No caffeine.

My breakfast today was oatmeal made with soy milk, a bit of honey, spices, almonds, flax seeds, banana and blueberries. However this is my breakfast most days, only that usually I use low-fat milk instead of soy milk.

I will keep you updated on how it is going!

On another note I have done a lot of painting this week. I painted our dining room in two different colors - a light blue and a beige. My father in law is coming to Chicago for a poetry convention (he is a published poet) and I want to have the apartment as ready as possible until then. So the other project for the next 7 days is painting and re-doing three pieces of furniture and get the house clean and in order.

I will post pictures once it is all done!

My dear husband is off to Las Vegas today until Sunday for a work-bonding experience, so I have all the time I need to get this stuff done.

And little kitten Penelope is back and as healthy as could be. She is a little devil! Her and Anouk spend all day hunting each other through the apartment but they seem to get along most of the time.

I wish you guys a wonderful weekend!

Open letter to my parents, by Anouk (First cat)

2009-01-29T14:53:00.000-08:00

Dear parents,

About three weeks ago you came home with something. It took me a while but I came to know this thing as a miniature cat. One you call "Penny".

Now, I know I have gained a few (it's winter, ya know? We kitties need our extra layers when it's so freakin' cold outside!) and I might not be as young and fresh faced as I used to be but to BRING HOME ANOTHER CAT?

First I thought you will simply replace me. Take me to where ever you found this bundle of fleas and sneezes. But it's been three weeks and I am still here (and so is the other one unfortunately) so I guess I am not going anywhere. Or am I? I just know I would feel a whole lot better once you put my cat carrier back in the closet! Don't you see me sniffing it and looking at you suspiciously? That means "PUT AWAY THE DAMN CARRIER!".

Anyway, I have you know I am not standing for any of this. I am strictly a one cat/one family person and that's how I'll have it. I was brought up cat-olic after all.

You might say that back when we lived with your friend Mike and his cat Willow we also lived with another cat. Well, I tell ya - that was DIFFERENT! Willow was strictly Mike's cat. You always made me feel like I was YOUR cat and Willow was HIS cat. Also I never liked that Mike-dude. Remember when I peed into his Prada shoes? Fun times.

So I beg you - please remove this boney, little fur ball from our premises so we can be a normal family again.

Or be prepared for a cold war as last seen between America and Russia during Jimmy Carter's regency.

Thank you and with all my love (if you do as I wish, otherwise, no love)

Your FIRST kitten

Anouk

Money, money, money, must be funny ...

2009-01-28T16:01:00.000-08:00

Just yesterday I said to E that the recession has not hit us hard yet (knock on wood three times) and that we are lucky.

However - it is hitting all around us. Mass firings everywhere.

Today Target is letting go a big bunch of their employees.

One of my favorite blogs - www.elasticwaist.com was shut down recently. All the girls who contributed to this sponsored blog also lost their day-jobs in the last few month (I started following their private blogs after Elastic Waist stopped, that's how I know).

And today - my favorite magazine - Domino - closed it's doors. The March issue will be the last one. When I first discovered this magazine I was amazed - finally somebody gets what style of house I like! Elle Decor, Vogue Living - all those magazines are too snobbish for me, not creative enough. I don't like the starckesque, emotionless interiors they show. I like colorful, friendly, homey, bohemian with a dash of glamour and a pinch of hippie and that's exactly what Domino showed in its pages.

I also just subscribed and haven't even received my first issue yet. I heard a rumor that I will be sent another magazine from the Conde Naste group instead. Whatever it is, it will not replace my Domino.

I think their website is still up for now if you want to check it out.

There is a new term forming in the media world - Recessionista. A Recessionista is a woman (or a man I guess or would that be Recessionisto?) who is a Fashionista but only shops bargains. Somebody who manages to look great on a budget. In the spirit of that I got myself a 7$ authentic leather Coach bag from the thrift store. It's a very old model (looks like from the 70s) but that makes it vintage, right?

New York, New York

2009-01-16T14:24:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning I am off to New York where I am meeting two of my friends from Holland.

I am a bit nervous about it - first because I am flying to La Guardia and I don't know if y'all saw it but a plane just emergency-landed in the Hudson river yesterday after a bunch of geese flew into the engine. Oh yeah and that plane started at La Guardia.

Second - the plane is fully booked. That scares me for multiple reasons, what if it is overbooked and they need to get rid of somebody? What if the plane is going to be too heavy and we are going to have an accident? That means I actually have to sit next to somebody! What if it's a jerk?

Third - having to find my hotel and having to check in by myself. On top of that my hotel is not getting very nice reviews on TripAdvisor. But it was cheap and close to were my friends are staying ...

You can see that I haven't been traveling by myself for a while. I promise I am actually a very independent, young woman. I mean, I moved to Holland by myself when I was 19 years old, I once went to London for a one week holiday by myself ...

But well, you kind of get used to having somebody by your side. You know, if something goes wrong, you always have each other. It's comforting. Also traveling seems to go so much faster when you have somebody by your side.

I have actually just been too Austria by myself in September but then that doesn't really count because I know my way around Vienna.

Anyway I am going to me much happier once I am there and checked into the hotel.

News on the kitten - there aren't any. The vet hasn't called me yet today but the last two days her situation was unchanged which is not great but not bad. It just takes time to get over a cold and as long as she isn't getting worse I am confident that she will get better in a few days and starts to eat again.

I will take some pictures in New York and also bring my Macbook. If I have time I might even blog from the Big Apple but I am not promising anything.

Things I don't like (but find interesting) - Reserving parking spaces

2009-01-13T19:58:00.001-08:00

In the past week we had more than 25 cm of snow. It hasn't melted away either. It looks pretty but if you ever tried driving in this weather - you know that it's a pain. Not only is it dangerous to drive on the streets because it's slippery but you also have to deal with your car being snowed in at the parking spaces.

It takes a long time to dig out your car. Some people completely clean out a parking space which can take an hour of labour. Other people (like me) just clean superficially, just so they don't get stuck in the snow.

So, in Chicago - how do you avoid that somebody else takes your space that you just spent so much time on? You "reserve" your space by putting something there - a chair or an ice box or whatever you don't mind maybe getting destroyed if somebody else does not share the same philosophy about "reserving" public property.

And that's were opinions split. This is actually quite a heated discussion in the city - as I understand - every winter.

Some people think it's only fair to keep a space that they consider "their" space.

Other people argue that the streets are public property and everybody should be allowed to use any spot that might be available.

Surprisingly there are many good shovelers that are against reserving spaces and there are a lot of people who just take an already shoveled space and then mark it as their own with a chair.

Personally I feel that public space is public space and should be available to everybody. If you want to have your own parking space, rent a garage or buy a parking space. I do however understands how it is annoying if you spent an hour shoveling and then somebody takes your space for days at a time.

I don't think we will be getting a chair out anytime soon though.

If you want to see how the chair reserving looks like - check out this website.

Kitten update

2009-01-13T19:41:00.001-08:00

After my last post little kitten Penny started to eat less and less. E and I tried to force feed her, which can be really dangerous if the food gets into the wind pipe instead of the food pipe. We did it anyway because she hadn't eaten since Saturday night and kittens can die from not eating and drinking pretty fast. I ended up calling a vet yesterday. He told me to try special high-calorie diet food for the cat. He gave me some cans to try feed her. Unfortunately it didn't work. Whenever I tried to give Penny food, she turned her nose away.

Another thing the vet told me to do was to put her in the bathroom with the shower on. The steam would loosen up the mucus from her cold and maybe being able to smell again would make her want to eat. Well, I tried it twice and it seemed to make the situation even worse. This morning she was wheezing badly. It was obvious that she had big troubles breathing. I called the vet again and he told me to bring her in.

So today at 3pm I brought Penny to the pet hospital and they decided to keep her there until she gets better.

I have mixed feelings about this - I feel guilty that I had to leave her there again. She will be kept in a cage, she will feel lonely, she will probably think that I abandoned her like people did before. I feel sad because I miss her and I don't know if whatever the vet does will work out. At the same time I feel relieved. Taking care of this sick kitten has become a full-time job. I spent most of the last few days either trying to force feed her, give her the antibiotics, watching her to see if she eats, trying to trick her into eating or reading up on how to make her better. I think I tried everything I could to make her eat but she just wouldn't. That makes me feel a bit like I failed her.

As I said they will keep her until she is better - they told me it usually takes 5-6 days, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.

I just want her to live and be a healthy kitten. And I hope she won't hate me forever for all that stuff she went through since I adopted her.

The estranged kitty

2009-01-10T12:18:00.000-08:00

My cat Anouk and I have been living more like room mates than a cat owner and her beloved kitty in the last few days. I feed her, she eats. She doesn't talk to me in her funny cat language anymore. She doesn't wait for me at the door when I get home. She doesn't come to cuddle. She even pretends to not wanting to eat her wet food (but she eats it when she thinks I am not looking) when she used to relentlessly beg me every morning for it.

The reason for this is that she thinks I am cheating on her. See - there is something living in our guest bedroom and she doesn't know what it is. She might have guessed it though. However, she doesn't like it.

I am spending way too much time in that room, seemingly neglecting her.

That something is a little kitten who I adopted a few days ago from a shelter. The reason I am spending so much time in there is that the kitten is very sick and needs all the love she can get.

The kittens name is Penelope - Penny (we finally decided on that name and will most likely stick with it). She is 10 weeks old. She is sweet and loving and happy that we freed her from that little cage she was living in at the shelter.

But yesterday she started sneezing and coughing and she didn't stop. Her little body was shaking through and through. It was a sad thing to watch. I took her to the closest vet immediately and they prescribed her antibiotics. Seems that she has Upper Respiratory Infection which is very common in cats from shelters. I have been giving her the antibiotics and I will have to keep her in that room longer than I planned so she cannot infect Anouk with her virus.

The coughing has stopped. She is still sneezing a bit though and now she is drooling like Homer Simpson when he is thinking about the Gummy Venus. She is also not eating very much which is probably a side effect of the antibiotic and can become a big problem. Especially since she is so skinny that you can feel pretty much every single one of the bones in her body.

So I am spending a lot of time with her on the sofa in the guest bedroom, on my lap, to keep her warm, a fleece blanket covering her.

And of course Anouk doesn't know any of this. I did try to explain it to her but even though she is a smart kitty - I don't think she is smart enough to understand my words.

So I am going to have to wait for Penny to hopefully get better soon so I can introduce the two kitties and hope that they end up really liking each other.

If they don't like each other, tough luck. They will just have to learn to deal. Because I love Anouk and I have definitely already fallen in love with little Penny.

So now I just want that little bundle in our guest bedroom to get better.

Penny, the day before she got sick:

And on E's lap:

Happy New Year!!!

2009-01-07T10:23:00.001-08:00

Hey you guys,

Sorry for not being on here much lately but a lot of things are going on - and I was in Ohio for a week.

Well - we have two big news - first - we own a car now. A nice old Honda. It used to be E's car when he was living in Chicago. When he moved to Europe he sold it to his father, his father sold it to his sister and later his sister gave it back to his parents, swapping it for another car they had and now we got it back!

I always hated cars. Living in Holland you really don't need a car but unfortunately - here you do. In Chicago not so much. I guess if you are student who lives in a furnished apartment than you are ok but if you have a family and children (which we will have at some point in the future) it's really much easier and efficient if you can drive places.

I am personally getting much better at driving. I have driven in the city a few times now and it is much less scary than I expected. As I said I will probably try and get my American drivers license in February.

The other big news is that we got a kitten. Well, we don't have it yet.

We actually went to a few shelters last Saturday and the shelters were packed with people and kids. All the kittens were adopted. Since I know that my little Anouk (my first cat that moved over to Chicago with us from Delft) is a very sweet cat and easily dominated by any other cat - I knew I had to get a kitten. For once I want Anouk to be the boss. I have this fantasy that the kitten will see Anouk as a big sister and look up to her and aspire to be just like her (because - let's be honest - Anouk is the perfect cat in any way). Well, at least I want them to get along.

Anyway - all the kittens had already been adopted. We were going to come back next Saturday in the morning to check again. E thought thats when they get all the new kittens in.

Yesterday I had lunch with E and a few friends downtown. After lunch I wanted to go for a long walk and thought, hey, I could just walk down to the Anti-Cruelty-Shelter (a shelter where they don't kill animals even if they can't find a home for them) and look at the cats.

So I did and when I got there they had a kitten. And she was a female (I wanted a female and people say that the same sex gets along better) and she was super cute. I was sold. I held her for about 30 seconds when I asked one of the people who worked there how I can adopt her.

The whole adoption process took about an hour. Mostly I had to wait for them to check my details. I also had to fill in a two page "exam" on how I would behave in which situations. Since I have had cats all my life and I have trained Anouk before I guess I answered all the questions correctly.

There was one question that said "When you move houses, what will you be doing with your cat?". Well I had moved to America with my cat, so the answer is pretty clear. I wrote that down and the moment the vet who interviewed me saw that - she was completely sold on me. After that she was almost trying to sell the cat to ME. Anything I said was gold to her ears. So I was approved immediately.

Since out new kitten is only 10 weeks old she had to still get spayed which happened last night. I can pick her up this afternoon which I will be doing in a few hours.

So far her name is Robyn but I think I will change that. Since Anouk was named after the Dutch singer I would like to name our new kitty after a famous, female singer too. So far she seems very mellow and calm, so maybe a cool, relaxed, jazz singer? But her looks (she is black with rusty spots) are more rock' n roll. So maybe a rock singer?

One name we like is Penelope - short - Penny. Because she kind of looks like a Penny. But I am open to suggestions. I actually called Anouk Lana at first but changed her name after a week because Anouk matched her much better.

If you have any good names, please let me know!

I'll post pictures of her soon!

I have gotten a ton of sewing books for Christmas. I have really gotten back into sewing and knitting. I want to learn how to do clothes but right now I am only doing small projects.

Here a few pictures of what I did so far:

This a shopping/diaper bag I made for my sister in law. It looks really easy but it is reversible and it has a bottom which made it more difficult. It took me a LONG time to make this bag. She loves dogs and blue, so I got some dark blue fabric with dogs on it and some light blue fabric with paws on it.

My first project were Christmas stockings. E's is the red one which I made first and is skinnier because I did something wrong. Mine is the green one. Next year I will probably make a new one for E.

That's it for today, really have to get some stuff done today but I'll write more very soon, I promise!

Layout

2008-12-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

I changed the layout. How do you like it?

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow ...

2008-12-19T18:50:00.000-08:00

We had another snowstorm last night and now we have A LOT of snow. A lot of kids got "snow free" today and didn't have to go to school. As a kid I always dreamed of getting a day off for too much snow. It's the greatest thing - you don't have to go to school and you get to play in the snow. What more can one ask for. Now I think - poor parents - how do people deal with that if they have to go to work and their kids get off school unexpectedly?

I still love the snow. But then I don't have to go to work yet. I am sure if I'd have to drive or go to work with snow drenched shoes, I wouldn't like the snow as much.

I thought I'd post some pictures of the neighborhood, including some pictures of the nice Christmas decorations some people have put up.

Cars buried in snow

unfortunately not all sidewalks are as clean as this one

If you think that's over the top you haven't been to America

a red wreath on a red back round - a bit diabolic but pretty

I have seen bigger icicles

That's an alleyway - that's where you put your trash and that's where peoples garages are.

Things I like - Trader Joe's

2008-12-19T09:48:00.001-08:00

What is Trader Joe's?

It's my local grocery store.

Living in Holland I often missed the pretty, Austrian grocery stores. I especially missed the products, the good cold cut meats, the sweets, the cakes, the bread, ...

But I never really missed the concept of the supermarket, the people who worked there, the service.

Trader Joe's is the first grocery store that makes me feel "at home".

When I first went there I was confused, even taken aback by the staff of Trader Joe's. They are not like your every day grocery store staff - you know - depressed, kind of in a daze, just wanting the day to end, ...

They almost look like they are having fun working there. They talk to everybody and they enjoy talking to everybody. I have seen people making friends and exchanging phone numbers at Trader Joe's.

My first time at Trader Joe's I thought "Why are they talking to me? Why are they asking me all those questions?" But I have come to enjoy it because the people seem genuine.

Also - it's an all organic store. They have stuff like organic Cheetos (which sounds like an oxymoron). And I don't know how they do it but they are cheaper than all of the other grocery stores in the area (that includes the non-organic stores).

Everyday they make a tasty little dish that you can taste in the store and easily recreate at home.

There are definitely fancier supermarkets - like Whole Foods which have fancier and sometimes tastier food but nothing makes you feel as cozy and at home as Trader Joe's does.

And no, they don't pay me. But they can if they want to.

"I love" and "I don't love"

2008-12-19T09:26:00.000-08:00

Enough of me complaining about how I am trying to find myself and all that stuff. You guys are reading this blog to find out how I like the US and Chicago.

So I decided to have two new sections:

I love

I don't love

I don't want to use "I hate" instead of "I don't love". First of all because "hate" is a very strong word which I generally don't like to use and second because there isn't really anything (yet) that I hate. There is stuff I don't like so much but well - there is stuff I don't like so much everywhere.

Living in Holland for 7 years, I always disliked the kind of expats who had nothing good to say about the Netherlands. I said it before - if you hate it - leave it.

I don't want to end up sounding like a whiney, unthankful foreigner - so for everything I don't like I will write about something I like.

Also - everything I write will be an observation. I haven't lived here long enough to say that all of my observations are accurate. It's going to be how I see things - that doesn't mean they really are exactly like I see them.

I am a very protective and opinionated person so if somebody bitches about Austria or the Netherlands or my friends or anything that means anything to me I get very defensive. Since I am like that myself and I know that a lot of people are like that I will try my best not to offend people with my "I don't like" section. As I said before - these are daily observations. I am open to discussion, I in fact often change my mind about topics if somebody respectfully explains their point of view to me. I consider myself a reasonable person.

Most of all I want to point out that me not liking some things about America does not mean I don't like living here or that I want to leave. It does not mean I am homesick beyond means and am so sad that I am going to start doing stuff to myself. I just like to observe situations and since that is something people are interested to read about I will write about it.

I hope you like it!

(There sometimes will still be touchy, whiney posts about myself)

(but less)

What's my age again?

2008-12-13T21:52:00.000-08:00

I was born in 1981. Some of you readers will say - jeez - that's young! Others will say, wow, I didn't know she was that old already.

Age means nothing to me. It's a difficult thing to explain. I am not sure I will be able to but I'll give it a try.

When I moved to Holland the group of friends I made (who is still my core group of friends or how the young kids would call it - my "homies") were all a few years older than me. Most of them were three or four years older then me. I was the baby. I was (according to them) so innocent, so sweet, I was the little angel. I was however not taken seriously at all. You could say my first year in Holland was solely used to make myself look and feel more mature and less innocent. And believe me, I worked hard on that one.

It took me a few years. I don't know if nature simply took it's turn and I just grew up. You know, like people do when they get older or if it was the rough life I was living, moving every few months, having not really enough money to live on, going out all the time ...

Anyway, I guess I grew up or at least I was accepted as a grown up in our group.

A few years later I met E. E is 9 years older than me. People who don't know that but who know us are always surprised about that - I guess because E looks like in his mid-twenties - or like a teenager if he shaves. So when I first met his friends in Holland (a lot of them even older than E) it was difficult. There were rocket scientists and security network specialists and engineers and they were interested in things I had no idea about. I had never spoken to a rocket scientist before and I was intimidated. It took lots of nights out, lots of Jaegermeister and an Icelandic drink called "Black Death" to break the ice and bring us together. The more I got to know them, the more I realized that we weren't really that different. We all were foreigners in Holland, we all wanted to have fun. That's a good common ground to build friendship on.

Now, years later, I can talk to anybody. I don't have issues with age, I don't see a problem with having older friends. One of my friends just became a grandma. Who cares. It really doesn't matter.

However.

Now I am starting to feel old.

One reason for that is the fact that people in the US are getting married and having children much earlier than in Holland (and I guess Austria but mostly Holland). It's quite normal here that people get married at let's say 23 years old.

E and I were engaged for 1 1/2 years - one of the reasons being that I did NOT want to be married at 24 or 25. It might sound silly but I just couldn't imagine being that young and being a wife. Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoy it now but any younger would have just been wrong (for me).

And then there is another issue.

My whole life I planned to do a masters degree but I left to go to Holland when I was one month shy of 20 years old. I always had the intention to go back and finish my studies but I never did. I sometimes feel like I am stuck in a time zone were I am still 20 years old, ready to go to University to get my masters. I have strange moments, like once when I sat on the train with a bunch of 20 year old students and I felt like I was one of them (that happened about 6 month ago).

When I meet people who are younger than me who have their freakin' doctors degree I feel like that can't possibly be possible. There are lawyers, doctors, professors, archeologists, ... out there who are younger than me.

What did I do with myself in those last 7 years?

I guess living. That's what I did. I lived the life. I had fun. I grew up. I learned.

I don't know if I still need a masters degree but I know once I finish my correspondence classes in Photography I will take classes at a university. Not to get a degree but to keep my brain alive. To learn new things. To stay focused.

My five month plan

2008-12-09T13:39:00.000-08:00

I got the idea from Marie who posted this entry on her blog. She is talking about her five year plan.

I gotta tell ya, I am pretty confused as to what to do with my life right now, so I can't tell you what I am going to do in five years, just what I am planning for the next five months. I always had lots of plans but just as many excuses as to why I am not pursuing them. (By the way H - I asked for the book you recommended for Christmas, if I don't get it, I will buy it myself.)

First I lived in Austria. I didn't like it there and it's tough to get into the (to me) interesting fields of the entertainment industry or Arts. Austria is based on something we call "Freundlwirtschaft" - The economy of friendship also called "Vitamin B" (Beziehungen) which basically means if you have friends or family who can get you in, you get in.

I first noticed that after I got my degree in Marketing when I was still living in Austria. I applied to about 25 Marketing agencies for an internship and I got invited to one interview. I didn't get the job.

Another marketing agency sent me a list of questions to answer. One questions was "One of your clients likes to chew on coca leaves. Since they contain cocaine they are illegal in Austria, how do you make sure he gets them anyway?". Another question was "Your client needs a curl of hair from the American president for an auction. How do you get it?".

I thought I was very clever in answering those questions but didn't even get invited to an interview.

A girl who went to the same school I went to, two years younger than me, obviously had not done her degree yet, had parents whose friends were friends with somebody at Saatchi&Saatchi (a famous advertising agency). She got a job there without interviewing or even preparing an application. And I saw a lot of those friendship deals happen around me.

My mother's friends were people who sold herb pillows and homemade candles at flea markets, so I knew I would run into some troubles pursuing a career in Vienna relying on the Vitamin B. To be fair, that was only one of the reasons why I left Austria.

Then, in Holland, I of course had the problem of the language. At that point I was not really interested in a career in advertising anymore. I got really into Photography and I took a few classes. I thought, that's something I am pretty good at and it's something I am passionate about. Maybe this could be my path. I met a lot of people working in the field. It was an exciting time where I got to hang out in the "scene" and get inspired by other creative people. However, I soon noticed that if you come to Amsterdam as a foreigner and you are not already an established Artist, you don't stand a chance to make it. I met quite a few trained photographers who were working in call centers because the Dutch only wanted to work with the Dutch. Unless of course - you were famous already. But getting an internship with a Dutch photographer - impossible.

Anyway, I did take up classes with the New York Institute of Photography last year. It's a correspondence course that teaches you everything you need to know to become a Photographer. You also have to do assignments and and technical knowledge tests.

Back to the original topic - so I am here in Chicago now and a world is opening up to me. I have no excuse to not follow my dreams anymore and to be honest it is a bit freaky and quite a bit overwhelming.

I have thought long and hard about it and have come to the conclusion that I need to use the next 5 months to make up my mind what I want to do with my life. And to do this I have to do the following things:

a) Get busy with my Photography studies - I need to get back into it, get the passion back

b) Find a job - I know I said I am afraid I end up in some kind of job I don't like but I really need to have a steady job. You need a reason to get up in the morning. So I decided to look for an administrative part-time job. Something where I don't have to answer the phone, or at least very rarely and nothing that includes the term "customer-service" unless it's very minimal and has nothing to do with complaint handling. Given the economic situation here right now, I know it won't be an easy task. More than half a million Americans lost their jobs in 2008 and I don't know why I would be better for a job than any of them. So I might not find a job immediately ...

c) Get back to the gym. I am most focused when I work out. I feel strong and confident when I am physically strong. I want to lift weights again and run on a treadmill until I feel dizzy. I found a gym not too far which sounds perfect, I will join beginning January and try to walk as much as I can until then.

So that's my plan for the next 5 month.

Baby it's cold outside

2008-12-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

It's really cold now. Like, Chicago cold. I am not even getting the "Oh that's nothing" from the locals anymore, it's that cold. I only go outside wearing long, silk underwear, jeans, boots, two pairs of socks of which one must be winter socks (woolen) and two to three layers on top. Plus of course, scarf, gloves and hat. One time I didn't wear my hat, I swear my ears felt like ice cubes when I got home. It hurt my fingers to touch them. It's that cold.

It's even cold inside. Our cat spends most of her time either wrapped in our duvet or on the heating. Here she is in our bed:

Luckily our lovely, yet environmentally aware neighbors helped us with the "cold inside" issue (we have central heating which is in their apartment).

But to be honest, I don't mind it so much. We have a lot of snow and I really missed the snow during my years in the Netherlands. I missed the snow and I missed Christmas. For those who don't know - the Dutch don't celebrate Christmas that much, they celebrate "Sinterklaas" on December 5th (by the way - Happy belated Sinterklaas to all my friends in Holland!).

America is very good at putting you in a Christmas spirit. I can imagine that the "Christmas buh humbug" people of the world will find it annoying. But I am not one of them. I love it. I love Christmas decorations, I love Christmas music (except "Last Christmas" by Wham, which is the only Christmas song that they play to death in the Netherlands), I love Christmas trees and TV programs on how to decorate and make Christmas cookies. I love egg nog. I even love Christmas shopping (I did pretty much all of my Christmas shopping online this year, no crowds but you still have the shopping satisfaction). Right now I am listening to the Christmas song radio channel.

I have to say when we lived in Delft it at least had the advantage of being really pretty. They would hang up some clear lights around Christmas time and it looked somewhat christmasy since Delft is just so damn cute.

But the weather - well - ask me in a few years but so far I'd take 4 or 5 month of cold and snow but sunshine (Chicago) over 7 month of non-stop rain and humidity (the Netherlands).

Two days ago we got our tree. It's the first Christmas tree I had since I left Austria and I am very excited. Unfortunately I pulled a muscle in my back yesterday when we went to get some ornaments from the store (we bought a dresser too and I pulled the muscle by trying to lift it). It's pretty painful and since I don't have health insurance yet (I get it in January) I just have to sit it out. It's been getting better though.

Anyway, pain or not - I had this beautiful tree in front of me, so I had to decorate it. I popped two Aleve and took my time but ended up with a nice tree I think:

In the back round you can see our yellow walls.

And some close up pictures:

We also have some other decorations in the room but I will take pictures of that some other time when everything is finished.

Hope you guys are excited about the upcoming holidays!

Snow in the city

2008-12-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a while. A thick layer of snow is covering Chicago. It's pretty.

As you know or may not know it was Thanksgiving last week. E and I were at my in-laws in Ohio almost all of last week. And that's my excuse why I haven't blogged.

To be quite honest with you - it's not a very good excuse because my in-laws do in fact have internet but oh well.

The good news is that it was a productive week for me. Not only did I experience my first real American Thanksgiving (in America because I have celebrated with American friends in Holland before) but I also made my own Christmas decorations, bonded with my new nephew, did some driving and got a haircut.

But let's start with the first one: The Thanksgiving dinner

My mother in law spent literally the whole day cooking. She made cheesy broccoli, stuffing, gravy, rice, baked sweet potato with marshmallows, of course Turkey, cranberry sauce (which strangely to me comes in slices), salad and brownies as a dessert (I now know where E has gotten his brownie making talents from). My mother in law makes incredibly rich food all the time. They are originally from the South and southerners love their butter. Every time I eat at my in-laws I go into a coma after the meal. In America the Thanksgiving dinner is supposed to

be the fattiest, most filling, most indulgent meal of the year - so you can imagine how I felt after a Thanksgiving dinner prepared by my mother in law. I couldn't sleep all night, my stomach hurt so much. And I hadn't even eaten that much, knowing that I would regret it.

It was very tasty though. See the photo and please be aware that the turkey is already cut up but this wasn't even half of the meat.

Christmas decorations are expensive here! So I decided to make some of my own. We are planning to have a tree this year, so I will need a lot of decoration. My plan was to buy cheap stuff and spray paint it silver and/or glittery. In Chicago they do not sell spray cans because they worry that it might be used for gang wars (I hate when they have all those glittery Christmas grafitti). So when we were in Ohio I went and got some spray paint. I also bought a bag of pine cones and some stars made of carton (to spray silver). Since I wasn't sure if I could bring the cans on the plane, I did it all right there. I might have ruined one of my mother in laws little tables though. Sorry about that.

I don't have a picture of that yet but I will post some pictures before Christmas when we have all the decorations up.

My new nephew is really cute. He was born 12 days ago - 2 weeks early but he already weighed 5 1/2 kilos when he was born (they actually induced labor because he was so big). I wonder if he still thinks he is in the tummy because he spends pretty much all of the time rolled up in fetus position, asleep. Nothing can wake him up when he is asleep. Maybe the day he was actually supposed to be born he will magically wake up and be a lively baby. Anyway, he is still a very cute boy and I am glad that the "I am still living with my parents" t-shirt I gave his parents as a present fits him.

Unfortunately due to his enormousness my sister in law had to have a c-section and has not fully recovered from that yet. She is going to be OK but obviously she is exhausted and in pain and will be for a while.

I am not sure how many of my friends know that I have a drivers license. I took my driving exam (and passed) a few month before I moved to Holland, so I didn't practice a whole lot in the last 7 years. And I had always been terribly afraid of the streets. I know at some point I will have to drive here though. Once we have children in a few years I am sure we will have to get a car. I actually have to re-take my driving exam here after six month because America does not accept the Austrian license. So I went out with E to drive around Akron and the neighboring towns and I did pretty well. First of all of course all the cars here are automatic which makes it much easier. I never really liked driving a manual and changing gears. Also with age I lost the fear, I got much more confident and much more alert. I used to have real issues concentrating on the road and I feel that I am way more focused today than I had been. So we went driving three times. I went on the highway, I drove at night, I even drove at night on the highway ... and I think once I practice parking in the city I will be ready to take my drivers license here. I am planning on doing it in February, so I can get some more experience around Christmas and then in Chicago after that.

Being able to drive felt like a real achievement.

As I said above - I also got a new haircut. I have this hairdresser in Ohio which cuts both my sister in laws and my mother in laws hair. It costs 12 dollars to get a cut and 22 dollars to get a cut and style. And I think that woman - who works at a hairdressing chain called Famous hair - is one of the best hair dressers who ever gave me a haircut. So originally I just wanted a trim. I looked like a shaggy hippie and some of my hair needed to go. But then, sitting there and waiting for my hair dresser to be done, I decided I wanted a new haircut too. It's not crazy different. I pretty much got the same haircut I used to have my first few years in Holland. It's shorter in the front and layered all around. My hair definitely looks healthier but I actually have to style it with products and a big brush and blow dry it and stuff which I don't like to do. It also makes me look a bit younger. I have noticed that people treat me a bit different in stores. I am probably imagining a lot of it but I had a funny thing happen to me yesterday.

I was at the grocery store and the girl at the check out had a heated conversation with the bag packing boy. She can't have been much older than 17 and the bag packing boy was about her age.

Bag packing boy: So when you go out, you hang out with your guy friends?

Check out girl: NO WAY! Boys are dirty! I don't trust them, when I go out, I go out with my girlfriends only!

Bag packing boy: Why you don't trust boys?

Check out girl: Well, you can't trust them, they all have dirty minds and will totally abuse a situation when you are like drunk and stuff! All girls think that! Girls don't go out partying with their guy friends!

Bag packing boy: I don't know ...

Check out girl: TOTALLY! Boys are nasty! Right? (looking at me) When you go party, you go out with your girls, right? Because boys are nasty!

Me: Uhm, yeah (hiding my wedding ring because I feel flattered she thinks I am still a young party girl who is afraid to be molested by her guy friends)

Check out girl to bag boy: See!

So here is a pic

ture of my new haircut plus my nephew.

I actually tried to blog live from Starbucks today. I was completely unlucky the first time. I went and even got a large coffee, so I would have an excuse to sit there for a while and do my blogging and stuff (since I have this beautiful iBook I should also use it as such and take it outside sometimes) but by the time I got my coffee the place had completely filled up and I could not get a seat. So I walked into a different neighborhood and there was a completely empty Starbucks. By that time my feet hurt from walking a lot and I decided to go there and have a cup of tea. Once there I wanted to log into their wireless but it didn't let me. Anybody knows how to use wireless at Starbucks? I know they have free wireless but how do I use it? Or is it p

ossible that not all Starbucks have wireless?

If you have any idea, please let me know!

I did use the time there doing some picture editing though.

And after that I went to a thrift store (cheap second hand store). They had tons of worn out, expensive brand shoes. There was a pair of Manolos for 7 dollars but you could see it had been worn quite a bit. There were many pairs of Ferragamos but they were from the 70s and looked like old ladies shoes. And they also were quite worn out. I asked myself is it better to buy used shoes that once were really expensive or cheap shoes that are new? So far I have been going for the cheap new shoes. But nevertheless I had never seen a pair of Manolos for 7 dollars ...

What would you do?

How the media controls our life or why grown ups still believe in fairy tales

2008-11-24T11:20:00.000-08:00

I am a self-proclaimed media junkie.

It all started when I was 3 or 4 years old and very sick. I wasn't allowed to leave the house for about a year. I started watching TV 24/7 (well, from 9am-11pm - back then in Austria there was no TV between 11pm and 9am) which eventually led to my mother selling our TV set. Well that and our financial situation at the time. Being a single mom is not easy.

After my mother had sold the TV I started listening to the radio day and night and going through my mother's magazines even though I only learned to read a year or two later.

I bought my first magazine at 7 years old - it was Minnie Mouse magazine (which has since sadly been discontinued). By age 10 I was up to reading 8 magazines a month.

I had become addicted. I had become a media junkie. Craving entertainment on a daily basis.

I can easily go a day or a week without TV or without radio or without magazines or newspapers or internet but all of them at once - that's a problem.

I do however realize that there is a lot of junk in the media. The media is telling us women to have big boobs and small bums and that nobody will ever love us if we don't know how to walk in 5 inch stiletto heels and give BJs to random dudes in dirty club toilets (thank you for that British Cosmo, I am glad I said goodbye to you a long time ago). The media wants men to have a full head of hair and hairless backs, they want men to believe that only the macho, the asshole will get the girl, that it's ok to put women down because deep down - that's what we want, right? (not right, just to clarify that)

But that's stuff we eventually grow out off. At some point (most) boys and girls realize that it's ok to be yourself and that there probably is somebody who will love you just the way you are.

Is that the point were we can start enjoying the media without feeling the need to conform to the image of what the media portrays as perfect?

No because once we are done with having a poor self image we move on to the next stage of our lives - relationships.

I once read a very interesting article about the topic. It was all about how growing up with fairy tales (and romantic movies - which are pretty much also based on fairy tales) influences our relationships. If you look at the basic setup of a fairy tale/romantic movie it's almost always the same: Prince and princess want to fall in love. Something happens that keeps them from falling in love. The two can only happily be together once these issues are solved.

This leads to people believing that it is impossible to just fall in love and be happy. There must be an obstacle otherwise it cannot be the real deal. If there is no obstacle you either must create one or dump the other person because he or she is not the "one". I have seen this happen with people and I think most people have. That's why some women are drawn to "bad boys" and some men to nutty girls who treat them like crap (because maybe they can change them ...).

So let's assume you managed that part and you actually are in a serious relationship -there is the next obstacle - the portrayal of relationships in todays television:

It all started with "Married with children". A married couple that absolutely loathes each other. That show was on for 11 seasons! Since then we have had countless others - not as extreme as this one but the topic is the same - wife and husband shouldn't like each other too much.

As much as I disliked "Married with children" at least Peggy and Al were equally unlikable. These days the couples in these shows are made of a funnyish, unattractive, dumb, uneducated, "kind of macho but more on the soft side" slob of a guy and a sweet, pretty, smart, superhousewife with a bit of quirkiness to her (so she doesn't appear too perfect).

Anyway - the content of these shows is always the same, be it "King of Queens" or "Still Standing" or "According to Jim". The husband feels like he can't do as much as he would like to - because he is married. And obviously being in a relationship is like being caged up. So he does something stupid which makes his wife angry and they bitch at each other. The wife will spend every episode looking like a nag and the husband spends every episode looking like a (supposedly lovable) idiot.

And you know what - people start thinking that's the way a relationship is like. They might not do it consciously but they think it's normal - maybe even fun - to bicker all day long.

The problem with that is that if you do it long enough as a joke it eventually will become reality. And after jokingly bickering about everything for a while - how do you know when you are actually really having a fight? And ... well ... it's just not nice to not be nice to each other if you love each other. Call me a romantic sob but I do believe what I am saying here.

There is an easy thing to do about this - it's not watching these shows. Luckily there are shows who embrace liking each other - my favorite being "How I met your mother". I used to like "Dharma and Greg" for the same reason.

So with all that being said - enjoy the entertainment industry. That's what it's made for but don't let it get to you.