My Last Weekend in Dresden

I still can't believe that it was almost a year ago that we packed everything up to come over the ocean to Dresden.  And I really can't believe that in two days I'll be back in the US for good.

I had to make sure to make the most of my last weekend in Dresden...

Friday night we had a going away dinner for some of our other friends who left yesterday (they're going to Malta, NY too).  Then we participated in a free-style powerpoint party.  Yeah... my husband and his work friends are super nerds.  It was really silly though.

Yesterday we took one more trip to the trödelmarkt to see all the silly things people sell.  It was a beautiful summery Dresden day and it was nice to take a long walk.  Then my mom and I did some last minute baby shopping so the new baby can have all sorts of awesome German clothes and toys!

Last night we walked to the Neustadt for dinner at Ausonia, our favorite pizza place.  We were lucky to walk through the wine festival on the way there.

On the way home, we saw an awesome saxophone quartet.

The moon was almost full and we snapped some beautiful pictures of Dresden at night as we walked over the bridge on the way back to our apartment.

There were even fireworks!

Today we walked back over to Neustadt for brunch.  We happened upon another big event- A Dresden bike tour.  We didn't participate, but it was fun to see all the people lined up with their bikes!

After brunch, we drove out to Pesterwitz to go cherry picking.  Germany is known for their sour cherries- specifically schattenmorelen, which are often used in baking.  They are fantastic, but definitely sour!!  Cherry picking was a ton of fun... with the exception of the old, scary, mean German lady that we had to talk to to get a box and find out where exactly to pick...

Here's the "three" of us :)

mmm... sour cherries... 

This afternoon, we finally made it to the Albertinum, the newly renovated art museum in Dresden.  I figured that being an art teacher, I should probably go to the biggest art museum in Dresden before I left!

Tomorrow will be a day of packing and getting Bob ready for the movers, and then Tuesday I'll say goodbye to Dresden...

So... this is it for Miss Kris living in Germany.

This blog will still be here (which I'm so glad about, because it's awesome to have something to look back on and remember my year here), but I won't be posting here anymore.  Thanks to all of you who've read this throughout the year... I loved the feeling of still being connected to people back home...

From now on, I'll be posting about (almost) being a mom and our new life in Malta, NY at www.dribblesnibblesscribbles.blogspot.com.  It might not be quite as kid-friendly, as I expect some upcoming mom-rants, but I'd love to have you follow our new adventures...
I probably won't be posting for a few weeks, but check back soon!!

The English Alphabet Book is Done!!

Okay, so it only took me a month or so longer than I promised, but I've finally finished the English-only version of From Alligator to Zebra: An Alphabet of Animals!



It was tricky because I didn't know what to put on the back.  My story doesn't really have a plot, so I couldn't write a summary.  I don't have any other children's books published, so I couldn't put a biography. I finally decided on a preview of my next books.  My goal once moving back to the US is to get a publisher to like my idea enough to publish the first English/German book and then agree to publish versions in Spanish, French and Italian-- wish me luck, I guess it's a hard field to break in to!

A Great Weekend

This past weekend, our friend from college, Ray, came to visit us from Belgium where he's working on his PhD.

We did tons of fun stuff.  We went to a birthday party for another friend and got to play with his new kittens (aww....).

Saturday we slept in then took a (really long) walk along the river, stopping at a few beer gardens along they way.  We were lucky enough to see the trödelmarkt again and even to catch a small street festival!  We hung out with our friends at our favorite beer garden, the Augustus Garten and then went to dinner at an all you can eat sushi buffet.

Saturday night there was an awesome fireworks display, which totally made up for missing the fireworks on the 4th of July.

Sunday we saw these crazy people pretending to waterski in the fountain outside the McCafe by our house.

We also got brunch, hung out with a few friends to say goodbye since we won't see them again before we leave, and just relaxed outside before Ray had to fly back home.

Three More Months

In three months we'll be three people instead of two!  Hard to imagine with all the other stuff going on right now, but it's pretty exciting.

Her face is on the right.  I don't know why there's a mini brontosaurus in there with her... these ultrasounds are so confusing to look at... 

Two Weeks?!?!?

Ack!  Two weeks from now at this time I will (hopefully) be on a plane (with two sleeping --yeah, right-- cats) to Munich on my way home from Germany!!  Can you believe it?  I certainly can't.  I might have said this before, but I can't believe how fast this year has flown by!

It's ridiculous.

I'm almost finished Part II of my latest project, Jungle Nursery.

Here's what it's going to look like on the wall (I hope).

I know, its hard to see when it's so tiny... but it's going to be fantastic.  We might even have to make one for our bedroom... 

A New Website

Part of getting ready to move back to the US is going to be trying to find some part-time work.  Hopefully, I can get From A to Z: An Alphabet of Animals professionally published... but I'm also sending out my artwork to try to get some freelance work.

I've always wanted my very own website with my name and no ".blogspot" or ".googlepages" or anything at the end, so I finally got one!  Check it out!

I'm also working on putting my jungle animals from the nursery into Adobe Illustrator so I can resize them easily onto canvas.  Here are a few:

The next step is adding jungle foliage around them.  Each one is going to go on its own canvas, but all the canvases will be hung together to look like a wall mural.  

Polish Pottery

On Wednesday I took a trip with a seasoned "Polish Pottery Buyer" to Boleslawiec, Poland.  The little town is famous for their handmade, hand-painted pottery, which is a little sturdier than most European pottery and is decorated with beautiful geometric designs.

I've been wanting to go to Poland for the pottery since I got here because I've heard so many stories about how awesome it is and how cheap the pottery is to buy.

Well, it wasn't that cheap, but I still made out pretty well on my one-day shopping spree.  I mean, when is the next time I'll ever be in Boleslawiec, Poland, right??

all the awesome stuff I bought!!

In other news, since I only have 19 days left in Dresden (yikes!), I'm going to try to start publishing posts on my new blog since "Miss Kris in Germany" won't really fit once I get back home.  To read about how I feel about the construction that is now taking place in my building, click here.

A Valued Inventory

I spent my lovely Tuesday of sunny 80 degree weather in my apartment.

"Why?" you ask...

Well, for starters, 80 is too hot.  Seriously.  If I go outside and come in 5 minutes later sweating, it's too hot.  And as much as I love doing laundry, I'm not doing 6 loads a day because every time I go and come in I have to change my clothes.

I happily enjoyed the weather by looking out the windows, which probably would have served to cool my apartment down a wee bit more had they been open all the way.  BUT since Germans have not invented screens that work yet (read "think a piece of netting that you tape onto your window is a screen"), I have to keep the windows tilted (read "only open 4 inches at the top and slanting inward") so that my kitties don't escape into the scary streets of Dresden.

Also, I have lists of things to get done, all of which are still NOT done, as I have become an expert procrastinator.

One of those things is our Valued Inventory- a fun little spread sheet that details the value of all the goods to be shipped back to the US.

Doesn't sound too bad, right?

WRONG.  In every way.

This lovely spread sheet is about 43 (okay, maybe 2) pages long.  Divided into section by room.  Lists all objects you might own that would be present in each room along with space for the number of items, cost of items, color and approximate dimension (okay, those last two are exaggerations...).  Keep in mind when completing the spreadsheet that any items of dissimalar value should be listed separately.  SERIOUSLY?

Can't I just say "kitchen- $3000" and call it done?

So I have dilligently walked through each room in my house making tick marks and unreadable notes about items on scrap paper so that I can come back to the spread sheet, look at the paper, wonder "what the heck does this mean?" and go back and do it all another couple times before finally writing down numbers of and values of all the things I have.

This is one of those times when I wish I had less things.

5 hours, 1 headache, a quick nap, and 2 freak outs later, I think its done.

YAY!


ps.

Dear Shipping people,

I have completed my valued inventory to the best of my ability.  I did not, however, find it necessary to count the number of pairs of underwear or socks I own and group them by similar value.  I'm pretty sure they all came from Target anyway.  And I just guessed how much they cost.  Also, after looking up all the electronic equipment we own on bestbuy.com and officedepot.com, I decided that we don't have that great of stuff.  So I might have rounded up a bit to get the next best model in case the ship carrying our stuff sinks.  That doesn't happen very often anyway, right?  And for the record, we don't even have a dishwasher, and if we did, we wouldn't be shipping it home; if we owned a "portable radio" I wouldn't even write it down because it would probably be more valuable as a doorstop; I am not a writer and certainly don't own a typewriter; and what about sofas? I'm pretty sure everyone has a sofa...

Thank you for wasting 5 hours of my life.  Just for that, I hope the ship sinks because after completing your stupid form, I think I'd much rather have the chunk of money than all my things.  In fact, why don't you save yourselves a couple days of work and just leave our stuff here and write us a check?

Sincerely,

Kris.

Mallorca, Spain

This weekend, we took our last vacation outside of Germany.  It was awesome, but a little sad at the same time...

Mallorca is an island off the coast of Spain and for us, it was pretty much a beach vacation- the three S's : Sun, Sand, and Sleeping.  Of course there were other fun things that didn't start with S too.  Like frozen drinks, the pool, and a sweet mini-golf course.  But more on that later.

We decided to call our trip to Mallorca our honeymoon since we never really took one.  In a way, I guess our whole year in Germany has kind of been like an extended honeymoon... but in my book, honeymoons don't include washing dishes, doing laundry, or making dinner.  So this was it.

I won't write a detailed play-by-play of our trip, but I'll highlight some of the most awesome things (there's only so much "and then we went to the pool" you can take).

We arrived early Thursday morning to an overcast sky :(.

We were too early to check in, so we had to carry around a lot of our stuff (the baggage room didn't seem to safe...).  But as soon as the sun came out and we were lying on the beach, we were happy as clams.

When we did get our room, it was fabulous- on the top floor of the hotel with a balcony overlooking the sea!

For the most part, we spent our time lounging under palm umbrellas on the beach

swimming in the sea, lounging by the pool,

swimming in the pool, drinking fantastic frozen drinks while people watching, eating, and relaxing.


Saturday, we went into the city of Palma de Mallorca to do some touristy sight-seeing.  The best part was Poble Espanyol.  It was a small walled village with reconstructions of architecture from all over Spain.  It was like taking a two week vacation through Spain in just two hours with NO TRAVELING!

Arriving back in the center of the city, we were lucky enough to catch the changing of the Guards in front of this awesome cathedral!

That evening, we went to the awesomest mini-golf place with fantastic food.  It was the House of Katmandu and was probably the coolest building for a mini-golf/restaurant to be housed in EVER.

Sunday was the day to get in all the things we'd missed so far.

We took out a paddle boat and paddled around the mini-island in the inlet

And even went to the fish spa to get the dead skin eaten off our feet!!

it tickled.  A LOT.

We were both sad that we had to leave, but it was an awesome last trip in Europe (at least for a while!).

Time for One More Project??

With less than one month left in Germany, my days and weekends seem pretty full.  I have to get all our stuff ready to be packed since it will leave a few days after I fly back, I have to make sure to visit all my favorite places one last time, Thursday we leave for Mallorca, Spain for the weekend, we have one more weekend to take a day trip or hang out at the beer gardens, then a weekend with a college friend who's visiting, and then my mom arrives to help us get our stuff together and take the cats back.  I'm tired just thinking about it...

But I was inspired this weekend by these wall decals I found online...

www.weegallery.com

I am so excited to decorate a nursery for our new little monkey, even if it won't be for a while... 

In preparation, I started some sketches of jungle animals.  I read that babies like big, bold patterns because they can't recognize whole images for a while... so here are a few of them... 

Maybe I won't have time to turn them into paintings before I leave, but at least they'll be ready!