Pouchain Family News Jan 2009

Well the outlook is not so good for us currently. Xavier is suing his company. He did not take the severance package because if he had, he would not be able to sue the company. And as we are finding out this week, if he had taken the severance package, he wouldn't have recieved a dime of it anyway.

Suing the company was a choice we made and each option had good and bad points at the time we had to make this decision, we tried to make the best decision possible with the all the information we had available. Qimonda may not exist anymore by the time our law suit will be finished. We thought Xavier would be able to continue working at Qimonda (best case scenario) during his law suit, however, 3 weeks ago, he was walked out of work with all his personl items confiscated. Now he will be paid until the end of march, then we will go onto unemployment.

As of this past Friday, Qimonda has filed insolvency (chapter 11), so we may be entitled to nothing if the company even exists in the future. On top of that, they will not be paying any bonuses at all that are normally due out in Feb, which is a very large chunk of money. No one is happy about that and I'm not sure how that's legal, but evidently, Qimonda is unable to meet payroll. They are also capping salaries for the next months in existance, which means we will get even less money than Xavier's normal paycheck through the end of March. This is actually much worse than our worse case scenario. We also bought a bunch of Qimonda stock thinking their assets were worth more than the stock price. I would like Qimonda to survive so we don't lose all of our investment. The lowest recent value of Qimonda stock is 5 cents per share...Oops.

Xavier had an interview in Toulon, the south of France on the Mediterranean, but that didn't work out either. We did have a lot of hope riding on that job. He interviewed with 5 people that day, one being the head of his division; a new head of division whom Xavier would have worked directly under and who had started that job one week prior and had a different idea for the direction of that dept than the people who wanted to hire Xavier. This new guy would have been his boss, so it was pure luck that he shot the idea down during that interview. Had we moved the entire family there, Xavier would go through a 6 month trial period, and would have been fired like within a week of starting that job solely due to a change in bosses and his ideas for that dept. Our lives are deeply affected by something as trivial as a change in managers. It's really horrible.

The market is pretty bad right now and a lot of educated people are out there floating around. It's not the best time to be unemployed and it's not the best time to be unemployed and foreign. In times of economic crisis all countries save jobs for their own people. It's only in times of surplus do they give jobs to foreign workers and immigrants. Xavier would do the best in France. However, irregardless of the rest of the world, France seems to have been able to maintain itself in a consistant economic recession of sorts since the Reagan era.

I went to the Arbeitsamt last week to get registered to start looking for work and getting answers. It seems as though I will have a hard time finding a job and am better off being self-employed. I was worried about my German because I don't think it's very good and I never really went to school to improve it. I write how I speak which is not correct. There is a spoken language and a written language. I just don't have enough practice reading and writing German. In all honesty, 2 years ago I would have had a hard time going to the Arbeitsamt in the first place because I wouldn't have been able to understand anything the guy said to me.

Living in Germany is like being a fairly intelligent, cognizant person trapped in a retarded person's body. You react to your environment like a retard because you don't have the verbal skills yet to be intelligable. You cannot understand your immediate surroundings and are completely aware of that fact, yet are helpless to do anything about it. As a result, the people immediately around you treat you as though you are retarded because you are incapable of verbally making anything known of any intelligence. You are intelligent and completely conscious of this, yet uable to do anything about it. You can speak beautiful sentences in English all day long, but if the person you're trying to speak to, (i.e. the vast majority) and they speak little or no English, then to them you might as well be speaking Chinese because they won't understand a word of what you're saying either. I am not one to make tons of hand gestures and believe me, this is a culture that doesn't use hand gestures at all. It is the most reserved culture I've ever lived in in my life. It's like living in a cubby hole and being just a cube inside this box. Everything has it's place and nothing out of place will be tolerated. A few examples:

-You are allowed to laugh, but not too loud.
-children are not allowed to stand on any kind of seats with their shoes on (restaurants, trains, etc) you must take their shoes off. Can you imagine a kid taking their shoes off on the 'L' or on the Amtrak?
-You are allowed to play music in your house as long as the neighbors cannot hear it if the windows are open and you are absolutely NOT allowed to play the radio outside in your yard, even if it's on very low (forget the average american barbecue)
-laying down in the grass and playing with a child is just plain bizarre, and I've never whitnessed it
-no german will sit on the floor directly no matter how clean or on the step of a building, they would rather squat
-kids are allowed to swim in the pool, but not jump off the sides of the pool, splash, or play on the rope dividing the shallow end and the deep end
-A woman has 2 choices in life here, a career, upon which she will be a man for all intents and purposes and even dress like one, or have children, upon which her career comes to a screeching halt because she is expected to stay home and be a housewife, or she can work part-time, but kiss any career advancement good-bye. You cannot even become a mgr if people know you have children, b/c they will hold you being a mother against you. When you apply for jobs, it is tolerated for the interviewer to ask you the ages and number of children you have, and yes they hold this against you. School ends btw 11 AM and 1 PM, so the mother is expected to be home from work by then to cook a hot lunch and help educate the children in their homework, because a child spends more hours doing homework than physically in school
-dogs are allowed, but must be leashed, if they poop, then you better have your poop baggy ready. IF you leave dog poop on the ground, you will be in trouble by EVERYONE
-grocery shopping is preferred to be done without children present. If children must be present, then they are not allowed to be loud, or run around the store, and not allowed to laugh. They will be shooshed by everyone, other customers and employees.
-when you enter someone's home, you must take your shoes off before entering, or right upon the entrance at the door.
-When in someone's home, food is restricted to the kitchen or other designated eating area, if you drop a crumb, pick it up
-children are absolutely NOT allowed to touch the windows or any other glass in someone's home, which is difficult since all the doors are made of glass
-when shutting a glass door to someone's home, meaning the door going to the garden, you must only touch the wooden frame
-children are not allowed to have tempertantrums and throw toys because they can dent the fake wooden parket floors
-children are not allowed to put stones from the driveway onto people's terraces, if they do, you are expected to reprimand them, romove the child from the scene, get your broom handy and start sweeping
-you must take your shoes off before jumping on the trampoline in the yard, even when the trampoline is located in your own yard
-you are not allowed to play in the fields of dandelions in the spring because the pollen will stain your clothes
-you are not supposed to sit down on the grass in your yard or anyone else's, even when it's on a blanket. It's just not done. All Germans own expensive patio furniture (except us) because we're the only ones in the village laying on blankets in the front yard.
-you are not allowed to sit in the fields in the village or in any other village, even when the farmer is just growing weeds. I've been yelled at for sitting in the field of wild flowers at the edge of our street with my kids. It's all little girls dreams to roll in a field of wild flowers.
-short shorts are not really worn here. Even when it's 90 degrees people wear pants to the knees
-If you need to wear a bikini in the summer, then you must be laying down sunbathing on your expensive patio furniture, if you need to walk around, then you must put something on over your bathing suit, even in your own yard (everyone can see into our yard)
-however, when you go to the sauna, you must be naked, but must wear specially designed sauna shoes but only up the the outside door of the sauna, then leave the shoes by the door and walk into the sauna barefoot, but you must sit on a towel (there is only 1 sauna for all people together, men and women)
- you can forget about joining your kids on the waterslide and hooting wildly, playing and having fun for an adult is just not done when sober
-adults are only permitted to have fun after drinking a few maß of beer and usually they will be wearing Dirnd'ls and Lederhosen. One Maß is equal to one liter of beer. In other words, adults are only permitted to get loud, laugh and have fun when they are physically located in areas specifically designated for "fun" and only when they are drunk
-you're not allowed to mow your lawn on Sundays or any Holiday
-in some places, you aren't allowed to vaccume inside your own house on a sunday or a holiday (these days are considered ruhe tag)

and the list goes on.....

I don't know any foreigner who is happy here. They mostly seem to be slightly depressed. The ones who are married to Germans, seem to accept their fates with silent resignation. It's like we all have these wonderful glowing spirits, then we come to Germany and our spirits are confined to a box, with thick walls that we are unable to break out of. It's no wonder everyone is depressed.

Something typical happened today, yet I'm still not sure how to deal with this kind of situation. We went to the grocery store and pulled in next to a car in the parking lot, like normal. It was a little tight, but no one meant any harm. Xavier went inside to pick something up with Austin, while I stayed outside with Anais and nursed Nikki in the front seat. An older man came out and had a hard time getting into his car because our cars were parked close together, mind you xavier was perfectly centered in his OWN parking space. This man starts griping at me through my window and yelling at me and glaring at me and staring at me as though I did this on purpose. He didn't ask me to move, he just griped loudly the whole time and griped directly at me. I wasn't sure what he wanted. I'm thinking he didn't expect me to move the car, because doing something nice for another person like that is unheard of in Bavaria and politely asking for someone to move the car is even more unheard of in Bavaria, so my guess is, he wanted me to know he was upset by being aggressive to me, but he didn't actually want to resolve the situation or have any help in the matter. He just wanted to be aggressive in a bizarre kind of passive way. So I looked at him a little, then ignored him, then decided just to stare at him and smile as he backed out while he glared at me. Sometimes I think about trying to politely discuss things with these people, but I have the impression they don't want to learn or understand and certainly don't want to be polite or nice in anyway. They are just miserble and want to gripe and extend their negative energy as far as they can. It's like they exude huge quantities of purely aggressive negative energy. I can honestly say I have never experienced that kind of negative energy in my life before Germany. It really repels me and it happens with a lot of German men. It's like they are dark entities. It kind of makes your skin crawl and you just want to move as far away from these people as possible, but you keep running into them inspite of yourself.

Xavier and I go from being totally stressed out and worried, to being just happy that Xavier is home and we can spend time together. Honestly, I really enjoy spending time with Xavier. We both agree that he has really needed a break for a very long time. In a way everything he has wished for has come true. I really believe everything will be ok. I can feel it, you know? I have this peace inside that tells me, don't worry, keep working at it and be patient. Everything will work itself out. Just try to enjoy the ride being home together as much as you can.

I hope you are all well and that the economic situation hasn't affected too many of you in the states in a negative way. I pray for all of you who have lost their jobs. It's terrible and frustrating and stressful. And it seems to happen to everyone at least once.

I know this sounds like a cliche, but I do feel blessed to be able to share my life with another person. It's hard at times, but it takes so much stress out of life when there is someone standing by your side. I hope Xavier can say the same about me. We went through so much hell coming to Germany. I was pushed to my limits on what I can take, on total isolation and being consciously handicapped. It's been 4 yrs and I still have a hard time even making small talk. The first 2 yrs in Germany was a horror. I had no friends. Not one. I had no one to talk to besides Xavier in the flesh. I couldn't communicate or understand my immediate surroundings. It is very trying to be in that kind of a situation. It isn't fun and it goes way beyond the idea of adventure. Afterall, adventure is supposed to be fun, right? Some people cannot understand the choices we've made. My answer is, "apparently, we like stress."

I hope you are all well. Take care.
Love,
Jennel