It is moving time again

Forwarded address:
we have no house number yet, the house is brand new.

Chemin du hameau du Plan
04800 Gréoux-les-Bains

France

don't have a phone number yet. movers come this friday and we will be on the road by saturday. we should arrive in Greoux sometime btw sunday and monday depending on whether or not we stop over at Coralie's house. the neighbors are giving us a good-bye party with the neighborhood on friday at 4 PM. not sure what to expect. Anais and austin will have a good-bye party on wednesday at kindergarten. as usual i have too much to do before friday. xavier flies in thursday night on his birthday. i have to do some presorting now and have accomplished most of what i need to do so it is ok. the kids have off on thursday so not sure what we'll do. i still have to call friends here and say good-bye. not everyone knows we're leaving. some people are sad, some probably not.

i'm not sure how i feel. i don't really feel anything to be honest. i have some friends here and i will miss them but that is about it. i think i will miss some things about germany and about bavaria. bavaria is really beautiful with the rolling meadows, green pine forests and mountains. when it is sunny, it is heaven. it's just sunny maybe 1 out of 3-4 days. i won't miss the rain. what can i say, there is a reason why it is so green. it is cold when it rains even in the summer, so a summer day can be quite extreme in temperature based on how much sun there is. i will miss the recycling attitude, germany is very pro-environment. i might even miss its directness. i had a hard time with people telling me what to do. i was always extremely affronted, but after 5 yrs, i'm used to it and find myself adapting to it. people are just trying to be helpful when they give you advice off the street, they don't mean anything bad by it. i'm not offended anymore. i found that my biggest problem was MY intolerance. i was the one who would not tolerate german culture and i had to adapt. it took a good 3 yrs to understand the culture and be able to adapt to it. it also helps when you make a lot of progress in the language then you can actually communicate and there is less room open for misunderstandings, which happens all the time at the beginning.

everyone thinks we'll be happier in france. xavier seems happier despite being away from the kids. he has been gone now for 1 month and i think for him being away is very tough. for me it has been interesting. i miss xavier and his companionship but i have been quite busy and socialable so it hasn't been that hard to be honest. i was sad during the time before he left but accepted it to be as it is and it was ok. i'm happy and looking forward to seeing him again soon. the kids really miss their papa. i feel a little odd not being too sad. it's kind of strange. i was very very sad when i left texas, but that was also my friends, my surrogate family in austin, and my family and culture knowing i was going to be cut off for a long time. yes, i was very very sad to leave the US and i did start to cry in Jill's car when she dropped me off at the airport. it was hard.

moving to france will be considerably less difficult. my main worries are not knowing where i am or where to shop for groceries, cat litter, things like that. we'll have lots of things to change over like car registration, insurances, kids schools, etc. it's not the end of the world, it's just a lot of work. xavier has already been working diligently on the papers and school registrations on his side. we are trying to get anais into the int'l school in manosque. we'll see if we can pull it off or not. i hope it's free but we don't even know if there is a price.

beyond that everything is more or less normal here. i'm getting anxious to get out of here, kind of antsy you know? i just want to get it over with. it is still really odd not to feel sadness. i don't know what's wrong? i don't feel joy either, just mostly little stresses and worries. i'm worried for anais more than anything else. she will feel the move the most and i don't like taking her away from her friends. even if we stayed here, she would have to go to a different school than her friends anyway because we live out of district and i couldn't get her into holzkirchen where she is going to kindergarten. i find the people feeding into the local school a little dorfisch (too small town) i feel much better with the holzkircheners. my friends are either ausländers (foreigners) or people who have lived abroad. i'm sure it will be the same in france. xavier already has more friends in france in less than 1 month than he has had here in germany in 5 yrs.

germans are very reserved. socially it's like doing a waltz, you don't really touch anyone and you keep dancing around in circles but never get really close. americans don't dance around in circles. there is no formality to making friends. we don't have walls that you need to climb over. we either like each other or we don't. not sure how it is in france. i think it is inbtw US and Germany socially. my language inability was my largest single barrier to creating friendships and relationships. it was very difficult more than anything else. the one thing i have truly learned in germany is isolation. my 9 months in dresden were probably some of the worst if not THE worst 9 months of my life. a woman with no ability to socialize in any remedial way with ANYONE, day in and day out, not able to speak to anyone or have any friends is like taking a flower and depriving her of water and sun. I don't EVER want to experience that again. it is isolation to the fullest and it is hard. you don'T make an effort getting into any social organization if even one exists in dresden because you know you are leaving soon, you just don't have the exact date. the stress i have now is peanuts compared to what i experienced in dresden. xavier and i were like puppets on a string being pulled in every direction and not knowing when the strings will be pulled by his boss and by the restructureing of his company.

moving employees around happens a lot in germany. if you want to get ahead then you have to move the minute they decide they want to put you in Dortmund, Dresden, Frankfurt, you name it. many families end up split. the wife and children remain in one place while the husband moves to another city for a yr or 2 while he works for the same exact company, just because some boss in his company decides it. he has to be a good soldier or his career will suffer. woman only follow for a time until they stop and plant themselves and their family because it's not fair to the children. everyone agrees this company culture is stupid and accomplishes nothing, but that is the way it is, so people have to just accept it. it is very specific to german culture, not sure why.

the good thing about germans is their impeccable tidiness. you can literally eat off their floor. you can eat off any part of a german's house, it is so impeccably clean. germans are clean, organized, perfectionists. the gardens and lawns are tended to with perfection and love and care. wood logs are stacked evenly and covered appropriately so as to not get wet when it rains. clothes are mended and ironed. homes are cleaned at least 1X a week and floors are swept at least every day. toys are organized into their appropriate boxes as well as papers and mail. i have never seen a country so organized in my life. people take great pride in their homes and in their work. a housewife is a job and is upheld to perfection. cakes are all homemade. homework is overseen by mom. kids are taken to sports adn music lessons by mom. acutally men go to work and women do everything else. i say men work but women make the world go 'round. i'm very impressed by german women. they do so much, most of which is never paid. they don't complain or anything, it's just normal. i have the impression though that they believe their work to be inferior to that of a man's. i alone seem to hold the opposite view. in america we would call them supermoms. the minimum bar is just held so high as a mother it's kind of impressive. a lot of mom's still work part time. i think most feel it too much of a strain to work full time, which i understand. imagine an entire country of perfection. men go to work without question and do whatever their companies ask of them, sacrifice everything for their work without question or standing up to authority, good soldiers. women taking care of the welfare of the family, children, home, education, and some work on top of that. it is a very efficient country filled with pride in every identity. everyone takes their work very seriously no matter how menial a job, no matter how little education one has, all work is done with pride and accomplished to perfection. i think i will miss this the most. the pride, the perfection, the cleanliness, the reliability of germans. when a german says something, they mean it. if a german says they are going to do something, or invite you to their home, they mean it. they are wonderfully reliable. i hope it is the one thing i have learned from them becuase i always felt myself to be flaky and unreliable and late. i hope i have changed for the better from germany.

we will soon see. france is a very different culture. i'm curious to see how i will react. it's been 10 yrs since i lived in france and a lot has happened in those 10 yrs. i think i've matured a little i suppose, not sure in which way though. sometimes you are sure of certain things you need to experience in order to advance in life, you know? being a mom will advance in a certain way because it has its challenges. the next step for me is to work independently for myself and hopefully employ other people. this is my next goal in france. that will afford me a whole new learning experience and i have more skills that can be sold in france than in the US. my biggest set backs now are lack of concentration or making choices, lack of focus and fear. i will have to make a decision adn get over my fear pretty fast. i have until christmas to get my situation cleared becuase xavier has a job only until then for sure. worst case scenario he will be unemployed again by christmas. i chose to be stable now. we want to buy a house in 1 yr. that is the goal, so i plan on sticking to it. i want to have a pied a terre in europe and one in the states, minimum. i think it is important and completely feasible.

that is all the news there is here. anais had her birthday party yesterday. i think it was a big success. her best friends are very sad she is leaving. i think anais is sad too. she has made it very clear she does not want to go to school in french, she wants to go to school in english and if not english, then german. i told her she will have to learn french anyway, but we will see what we can do. if we can get her into the int'l school, it will be half english half french, which would be perfect for her. i think she would be soooo happy with other internationals who are all in the same boat. her 2 best friends are internationals. 1 mom is polish living in germany, the other is german but lived in hong kong for 3 yrs and went to an english speaking kindergarten. interesting. i can't blame her, i'm better friends with both their mommy's as well.

i hope this blog hasn't been too negative. i have been getting a little criticism about my negativity. don't mean to be whiny or anything, sometimes i just put out some of my frustrations on paper i suppose. i hope you are all well. and i will be dropping off the radar for sometime until we get the phone line straightened out. with the moves and paying double rents, we are going to be very short on cash, so the phone line might wait until july or even later. so i will let you know when i get back online. i hope you have a nice summer and don't worry if you don't hear any news for awhile, this is how it goes i suppose. speak to you again soon.

love, jennel