Saturday Nico picked us up at 10am and we drove over to the outdoor tennis courts on the far side of town to meet up with some others on the team and get the clay courts ready for play. It was just the second true day of spring, in my opinion, and it was a beauty. Sun blazing, temps in the upper 60s or low 70s, not a cloud in sight, a bit of a cooling breeze. We wore shorts and tees and were immediately put to work pulling tables and chairs out of the storage bungalows, then scraping, raking, shoveling, and wheelbarrowing 2 tons of old red clay sand off the 3 courts, and then wheelbarrowing, shoveling, spreading, raking, and smoothing 2 tons of new sand onto them. It took all day and was very, very hard work. But Nico broke out the beer at 11am (I love the German work ethic--from what I can tell, any kind of work deserves beer asap, regardless of time of day) so everyone enjoyed themselves.
Wolfgang barbequed bratwursts, chicken breasts, and pork steaks and we ate and drank beer for an hour, still in the sun. Besides me and Wolfgang's daughter, it was all men, mostly older guys. And as we were finishing lunch and some people were headed back out to pick up shovels, Wolfgang said something in German that included my name. I looked at Bill for translation. With a sly little grin, he said that Wolfgang had just announced that his daughter and I could clean up lunch. Wow. Okay. All I could do was laugh and start clearing the men's plates. When I was done washing dishes, I sat with Bill on the lawn overlooking the courts and told him that if these men were going to expect me to embody their outdated ideas of gender roles, then I was going to reciprocate and let the men do the hard labor for a while. So I stretched out in the sun, in full view of the courts, and napped for an hour.
When I woke up, feeling a bit guilty and dazed from the sun, I did go back out and reclaim my shovel. Bill had his tennis headband tied around his forehead all day, and got a pretty hilarious tan line between his sunburned face and his winter-white forehead. Luckily, his hair covers the worst of it so hopefully his students won't tease him too terribly. I got some sunburn too, on my arms and shoulders. Pretty mild, but seeing as it was the first sun to touch my skin in 5 months, I was fairly knocked out by it, spent the evening slightly feverish and unable, because of sore muscles, to move much from the couch. We were absolute slugs that night. Could barely finish the one beer we had with dinner, then slept like logs for 12 hours. Delicious.
And now, hopefully, the bit of color on my skin will forestall most of my mum's traditional teasing about my ghostly whiteness and devotion to 55 spf sunscreen.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
A few notes...
while the internet is being cooperative.
-- Two days ago, looking out the window, we saw a saddled horse, sans rider, galloping wildly down a hill and then down the road. The whole neighborhood was in a fuss, all the neighbors out to try to catch it. A man in a riding helmet and boots went running down the road after it. We don't know what eventually happened.
-- When we were at Afterwork last Friday night, an enormous touring bus pulled up onto the pedestrian part of the square right outside, and in came the Munster professional handball team to have a drink on their way home from a match in Aue. Every player was enormous and drunk. They bought at least four bottles of whiskey and rum, as well as coke to accompany, and dozens of beers. The bartenders had to get out new glasses because they didn't have enough to serve everyone.
-- Neckermann man, the oldish dude who works in the secondhand shop and is always drunk and drinking alone (it's a very pitiable sight), was greeted as an old friend by some players on the Munster team because, we were told, he was once a professional handball player.
-- Our students can't throw snowballs at us as we leave school anymore, because all of the snow has melted (!).
-- Herr Lehm drove us to get beer yesterday, saying he needed to go anyway to buy some fleisch salat. That translates to meat salad, which is exactly what it was. Like a potato salad, but with various kinds of meat, in mayo. Gross.
-- Bill started streaming the new episode of Lost before he went to school yesterday. He came home, and we were very excited to sit down and watch. Thirty seconds into the episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's vampire boyfriend comes onto the screen. Bones had streamed instead of Lost. Gross.
-- In a week we leave for Holland to meet my Dutch cousins. We'll be staying with two middle-aged alpaca farmers. We're curious to see if they're pot smokers.
-- Two days ago, looking out the window, we saw a saddled horse, sans rider, galloping wildly down a hill and then down the road. The whole neighborhood was in a fuss, all the neighbors out to try to catch it. A man in a riding helmet and boots went running down the road after it. We don't know what eventually happened.
-- When we were at Afterwork last Friday night, an enormous touring bus pulled up onto the pedestrian part of the square right outside, and in came the Munster professional handball team to have a drink on their way home from a match in Aue. Every player was enormous and drunk. They bought at least four bottles of whiskey and rum, as well as coke to accompany, and dozens of beers. The bartenders had to get out new glasses because they didn't have enough to serve everyone.
-- Neckermann man, the oldish dude who works in the secondhand shop and is always drunk and drinking alone (it's a very pitiable sight), was greeted as an old friend by some players on the Munster team because, we were told, he was once a professional handball player.
-- Our students can't throw snowballs at us as we leave school anymore, because all of the snow has melted (!).
-- Herr Lehm drove us to get beer yesterday, saying he needed to go anyway to buy some fleisch salat. That translates to meat salad, which is exactly what it was. Like a potato salad, but with various kinds of meat, in mayo. Gross.
-- Bill started streaming the new episode of Lost before he went to school yesterday. He came home, and we were very excited to sit down and watch. Thirty seconds into the episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's vampire boyfriend comes onto the screen. Bones had streamed instead of Lost. Gross.
-- In a week we leave for Holland to meet my Dutch cousins. We'll be staying with two middle-aged alpaca farmers. We're curious to see if they're pot smokers.
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