Here is a picture of Brandi and Emilia, the participants of the First International Chihuahua Conference, held in this house on Saturday, Sept. 19. Johannes, Henrich and Ulla's son, and his girlfriend have Emilia, who is smaller than Brandi. Since she's been here before, and now Brandi also thinks this is her house, Henrich and I had debated about having the chis meet on the sidewalk (which Henrich decided to call England) when these folks visited from Dusseldorf. However, it was dark when the chis could meet, so the meeting occurred in the main part of the house. All was well, and Emilia fell asleep at one point, so we decided it had been a successful conference since this often happens!! We had a lot of silly fun with the whole thing.
Things have been so busy I haven't even blogged. I participated in the e-mail conversation about the NMU faculty contract. I did a lot at school, getting keys, working with Thomas Degenhardt the IT guy here and Max Graves and Matt Smock there to set up a TV connection such that I can see people in certain rooms at NMU and participate in conferences. Here, the equipment was not used in 2 years, and Max and Thomas had to try several options to get things working. I think we tried on 2 or 3 days for an hour minimum each time. Last night I was able to view a 3-hour conference because of this system, though it was 7-10 p.m. Bielefeld time.
I've made trips to the main train station, getting tickets that I need to meet up with Pete and Heidi late next week in Mainz, where Heidi went to university, then go to Gera where she was in high school, and then come here. We'll have a couple of days here, we'll go up to Flensburg where Grandma Miller was born for Thursday and Friday, Saturday here, and they leave on Sunday! I was able to reserve seats for us on Fridays and Sundays, recommended because those are busy days. Heidi and Pete are traveling today from Mpls to Rome and spending a week working their up, through the Oktoberfest, to Mainz where we'll meet. They're doing train travel on Eurail passes.
I also successfully managed, last Saturday, to wash and dry my laundry at a "washing salon". This is always somewhat scary when all the directions are in another language and you don't want to dye everything one color or shrink your clothes. There are dryers here, which I wasn't sure there would be. The washer cost 4 euros, and drying was 1 euro. I got my jeans and sheet dry in one hot cycle, and will try a slightly hotter cycle for permapress stuff next time. It is great to have clean clothes! On Saturday and Sunday, Rainer took Brandi and me hiking. On Saturday, we walked from here to a nearby Bauernhaus Museum. This is a museum of buildings like they might have been 100 years ago. We laughed about how this is old in American but not old here. On Sunday, he brought along a family friend, Urzel, whose husband was out of town, and her Schweizhund Frieda. A Swiss hound is a hunting dog, though Frieda is a family pet, and I thought she was absolutely beautiful. She has such soft ears! She and Brandi did nicely together. We hiked in a forest area and ate lunch at a nice open-air restaurant. I had the best schnitzel I've had in my life, basically due to the outstanding mushroom sauce. Sehr gute!
This week I've been working on things at school, getting my keys for various things, working on the TV business, and trying to solidify arrangements to visit Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Winterthur, Switzerland, St. Etienne, France, and VIC University near Barcelona, Spain. This gets complicated because we want to make sure that I can meet with the deans of the business colleges and also work with the people in the international office. So, we're trying to set up dates, then get plane tickets, etc. In the middle of all this, I've been invited to attend a week-long International Business Week at the Rotterdam school. I'm going to attend the first 2 days, and the dean here is also going. The dean is Herr Rossler, and I actually don't know his first name!! He had evidently been at NMU and knows Gary Brunswick and Sandi Poindexter. Sandi is coming here in a month or so, and I'll make sure we get to campus and hook up some people again. Yesterday was the first faculty meeting for the year. I was asked to introduce myself. Susan Morgan nicely sent me a slide program she uses for international student recruiting, and I cut it down to 12 slides. I had thought about speaking in German. However, on Tuesday, 4 different people came to me and said that the dean didn't want this to be more than 3-5 minutes, I had too many slides, people would be bored in a long meeting, etc. I introduced myself yesterday morning in English, shared the slides, was my usual outgoing self and said some funny things, and was well received. The whole darned meeting was in German, otherwise, though I did manage to get the general gist and Rainer sat next to me and helped with a couple of things. After the meeting, Rainer made sure that I met individual people, and everyone seemed warm and friendly. A few people complimented me on my presentation. Rainer told me late this afternoon that the dean had complimented him on getting such a great, outgoing faculty member to start the foreign exchanges. Rainer didn't tell him he didn't choose me!! He and I were talking about this yesterday----I really couldn't remember how this had come about. Evidently Susan Morgan had sent him an e-mail saying I was interested in doing this for a sabbatical, and away we went.
Rainer has been fantastic beyond words. His family is in Florida, and so he has more time than he might and probably is open to having company for things. He's taken me hiking, took me downtown 2 days ago for coffee in a high, open-air cafe and a short tour of the older part of town, and has been gracious in every way. Yesterday morning, however, he told me that he'd had a conversation with his wife, Monika, and she had been upset with him. She had apparently asked him if he was speaking with me in German or in English. She is currently in Florida, where he'll spend winter semester on sabbatical, with their 3 children. The youngest, age 9, knows little English. Anyway, Monika evidenty chastised him for not speaking to me in German, she said I was taking German class, he should speak in German, etc. So, we agreed that starting today, we'd try more in German. Rainer is absolutely fantastic at explaining German words, at translating for me later or on the side when rapid German conversations have to happen with other people, and so forth. I couldn't ask for more or better help and company. He and I are having fun with things. He also has a wicked sense of humor, and now and then he spins stories, in German, which I quickly identified as "Marchen", fairy tales that he's created on the spot. So, these happen in our conversations. I've also been helping him with English, and his pronunciation of "hierarchy" somehow came off similar to jabberwocky---hiowocky, or something. Eggplant was another one that we had trouble with. He was asking me about this purple vegetable and how to say it. I finally realized that the German "ei" egg was involved, and then we got it. So, those are our code words. Today my student worker Stefanie and I worked on trying to set up some trips, and Rainer called people so that we can try to firm up dates. We want to make sure that we can see deans of business schools, etc. It's so nice to have people be gracious hosts and to help in this way, especially when the culture and the languages are different. Riza Ostuerck has also been helpful. He is younger, single, and has just taken over the chairman spot of the international team here. He is Turkish but was raised in Germany. The two of them and I often eat lunch together. It is apparently a ritual to move from one of the cafeterias up to the coffee area to enjoy Turkish coffee. So, going to lunch is not a quick thing, but we are having some wonderful conversations. I have some other pictures to download and will include them in another post. Hopefully, I won't get so far behind in posting.
OH!!! I FORGOT to tell you that there was almost a tragedy a few days ago. It appeared that my entire computer was dying. Thomas tried to help me because bizarre things were happening---it wouldn't start, it didn't connect with either the wireless or the wired system, etc. We tried all sorts of things. Thomas had to go to a meeting, but we got the idea to try to use the TV system between the two universities to see if Max could get the helpdesk guy, Chris Wagner, to come into that room and help me. I was madly typing an e-mail to several people to set that up, when Max came into the room. I was about frantic; all I could think was that NMU would have to load up a computer with all the software I have on this one, and ship it over here. Anyway, Chris quickly came in, and especially with the aid of being able to show me which buttons he was referring to, we got the problem solved. I had changed from a Nortel VPN client to Cisco right before I left, and evidently Cisco was locking some things up. Chris' suggestion, which I'm now following religiously, is to make sure I disconnect from Cisco before shutting down the computer. Both times we've had trouble, Thomas and I had used this computer to try to connect to NMU's Polycom system, the computer then found wirless here in the house in the evening, but the next use in the morning, it wouldn't work. Hopefully, we won't have that problem again----absolutely heart-stopping! I accomplished absolutely nothing the day this happened, and I can't tell you how relieved I am to have a working computer!
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