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New Years Traditions
Oh boy, it’s only 7:30pm and Rainer’s already made me watch Dinner For One twice (click the link to watch at your own peril). I totally don’t get this German New Years tradition. The show is played (in English) round the clock on one channel or another all day, and it’s not funny at all. It’s about a lonely, batty, rich old Brit who has no dinner guests so she has her butler drink all the toasts with her as if he were four guests. So the “humor” is that he gets steadily more drunk as the dinner progresses until he’s falling all over himself. Okay, Rainer’s complaining that I’m not being New Yearsy now, guess I gotta go back and watch another round. ARGH!
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Happy New Years!
I’ve actually been back in Bavaria for a few days now, and have been feeling somewhat more energetic (I can stay awake all day now!), but my new affliction is that after a few minutes of looking at a computer screen I get a headache. I felt guilty about not posting, so I thought I’d shortly summarize a few of the books I’ve read recently (and I’m reading - or at least skimming - your blogs now but usually don’t have the time to comment before headache and dizziness set in, but I’m at least trying to keep up to date on all of you!). And I know a lot has happened in the world, but that stuff would take too long to comment on, so I’ll just say that I really didn’t need to see the footage of Saddam being led to the gallows on CNN and leave it at that.
So, in The Known World, Edward Jones tells the stories of free blacks living in the fictional Manchester County, Virginia in the 1840’s, some of whom are also slave owners. It’s a very good book and the author throws in “excerpts” from the U.S. Census to add reality to the story. Unfortunately, if you’ve ever looked at the 1840’s census, you’d know that it only lists head of household and number of people of various ages in it. It doesn’t list the names of other household members or the relationships of those people to each other, and in the Slave Schedule there are no names of slaves recorded. But as long as you can overlook these fudges on the authors part, it’s an excellent read.
In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, author Jared Diamond explains his theory of why the peoples of Europe rose to dominate the world, mainly through the luck of geography, plant and animal resources, and disease exposure. I find most of his arguments to be well thought out and fairly convincing, although some of his theories are just that and have no evidence behind them. Overall, a good book to get you thinking.
Plagues and Peoples by William McNeill also touches on the above subject somewhat, but it is more of an epidemiological study of the history of disease. It was written in the 1970’s and this really shows through, especially in the conclusion when he states that science is getting close to understanding and beating infectious disease (remember, small pox had just been eradicated). The book was updated with an introduction that discusses this and the AIDS epidemic, but it doesn’t go far enough. In the book, the author makes much of the fact that there is a lack of information on disease in the ancient Middle East, India, Japan and China because little work has been done on translating the related historical documents in those countries. I’m sure that a lot has been accomplished in this regard in the last 30 years. In the end, an interesting read, but left me wishing for a truly updated edition.
And finally, 1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry by Andrew Bridgeford gives the history of the Norman conquest of England through his interpretation of the tale told in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. I don’t always see what he sees in the threads (more detailed illustrations of the tapestry would have helped), but his “tale” is enthralling and manages to bring the embroidered characters to life. This is the first history book I’ve read in a long time that I really couldn’t put down. He challenges the idea that the tapestry was created in Normandy, instead stating that it is the cleverly disguised Anglo-Saxon version of events. I’m not convinced on all his theories, but I think it’s always good to look at things from a new angle.
Happy Holidays to all!
For those of you having holidays in the near future, I hope you enjoy them. We’re off to my inlaws now, where I will pray that the lit candles that are placed on the Christmas tree do not cause a fire that ends up consuming us all. I don’t know if this is a German tradition or just a Rainer’s family tradition, but one really cool thing his mom does is give each person their own plate of cookies. Mmmm… I will be dreaming tonight of my plate. I’ve had to avoid Mausi’s blog recently because of all the incredible looking cookie pictures - which I couldn’t bake because until yesterday I had no kitchen. But now we have a beautiful kitchen and I had french toast for breakfast and lad na gai for dinner. Yum! Anyways, I’ll be back before New Years, so until then Happy Holidays!
Christina’s pregnancy myths debunked #1
The pregnancy glow:
Is caused by an increase in oil production and you only get it if you happen to start out with dry skin. If, like me, you start out with oily skin, you get to relive all the horrifying high school memories of being taunted by shouts of “hey there, pizza face”. To make the best of it, I’m thinking of opening up a betting pool: “How many giant pimples does Christina have today?”
Time to hit the stores!
Surprisingly, no one is blogging about the sales tax increase that is taking place in Germany on 1 January 2007, so I thought I’d give it a brief mention. On Jan 1st, the MwSt (or sales tax) is increasing from 16% to 19% (and those Northern Virginians keep voting down an increase from 4.5% to 5% - wusses!). Some items will be going up in price, while some stores plan to absorb the increase themselves and keep prices the same out of fear of losing customers (such as kik, C&A, Karstadt, Galeria Kaufhof, Media Markt, Saturn, and Obi ), which means that they must have had a pretty healthy mark up anyway, or plan to mark up in the future when hopefully no one is paying attention. Unfortunately, it’s probably too late to order that new car, but if you check the lots you might find one that fits. Either way, times almost up for making those big puchases you’ve been thinking about!
How it all started
First, sorry for not posting, my internet connection was down so I was without internet AND kitchen this weekend (the kitchen comes Thursday, thank god).
So nothing in my pregnancy books prepared me for the overwhelming exhaustion that comes with pregnancy. (Although I have caught a couple episodes of Run’s House on MTV and see that his pregnant wife is also constantly exhausted and in bed - so it’s not just me!). But I see pregnant women running around with toddlers and I really have to wonder how they possibly have the energy to do this. I can only suppose that my symptoms are a bit worse than the average, but I guess there’s no way of knowing this for sure.
So, for those interested, I give the story of MY pregnancy, thus far:
Well, first off, we’d been “sort of” trying to get pregnant for some time (that is, not doing anything to prevent it). Then I applied for jobs in Regensburg and got an interview, and we agreed that our family plans should go on hold so that I could restart my career (ha ha on how that worked out!). Anyways, I started feeling nauseous, dizzy and exhausted, and incredibly grouchy - I mean, I was a total nagging bitch. After a week of this, I started wondering what the heck was up, and it came to me all of a sudden, so before getting out of bed for my morning trip to the ladies room, I sent Rainer to the Apotheke (pharmacy) for a test. It came out positive and a few days later I was at my job interview, oh fun!
So, I’m totally nauseous, and dry heave a lot but have never actually thrown up. It has eased up a bit, I began eating again last week, but since I found out I was pregnant, I’ve lost over five pounds. My big turn off is fish, although I did want a tuna sandwich recently, so maybe that’s easing up as well. When we went to visit Rainer’s brother in Bonn, he wanted to welcome us with a nice fancy dinner which started with sushi and ended with salmon. Let’s just say my condition did not stay secret for very long that evening.
Rainer’s mother is boucing off the walls over in Wittlich, while my mom doesn’t seem all that excited to be a grandma - I think she thinks of herself rather closer to my age than to her own, considering that her last boyfriend was the same age as Rainer. But I’m sure she’ll get used to the idea and be totally excited by the time the baby is here (July 23, 2007 is the due date, by the way).
So we will be spending this Christmas in Wittlich with my inlaws, then heading up to the Bonn area to visit Rainer’s bros. I’m not sure if we’ll be making a trip to Koblenz, but that’s also not out of the question. Let me know if you want to meet up and we’ll try to arrange something. I can’t promise anything in case I’m too tired to do anything, but I will cretainly try. And with that, I’m off to bed.
What Christina found out on November 17th…
It seems Rainer was right about that Chinese food 
Unfortunately, I’m suffering from constant sickness (as opposed to morning sickness - I lost a whole kilogram in the last week), not to mention that most of the day I am too exhausted to make it out of bed (yesterday’s short IKEA trip required 18 hours sleep to recover from). The doctor says this a “good” sign.
Well, I’ve spent the time rereading Harry Potter and am hoping that when OotP comes out I will manage to make it to the theater.
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