Winter Updates! (lots of links)

The time has simply disappeared...Since the last post, we have been to the US and back twice, and visited a number of neighboring places here in Munich. The University connected to Joe's lab (but he doesn't work at, it's just physically connected) extends an offer to do local cultural excursions once a month, and we've been doing those this winter! We've now decided we need to keep doing these, but on our own, choosing some new places we haven't yet visited to mark off our travel list! Hopefully we'll actually follow through and have even more places and pictures to share in the future. And, hopefully we remember to add them to this blog.

Since July...

-We've both continued with work. Joe's research is out of the "setting up" phase and into the actual data collection phase. He's learned that when people finish their Master's or PhD there, their lab builds them a hat. Basically they build some sort of gadget onto the top of the graduation cap, and they spend hours on this project to make it light up, play a game, make noise, etc. He's also been to a few more conferences around Germany and is getting to see a new places that way. Sarah's been enjoying her job at the international school and has gotten to be a part of building a special education/inclusion program there this year. They've had one in place for a number of years, but this year the focus has been on specifying policy, using data based decision making, and allocating resources a bit better. It's definitely beneficial experience!

Inside Nymphenburger Palace. We went on a guided tour with the cultural excursion group. For all our pictures of this palace, click here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/vABA7CsYbcAob3i63 

Here's a commemorative bronze piece at the town hall in Ingolstadt, Germany. On some special occasions the fountain, which usually gives you water, will give you beer instead. In Ingolstadt, we saw a gorgeous church and the hospital where the story in Frankenstein was based on. Click here to see the full album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KTtGmzgJPUIOCWEv2 

-We flew home in October for a wedding over Sarah's fall break. It was great to see so many people!

Sunset as we arrive in Reykjavik, Iceland 

Sunrise as we got ready to run the Marine Corps Marathon 10k Race with Sarah's mom

-November and December we spent exploring more Christmas markets as Joe didn't get to see as many last year as Sarah did. We met with friends, enjoyed the atmosphere, and the glühwein, and the food. We also flew home for Christmas, and got to see even more friends and family.

-In January we continued with the cultural excursions, and got ack into our routine at home. We've been trying to explore a few new restaurants since we do not eat out every often. The cold temperatures and frequent snow meant we just ended up ordering in more than going out! But we are keeping track of which places we like and who makes the best delivery pizza. Sarah went to a work training in Thessaloniki, Greece with a  coworker, and Joe (and the coworker's husband) tagged along for a long weekend. There isn't a whole lot to sightsee there, but we made the most of it and tried a ton of different foods.

A picture from a cultural excursion where we walked around Lake Schliersee. It was beautiful. For more pictures click here (it was really beautiful, worth it to check out the pictures): https://photos.app.goo.gl/ljCutsYvqdZF1U6g2 

On the left is us enjoying a bit of humidity (the air is SO dry in Munich) and on the right is a castle tower that is one of the top sights in Thessaloniki. For more pictures click here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/XRDDCAvfjO88RaOg2










-We took a proper ski holiday for 3 days in Innsbruck in February during Sarah's ski week. Sarah took lessons and Joe got a lot of practice in. By the end of the 3 days we were pretty tired but happy with our progress and able to say we can successfully ski down beginner slopes and feel mostly confident about doing so! Skiing was definitely a skill worth learning, as we got to experience some fantastic views from the top of the slopes.

Click here for a ton more pictures from Innsbruck and skiing (including some seriously beautiful views): https://photos.app.goo.gl/hyAOi7ba5X1Oi1KY2 

-Sarah's cousin visited for a few days on his college spring break, but Sarah was sick with strep throat, and couldn't do as much visiting as she had hoped. They did make it out to see sights, and the weather was a bit sunnier those days, thankfully. We've managed to make it this far in the flu season without getting sick, but strep throat starting going around the school and Sarah went down for the count.

-Now that it's March, we'll start experiencing the back and forth spring/winter weather conditions. This was common back in NC and Virginia, but here it doesn't really start until March and will go through the end of April. We are looking forward to warmer and sunnier weather, but we still have a ways to go. Thank goodness for the pastries, starkbier, and spring break to get us through! Sarah's mom is visiting at the end of March.

 Here are two pictures from our day trip to Freising, Germany. We learned a lot of historical facts there, and it was such a cute town to walk through! For more pictures, click here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dlWeHZ4FeDOnxrM23

Summer Updates! (Long post)

Classroom packing was quite the job.

It's summer here, which means lots of festivals and celebrations popping up, everyone we know is traveling somewhere, and the weather rotates between warm (80s to low 90s at the hottest) and cold/raining (50s-60s). It's a decent balance, a little tricky without air conditioning, but overall, feels very mild compared to what we hear is happening on the East coast in terms of heat waves at the moment! June 30 was the last day of school for Sarah, who ended the year having to pack up someone else's teaching stuff and move rooms for next year. The woman who she was covering for did come in and clean out some of it, but otherwise there was a lot of box packing and moving going on in the last week of school for Sarah. 

We learned about the Wolpertinger, a
Bavarian bigfoot, so to say. Here's a
weirdly taxidermied one in a window
display in Garmisch!

We've been up to a few things this summer. First up is German courses! Joe is taking one through work and Sarah signed up for one that just runs through July, since school is out. We're working on our vocabularies and knowing when to use the "Akkusativ" or the "Dativ." In some situations, people have stopped responding to our German with English, so that's a good sign that we're improving. 

Something really neat Joe got to do was called the B2Run. Held at the Olympic Park, which is obviously becoming a favorite place for us, this was a 6k race that all the local businesses compete in. Every office sends a team. They get fancy running shirts, they train and prepare, and boy do they show up! There had to have been over 30,000 people there to run. It was so packed and full. Joe ran with his work group, and I was naive enough to think I'd be able to find them there...nope! In the pictures below you can sort of see the crowd, but it's probably hard to tell the capacity from the photos. It was neat to see all kinds of offices sending teams to compete. 

This was just the crowd walking toward the start line, which was probably still 500 meters away. So many people!  

This is a huge open area and it's completely full of people! The stadium is in the background, where the race ends.

In the distance you can see the stream of people running. Joe said it was kind of hard to actually run because the path, which is only a few people wide, was jam-packed. 

Next up, we got bikes this past weekend! We feel like true Münchners now that we can bike everywhere. It's actually fairly lovely to ride to a biergarten and hang out or to be able to take ride a bike to the store instead of always having to walk. Sidenote: they do have the appropriate headlights and bells, as those are the legal requirements here. Our second day owning them, Joe suggested we ride to the lake by the school where Sarah works, and so off we went. 24 kilometers later (around 14 miles), we made it to the lake, Starnberger See, and had some lunch before deciding maybe we'd take the train back with the bikes, instead of riding home, as we were pretty tired from the ride there!  It was still a lovely time, even if our bums were a bit sore at the end. 

Sarah's bike! We bought them at the Olympiapark Flohmarkt, which is like a giant
flea market that happens every week. 

Joe's bike!

Lake Starnberg

In June we played soccer with some friends a few times at the Olympiapark indoor arena, and we went to the Tollwood summer festival one afternoon to wander around, see the artwork, and of course partake in a bier and a brezen. We had the freshest pretzel we've ever eaten- it came straight out of the oven- and now we're not sure how we will ever eat bread outside of Germany ever again. 

Outfitted for Tollwood.

These were Roswell-esque wood carved statues.

This is a GIANT flower made entirely
from old metal road signs! 

Tollwood sights! To the right is a "beach" complete with sand and beach chairs where people could sit and eat, and in the background is a stack of cars. Just, a stack of cars. At night it's illuminated and really beautiful, actually. The arts at these festivals is truly unique! 

And now for the big update- our jobs! Sarah is happy to report that she's been contracted to cover a maternity leave position at the Munich International School in Starnberg for the 2017-2018 school year, and is really excited to fill this teaching role. At the moment it looks like she'll be working mostly with 3rd grade students who need learning support and the 3rd grade team, as well as working across curriculum and grade levels with colleagues as needed. She's excited to learn a bit more about what makes a school PYP (pre-IB diploma track) and to continue to work with students who need that little bit of extra support. Joe, on the other hand, is even happier to announce that he's been awarded the Humboldt Fellowship. This is long-awaited news, as he applied back in February after working on the application since our arrival September! The Humboldt is a fellowship award that only makes it to 13% of applicants, so it's a big surprise to find that he was awarded one! What this means is more funding for Joe's current lab and their projects, and a 2 year position to continue working with the group at Max Planck. For us, this means we'll be here in Munich through the fall of 2019, most likely. That could always change depending on the job search Joe will do toward the end of the fellowship, and when the start date would be for whatever his new job is. 

We are rather excited not to have to face moving next summer, although we know this makes it more difficult for family since we will be abroad a year longer. For us, that seems like a good incentive to plan a visit to see us! We do have plans to be back stateside twice before the end of 2018, so we'll be able to see family and friends then. For now, that's all we have! We've got a special offer awaiting us on AirBnb, so perhaps in August or September we'll travel somewhere else! We've still got space on our pullout couch for Oktoberfest if anyone's interested.... ;-)

We biked past the Oktoberfest grounds, and this is what it looks like mid-July. They've already started setting up the tents! 

Up next, we're preparing for a big visit from Joe's family, where we'll meet them in Venice and then we'll all trek back to Munich after a few days. We are excited for the visit and to see family! 

More Hiking! This time, the Garmisch Partnachklamm and the Schachen

Inspired by new hiking backpacks and proper hiking boots for Joe, we embarked on another hiking adventure one Sunday in early June. Joe's colleagues shared some books with hiking routes, and we looked through them and chose to hike to the Schachen, which was meant to be a hideaway in the Alps for the king, back in the day. It's a fancy house truly hidden in the hills. There is a path to drive most of the way up, but we chose to hike up. By our estimates it was supposed to be around a 3 hour hike, but it turns out that it was really 3 hours one way. In total, we were walking (through the town, to the hike, the hike, the hike back, back through the town) for probably around 6-7 hours! The first part of the hike takes us past the Winter Olympic grounds (from the 1930s) and through the "Partnachklamm" which is a gorge between the town and the alps. It's a beautiful walk through the gorge, and was a welcome break from the heat of the sun. Once you make it to the other side, there are many hiking trails that split off into various mountains of the Alps and a restaurant, so one could just go through the gorge, have a nice lunch, and go home. For us, of course, that was not the plan! It was certainly a tiring day, but worth it for the views, the exercise, and the experience. We had a great time.  Here are a few of our favorite pictures, and here is a link to the full album, because Sarah took a TON of pictures.

The ski jumps at the older Olympic Park! By today's standards, these feel horribly undecorated. 

Hiking Routes. If you can zoom in enough to find "Schachen" that's where we went :)

A picture while walking through the gorge.

View from the bottom of the gorge!

The view from the far side of the gorge. Amazing! 

There were stacks and stacks and stacks of rocks on the river at the far side of the gorge. Not sure why, but they were there!

Wondering when we'll reach the top, as this seemed plenty high...

The first hour of hiking was pretty much this.

Thinking we were close to the top. It was still another 45 mins.

The Schachen!

Picture with the Bavarian flag at the top of the mountain.

Not the schachen, but a cute little shack nonetheless.

Bavaria.