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!