Goodbye Movember!

Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone!! Jen and I again had the pleasure of cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner for some select friends and current roommates of ours. The dinner was, once again, an incredible success and this holiday is quickly becoming one of my favorite days of the year. Let’s go back for a minute; last year, Jen and I took the whole day off (easily done, we weren’t working) and spent the whole day cooking together. We ate at a normal Thanksgiving late afternoon time with our roomie from Hungary who had never feasted so heartily on Turkey. Ha. Only cheesy joke I’ll make this blog, I promise. We ate so heartily and drank a few beers and therefore didn’t make it to practice. Fast forward to this year; our dedication to handball has grown so much and our desire to pummel Canada is so great that we decided to attend practice this year, which forced us to eat at 1130 PM. Jen got the day off from work, one of the many positives in working at an English Pre-School, and we were again able to cook together all afternoon. We spent almost 100 Euros (thanks Tom and Katherine) on the feast we prepared for the nice people who let us invade their house and live with them for a month. Hans and another friend joined us for the late night Turkey dinner, making the total six hungry people. Jen and I cooked the entire day and than we all had to go to practice, which was a bummer because all the food looked and smelled so good. When we finally reconvened around 1130, we were so famished I don’t actually remember much of the meal. I recall fisting a Turkey leg into my mouth at the same time I was forking sweet potatoes in and failing to butter my croissant because I was in such a hurry. By the end of the feast almost two full hours later, we had consumed two 6-pound turkeys, 10 full size potatoes, mashed, 6 large sweet potatoes with marshmallows and brown sugar, 2 pounds of stuffing, 12 Croissants, Jen’s famous banana bread, Jen’s almost famous homemade apple pie, a “few” beers and a half bottle of Johnny Red. It took a series of pulleys and lever’s to get me into bed around two o’clock. I love Thanksgiving! And I believe the Germans do as well.

We are aware Thanksgiving isn’t just about food and drink and good times, so Jen makes sure to tell the story behind Thanksgiving (the Germans find it fascinating, even though it’s tough for us to explain in German) and we all gave thanks for what we are thankful for before dinner. It was an evening of great fun and friendship and a refresher from our everyday struggles. Another incredible experience to chalk away in the memory bank.

The day after Thanksgiving, Jen and I received some great news; Jen’s coach finally gave us the key to an apartment one of Jen’s teammates had recently vacated and therefore we finally have a place we can call our own. It is a nice, clean place with running water and heat. It is relatively large, at least compared to what Jen and I are used to and offers more privacy than we’ve had in a long time. The only problem with the apartment is the shower. I do believe it is a multi-personality shower; it turns from scalding hot to shriveling cold in a manner of seconds and than back again. This is very disconcerting and makes for exciting shower experiences. The first time we figured this out, I thought somebody had attacked Jen in the shower because she screamed so loud. Regardless, it is a place of our own, where we don’t have to rely on somebody else, finally. Even more exciting, we will only be staying there until the 13th of December, when we come home to stomp Canada and enjoy Christmas, because, we officially signed a lease on a place we have been looking at for two months and will be moving into said apartment when we come back in January!! We are so excited to finally have a place we can call home. It has been almost two years since we have been on our own and the last five months we had been living out of our bags. We spent all day Saturday unpacking our bags, finding clothes we thought we had lost and finally settling the argument about who has more clothes in Germany. I always thought Jen had more because my clothes are bigger and therefore take up more room than hers, however, it was clearly evident in our piles on the floor that I have almost double the amount of clothes here than she does. Not a good thing, considering she is the only one of us that works and has to dress up and she is a woman who enjoys choices and options. In conclusion, our bags will filled with her clothes on the return trip post Christmas break.

Speaking of Christmas break, it is a little less than two weeks before we fly home. We are so excited!!! We can’t wait to speak English on the handball court again and to come together with our respected teams for the first time in a long time. We can’t wait to see friends and family and celebrate the Holidays. And we can’t wait for warm breakfasts, being able to turn right on red and drinking tasty, smooth drip coffee. O and light beer. And opening presents. And 4-wheel drive vehicles, particularly SUV’s. And cheap gas.

This upcoming Saturday Jen has a big surprise for me. I know this because I saw it in her email, whoops. She bought us tickets to a 1st league German soccer game. Eintracht Frankfurt plays their hated rivals and top of the league Mainz 05. She bought them as a surprise Birthday present for me and I couldn’t be more excited. The atmosphere at these games is reported to be insane, approaching Manchester Derby type level or any other rivalry game in England. To say the least, I am pumped! The game is Saturday afternoon, which will allow us enough time to explore Frankfurt in the morning and allow us to double dip on some Handball action during the evening. We are going to watch TV Huttenberg (2nd Division Handball) play on Saturday night. I have recently been given the opportunity to practice with Huttenberg on the days I don’t have training with Bruchkobel. It has been great, I have been practicing six times a week for the last two weeks and have received great training from the coach of Huttenberg and have learned a lot from the players as well. I am excited to watch them play and continue to learn from watching high levels of play.

Jen has a free weekend from games this weekend. Last weekend TV Mainzlar won their first game of the year! Jen played some minutes, playing stellar defense (as usual) and firing one shot on goal that was saved by the goalie. We expect her time to continue to grow. She has been receiving personal instruction from her coach in training again and has had two very good weeks of training. They play a very beatable team on the 11th and I completely expect them to carry a two game winning streak into the break.

SGB went one and one since the last blog. We lost a very poorly officiated and poorly played game at Wallau two weeks ago. The game was full of two-minute penalties (18 total) and even included two reds and two other situations that almost ended in fisticuffs. I didn’t see much playing time on offense but played good defense. It was the first game of the season I was shut out on the scoreboard and it is a game neither I, nor the team wants to dwell on. However, we did rebound well last Sunday at home. We beat a top tier team, Holzheim, by three. I saw good time on offense and defense the first half, netting three goals and playing my most consistent defense of the year. The second half was full of two-minute penalties and gimmick defenses from the other team so my time was limited. But, we won and garnered two important points. We are now back up to fourth in the table with two tough opponents left before the break. With two wins we should reclaim second spot on the table but we have to play very well to accomplish this. I am excited about the opportunities to improve and play the next two weeks before coming home.

My job situation has gotten slowly better and better. I have had a series of meetings with the man who is supposed to be giving me a job and after a few miscommunications and frustrations, I was able to turn in the all important paper to the foreigner office today, where they will read over it and decide whether or not they will allow me to work in Germany. We are hoping that by the time we fly back in early January I will be able to work full time, which means Jen and I will both be working and playing full time for the first time in ever!

Things are continuing to look better and better for us and we couldn’t be more thankful. We want to thank everybody for their continued support and are very thankful for our families and friends. Last but not least, we are thankful that we have been given the opportunity to play this wonderful sport and represent our country. In less than two week we will again have the honor of wearing the Red, White and Blue into battle. Gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. Beat Canada!

In other, unrelated news, I have decided that even though Movember is officially over, I will not be shaving my mustache anytime soon. Boom!

And lastly, in rather disturbing news, Jen’s little 4-year-old pee’er has graduated to crapping his pants everyday. Be thankful you don’t have to deal with that. I know I am.