Thursday, May 10, 2007

28 April: Catching Up & Sushi Night

It’s official, for the first time in more than six months, I am caught up on my journal (I probably shouldn't admit this but that means that I am actually writing these words ON April 28th as opposed to weeks or months later). Now all I have to do is get up to date on this blog so that I'm actually writing and posting on the same date (right now I am still playing catch-up and transferring the posts from my Word file to the blog).

The fabulous weather continued all week and there is still no rain in sight. They were predicting thunderstorms on Tuesday but it just got a little cloudy and then it all blew away by evening. Spring is in full force – all of the bulbs are done and now the fresh scents of lilacs, wisteria, and chesnut blossoms are drifting in the open window as I sit here typing. Birds are twittering and the sky is blue and cloudless. Honestly though, I really wouldn’t mind some rainy weather – it is more conducive to writing!

Speaking of writing, for those of you wondering, I have been working on my novel off and on over the past few months after a 6-month hiatus last year. I am up to nearly 120 pages but it is very slow going. I keep getting distracted; I spend hours agonizing over a few sentences, or I go off and do internet research on some trivial detail. I'm sure that part of my problem is all of the uncertainty over how long we are going to be here – I thought I had the rest of the year, but if Chrysler is sold and we have to go home, I will be terribly disappointed.

We took Cody for an early walk today and then headed over to Shannon’s house in Feuerbach for the first-ever IWC sushi night. We bought a bottle of sake at Neukauf and joined Anne W. and her husband Marcus (who I hadn’t seen since the wine tasting last year), Eliza (the Malaysian woman from Botnang), and a new German member of the IWC (whose name I have forgotten) with her husband Bjorn and their twin 2 ½-year-old daughters. This couple is German but Bjorn got his doctorate at Texas A&M and they speak the most amazing English, with virtually no detectable accent! John and I were quite literally dumbfounded. I thought they were joking at first when they said they were German, but then Bjorn referred to his hometown of Düsseldorf and I heard just the slightest accent in his wife’s voice. There must be something about that Texas drawl that makes you develop a perfectly flat American accent.

We had a lovely time rolling sushi and sitting out in the garden, enjoying the view towards Weilimdorf. Shannon’s husband Todd is a military contractor and he’s the official sushi chef in the family. They make sushi almost once a week, buying the freshest fish at the Markthalle downtown. Shannon said the folks there are very nice and are pleased to hear you’ll be making sushi. She placed a special order with them for the tuna to make sure they would have enough to feed 10 people!

No comments: