April brings our first visitors of the year, as well as the
start of our spring and summer vacations.
And while we are both looking forward to the family and friends making
their way to see us, as well as our getaways, it does mean that it will be
harder for Noah and me to find time to lounge around the apartment. Therefore, Noah and I have consciously decided
to maintain a certain amount of laziness during these last few weekends in
March. That means that there isn’t too
much to write about from the month of March, which is why I find myself with
two days left scrambling to write something
so that we maintain our self-imposed rule of having at least one entry a
month.
One thing that has had some activity is Noah’s work. He is now officially a manager of a team of 3
– and all three employees are German.
This means he is speaking the language more than ever, and his knowledge
of German never ceases to amaze me. Hard
to believe that we both started at the same point – knowing nothing more than a
few words like Ja/Nein, Bier, and Gesundheit.
Now he is managing people in this
crazy language!!!! Count me
incredibly impressed. Also – he had his
first official yearly review which came with his first raise. The downside is he has been finding himself away
from home a bit more – between his Leadership Program (also all in German), a
conference, and entertaining visiting business partners, I barely saw him at
all last week! But he is loving his role
and the travel should calm down now, so I am nothing but happy for him.
The other ‘big’ thing for us is we were featured on the Foap
website – this is the stock photo selling app that Noah and I joined early last
year. We’ve done pretty well – sold over
100 photos at $5 each. Here is the linkto the interview. I was thrilled to
be featured – I sure have spent a lot of time on their app, and Noah has fun joining
me in figuring out what might be a ‘Foap-able’ photo.
Speaking of photography, Noah had the idea a few weeks ago
to practice our night photography skills down at Lake Starnberg. After dinner, we bundled up in our jackets
and grabbed our gear and found a spot along the water to try to capture the
stars. While we didn’t get exactly what
we wanted – still way too much light pollution from the towns around – we were
able to take a couple of photos we are happy with.
I also had the experience of seeing my first solar eclipse. I was sitting in the living room on Friday
the 20th, when I noticed it became visibly darker. I went to the window to see if any storm
clouds were making their way to me, but the sky was perfectly clear. That is when I remembered the day before my
colleague telling me that there would be a partial solar eclipse on Friday, and
when I checked the clock I saw that it was roughly the peak of the
eclipse. So I googled how to make a pinhole
projector, and rigged up a few pieces of paper.
While my photos are terrible, I was excited to finally experience
this.
We wrapped this month up with a celebratory dinner at Rue
Des Halles – our fancy French restaurant we like to visit once a year or
so. We were there to celebrate Noah’s
first raise with his first ‘true’ job (or so I thought). Apparently Noah also wanted to thank me for
being so supportive with all his extra work lately. He even had called ahead and asked if they
offered anything special for the table, like flowers, and was told they don’t
do that. But they did say that they had ‘very
nice’ red candles they could offer instead – so Noah accepted, not knowing
really what to expect when we got to our table. (I usually don't share this side of our relationship, but this turned out funny to me so I will).
When we arrived to the restaurant, nothing was standing
out to me, so I remained clueless to Noah’s actions. He finally couldn’t wait anymore for me to
notice the ‘very nice’ red candle, and explained what he had done. We both laughed pretty hard at the fact that
this is what this French restaurant (aren't the French supposed to be
the masters of romance) deemed romantic. Every other table had a candle on
it already (but not red!!!), so why take the effort to promote their red candle
as this huge romantic gesture?
 |
| Can you handle the romance?? |
That about wraps up the main anecdotes from our month of March. While I loved having so many lazy days this
month, I am definitely looking forward to people visiting and beginning our
travels this year.
