Kategorie: Allgemein

First of December!!! My mom sent me a German advent calender, Thank you!!!

We made it to December!!! I think I mentioned it already many times before but I just LOVE Christmas and everything related to it. You can only imagine how excited I am these days. Everything looks so festive and luckily Americans started Christmas season already before Thanksgiving by decorating and celebrating some Christmas events. But before Christmas officially starts I would like to share my Thanksgiving experience 2014!

Thanksgiving in the USA always happens the fourth Thursday of November. This year it happened to be the 27th of November. My host sisters were already on Thanksgiving break the whole week and everyone seemed to be preparing for the big day, the days before Thanksgiving. I was lucky that Thursday was a holiday because that day is always the busiest for me at college.
Since my host family’s family lives all over the USA and mostly in California, it was just us 5 to celebrate the typical American holiday. Though we were kindly invited by friends of the family. My host family’s task was only to bring pies and the other family prepared everything else. Of course I also wanted to contribute something and decided to bake a German apple pie.
Thursday noon everyone dressed up nicely and festive and we left at around 1 o’clock to Sherwood, a city 30 minutes away from where I live. The whole neighborhood and street already smelled like amazing food is waiting. We had a warm welcome by Scott, Maera and their small daughters Milli-May and Katie-Beth.

All the girls together

My complete host family: Susan, Patrick, Tori and Emily

After playing and goofing around with the girls, it was time to finally eat the Thanksgiving dinner and I really didn’t get disappointed!!! A super tender turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cream corn, sweet potatoes with a marshmallow topping, potato salad, cranberry sauce, rolls and gravy! Yummy Yummy Yummy!!! Having this delicious dinner and lovely conversations made me feel very welcomed, comfortable and a tiny bit American as well. We spent the rest of the day watching football, chatting and eating more. Of course after the huge turkey dinner I also had to try all the pies: pumpkin pie, pecan pie, chocolate pudding pie, apple pie and a peach pie with ice cream and whipped cream on the side. 20687 calories later, I was so full, but happy! We left in the evening and just hang out and enjoyed the holiday.

Cutting the turkey

ALL THE FOOD!!! – We should start celevrating Thanksgiving in Germany as well!

Me: ‘Tori, pull an excited face!’

Myself, Scott and Patrick

The sweet girlies

My host sisters

The Friday after Thanksgiving is known as ‘Black Friday’ which basically means: Shop until you drop! All stores have amazing deals and you can get especially electronic goods for a very good price. I didn’t really need anything and so I didn’t do any bargain hunting.
Actually most shops already opened in the evening of Thanksgiving and then again really early on Friday. I just made my way to the shops at around 10 am to see the crowds and maybe also finding a good deal. The craziness though was already over. Most deals were sold out within minutes after the opening. It was still very busy and after strolling through Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom and a huge mall with all other well known stores I was just exhausted. In the end I ‘just’ got two pair of pants and a t-shirt. Compared to others who could barely walk because of all the bags they were carrying, I was very modest.

American Thanksgiving and Black Friday: check! Been there, seen that! (Actually my second Thanksgiving. Back in 2008 I had a similar experience in Missouri)

Another part of the CBYX program which I am participating in, is next to studying and working also volunteering for at least 40 hours during the year. It took me quite a while to decide on where I wanted to help but after a little research, I found a food pantry which is  fairly close to where I live.
Maybe some of you remember that I helped out at a food pantry at my very first stop of the homestay tour in Rock Falls, IL. I really enjoyed it back then and thought I could give it another try. Tracy, the coordinator, gave me a warm welcome, showed me around, introduced me to my co-workers and explained my tasks.

Ready to work!

The ‘Tualatin School Food Pantry’ is an initiative to help families of the communities of Tualatin, West Linn and Lake Oswego. You only need to be a resident from one of these towns and you have the right to benefit from the food pantry. You don’t need any other social or financial proof. It is located on the ground of the Rolling Hills Church and also connected to this non-denominational church. Private persons donate food as well as big grocery stores like New Seasons, Safeway, Market of Choice and also Starbucks donates for example pastry.

The procedure is fairly easy. People are allowed to shop once a month. Depending on how big the families are they get a certain amount of food.
My task is to help, support and supervise the customers. I have a chart where it says how many units they get of what food. The food pantry almost looks like a normal grocery store and is divided into different sections: dairy, meat, canned vegetables and fruits, produce, bread, drinks, sweets, pasta, cereal and so on. I accompany every family through the ‘store’ and tell them for every section how much they get of it.

Shopping carts

That’s how the aisles look like

Meat and Milk

Veggies!

Dairy!

A family of 4 persons for example gets 5 units of canned vegetables. We always have a variety and so they can choose if they prefer green beans, tomatoes, peas, corn or mixed vegetables. So basically it is regulated how much they get but they can choose what kind of a certain category. I  think the concept is very logical and it really seems to work great.

My chart where I can look up everything

My co-workers are all really helpful and warm-hearted and supported me in the beginning a lot. I’m working there now since mid October always on Mondays and Fridays. I really enjoy helping for a good cause. For me it was definitely the right choice to do my volunteer work at the food pantry. The week before Thanksgiving was crazy though because they gave out turkeys and many families combined it with their monthly shopping. This meant lots and lots of work for us! Usually there are around 40 – 50 families a day but the days before Thanksgiving we helped around 120 families!

One Sunday in November it was time to discover the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood. As I mentioned in my last blog post I always enjoyed seeing the mountain but I actually never went to discover the area east of Portland. That Sunday was fairly cold and rainy but well I didn’t bother. I have a little travel book of Oregon and Washington and there I found this tour: from Portland, along Columbia River, around Mount Hood and back to Portland. The book also pointed out a few points of interest along the way. One stop was the Multnomah Waterfalls. Apparently they are the fourth highest waterfalls in the USA. It was indeed really impressive! Around this area one can find many smaller and bigger waterfalls between all the high trees. What a natural beauty!

Columbia River

Multnomah Falls, I was there!

A ‘smaller’ waterfall just next to the historic highway 30

The historic highway 30 is a winding road and gave scenic views over Columbia River. It ends in the Mount Hood Valley which is  fertile plains and known for it’s many apple and pear trees. I bet this is beautiful in spring when everything is blooming, but that day it was just rainy and grey. I was very impressed that just a few miles outside of Portland, the landscape and the atmosphere changed so drastically. Small towns, farms, silence, emptiness and just nature. As following the winding street, it rained and rained and rained and snowed, and… hold on, what? YES, it started snowing! I probably should have expected that, but to be honest I was very surprised and unprepared! I really wasn’t sure what I should do in that moment. The road was all of a sudden covered in snow, I didn’t have any snow chains and it was super slippery plus I am not used to driving in a hilly snowy area. Sounds promising, right?
Since the road went up so slowly and slightly; I didn’t even notice that we were that high and close to the mountain! Afterwards I looked it up and the street was actually over 1.400 m high at that point. With this knowledge now, I am not really surprised that it started snowing. In that moment it was very scary on the one hand and at the same time it was a winter wonderland. Although I really dislike the winter, the picture of snow covered trees and the whole nature dipped into white, was just beautiful. With Christmas music on the radio it could have been an idyllic moment but as I said I was rather scared and concentrated to navigate my car on the road and not driving it into a ditch.

(Of course I would love showing you some photos of the snow but after the described situation, I didn’t think about taking out my camera… Next time for sure!)

In November my host sister Tori turned 10 years old and she celebrated with all her friends at our house with a sleep-over party. All the girls had a fabulous time and so did I. They played different games, had lots of candy, chips, popcorn, sweet drinks, stayed up late, listened and sang along loudly to every song and Tori received many nice gifts. Watching the girls made me miss being 10 a tiny bit hahaha. It was just so much fun and I just wanted to share this lovely day! (where I didn’t get too much sleep since the 8 10-year old girls stayed just next to my room and giggled the whole night)

Coloring

Dancing

Woop Woop Parteeey!

Red velvet cake with lots of chocolate frosting, topped with a million m&m’s and surrounded by hundreds kitkats

Sleep over

As the year comes closer to an end, also my college semester is about to finish up. This means again: I need to start working soon! To be precise: in January. I was always quite chilled about it, but when November started I realized that I should better start looking for a job because I didn’t want to bother with it during Christmas season. I noticed really soon though that finding a job in the tourism industry in Portland is fairly difficult. No well-known or big tour operators, airlines or other tourism companies have offices in Portland. Even though I am trained to work in a hotel it was not my preference to work there. But since I knew I had to find  something, I decided not to be picky and just apply everywhere.
For two weeks, I was digging through Craigslist where you can find many job offers, applied at every hotel around where I live and even handed in some resumes at local coffee shops and Starbucks. All the research, introducing, writing cover letters and no promising answers have been quite a tough time and I doubted that I would find anything decent.
In the end I had a few interviews and can proudly announce that I found a job!!! I am happy as I could be! The company that is hiring me didn’t even have an ad somewhere but I just walked in anyway and introduced myself. We got along very well immediately and agreed fast. I’m going to start working in January for a travel agency in Lake Oswego, just 20 minutes by car from my house. I am very curious about the new job and I can’t wait to start with this new challenge.

I will end my blog post with first impressions of christmassy Oregon. I got to see the local tree lightning of West Linn with Santa’s arrival and a small festive festival called ‘Light the Park’. I also baked Christmas cookies on the first ‘Advent’ with my host sisters Tori and Emily. All this makes me even more excited for the coziest season of the year and I can’t wait for the next weeks! Happy Holiday Season!
Anneke

West Linn’s christmas tree

Santa Claus arrives in a fire truck. I mean, why not, right? (side note: this is no snow, but of course: rain!)

There he is!

The typical scene: A photo on Santa’s lap. That kid looks super excited!

Tree lightning celebration

Light the Park

Baking christmas cookies with Emily and Tori

Sprinkles EVERYWHEEEERE!

Our result! Yummy!

Christmas decoration of our neighbors! Just like the movies!

It has been a while since my last blog post. You probably would expect that I excuse myself, saying I was so busy and many things happened. Well surprisingly rather the opposite was the case: I settled and a daily life routine has developed.
In the beginning, the first weeks, everything was new, exciting and I took pictures of each and everything but by now I entered the second stage: I am not here on vacation, instead I realize slowly but steady that this will be my life for the upcoming year. My last general update was from mid October, so exactly one month ago. That’s why I wanted to share now some things that I did the past weeks, in my new normal daily life in Oregon…

Fall in West Linn

First of all a quick update from my life at college. I still enjoy my classes a lot and I learned so much from the philosophic discussions we have. Besides the 12 hours of class each week I have to read a lot. Sometimes it seems impossible to keep up with all the reading assignments and then writing a paper about different, very demanding topics. But most of the times I manage to do it and I know that it helps me to improve my language skills a lot. As I already mentioned in an earlier blog post I have to read a lot of the classic writings which I think is so cool to read. Just last week I read the book ‘A New Millennium’ by the Dalai Lama for my ethics class. I was very impressed by it and enjoyed talking about it.
Probably my most difficult class is Cultural and Visual Studies because the readings are very dense and hard to understand but I love how the teachers (there are actually two) combine the classical pieces with contemporary examples. For this class I had to watch for instance ‘Monsters Inc’, an episode of ‘Undercover Boss’ and ‘Orange is the new black’ (I haven’t seen that show before and I liked it A LOT!!!). So even though the readings can be tough sometimes, the teachers do an amazing job explaining the meaning on contemporary examples where we can see that scenarios and theories made up hundreds of years ago can still be found in our society today.
By the way, actually it’s crazy that I already experienced more than half of my college phase and there are just 4 weeks left until Christmas break! That was by far the shortest semester ever!

Marylhurst campus with sunshine

The driveway to the university with beautiful Mt. Hood in the background

Directory for the small campus. I need to go either to St. Catherine for music or B.P. John for all my other classes

St. Anne Chapel at my uni. Marylhurst is a private roman-catholic university and has several small chapels where concerts and masses are held

It’s not about the text, but the different languages: you can kind of guess where foreign exchange students come from at Marylhurst… (and I always thought I knew languages, I have a lot to catch up on!)

Looking back on what I was up to in October, of course Halloween was a big topic. I have to mention that I am not a big Halloween fan. I don’t really like dressing up and I don’t like to be scared, so obviously not the perfect holiday for me. But of course I am here in the USA so I have to join the experience. Before the big day I had to prepare myself and get my pumpkin carved that I picked up earlier in October at a pumpkin patch. Believe it or not, but I have never carved a pumpkin before! So that was definitely a cool new experience. Fortunately I got some very good advises from some real Americans who probably carved hundreds of pumpkins in their life and with the help of a good paper stencil my result was quite impressive, I think. At least I was proud of my work. All in all it took me about two hours and actually I never realized before how sticky and disgusting it is to pull out the inside of a pumpkin. After I was done I felt like I was covered in pumpkin and it was everywhere. But the effort was definitely worth it and with the candle inside it looked reeeally scary 😉

It’s this time of the year when the pumpkins are just laying in the parking lot

Starting the adventure of carving a pumpkin

Done!!!

Halloween came up, obviously on Friday, October 31st. Unfortunately I am too old for trick or treating… My host sisters though got very excited about it. They are 8 and 10 years old and for days they were sorting out what bag or pillow case they could take, printed out lists where they would wríote down how much candy and which kind they get and tried on their costumes many times. They were dressed up as Captain Hook and Peter Pan. I assume their trick or treating was very successful since they have been on sugar for days…

Tori as Peter Pan, Emily as Captain Hook and Susan as a witch

Mr. Skelleton greeting trick or treater at our house

So no candy hunting for me which meant: I needed a different plan. Luckily it was a Friday so it was perfect for going out. Stephanie, Philipp’s host mom, has a lovely bunch of friends who invited us to do a pub crawl through Oregon City with them. Oregon City is another suburban town of Portland just across the Willamette River from West Linn where I live. In the end I had a blast and so much fun that night out. Some people had insane costumes and all in all it was just a great evening. Oregon City is rather small but they have one main street, which is called ‘Main Street’ (duh!) and there it was easy to just walk down all evening and popping into different places and discovering them.
Of course I also had to dress up and believe me, back then I didn’t even nearly realized how ridiculous, stupid and weird I looked. I got my ‘costume’ at a thrift shop. I saw this poncho and thought ‘mmmh I could dress up as a kind of Mexican / Hispanic person’. So I added a sombrero and a mustache. My whole costume cost a crazy amount of $5. I covered my face with some pretty face-paint to become a bit scary and pictured myself as a Zombie-Mexican… Don’t ask, I don’t even know what I was thinking. But here you are, some beautiful and fun memories of my American Halloween 2014!!!

I guess that’s me then…

The bunch of people I spent Halloween with

Some girls dressed up as… I forgot what it was, oops!

Hilarious!

Cute!

Scary!!!

After Halloween, no surprise here, it was already November! With the arrival of the months also the weather changed drastically. Daylight saving time ended and obviously now it’s almost dark at already 5 o’clock in the evening. Despite all people saying, it would constantly rain in fall, we have been lucky because there has been some, but not nearly as much as usually. Instead it became very very cold the last few days. The whole United States were hit by a cold weather front from Canada and I heard from other participants further east around the Great Lake region that they already had a massive amount of snow. The forecast for last Thursday said we would get 5 inches of snow. Since snow is quite rare in Oregon, everyone got a bit excited, besides me. Driving on a steep hill covered with snow is not a good combination. In the end we didn’t get snow, ‘only’ rain which turned into ice as soon as it hit the ground. Everything was covered with a thick coat of ice: trees, cars, mail boxes and of course also streets. It looked really cool, but for daily life imaginable unhandy. So these days I feel winter is here! Temperatures around 0°C (32°F) make outside activities a new challenge. But there is also a positive point to it: no rain means blue sky and a lot of sunshine which makes the nature look very pretty. These days I had several times an incredible view over to Mt. Hood. It’s quite difficult to capture but here are some of my attempts:

Mt. Hood – you beautiful thing!

Waiting casually at a traffic light…

Just a quick look in the side mirror…

Here I got a bit arty and pushed my camera’s abilities…

Taking Tinkerbell and Rover on a fall walk

Ice – covered leaves

On the weekend of November 8th and 9th another participant from the CBYX program, Lukas who is placed in Seattle, WA, came down to visit. The really great thing about visitors is always that it gives you the chance to explore your own city a lot more because you show people around. Actually also the weeks before I already tried to go downtown more often to get a better feeling of Portland. I really enjoy the city and it has some beautiful places and so much to offer. So far I was most impressed by the well-known sights of Portland:
1. Powell’s book store which is the biggest independent book store in the world. The building is huge. One whole block is just the book store! On several levels you can get any book in the world (slightly exaggerating here). There was also a huge section with German books, in German language and the amount of travel guides just of Berlin was insane!

Only a part of Berlin guides

2. The Saturday market (which is confusingly also open on Sundays) is huge and amazing. As you know I love markets and that one is definitely worth a visit. You can buy seriously everything (not exaggerating here though). Clothes, Food, Jewelery, Crafts… The atmosphere on there is just great, even now in the colder season. I picture it to be even more amazing in the summer though!

Unfortunately also this is Portland: many homeless people. This was taken just 50 meters away from the bright and happy Saturday Market

The city center of Portland is divided into two areas: the modern downtown with the big retail shops like Apple, Nike, Macy’s and the famous Pioneer Square and then ‘Old Town’ with a slightly different atmosphere: more breweries, restaurants, bars, small art galleries, independent shops. Right next to it, Chinatown is located. It is actually, I think, a little bit ridiculous to even call it Chinatown because besides a Chinese arch and some street signs in Chinese there is not much of a Chinatown to see.

Here you can even see the lovely rain

Portland is one of the cities that doesn’t have ONE major sight that everyone just HAS TO visit. What I mean is: Berlin – Brandenburg Gate, Paris – Eiffel Tower, London – Big Ben, New York – Statue of Liberty… Portland has nothing like that. The beauty of Portland is maybe not as obvious. One needs to get a feeling for the city and dive into the city’s flow. It’s the small shops, cafes, the food carts and the people. Portland is very different compared to other American cities I visited before, liberal and open – I like that a lot! It’s amazing how many people that I met here have been to Europe. They know so much about it and considering that Portland is surely one of the cities furthest away from Europe in the USA, it is even more impressive. Sometimes I feel like I am a lot closer to home than I actually am.
At the same time Portland’s unofficial motto is ‘Keep Portland Weird’ and I can assure that many of it’s inhabitants are doing their very best to prove that motto every day! Just two weeks ago there were elections in Oregon and the dear Oregonians voted to legalize Marihuana! So after Washington and Colorado, Oregon will be the third state in the United Stated who will legalize it. Just saying…

This reminds me so so much of the Netherlands!!! A bakfiets 🙂

After doing some sightseeing on Saturday, November 8th, I went with Lukas, Philipp, Korbi and his host family to another ice hockey match of Portland’s Winterhawks. Although I never watch ice hockey I really enjoyed it again a lot and thanks to Korbi’s host family we had amazing seats where it was easy to follow the match enthusiastically. They beat the Canadian team ‘Kamloops’ 4 – 3.

But my highlight of that night definitely happened after the match. Fred Meyer, a big grocery store, had a little event going on. All women over 18 years could go down on the ice and try to shoot a goal with the puck. If you made a goal you could win a Thanksgiving turkey. So Korbi’s host mom, Ally, convinced me going down with her and give it a try. Most people know that I am probably not the most talented shooter and I actually never even did it before! But, oh well how often in life do you get the chance to embarrass yourself on the ice of the huge Moda Center in front of everyone, right?

Looking back, I am so glad that I went because it was really cool going down and walking through the backstage area of the stadium and feeling the spirit. It was time to enter THE ice! Ally went first and unfortunately didn’t make it and then it was my turn. The Winterhawks’ cheerleaders tried their best to encourage us and what can I say: I tried so hard and I am not kidding, but I was SO SO SO close. I hit the inner corner of the freaking post. I was so upset!!! How cool would it have been to win a turkey??? I tried to convince the cheerleaders to give me a turkey anyways because I was so close, but no 🙁

Ally’s try and me getting excited in the background

Ally cheering and me getting ready

There we go!

Not sure what I am doing here, but unfortunately I didn’t make it 🙁

Still the experience was very unique and I am glad I got the chance to see the stadium once from this point of view. We ended the great day of sightseeing, brewery hopping and ice hockey at a fun bar with karaoke, dance and drinks in Old Town Portland.
Just the day after, on Sunday November 9th we went right back to the same stadium, the Moda Center which is by far the biggest arena here in Portland. It is located beautifully on the east side of Willamette River, very close to Downtown. Within 20 hours the ice in the stadium was gone and a decent basketball court was shining. We managed to get tickets for a NBA match: Portland Blazers vs. Denver Nuggets. Compared to the ice hockey match the arena was packed and also the very upper seats were uncovered and used. That’s also where we sat; right under the roof. We went for the slightly cheaper option and still had a great view! Despite the fact that the stadium was almost sold out and it was a major NBA match the atmosphere was still quite reserved which I was very surprised about. Although I am also not a huge basketball fan (to be honest I only like watching soccer, so German of me!), I really enjoyed it and our seats gave us a great overview from above. The big screens captured additionally all the important moments. Luckily the guys also explained the basketball rules a bit more to me, so I knew when and especially why they sometimes got 1, 2 or 3 points. I know, kind of embarrassing that I didn’t know before… In the end the Portland Blazers won 116 – 100 and everyone was excited and happy!

A floating Ford

Getting ready…

… and play!

half time…

Lukas, Philipp and myself posing in front of the Moda Center. Rip City is another nickname of Portland in context with their NBA team Portland Blazers

On Friday, November 14th Philipp and I decided to do something rather different and attended the ‘German Society of Portland’. We have read about it in the internet and thought it might be fun visiting their monthly meeting called ‘Stammtisch’. The organization has a beautiful huge villa north of Portland and already the entrance looked amazing and monumental. The event was held in the so called ‘Bierstube’ (ale-house) which was decorated like a good Bavarian restaurant. When we arrived everyone was super welcoming and nice. There were about 15 – 20 members having a beer and German dinner: Sauerkraut, Apfelstrudel and typical German bread. The average age of the members was approximately 75 years. I’m not kidding, we were by faaaaaar the youngest!! But it was just so lovely talking to these elderly people. Some were Germans and left in the 1960s, or later, others were Americans with German ancestors or just Americans who did their military service in Germany back in the days.
It was hilarious hearing them speaking a mix of English with some German words. It was so interesting chatting to them. There was one man who was in Berlin when the Wall was built. He told all the stories about how he lived there and experienced the division of West and East Germany. He then asked me where I was when the Wall came down and how I experienced it… Well, as some of you might know last weekend there was the huge 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall in Berlin which happened in 1989. I was born in 1992. So I had to tell him that no one even knew that I would exist one day. We both had to laugh because he then said that he felt so old. He could still remember building the Wall and I wasn’t even born when it came down.
Another lady heard from a member that I was from Berlin. She came over to me and introduced herself in fluent Berlin dialect which was soooo confusing and weird to hear. She immigrated to Oregon back in 1984 and is originally from Zehlendorf, Berlin and now she just lives 5 minutes away from Marylhurst University, my college! It’s crazy to know that a true Berliner lives so close, so far away from home. Even though everyone was a lot older it was so much fun and I am sure we will go back at some point. There was one younger couple (around 40 years old) who was also super nice and gave us some tips what we could do on that Friday night in North-East Portland…

(Unfortunately I forgot to take photos at the German Society of Portland… Will make up for that at some point!)

We went to a cozy little brewery and had a drink. I met two guys who were on vacation in Portland and actually were from Springfield, Missouri! A city very close to where I used to live when I was an high school exchange student in 2008 / 2009. It was so funny meeting randomly two guys from that small city who also knew the small town, Bolivar, where I went to high school and lived with my host family. No one EVER knows it and I can’t even tell how excited I was having some inside conversations about Missouri, Springfield, Bolivar, Silver Dollar City and all the things that just exist in this area.
It was a very cool night meeting a woman from Berlin and two guys form Springfield, MO within just a few hours… What a coincidence!!!

We then called it then an early night and went back to my car to go back home. Well, that was the plan!
We walked and walked and when we reached the spot where I left my car, the only thing I saw was a gap! Just a freaking gap! I was very sure that this was where I parked. I freaked and paniced. WHERE IS MY CAR!?!?!?!?! I tried to remember if Í was really sure that I parked there, walked around some blocks, but no, it was GONE! Was is stolen, was is it towed??? It was Friday 11 o’clock, -1° Celsius, in an unknown part of the city and I simply didn’t know what to do.
We went back to the bar and fortunately one waiter was very helpful and made some phone calls to help me out because as I said, I seriously had no idea what to do. My car never got towed before. After a few phone calls, I eventually called the towing company and they confirmed that they had my car. The only positive thing in that moment was, that they were open 24 hours and I could pick up my car right away. We took a taxi to this very shady and dark area of Portland in the middle of the night and I was very nervous! It turns out that I parked in front of a fire hydrant. I seriously had no idea. Fire hydrants look different in Germany because they are in the ground and not like here a little column. That was definitely a lesson I learned, though a very very very very very expensive one! It sucks big time! But I try not to bother too much because I simply can’t turn back time and change it. I am sure though that I will NEVER EVER park in front of a freaking fire hydrant ever again!

This is not the original fire hydrant, but it looked similar to this one

What can I say?!

That was quite a depressing story to end my blog with. Even though things like that happen, they just happen, I guess. That’s life! I still feel good though and I am having a wonderful time here in Oregon. I feel more at home every day but of course it can’t substitute my home in Berlin.
Now one of my favorite seasons of the year is about to start, CHRISTMAS TIME!!! I am beyond excited and there are so many parades, tree lightnings, Christmas markets and festive events going on; I can’t wait! Also Thanksgiving is coming up soon. So the next blog post will surely be very festive!
Until then bye bye & Tschüss
Anneke

P.S. After finish writing that post and going through all the pictures, I realized that I actually had quite a lot to talk about! 🙂

It has been over nine weeks on American soil. I think it was about time to leave the USA behind and discover Vancouver, Canada!!!
In terms of American relations, Canada is basically in the neighborhood of Portland. It is ‘only’ around 500 km (300 miles) further north. Vancouver is situated at the west coast of Canada, to be precise at the ‘Strait of Georgia’ which is a part of the Pacific Ocean and divides the city of Vancouver from Vancouver Island.

End of September me and four other fellow students from the CBYX program started planning the weekend trip to Canada. It needs a bit of planning because due to our visa we need a special permission to leave the USA and come back again. We booked a room and since there were not too many other options, it was my turn to drive up there. The first challenge and road trip for my little silver car. Honestly, I was a bit nervous but it turned out we didn’t get into any problems and it all went smooth.

Friday, October 10th I left my house at 3:56 am. First, I picked up Philipp and Bianca, two other participants who also live in the Portland area. It was an early, dark, foggy and wet morning in north-west USA but with chatting and music we passed the woods of the Washington state, Seattle (which I didn’t get the chance to visit yet) and eventually arrived at our first pit stop in Mt. Vernon, Washington at sharp 9:00 am. That’s the town where Julia and Bene live – our little travel group for the weekend was complete! After a quick breakfast, kindly prepared by Julia’s host dad, we managed to fit five grown-up people plus 5 backpacks, purses and jackets into my teeny-tiny car. In the driver’s seat was plenty of room, but I am sure the three in the back had a cozy cuddle time. Mt. Vernon marks also the place where I certainly, got the cheapest gas ever. My tank was almost empty and I filled it all up for $25!!! This is seriously unbelievable (for Germans at least). From Mt. Vernon it took us only another hour to the border.
The officer greeted us with a more or less warm ‘Bonjour’ (Yes, we are so different in Canada, we don’t only speak English here but also French!). He checked all our passports and asked me within approximately 60 seconds 15 questions. He wanted to know everything, but apparently I gave the right answers – we could pass!
For me it wasn’t the first time on Canadian soil. Back when I was visiting the east coast I went to Niagara Falls and just crossed the border for a day trip – but indeed it was the first time to stay there overnight. With a new stamp in the passport we were ready for the weekend!
Behind the border one is more or less already in Vancouver, it’s just 50 another miles away. Vancouver is Canada’s third biggest city, but the biggest metropolis on the Canadian west coast with over two million inhabitants.

Although I wrote down the directions to our hotel, I still missed a turn and we were lost in a city none of us has ever been before. Being a generation relying on Google Maps, it was difficult because in Canada our internet didn’t work anymore. Fortunately we had a good old map and eventually made it. The place where we spend two nights was the ‘English Bay Hotel’ situated between Stanley Park and Granville Island – two major sights of Vancouver. The room was really nice for the fairly cheap price. We stayed all five together in one apartment which had a fully equipped kitchen, dining table, a huge TV, two bedrooms and a stunning view over the English Bay.

View from our hotel room

We arrived Friday noon and Vancouver gave us a cold, windy, gray and rainy welcome. We still decided to discover and orientate in the city anyways and took a first long walk through the rain. At some point the weather got really miserable so we already had the worst case scenario in our heads – the weather will stay like this the whole weekend and we won’t get the chance to enjoy it as we planned.

Downtown Vancouver

Friday evening we decided to go out for a little bit. What really surprised me is that Vancouver seems to have quite a lively nightlife. There is one street, the ‘Granville Street’ where uncountable clubs and bars are located just next to each other. Also everyone was really dressy and chic, so we were definitely slightly under dressed if we have had the intention going in somewhere. Instead we found a nice, warm and cozy little pub where we could hang out just casually and drink a beer.

I woke up Saturday morning and I was so delighted that we didn’t have curtains in our room, because the sun was shining just directly onto my face. Against all weather forecasts there was blue sky and sunshine!!! Since we didn’t know how long this would last we started off by walking through Stanley Park which is Vancouver’s most visited sight. It is a huge park in the north-west of Vancouver. The trail is beautifully following along the shore and if you walk inside the park there is a nice forest with different points of interest like a lake, a rose garden, different trails, a totem monument and at the shore again a little lighthouse.

English Bay

Exploring the woods of Stanley Park

The Lost Lagoon

Bianca, myself, Bene, Philipp and Julia

Totem Monument

Sunshine on my face 🙂

Blue, blue sky, sun and skyline

Lighthouse at Stanley Park

Lions Gate Bridge

Strait of Georgia

The Lion Gate Bridge again – that’s how I kind of picture the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco…

The trail around Stanley Park

Siwash Rock

Since it seemed like the weather would stay as beautiful as it was, we decided to rent bikes. That way we could see a lot more of the city because although the city center is not too big, some distances are longer as they appear. Cycling in the mild sunshine was beautiful and it made me think of my days back in the Netherlands when I was cycling daily. Leaving the Stanley Park behind, we crossed the Granville Bridge which is at the same time the high frequented highway 99. All of a sudden we were in the middle of heavy traffic with our bikes – not a lot of fun! Fortunately there is also a sidewalk where we could escape the situation. From that bridge though we had the most beautiful view over the city center. I couldn’t stop taking pictures, it looked stunning with the sunshine!!!

Most beautiful view over downtown

Fishermen’s Wharf and Granville Market

Granville Island is actually not even an island but rather a small peninsula in the False Creek. It is known for it’s huge market, little shops, art galleries, an art university, workshops and small manufactories. I love markets in general but this one especially was really amazing. It is indoors and offers every delicious food I could ever dream of: specialties from different countries, fresh vegetables and exotic fruits, cakes, chocolates, coffee, ice cream and also hand made items like soap, jewelery and traditional Canadian souvenirs. It was a pity that I already had lunch and I wasn’t hungry because I wanted to try everything! Of course there was still room for some ice cream though… I got myself a massive scoop of chocolate ice cream.
It was one of these moments again where everything seemed to be perfect: a stunning view of Vancouver’s skyline over the False Creek where little boats, ferries and yachts were driving by and sitting outside in only my thin sweater in the sun, eating my ice cream in good company on October 11th in Canada – it could have been worse, for sure!!!

Everything was really arty

That’s how I would imagine the French Côte d’Azur and not Vancouver, Canada

That night we took it easy and just hung out and had the best chats. It was great catching up with everyone since I only have seen everyone last in August in New York. We definitely had so much to tell from our homestay tours, our placements, host families, colleges and all the exciting things we experienced the last weeks and now we can already even say months!

Sunset over the English Bay

Sunday morning was slightly worse weather than Saturday. The sun was gone but fortunately no rain. We took another walk through town and discovered some really neat places. On the photos it always doesn’t seem too exciting because of the gray and dull weather but it was definitely nice seeing some new corners like the ‘Yaletown’ district.

How autumnal!

Courthouse of British Columbia

I loved these laughing folks!!

We left downtown after lunch and shoveled everyone and everything into the little car again. We wanted to visit the Capilano Suspension Bridge which is just 15 minutes north of downtown. It turned out that a ticket to visit the bridge also included a whole nature park which then cost $35. We all agreed that it wouldn’t be worth it since we were about to leave Canada that day and it also started raining. On our way back I took some wrong turns (again) and we ended up at a really beautiful forest. I guess it was the proof that there are no ‘wrong’ turns because that’s when you discover the most beautiful places that you didn’t even know existed.
The Capilano River is a good place to spot salmons swim upstream. There was an open visitor center and for me it was the first time seeing salmons literally jumping up the river. Along the river are some beautiful hiking trails, but unfortunately as I mentioned we didn’t have too much time. We only took a short walk around. It was slightly raining but the whole atmosphere was just so autumnal, cozy and peaceful which made the stop so worth it.

That’s the Capilano River where the salmons swim upstream

We hit the road and basically tried to find the American boarder for a good 2 hours. I lost total orientation and we all thought we were going south until we noticed we actually went the whole time into the wrong direction: north. We had some really good laughs because it was just so confusing with all the bridges and wrong turns BUT sooner as we knew we found ourselves waiting in line at the border again. This time we had some difficulties crossing due to some missing paper work. So we made an extra stop and had to go to an immigration building to get double checked until they finally understood that we all are legal and allowed to enter their country. We dropped off Bene and Julia, got some more fuel from the cheap gas station and left Mt. Vernon at 8:30 pm. Again it was dark, rainy and this time also fairly late so that I found it really exhausting driving back to Portland under these conditions. But with good chats and laughs I managed to stay awake and focused until I was back in my own bed at 1:30 am.

It was a long weekend with over 700 miles of driving but I think it was definitely worth it. Vancouver has a lot to offer and I am very certain that I just got a very quick first impression and that there is a lot more to experience. Since it is not too far away I am very sure to go back within the next year at some point.

Two things I loved about being in Canada:
1. Hello metric system! I loved not calculating and instead seeing signs in Kilometer, Celsius, Liter, Kilogram. A piece of home on the other side of the world!
2. The Canadian currency! I have never seen money that is so beautiful! The bills are all in different colors and have some really neat details and features like a little clear ‘window’. Comparing this to American Dollar (sorry USA) it is just so much more pretty.

Another thing that I would like to mention is that besides these two points above I can hardly tell a difference to the USA . I caught myself a few times saying or thinking ‘Ah these Americans‘ or ‘This is so typical American‘, when I saw something funny, weird or extraordinary. Until I noticed ‘Oh, hold on, I am actually in Canada‘. Same shops, restaurants, weather and atmosphere. I guess also the same language contributed to my feeling of only being in a different state or city than actually in another country. Maybe it’s a bit like traveling from Germany and Austria, I would say.

Au Revoir and Bye Bye
Anneke