the good old days?

I've heard stories about the old days from my Grandpa for the last 25 years (yes, even before I was born, he was telling stories...), and got to be part of the restoration of those old days this week. You see, Grandpa found an old photo from summer 1937, the summer he started dating my Grandma.

The photo was in pretty bad shape... there was a terrific tear down the middle (right through Grandpa's head), and about as many wrinkles and creases as Grandpa has now (at 89 years old...). As you can see, the photo is of my grandparents and two other friends, Katie McNeil and Danny Beaudrie (the couple on the left, my grandparents are on the right), down at Lake Erie enjoying a beautiful summer day.

My job? Fix that sucker up and get some copies printed so Gramps could give one to Katie (whose last name now is not McNeil...), and have enough to enjoy them properly himself. ;) Not really that easy of a task, but with a little computer magic, Voila! You see what we've got now. :)

This was more than a fun project, but it was definitely a pleasant one to work on. Actually, it was so fun, that I was thinking about how I could (possibly) make this kind of job into an actual job while I'm raising my support. I definitely could do a much cheaper job for people than other places, and I'd give them files so they can reproduce as many copies as they want with full legal ability to do so.... I guess we'll see.

Oh, Grandpa told me yesterday that they threw my poor Grandma into the lake that day... I'm hoping it was a lot cleaner 70 years ago than it is now!

cafe creme, bitte

I miss Germany. Lately I've been thinking a lot about Freiburg (it's pretty easy for me to do since I'm sharing with my ministry partners about the last year, which includes the fun of being over there), and I just miss the Germanness of it all. People are so different there, they interact in such a distinctly different way... it's just a refreshing difference in comparison with American culture after having experienced the not-so-fun aspects of campus life in the states.

Don't get me wrong, I do love Americans and our culture, but spending the summer in Germany provided a great change of pace that I will always cherish and long for again. Students' upfront attitudes and openness in discussing sensitive issues was such a great treat for me, and Germans just don't value most of the fake-courtesies of Americans. Of course, that takes a little getting used to... it can be a lot more comfortable at first to be rejected by someone with a fake smile than by someone who really hates what you have to say (and is very blunt about that). Still, I think that in time, I learned to really value that genuine honesty, despite the apparent harshness (and that--however unfair--often is what Germans are remembered for, it seems).

One thing about Germany that I miss most is the simplicity of life, going to a cafe somewhere to spend time with the Lord and people-watch. You order, sit down somewhere, and no one interrupts you, not even at closing time. They know you are able to tell time... and you leave when you're good-and-ready. (Of course, for me, this really never happened since I needed to be back before dark AND had to catch the early streetcar home to make it in time....)

Ah, Deutschland!

hooray for the underdog!

Saturday I went to the U of M football opener with Greg, and we saw a historicially significant trouncing. There was nothing that could be done, one team just completely out-played the other. The wolverines were sent home defeated.

And the new victors? The rag-tag bunch of hillbillies at a speck of a school in North Carolina--Appalachian State. Their school boasts only 1,600 students (about the size of the U of M football team if you're counting red-shirts), and they're definitely not division one....

When I got home from the outing, I was met at the door by my Spartan father, excited as anything that his rivals had been defeated so embarrassingly, and shocked that I had been witness to something so spectacular--the biggest first-game overturn in history, the tragic take-down of a Big Ten giant.