What I do all day....

One of the questions I get asked a lot these days is, "So, what do you do, Heather?" People I just meet ask me this, wondering if I also work. My family who know I'm not working ask me this, wondering what I do with my time. Other American wives I meet here who are also not working ask me this since, unlike most of them, I have no children to care for. Sometimes I find myself asking myself this, as well.

So...what do I do?

Well, one thing I'm NOT doing is working. I don't have permission from the German government to work. And honestly, I have not looked into the possibility of getting permission to work. Nor do I really want to right now. I felt so overwhelmingly busy at times in Flint that I love this time to do what I really want to do so I've been digging up projects I've postponed for years and finding new ones to work on. Here are some of them:

I'm quilting. As many of you know, I asked Karl for a sewing machine for Christmas two years ago, with the idea in mind that I wanted to learn how to quilt. Which I did! And I really enjoy it. So now I have more time to quilt. Here is a quilt I started in Wooster and finished the weekend Karl was forgetting everything in Switzerland (front and back views):





I'm blogging. I've really enjoyed writing this blog and I'm glad you are all still reading it! I keep a running list of things to blog about and I hope I'm not boring you all yet, because I have a lot of ideas!! And if any of you have ideas of what you'd like to hear about, please let me know! Since I've started my own blog I've also been discovering other blogs. I have several I like to read almost daily and others I like to keep tabs on. Some I find simply interesting or fun to read, others give me good ideas for projects and quilts and others are just beautiful.

I'm researching my family history. I've been wanting to help my dad research his German family line for years and now that I'm in Germany and have the time, I'm doing it! He was able to find information on his family line up until the point when the family came over to America but he could not find information on them IN Germany. I was able to locate our family in a town in Germany a couple of hours north of here and I've found other records on the family in an archive in Speyer. It's been fun and I have lots more to do! I'm looking forward to taking a trip up to the towns my family came from.

I've been learning German. LuK has provided me with a German instructor and she comes twice a week to help me with my German. We speak in German, I write in German, she teaches me grammar and cultural tips and gives me homework. I'm learning that the German I thought was so good at the end of my mission in Berlin really wasn't that good at all!

I'm planning trips. Living in Germany for two years, it would be a sin not to take advantage of travelling around Europe now that I don't have to pay for the most expensive part of the trip...the plane ticket over the Atlantic. Karl and I, as you know, have been exploring the region of Germany we live in, but we're planning some bigger trips as well. My good friend is visiting in April and we'll be spending a week in Paris together. I'm hoping to spend my birthday in June biking around the Dingle peninsula in Ireland. And Karl and I want to pick up our new Harry Potter books at a London bookstore on the day it's released in July.

I'm been doing laundry. And dishes. And vacuuming. And grocery shopping. And paying bills. And...well, you get the idea.

And sometimes I'm bored. About once a week or so I have a day where I am just plain bored. Those are the days I often start thinking of new projects and things to do...like maybe I could buy a drum set....?