Hawksley

One thing we've been wanting to do for awhile, but couldn't because of circumstances, was get a puppy. Well, now that we're no longer living in a one-bedroom apartment, and we've settled down in a house in Cleveland with a fully fenced yard, there's nothing stopping us.

So, once we returned back to Cleveland after spending Christmas and New Years in Prince George and Vancouver, we started searching hard for a puppy to join the family. We searched a lot on Petfinder.com, visited a local branch of the SPCA, and finally found the right pup at the Cuyahoga County Animal Shelter.

When we found him, he was 8 weeks old, and had been abandoned with his brothers and sisters in a shed. Some of the litter died, and only three boys survived. He's part German Shepherd, and part.... mystery dog. They don't know what he's crossed with, but they think possibly a Newfoundland or an Norwegian Elkhound. Whatever the mix is, he's cute! We had to wait a week before we could take him him (just in case the jerk that abandoned him came back to claim him), and on January 13, we officially became proud dog owners. We named him Hawksley.

It's been a pretty eventful three weeks since we got him. When he's not sleeping (which thankfully he does a fair amount), he's tearing around the house, biting us, chewing on things, and most of all, peeing, peeing and peeing. We've got him going outside most of the time now, but he still has some pee accidents inside and some other indoor pees which we're pretty sure he does just out of spite. Despite this, we love him a lot and are really happy we got him. He starts obedience class in just over a week, so hopefully he'll be a little better behaved real soon.

New York, New York

Over Thanksgiving, we were invited to spend the weekend in Morristown, New Jersey with our friends Jodie and Adam, as guests of Jodie's parents Ed and Maretta. Morristown is only about a 1-hour train ride from New York City, so we took the opportunity to spend a couple of days in the city while we were there.

We piled in the SUV with Jodie, Adam and their Border Collie, Duncan for the approximately 7-hour drive from Cleveland to Morristown Wednesday afternoon. After a relatively uneventful drive, we arrived around 11:00 PM to some great hospitality, and a house full of dogs as Jodie's brother and his girlfriend, also staying at the house, had brought their two labs as well. Erin has been talking about having three dogs one day, and this gave us an idea of what it might be like (a little crazy, but not too bad).

Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving in the States. It's a stroke of genius if you ask me. They get a four-day weekend out of it, while we only get a three day weekend with our Thanksgiving on a Monday. It was pretty much as advertised in TV and the movies: an entire day dedicated to nothing but lazing around the house, gorging yourself, drinking too much, watching football, and passing out from the turkey. A good time, but not something you could do every day.

On Friday, our hosts had plans to attend a concert in Morristown, so we headed out on our own to the Big Apple. Black Friday crowds meant the city was incredibly crowded, but it was still great. We arrived at Penn Station, and from there walked around mid-town, seeing sights like Times Square, the Empire State Building, Broadway and Rockefeller Center before hopping on the Subway down to Greenwich Village and the East Village. We did a little bit of shopping, stopped at a café and later a small pub before having a very nice dinner at a steakhouse in the area.

Our hosts were free on Saturday, so they took us on a little tour of more of Manhattan. We again took the train into the city and headed downtown. This time we saw Chinatown, Canal Street, Little Italy, the World Trade Center site, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Another great day in New York.

A big thanks to our hosts Ed and Maretta for welcoming us into their house for Thanksgiving, and for the Saturday tour of the city. New York is an amazing city, and not one you can do in a few days, so we're definitely planning on making a trip back, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Cleveland Rocks! (Though we haven't lived through winter yet)

It's been a couple of months since our last update. Chalk it up to us being busy settling in here in Cleveland. Here's an update on what we've been up to:

At the end of October, we moved into our new house in the Coventry Village area of Cleveland Heights, an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland. We love both the house and the area.

Moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a two-story house means that we had a LOT of furniture to get to fill up the house, and it is still half empty. We've managed to furnish most of the downstairs, including our living room, dining room and eat-in kitchen (though the living room furniture will be upgraded), but our upstairs still consists of a half-furnished bedroom (our TV is resting on two German beer crates -- very classy) and two empty bedrooms. We hope to get our guest bedroom furnished early in the new year, at which point we can comfortably host visitors.

Even though it's still unfinished, our house already feels very much like "home". It's our first house together, and we are really enjoying the experience of making it our own.

The Coventry Village area is great. It's one of the few areas in Cleveland that is walkable; there are a large number of shops, restaurants, pubs and cafés within a 5 minute walk of our house. With Christmas approaching, the trees lining the street are all lit up with lights and it is quite beautiful. We've been to a few of the restaurants and pubs, but still have a number to try. We've heard that the area is especially nice in the summer, and we're looking forward to that very much.

Other than settling in, we haven't done anything too too exciting, except for a short trip to New York and New Jersey over American Thanksgiving with our friends Jodie and Adam. We'll have a separate update on that shortly, but it was a great trip. Tomorrow morning we head to Prince George for Christmas, with a short stay in Vancouver for New Year's before we head back to Cleveland.

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

After Patrick and Bree's visit, we had just a few days left in Germany. Patrick and Bree left town on Tuesday morning, a day which also saw movers come to pack up our apartment, and Erin work her last day in Singen. After being moved out of our apartment, we'd spend three nights in a hotel right in the heart of Konstanz's old town.

Despite living pretty much right in the middle of Konstanz for a long time (3.5 years for Erin, 1.5 years for Tim), the town seemed a little different while staying in the hotel. We got to see the city through the eyes of a tourist, and we realized all over again what a beautiful town it is, and how much we'd miss it.

In between checking in on the cleaners and painters touching up our apartment for the turnover to the next tenant, we were able to spend some time touring the city one last time. We walked through the old town, walked along the Rhein, and had some nice meals at some our favourite restaurants in town. It would have been nice to have a little more time to soak in the town before we left, but unfortunately we had to leave early Friday morning to move to Cleveland.

Our move to the USA is one we're making with mixed feelings. On one hand, we're excited for this next adventure in our life, and to be in a culture way more similar to our Canadian way of life. On the other hand, we will miss some facets of European life that we really grew to love, and we will definitely, definitely miss having all these amazing travel opportunities right at our doorstep. In less than four years, we've seen more beautiful and amazing places than most people get to see in a lifetime, and we've gotten to meet a number of wonderful people that have become great friends. We've had some great experiences here, and we're truly lucky for that.

Konstanz Oktoberfest (with some visitors from Canada!)

This most recent update is coming to you from our new (temporary) home in Beachwood, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. It's been a busy couple of weeks, but we are starting to get things in order here. More on that to come soon, but first we'll go over our last days in Germany.

Our friends Patrick and Bree were visiting family and friends in England in September, and had mentioned that they had hoped to come visit us for a few days in Germany if we were able to find the time. We had to make sure their visit wouldn't interfere with the movers coming to our house, and after organizing and cancelling their vist a few times, finally we were able to arrange everything, and Patrick and Bree arrived in Konstanz on the Friday night.

Those of you who were at our wedding will remember Patrick as one our MCs; specifically the one with the odd sense of humour. He worked with both Erin and I at our last job in Canada, so we both know him well and were happy to have him and Bree visit. On their first night, we made them a cheese fondue before heading into Konstanz for a couple of drinks; all in all a pretty quiet night.

On Saturday we showed them around the town. We showed them the usual tourist sites of Konstanz: the cathedral, the old town, the waterfront, and the statue of Imperia. They absolutely loved the town.

That evening we went to the local Oktoberfest. It is tiny compared to the one in Münich, but it is still a huge party. We had a number of other friends show up as well: Scott from Tim's German class with his girlfriend Nina, our friends Chastity and Mark, and a number of friends from Erin's work as well. We had a great time drinking the giant one-litre beers, eating pork knuckles and listening to German music while wearing our lederhosen and dirndls.

Sunday we showed Patrick and Bree around town a little more, and Bree, inspired by the night before, went and bought her own dirndl for future Oktoberfests. We took advantage of some nice September weather and had a couple of beers on Konstanz's waterfront beer garden before having a nice dinner on a restaurant on the Rhine.

Monday we were back to work (Tim's last day teaching English and Erin's second-to-last day in Singen), so Patrick and Bree went down to Zürich for the day. They enjoyed it, but said they liked Konstanz much better -- great praise considering Zürich is generally considered one of the nicest cities in the world. For dinner we went to a local Brauhaus to get some traditional German food and beer. We sent Patrick and Bree off to a friend's apartment in Kreuzlingen across the border, as we needed to do some preparations for the movers coming the following morning.

Patrick and Bree were off back to England Tuesday morning, and the movers came and cleaned our stuff out of our apartment. While it was a hectic few days to have shortly before our move, it was really great to see our friends and show off our life in Germany. Three days later we would leave Germany. More on that next entry...