As promised yesterday, I’m back with some shots from our long weekend at Canyonlands with our pals from Germany.  We are spending the summer in the US so that Martin doesn’t lose his green card, and ironically… we’re already hosting culture shocked visitors from Germany!  I wish I could recall everything from college geology class.  Canyonlands National Park is spectacular with layer after layer of delicious geological history.  The Park is also the perfect place to take a scenic flight before I begin my summer project of earning a pilot’s license.

It’s kind of a badge of honor for Germans to go back home sunburned from a trip to America.  It’s always so cloudy in Germany, so our friends were determined to get as tanned as possible.  They truly were like lobsters.  Meanwhile, I was determined to stay as white as possible for our summer in the Rocky Mountains.  So let me just say that I’m not going to show you any pictures of my white and pasty legs next to their sun-filled, glowing selves.  Maybe in 40 years.  On with the rest of the pictures…

Day 1:  Canyonlands from the ground:

Part of our all-day hiking trail was on a mountain biking path.  We saw about ten bikers, almost all of whom said, “How’s it going?” to us as they biked by.  (The ones who didn’t were too busy reminding themselves to keep pushing, keep breathing.)  Our German friends turned to us and finally asked, “What am I supposed to say to that?”  Martin and I shrugged.  I mean, what do all of YOU say to that statement – how’s it going?  We told them to say whatever they wanted… well except an answer like, “I’m dying.”  The buzzards weren’t after us in all that heat quite yet.

Day 2:  Canyonlands from the air:

Today we’re on our way into the mountains where we plan to live until we head back to Berlin.  We’ll be working on the whole internet in the middle of nowhere thing, getting used to a 30 mile drive to the grocery store, and having not a single neighbor in shouting distance.  Kind of like Canyonlands.  The house is probably the greenest home I’ve ever seen, so we can’t wait to give you a tour once we get there.

Next up:  aerial views of the Arches National Park claim to fame!

(Images by Making This Home)

My flight lessons haven’t started yet for a couple of reasons.  First we’re not even to our destination in the mountains (we’re on our way Right Now!).  Second would be the teensy problem that I have with intense motion sickness.

You know how drivers never get sick in cars?  It’s always the passengers.  In airplanes, it’s the same way.  Except it’s worse.  If small airplanes had those “fasten seatbelt” signs like commercial planes, those little lights would be illuminated for the entire flight.  At this point, I “fly the plane” by steering for 30 seconds while Martin snaps a picture or looks up something in his flight books.  After 30 seconds, I just can’t do it any more.

Small planes can’t get the kind of elevation that commercial flights get.  It means commercial planes typically get smoother air, but little planes get the view.  Bigger planes have more surface area, so the bumps that could bounce a little 2- or 4-seat plane wouldn’t jolt those big planes a bit.  Now I’m not trying to discourage people from flying; you have to go up when the weather is best.  Spring happens to be the worst season.  And just like I have never met a female pilot, I have never met anyone who battles motion sickness to the extreme level that I do.  Many people have absolutely no problems; I can’t even look at a map in a car.

I started crying the other day, absolutely convinced that I would never be able to be a pilot.  We were doing a few loops around one of the little airports in the Denver metropolitan area, and I felt so sick.  I could focus on nothing.  It felt like if I tried to open my mouth to speak, something else would come out instead.  My body was numb, and tears were making me worse.  I’d been getting so excited about flying.  Was I going to have to give up?  Was I going to have to tell all of you and all of my family that I was giving up?

Martin tells me to hang in there.  I tell him all of my doubts with my battles of motion sickness; he reminds me of how I have overcome it before.  I try to be patient and keep enduring.  I also know that if I want to fly, I have to learn to just do it even when I start feeling sick.

The key to handling motion sickness is to just keep getting in the air over and over.  So that’s what I’m doing.  I have remained in the co-pilot’s seat the couple of times we’ve gone up.  I won’t tell you how many times I’ve washed out our designated motion sickness bucket with a lid after landing.  But I will tell you this:  we’ve met some awesome Colorado cowboys and seen some beautiful Utah canyons.

Yep – we slipped away for the weekend and joined our friends from Germany one last time at Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.  Don’t suppose you’d all like to see some aerial pictures of those parks now, would you?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about recycling and repurposing odds and ends that can’t go into our recycling bins.  The latest target in our house?  CDs.

Thanks to our decision to go digital, we don’t buy a lot of CDs or DVDs.  But when we do run into them, we’ve always tossed them.  I suspect you do the same, right?

Not now.  Here’s what I’ve dug up on going green with those old disks cluttering your house:

Turn CDs into a craft project

Curlby and Make-Stuff have both compiled a slew of different projects from disco balls like the one below to clocks and driveway reflectors.

Great for kids, RePlayGround has simple ideas for making sun catchers that I know the volunteers at day camp would have been all over if CDs were actually floating around when we were kids.

Mail them to Recycling Centers

Mail CDs, DVDs, and cases to the CD Recycling Center for a $2.00 donation.  They melt the disks down and reuse ‘em in automotive and building material industries.  They’ll accept hundreds of the things, so you can clean out that office and be doing the happy dance.

Wanna chip in on any ideas you have for recycling or repurposing CDs?  I’ll be honest; it wasn’t something I had thought about before.  So spill what you know.

As you probably know if you’ve stuck around us, we’re always looking for more recycling topics (Like remember what we found about recycling contacts and glasses?  And then there ways to recycle our old shoes.  Good times.).  So if you’re dying to know about how to recycle, say, just about anything but a tasty chocolate bar, let me know.  Chances are, more of us will want to be recycling it, too.

Ahh heck, and if you are thinking of redistributing any chocolate bars, I know just the place to send them (email me here!).

(Images from MakingFriends & CD Recycling Center)

It’s time for us to pack up and head deep into the Rocky Mountains.  Yippee!  But before we do, I’ve got something to share with all of you.  I get a lot of emails from people moving to Germany for the first time.  It’s very exciting to read about their plans and try to answer their questions as best I can.  It also brings back a lot of memories.  When Martin and I decided to make Germany home, I started searching for American bloggers in Germany.  Just hearing them talk about life as an expat brought me comfort.  I was nervous, scared, excited.  In a word: overwhelmed.

Perhaps you have felt the same thing when big changes are approaching?

Today, none of the bloggers that I followed still live in Germany, but I haven’t forgotten what they’ve done for me. That’s why I want to pass on something to people planning future moves overseas.  I can’t offer advice on visas and legalities.  As you all know, we did pick up quite a few other skills (like mastering the quiet hour laws).

Stuffed with links and suggestions, here it is:

An Expat’s Guide to Life in Germany

I’m tucking this little guide in a couple of places so you can always find it without it getting in the way for people who aren’t necessarily looking for a guide to life in the land of beer and bratwurst.  You’ll find the lovely linky:

1. Below our Berlin Tour for anyone heading our way, and
2. On the Contact page

It’s a work in progress, so you can be sure it’ll have plenty more as my expat knowledge grows.  Hope you can let me take a raincheck for today’s Simpler Life post.  Time got away – either while packing or eating Mexican food one last time in Denver.  I really can’t say which.

Tschüs!

(Image by Katie for Making This Home)

Seriously!  We want to know.  It probably comes as no surprise to you that Martin and I get asked one question more than any other:

Where do you prefer to live?

We’ve pondered the question over and over, and we really can’t give a solid answer right now.  Europe, the US, the city, the country, the suburbs… so many choices.  So many good points (and fortunately, so few not-so-good points) in all the places we’re calling home this year.

So we thought we’d throw it at you.  We’re both really aching to hear what you would say is your dream place to live regardless if you’ve been there or not.  So come on.  Give us your best.  Where do you prefer to live?

(Image by Katie for Making This Home)

This is one of my future passengers freaking out about me being her pilot:

Oh wait.  We haven’t even left the ground, and she’s already feeling it. The door in front of her (to the left) is still wide open, and the passenger behind her hasn’t got his headset on yet.  See him dangling them behind her?

You gotta love having a support system like this around.