Saturday, April 11, 2015

Week 5: Caves and the thing about too much food

Hello again,

This week was a fairly quiet one, so if, after reading you think to yourself "gee that was boring"- don't complain, you've just been warned. 



Thursday: 

It was freezing. And when I say freezing I mean the wearing-three-sweaters-two-pairs-of-socks-long-underwear-underneath-my-winter-coat-hat-and-scarf-and-still-feeling-like-I'm-getting-frostbite kind of freezing. So naturally, we had our first tour of the season. Basically, the Conservancy offers tourists the chance to experience the Spanish Mustangs up close. We take them through the herd, telling them all about the history of the Spanish Mustang and about the individual horses etc. It's really neat, and I enjoy walking with the tour every time Lucy tells the stories. I say I enjoy it every time. Let me make an exception. I enjoy it every time with the exception of that day! 
The family that came was really nice, but with the weather being so horrible, the tour lasted about thirty minutes and they bundled back up into their car and left, promising to come back in the summer time. Wise choice (in my opinion). We spent the rest of the afternoon baking bread which was quite fun and went to bed early. Surprise surprise. 


Friday:

Friday wasn't the best of days. The weather was bad and people were in a bad mood all day. We raked up the pens again, cleaned the house and went to the post office. It's the cutest post office ice ever seen! The building is so small and the po boxes are made out of brass or something and look out of the last century. I love it! And basically, that was the highlight of my Friday. 



Saturday:

We escaped the broody mood and the cold on Saturday by visiting the nearby Wind Cave National Park. The cave was really cool to walk through, at one point, our guide turned of the lights and it was so pitch black that you couldn't even see your own hand if you held it in front of you face. If there had been someone in the tour I knew and didn't like, I could've totally gotten away with smacking them. No one would have known. Then again, knowing me, I'd have probably tripped over my own feet and fallen down a shaft or something.





Sunday:

One of the first days I was actually homesick. I skyped both my mom and my boyfriend and I think that was too much in one day. Also add in the fact that I've been extremely sleep deprived due to the fact that I haven't had one night where I slept through and it was all a bit too much. So I was pretty mopey all day and I guess it was good that we didn't really do much. 

Monday:

It was crazy windy today! I mean, living here for a while, you get used to the fact that there's always wind (especially at feeding times- alfalfa in my face!), but today was extreme. Due to this, we didn't spend a lot of time outside and mainly cleaned the house. We had a delicious dinner though: steak from their own cow (I believe his name was Charlie), rice and broccoli. Yum!! The highlight of my day however, was when my boyfriend called. Cheesy and stuff I know, but just hearing his voice made me smile from ear to ear. 

Tuesday:

Another day, another music concert. This time I believe it was the Winter Concert of the high school as well as the middle school. Beforehand we fed early and went for Chinese food. Delicious! The best thing were the fried sweet dumplings afterward. Those things were way too good and way too small, meaning I think I are about six of them ( really don't wanna know how many calories I consumed, so I'm not gonna think about that). The weather was really nice for a change, though still freezing cold. 

Wednesday: 

Shopping!! We went to Rapid for a huge food shop. We went to SAMs club and by the end we had so much stuff that is girls had to walk alongside the cart thing to make sure that nothing fell off. It was so much fun. We also went to Target, Michaels and Starbucks. For lunch we went to this amazing Japanese grill place. You know, one of those where you sit around the grill and the chef stands in the middle preparing your food. It was amazing. The chef guy totally flirted with Lea ( he wanted her number, she refused, Leigh (the other intern from England) and I contemplated giving it to him anyway, but we figured Lea might kill us, so we didn't) and we all thoroughly enjoyed that. The end result was that we rolled out of the place. We were so full that we swore we would never eat again. I haven't been that full in months. See the thing about too much food is that you don't realize that it's too much until it's too late. One minute you're happily tucking into your rice and salmon and the next- boom- you think you will explode and someone will have to scrape you off the wall. Not a pleasant image. Not at all. Still, it was worth stuffing ourselves. It was so so very good.



See, I told you, this week was a little boring. All in all, the drawbacks were the fact that I haven't been able to sleep well in weeks and that the weather was so dreary and cold. Off to a sunny and happy next week I hope! Talk to you soon,



xoxo

Laura 

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Week 4: Fudge and a Rodeo

Hello there,

Let me start this week off with a little rant about technology. I had had this post written already (no this is not an excuse- it's nothing but the sad truth); and when I went to add pictures to it - POOF- gone. Stupid stupid computer. Stupid technology. Stupid everything (*pout here*). So here we go, take two of week four:



Thursday:

Rodeo day!!!! I was beyond excited, everyone had told us so much about the rodeo that we couldn't wait to see it in person. It was a really cool day, before we left for the rodeo we did our regular daily chores with one exception: we let the horses out. Now that I guess I'll have to explain. During the winter, the horses are kept in an area called the rodeo grounds. Basically it's an unfinished riding arena that once was and once it's restored will again be a rodeo ground. The reason for that is just that it makes feeding them a lot easier, this way all we have to do is drive into the rodeo grounds with the flatbed pick-up and throw the hay off. Anywho, Thursday was nice enough for us to let them run out into the large pasture for the first time so that they could all stretch their legs etc. Have you ever seen the movie Spirit? (If anyone answered no- watch it. Now!) Seeing 21 horses gallop straight towards you (I was standing by the fence) is just a magical sight. Their hooves made the snow fly up and it was just gorgeous! Evening rolled around and it was finally time to leave for Rapid City. The rodeo was amazing! There were so many events, calf roping, barrel riding, bucking stock riding (basically like bull riding, but with bucking horses) and of course bull riding, amongst a few other small events like a competition amongst cowboys to see who could load their horses into a trailer the fastet etc. It really is like everyone always imagines it. The cowboys have to stay on their bull or bucking horse for eight seconds and if they manage that they get a score based on all kinds of different criteria like posture, the position of their legs (they're not allowed higher than the saddle or something like that) and loads of other stuff that I don't know. It was so exciting and it all happpened so fast. I tried to take as many pictures as possible, but most of them came out blurred (thats how fast it was ;) ). It was a long day, we got home at around eleven pm and just fell into bed.



















Friday:

Friday was a low-key kind of day. We went to the Stock Show for a third time just to wander around and look at all of the stalls again and when we got home we groomed the horses. It was a beautiful day, 21°C, crazy weather for February, but hey- I'm not complaining! All in all it was a good day after the rodeo because we were all pretty tired from the long day we'd had.

Saturday: 

Another relaxed day. We had to clean the pens again, which is a nice way of saying we shoveled poop for most of the day. It was quite windy as well, which, let me tell you; poop and wind....not the greatest of combinations. The thing is, once the stuff is dry, it blows all over the place very easily. Let's just leave it at that. Showers were a neccessity.

Sunday:

Tumbleweeds and sleeping in were the key words on Sunday. We had lots of chores to do (yes, poop again) and we also had the task of freeing the pastures of the tumleweeds. Now, you know how in those old westerns, these dry bushes tumble across the prairie? That's literally what it's like. Only that it's not as cool-looking in real life. For one, they have little thorn-like things on them, so if you grab them the wrong way, it hurts (been there, done that *cough*), and secondly, they blow frickin everywhere. We had to heave them over the pasture fence because they'd accumulated and were getting so heavy that they could've knocked the fence down. So, the good samaritans we are, we freed the fence and left the tumbleweeds to continue their tumbling in someone elses yard.




Monday:

The first day we really worked with the horses in the round-pen. I got to lunge one of the horses by myself for the first time. It was so cool to be able to interact with them that way, I learned a lot about body language and how to "spook-proof" a horse. Basically, the horse needs to be shown all kinds of things like a flag waving over their head or a long whip stroking their side (never hitting them, but just so that they get used to the light touch of something on their back) and everything, so that you can be sure that your horse won't blow up on you when you go out into traffic and stuff with it. It was so warm that I could actually walk around in a tshirt, I couldn't believe it . We also watched Pitch Perfect (another great movie), ate some seriously good steaks (except for Lea- she's a vegetarian) and laughed a lot. Whenever the sun shines, it just brightens up everyones mood.




Tuesday:

Field trip! We went to visit Hill City, a quaint little western town near Crazy Horse and Mt. Rushmore. Not a lot was open, because most stores, restaurants and even hotels here are closed during the winter season, because no one but us is apparently crazy enough to visit South Dakota during the winter. It was still really fun, we went into one of the MANY rock shops (seriously, South Dakota has rock shops like Germany has mattress stores....craaaaaaazy...I mean, they all have the same rocks and lets face it....rocks aren't that interesting.) It's still fun to look around in one though, so that's what we did for a little bit. Moving on from rocks, we saw a chocolate store that was open and went in. Oh my! The chocoholic in me still gets the giggles when I think about it. Rows of freshly made fudge, pralines, truffles and caramels...amazing. We all kind of went a littel crazy and needless to say, I had a major sugar rush later that day). But we hadn't had lunch yet. We drove by a little house with a sign saying "Pizza Mill". Figuring that pizza is always a good choice we went in - and were not disappointed. The pizza was huge, delicious, and the crust was a specialty that tasted amazing with a little honey drizzled over it (don't judge until you've tried it,ok?) We were so full when we got home, until dinner came round and we had tortellini. You can't not eat something when there are tortellini, so we didn't have a choice but to stuff ourselves...daaaaang it. We finished the night by watching Despicable Me ("it's so fluffy I'm gonna dieeeee") because Lea hadn't seen it and let's face it- you have to have seen it!








Wednesday:

We had to get up at five am to drive to an all-day music event for the kids in Rapid City, so of course, I slept horribly. In a great mood due to a lack of sleep and the freakin cold weather, I was kinda angry all day, and it didn't help that all we basically did was sit around. I mean, hearing the kids play their various instruments was lots of fun, but a roomfull of people practicing trumpets and other loud instruments at seven in the morning...not really my thing. The things that brightened up the day: glazed donuts and chinese food.


And with that, we conclude not only week 4, but also my first month in the US. Crazy how fast time flies. I'm still a little miffed about having had to write this post twice, so I'll leave you here and I'll see you next time.



Love you all lots,

xoxo

Laura

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Week 3: Vikings and Cookies

Hello again,

I'm just gonna quit apologizing for constantly being too tired to finish my blogposts and post them; cause let's face it, I'm not going to get any better at that. The short summary to start off for all of you who are too tired/bored/late for something to read the whole blog: visits to Rapid City were made, more music events visited, bacon and cookies were eaten, Vikings was watched and snow was hated. Now for the in-depth tour: 

Thursday:

This Thursday we didn't really do much. We fed the horses in the morning and then loaded a bunch of steel onto a trailer to take to the recycling plant in Rapid City (well to be honest, I wasn't much help with loading the steel- I'm 1,62 m tall and have the upper body strength of a five year old- not a good combination if your goal is to lift 150 pounds of steel pipe onto a trailer. I was more of a mental help, you know *cough*). We got done with the steel at around noon, ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I don't know what it is with Mexican food, but I stuff myself by accident every time. Basically I didn't feel too good afterwards and was glad to sleep on the drive back home. We visited an antique store on our way home, I've never seen so much stuff in one room. It was very impressive, there wasn't a lot of stuff I'd personally want to buy, but it was fun to walk through. And that was the whole day (well we watered an fed all of the animals again and had dinner, but we do that every day, so I'm not going to mention it every time). 


Friday:

Again, a very slow day. We didn't have too much to do so I caught up with my emails and such and at night we went to a Gymnastics meet for one of the girls and to Dairy Queen afterwards. I must say, I remembered DQ strictly as an ice cream place, but apparently they also have loads of other food. Who knew? (Probably everyone but me, but whatever). 

Saturday:

Off to Rapid City we go (again). This time it was due to the auditions the kids had for an All-State Band. We waited a few hours for all three of them to finish up and at around two pm we were starving. What do you do when you're starving? Visit IHOP of course. I must admit that this was my first ever visit to IHOP. I know, crazy right? But I'd just never gotten around to it when I lived in Michigan. Being there for the first time, the obvious choice of food would of course be pancakes, but it was the afternoon and I wanted something hearty. So I went for pasta. Weird I know, and I have to go there again for the pancakes, but when I'm really hungry, I just don't feel like breakfast, which is my least favorite meal of the day anyway. It had been cold and foggy all day, but the temperature continued to drop and the fog literally froze as soon as it hit the ground. I've never seen anything like it before I must say. It didn't look it but the roads were dangerous. On our way home we drove past about 10 accidents, it was crazy. The roads were so icy it took us three hours to get home, we went that slowly. It was seriously crazy. 

Sunday: 

We got to sleep in!!! Whoohoo!! Well, we slept until 7:30 am. For us, that's sleeping in. I don't know what to think about that fact to be honest, but that's the way it is. I'm like an old lady, I get nervous when I'm not in bed by 7 pm because when you get up at six am every day, every hour of sleep counts. We had a wonderful breakfast of bacon and waffles (yum!). Feeding the horses was a blast, considering it was -18 degrees C and it felt like -30 and yes, there was snow on the ground. Yes, that sentence was meant as an ironic comment, I was freezing my butt off. Considering all that, we spent the day inside, had fajitas for dinner and went to bed as early as possible.
This is my bed by the way...interesting I know, but seeing as this week was quite uneventful I figured I might as well show you :)

Monday:

The ground was still covered in snow on Monday, the cold prevailing as well. We did brave the weather in the morning to stack wood according to its size and usage, and seeing as the sun was shining it was actually quite fun. When we got inside we warmed up in the living room and the show Vikings was on. At first I was like "too gory" and didn't pay it too much attention, but after one episode you totally get into it and we were all hooked. Basically we watched all two seasons in one day (Season three is airing this February- ahh). It's seriously good, if you like historical dramas and good-looking guys in Viking clothes. I mean, yes, they're all covered in blood every five minutes because they have to pillage and plunder, but it's so awesome! And if that wasn't a pretty chill Monday already, we also ate some pretty awesome Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (Yes, I got the recipe and yes, I will make it as soon as I get back home). 



Tuesday: 

It was another musical day for us this Tuesday. Both girls had a performance at a college with their high school band so we had to be done with all of our evening chores by three pm because we had an hour and a half drive to get there. So we didn't do anything except for chores that day and got to sit in on the concert at night. The snow had melted (yay) but it was still freezing cold. The wind seriously makes all the difference here, as soon as it picks up it feels like it's ten degrees colder. For dinner we had Subway, which was nice because they don't have meatball marinara sandwiches in Germany.

Wednesday:

Wakey wakey....at five am. Oh jolly good. It was a gorgeous day but freezing cold. Our host "mom" had a doctors appointment bright and early, hence the five am wake up call. We spent the morning at Starbucks which was very enjoyable. I had a Chai Tea Latte and a Caramel Macchiato (I think). I don't really remember what the coffee I had was called. I also wanted a bagel but they were out (pout here). Afterwards we went to the Stock Show at the Civic Center. It was basically a huge Exposition of all things western. From blinged-out cowgirl belts to cattle guards and twenty foot horse trailers, you could buy just about anything. They also had a lot of cattle and steers, they did bull competitions ( the top stud bull sold for something like 35,000$ or something) and this was also the place where the rodeos took place. We spent a few amicable hours there and then drove on home. It was a lot of fun to just walk around and look at all of the stuff there. Again it was freezing cold, but seeing as we were indoors for most of the day anyway it was ok. 

I do believe this marks the end of Week 3 ladies and gentlemen. Next week is going to be great. Prepare yourself mentally for rodeos and gorgeous sunrises (amongst other exciting things), so basically, I promise there will be more pictures in next weeks blogpost.

At this point I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who reads my blog. I don't know how many you are, but even if it's just a few people, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read what I wrote. 



See you soon, 

xoxo

Laura 

P.S. It has come to my attention (*cough* thanks mom), that I have been making some massive spelling mistakes and grammatical errors...I would like to formally apologize for this (it's all autocorrect's fault of course). I'll try to do better next time :)

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Week 2: Mammoths and Crazy Horse

Hello there,

I'm just going to get straight into it without much of an intro, but for everyone who doesn't feel like reading my novel-esque blogposts ( The word "esque" is currently one of my favorites... can you tell?) here's a quick summary: We cleaned some horse stuff, did more chores, visited Rapid City a couple of times, ate great food and went sight-seeing. If you wanna know what we saw, read the post :P

Thursday

Thursday was quite a cold day, so we spent it in the basement cleaning halters and brushes. It was quite interesting to see a halter which you could've sworn was grey, turn pink. We also cleaned up the garage a little bit, got pick-up driving lessons (so much fun, but you have to be careful when going through the gate while feeding so that you don't knock the sidemirrors off. I might've tapped against the gate once already...or twice..don't judge me, I'm not a ba driver I swear). Other than that we got to meet the horses "in person", stroking them and getting to know their herd behavior. It's so interesting seeing them interact with one another, I think I could spend an entire day just watching them. You learn so much just through the way they react to each other. For dinner we had potatoe soup and some of the best biscuits I've ever had. Seeing as I don't have any particular pictures of today, look at this little chihuaha; his ears just kill me!



Friday:

Our first Friday was very quiet. We didn't have a lot to do so we raked some of the "poop piles" up for the bobcat ( a machine, not the animal) to spread out and visited Hot Springs (the nearest town) to pick up some fruit and vegetable baskets at night. I also skyped with my boyfriend for the first time. It's a very surreal feeling skyping someone you're so close to. You feel as though you're with them because you can see their face and their reaction to what you say, but you can't touch them to give them a (light) punch or anything like that. Basically, the 3D part is missing.  I'm not sure whether or not I like it...It shows one how very far away one is from another and that makes me sad. I guess this is a good time to talk about homesickness while I'm at it. Do I sound completely cold-hearted when I say I'm not homesick? I miss my family and my little Molly (my dog) and my boyfriend very much, but I mean, I'm going to be gone until June, and there is nothing that will change that, so what's the point in moaning, right? Is that horrible?

Saturday:

I skyped with my parents, brother and dog on Saturday. I had to get up at five am, but it was worth it. It was so much fun seeing them all...poor mommy, alone with two men (well, one and a half men). My dog is very much ignoring me, apparantly she sneaks into my room sometimes and causes as much mayhem as possible. She is not amused that I abandoned her like I did. I take this in the most flattering way and say that she misses me. We also drove into Rapid again to watch the youngest daughter of our host family perform in a music contest. I think I haven't mentioned this yet, but Rapid is about an hours drive away from where we live...but that's not very far, thinking in US standards, and one gets used to the car drive very quickly. One hour passes very fast. Usually.

Sunday: 

We visited the Mammoth Museum in Hot Springs on Sunday. The museum is actually an excavation site where they still do digs, so it is still active, which I find very cool. The center of the museum is an old sinkhole where the mammoths died in, thousands of years ago. They've already found over 60 skeletons and have about 40 more feet down to excavate. Very cool, I must say. It was also very windy that day. And if one says it was very windy in South Dakota...trust me, that's very windy. Chicago is nothing against the wind here. If there's no wind here you better not jinx it by saying something stupid like "yay, no wind today" (trust me, been there, done that), because the wind hears it and goes "whoops, my bad, here you go: whooooooosh". Great job wind, thanks buddy.



My Jaw compared to that one of a Mammoth. Well let's face it, my HEAD compared to the Jaw of a Mammoth

I'm even smaller than the tiniest baby Mammoth...short people problems....


Monday:

Crazy Horse Memorial. Great, great day. It was very warm, a sweater was enough to keep one nice and toasty and the sun was great. Not a cloud in the sky. I'd already been to Crazy Horse Mountain a few years ago, but they've added onto the museum and let's face it, it's always worth the trip. Seeing as it's the winter here, there's not a lot of basically no tourists, so we almost had the place to ourselves. It was very nice. We spent some of our time just sitting on the deck there looking at the mountain and chatting with the sun warming our backs. Seeing as I am generally fascinated by the Native American Culture and their way of life, and I've already had my fair share of papers and presentations on Crazy Horse, I can only recommend to everyone who visits South Dakota to go there. It's such a fascinating place to learn about Native American History and such. The thing that impresses me most is the Quote by Crazy Horse when he was once asked where his lands are now ( being faced with life on the Reservation) and he pointed to the Black Hills and said "My lands are where my dead lie buried".









Tuesday:

The most beautiful January day I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Over 19°C which is like over 60°F, not a cloud in the sky....just plain gorgeous. Coincidentally also my boyfriends birthday, which was very nice, even though I was very sad not to be there to celebrate with him. We stained the library upstairs that day, which was loads of fun. I almost had a whole bucket of mahogany stain dumped on my head (thanks Lea ;) ) because I am very short and so I had the task of painting the parts closest to the ground and Lea (the tallest) stood on the scaffolding painting the ceiling and well...she sort of forgot she had the paint bucket in her other hand. Missed me by like an inch, although my jeans caught their fair share, I now have a brown stain on my right knee which I fear I might get to keep for a while, cause it won't wash off. It was loads of fun though, so it's all good. Tuesday was also the first day I got to throw the hay off of the flatbed pick-up, which made me feel very good about myself. I'm such a big girl :P

We got Hay delivered today, so we locked the little dogs in the Pick-up; otherwise they would've gotten flattened by the HUGE (and by huge I mean, Transformers-huge) Tractor.





Wednesday:

We finished staining those parts in the library which we could reach without putting ourselves in serious danger (I could've hung off the ladder a little more...but it's only our second week, better not risk falling and breaking every bone in my body). We also waxed the hardwood floors in the parlor and hall. Wednesday was so windy we actually couldn't feed until about eight am because the wind would've blown the hay and alfalfa all over the place, so there was no point and we had to wait. I have to say, I love working outside. Even though it gets pretty chilly and windy most of the time it gives me satisfaction to do physical work, see a result at the end of the day and to know that I've done some excercise one could almost say.


Let's see, what was also worth mentioning this week:
- Eggplant parmesian....delicious, and I usually don't like eggplant, but man that was good!
- We're starting to feel more at home in our little basement room, it's definitely helped now that it's nice and warm with the space heater
- The adorable doggies that I've forgot to mention so far. There's three in total. Tessa Mae, an australian sheep dog, Mojo a dachshund/chihuahah ( I don't think I've spelled that wrong but it's almost ten pm and I wanna go to bed - shoot me) and little Koda, a chihuahah. He is so small I can pick him up with one hand and his massive overbite makes him even cuter. They are all massive cuddlers which is nice, it helps a lot with missing Molly.



I think that's it for Week 2 guys. Thanks for reading, hopefully I haven't bored you to death... if so: BOO!! WAKE UP I'm done now :D

See ya soon guys,

xoxo

Laura