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

Week 1: From the Lone Star State to the Prairie

Howdy do there!

Ok nevermind, no one here talks like that, but I thought it would make for a nice entry line...no?...ok.

The first week of my adventure flew by in a flash. I decided that I would try my best to do weekly updates every Friday (failed on my first try, didn't I, seeing as it's Saturday Tuesday the next Saturday now ... I am really bad at this), so here was my first week in the USA:

Thursday:

Thursday was basically flying. Our first flight from Munich to Houston was 11 hours long and it left at around 9.30 am, so we were up by 5 am (we live a little while away from the airport) The flight was surprisingly pleasant I must say. Even the food was edible. I went for the lasagna which (even though it was overdone) was quite alright. We had vanilla ice cream for dessert and around two hours before landing we had a panini, which was also good, even though I really don't want to know what it was made of. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the airplane food, I was waaay too hungry (sorry). I'll try to do better on my next long flight :).The pictures I did take were gorgeous though. We flew over Greenland at dawn and it was breathtaking. But see for yourself:

We arrived in Houston in the afternoon, went through immigration where the officer naturally gave us some grief and then we took our connecting flight to Tyler. The plane was tiny. Literally. There was one row of seats with two seats and one with a single seat, all together maybe 40 seats. Cute. And that was basically it. We went to Applebees seeing as we were starving after all that flying (it's hard work doing nothing for such a long time!) and then to bed.


Friday:

Shopping. What more can I say? Rice crispies, York Peppermint Patties, Quaker Oats granola bars, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Hollister.....you name it, we shopped it. Well we didn't buy too much, it was mostly just "aww I remember this!", "Omg, they have that now?" "Targets smell the same everywhere, don't they?!". I loved every minute of it. But I must say, the highlights were the biscuits in the morning and then....PANERA BREAD at night. Can we just take a minute and thank whoever invented Panera? I think that if I could, I would live in one. One bite of the Chipotle Chicken Sandwich and I was in food heaven. Oh my goodness, I don't think it's normal how much I love that sandwich. And they do pasta now too!! Just when I thought it couldn't get any better.... *begin daydreaming about Panera...stomach starts rumbling*. 

Saturday:

On Saturday we took it slow. Started off with some doughnuts (yumm!!), watched some Food Network (American television, I love you), had coffee and cake (Red Velvet cheese cake anyone?) and at night we went to a Mexican Restaurant and the movies afterward. I don't think anyone will understand the bliss of going to the movies and watching a movie in its original soundtrack until they've had to face the dubbed versions in Germany. Sigh. We watched The Wedding Ringer, I must say, it was pretty funny albeit predictible. Driving home we had an ice cream sundae in mind, but unfortunately a small accident caused by an irresponsible person forced us onto a curb and we got to see the american police in live action. The officer was very nice, and seeing as it was none of our fault and we couldn't have reacted any better it was ok and we drove home, had our sundae and watched Pompeii on Netflix (it's always so sad when the hot guys die at the end. Especially when they have such nice accents).

Yes, that is me posing with my new jeans and fluffy jacket...I'm such a model.

Sunday:

Sunday was spent riding Mustangs on a 1,000 Acre Ranch. Yeah. It was pretty awesome. The weather was great, the company as well and let's face it: Riding to a ranch in Texas in an authentic pick-up truck, saddling up some Mustangs and riding out onto the "wilderness" (fenced in ranch I mean)...can it get any more Texas-esque? The only thing missing was the barbeque on the open fire and an old Cowboy telling stories or playing the banjo. That would have been legendary. (I don't think I will ever be able to write the word legendary again without thinking of Barney Stinson...but back to the point) It was a great day.
Another thing worth mentioning: Whataburger...and their Ketchup. 'Nuf said.

Monday:

We had to get up early. Again. Wheeee. We flew from Tyler to Houston to Denver to Rapid City. I must say, I am becoming such a pro at flying. The only thing that bummed me out was that all they had to eat in Houston was breakfast (it was like 8 am, but hey, I would've LOVED some chinese food or something). Arriving in Rapid we got greeted very nicely, drove "home" and got shown around. We were pretty tired so we didn't do too much that day.

Tuesday:

The plus side of getting up at six am? Getting to see the beautiful sunrise every day :)

From this day on: get up at 6 am. The horses are hungry :) But it's ok, cause we get to feed them off the flatbed of the pickup. It's so cool that I'll even get up early for it :D You feel like a real cowgirl doing it. Yeah, I'm too cool. We did some chores that day which we've been doing almost every day since. Feed the horses, chickens and cats, water the horses, chickens and cats and then some chores around the yard. For dinner we had very good one-pan-pasta. Must remember the recipe.

Wednesday:

We were in Rapid City all day, visited the mall (I have quite a list of stuff I'd like to buy. But I'm restraining myself...for now), ate at Applebees and just had a quiet day, finishing it off with chores.

And that was my first week in the US. At this point I'd like to say a huge THANK YOU to Melissa, who is basically like my american aunt. You are such an amazing person, and coming to visit you and Oma Hannelore and Opa John is like visiting family. Thank you for everything. I can't wait to see you all again.

Ok, I'll start working on the next week as soon as I have time...maybe I'll be done before next Saturday ;) I love you guys reading this (even if it's just you mom, I love you so much, hang in there with the two guys ;) ).

'Til next time,

Again...yes, that is me. This time in a mirror. Advice to the unknowing people out there: Don't give me a camera...thats what you'll get.

xoxo

Laura