Establishing a Routine

Sorry it's taken so long for us to update. I (Stina) am now two weeks into my teaching career . It is going well. It is nice to be official and teaching my own classes.

In other news, Brendan and I are working on National Novel Writing Month, where one's goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

We had a Halloween party and it was a huge success. Brendan and I both dressed up as pirates. We made a ton of food and thought we would have leftovers for days because we didn't think that many people would come. Turned out we had a total of 25 guests, everything got eaten, and the last people left at 3:42am. A bunch of Couchsurfers came that we'd never met before and that added a nice dynamic...everyone was mingling and meeting new people. It was a real party party. We are now working on organizing monthly Couchsurfing potlucks and we're having the first one at our place next week.

We are still finding lots of stuff. A couple weeks ago we went on a walk. We were searching for a street I had driven down when a co-worker gave me a ride home. All the building on it are brightly and crazily colored, and I wanted to show Brendan. We found the street, and we also saw a bunch of stuff on the curb. There was a bag filled with pans, tupperware, bowls, pots and mugs. We wanted it! So we divided the stuff into two awkward piles and proceeded towards home.

On the way, we passed another big pile of stuff on the curb and saw some really amazing things, like a bread slicer and a brand-new showerhead. We wanted it! Thankfully, there was also an old baby carriage out there, so we were able to put all the stuff we already had plus the new stuff in the carriage. As we started to head home, though, we realized the reason the baby carriage was out there was because it only steered to the right. So for the 30 minute walk home, we took turns pushing this baby carriage, starting on the far left of the sidewalk, letting it veer to the far right of the sidewalk, then resetting again to the far left of the sidewalk. It was easier that carrying everything, but still incredibly awkward.

I (Brendan) am still waiting on my Arbeitserlaubnis. I called about it last Monday and they said to call back at the end of this coming week. My boss wants me to come in to work on Wednesday, but she didn't say why...

We finally bought some ping pong gear, and had our first match at the park half a block from us. We're taking regular evening walks, and have pretty full evening schedules, with lots of friends nearby. Last night we went over to a friend's apartment and played new games and old, and today some friends are coming over to play games with us. Every Tuesday, a friend comes over on her way home from work, and we often feed her, and always play Carcassonne with her. Speaking of feeding, we've continued expanding our culinary horizons, as I make once-a-week special meals for Stina's birthday, and she feels the same urge. We haven't found a regular place for dumpster-diving yet. The one dumpster we successful dove in hasn't been out on a Saturday or Sunday night since that time. If anybody reading this is a part of the Magdeburg Dumpster-Diving scene, shoot us an email, so we can figure this city out.

We've thought about dropping everything and buying a van and hauling curbside treasures for a living. The things we find are amazing, and we're feeling sated. We almost feel a sense of guilt for not being able to give all the wonderful things a home. Luckily we go pretty regularly to Lirum Larum, and give them the excess stuff we find. I don't know how much of it they use or what their procedures are, but they certainly relieve our guilt.

All-in-all, we're settling in to a very comfortable day-to-day existence here. We find plenty to fill our days with, and there is no dearth of delightful personalities near us. Wir sind zufrieden.

Dumpster Diving

Related to yesterday's post about the negative connotations to the word "begging" and asking for food that would be thrown away, I'd like to talk a little about dumpster diving. Like Brendan's dad said in comment, it basically just seems easier to dumpster dive than to try and find the right person to get permission to be given the leftovers or just-expired items. Plus, there's a feeling of excitement to it. Let me relate a recent experience to try and share that feeling.

Dressed in black jeans and black hoodie, armed with rechargeable flashlight and a reusable bag, led by my trusted partner Brendan, the nearby grocery store dumpster was my destination. We left the house around 10:30pm to give the store employees ample time to clean up and go home after the store closed at 9pm, and soon stealthily rounded the corner by the store. Our reward for the trek was ample. King cakes galore, banana nut muffins, macaroons, bags of lettuce, mini-cinnamon rolls...nearly everything with a sell-by date of that day, some with the day after.

Okay, so my black jeans and black hoodie are not so much a ninja outfit as they are the only jeans and hoodie I brought with, but the feeling of being undercover and super-cool remained. But dumpster diving isn't just a fun pasttime. For many, it's a lifestyle, one I think Brendan and I are becoming more and more enmeshed in. Check out http://freegan.info/ and read about "What is a freegan?" and it very well describes much of what we're trying to do, except for the squatting part, though we do Couchsurf.

Reading through websites like that just makes me wonder what more I can be doing. What else can I recycle, even in an incredibly recycling-unfriendly city like New Orleans? Can we be even more diligent about dumpster-diving, so ultimately we don't spend any money on groceries? Do I ever need to buy new things, like gifts for people, or can I always give found items or made-from-recycled-goods items? I guess it's okay to have a balance, and that's kind of how we're doing it now. Buying things like milk and eggs and enough fruits and veggies when we can't find them to make sure we're still eating healthy. Anyway, to quote L.M. Montgomery's Marigold, "Isn't it all so int'resting?"