Shorts in November

On Sunday night, our group had an international evening here at the Varsity’s game room. We enjoyed food, presentations and stories of Israel, Mexico, South Africa, Finland and Germany. My wife prepared some Finnish salmon rolls and fish roe on hapankorppu, I contributed with Kӓsspӓtzle. Naturally I tasted all other countries’ dishes, of which I couldn’t figure out a favourite.

The Indian summer reached a peak on Monday with unbelievable +24°C (75°F), it was time to wear shorts outside! My wife and I went for a walk to Lake Artemesia to see how the leaves had changed their color. On the way we saw some deer in the woods looking for food. They actually stood just a few meters from the path and clearly got used to being around humans. At the lake we saw autumn leaves in fantastic colors and the view was totally different compared to my last visit in September. The water was occupied by a few hundred wild geese on their way towards South. It was a beautiful sight and great to hear them chatting.

My wife’s teacher group had a reception in the town hall of College Park later that night. So the “plus one’s” (two other husbands from Singapore, 4 kids and me) decided to go to a local diner. Silver Diner is a small chain of restaurants using fresh and local food.  They even had organic ketchup on the table. The food was lovely and – apart from the cheese fries (yummy!) – very healthy indeed. I still can smell the last memory of the night, a “healthy” portion of one of the kids chocolate milkshake on my trousers. I should have worn my shorts...

International evening

International evening

Oh deer..

Lake Artemesia..

 

 

 

 

 

Rude awakening for the "au-pair"

Yesterday the plans for this day seemed quite relaxed. While my wife would spend the day visiting a local high school, I'd take care of some au-pair duties. Dishes, grocery shopping and IT-support. So I spent half the night at our laptop trying to figure out to create the perfect panorama picture combining several pictures. As it sometimes happens, when investing a lot of time into a subject, expectations go up and mediocre results are not satisfying anymore. At 3am I finally gave up and used the program I tried out second..... A wonderful eight hours of well-deserved sleep began...

...until I heard a long beep and a voice:
"May I have your attention please. An emergency has been reported in the building. While this report is being verified, please leave the building using the exit stairway. Do not use the elevators. BEEP. May I have..."

Quite annoyed I checked the time, 8.20am. Staying inside and having possibly a fire in the house would make me even more unhappy. So I got dressed, got up and went downstairs to go outside. There were a few people, including our room-mates from India. Some electrical wire installation went wrong in the building; a few wires were mixed up. Back in the apartment, all sleep was gone and I stayed up, having breakfast and starting my au-pair day.

Dinner was prepared by our Indian room-mates with adjusted levels of chili for us, yummy!

For today nothing else happened besides 10-15 more so-called fire-alarms, version 1.2. I had one addition from the guy in the reception: "Please disregard all fire alarms". Hopefully they don't work in night shifts.

As for last couple of days, we stayed mostly in College Park, once shopping to the outlet center in Hagerstown. Our aparment building is called the Varsity. My wife gave me a tour on Sunday and in the evening we went for a walk on the Paint Branch Trail which led us to lake Artemesia. There, the evening sun was shining so nicely, that I decided to take several pictures for creating a panorama picture later...

the Varsity, College Park

Lobby inside

Gaming room

Cardio room

View from the cardio room

Lake Artemesia

In Hagerstown, not the outlet