365 and continuing

It is our 365th day in the USA - one year ago right now we were in a plane from Amsterdam to Seattle - more than necessary to update this blog! A year full of change - growing kids communicating in English, different food, different way of life, slowly emerging into the US culture! For me it is impossible to squeeze the last 365 days into written words, but I still want to write down some thoughts.
So many wonderful experiences, so many wonderful new friends, the Northwest nature. We are still getting to know the US culture as Germans, some things are hard to understand, some are repulsive, but in general most are great - this culture makes it easy to feel welcome, differences are accepted (- at least it feels like more than in Germany). Individualism is everything, but at the same time neighborhood support and fund raising for all sorts is widely spread. And then the constant struggle between total freedom versus total security, two opposites. We observe things that are as socialist as in the former GDR next to total capitalism - we observe a country that is very kids friendly, but on the other hand prohibits you to go into a bar with a kid in a stroller, or even a teenager (- no matter if they were only going to drink a coke) - we observe a country with 2 lane roads through all suburbs and most cars driving as if it is a one lane road - we observe a country with huge petrol swallowing cars everywhere, but at the same time a huge spread of hybrid cars - we observe a country that has a banking system, electric monopoly and telephone companies that work like it was in Europe 15 years ago ... .
For outsiders like us this country is full of controversy - I guess the controversy is a little bit similar to putting Italy, Spain, Greek, Poland, Sweden, Estonia and some other countries into one and give it a constitution ... Europe! Long life manifoldness!! Still there are strong ties within the controversy - on both sides of the Atlantic. It really is amazing getting to know a country from the inside, by taking part in everyday life - for the 2nd time in our life. (For me it has been New Zealand as exchange student for one year with YfU 17 years ago and for Katrin it was a different part of the US).
It took us a while to find the shops to buy groceries that suit us, to find the news channels that give background information without polarization, it took us a while to understand the intention behind actions and words, ... and we still learn and enjoy the gain of knowledge from this culture in the hope to take some of this back to Europe, back to Germany within our self. I often wonder how much our kids will take with them on the long run - how much stays in their subconscious about the experience of different cultures - the acceptance of different ways of live, of all the different cultures in the world.

Alright alright enough inter cultural thoughts and words - how is summer here?...

- one bottle of wine later I reject to write more now and postpone any more writing to tomorrow or soon after. Several pictures and stories to come - life is fast!

The promised family pictures ... two visits to the Olympic Peninsula, many many photos. I already posted a link to some photos a couple of days ago. The only thing I did not post so far were more photos of us being there. So here they are:
-correction 3 visits so far but only photos of the first two visits here!-

You have to stay somewhere overnight - each time it was just perfect!

(flaming up marshmallows)

Dungenous Spit - Strait of Juan de Fucca

waiting for the bigger waves in between to reach our stump

Pacific Beaches Rialto Beach and Beach 4

Tide pools are great! Starfish, sea-anemones, and many small fish.

oh yes and plenty of driftwood!

Since the rain forest is close to the beaches (close in the American sense of distance not the German) we twice combined these locations on one day!

Hoh Rainforest

finally found a very small tree to sit on - the others were just to big

Hurricane Ridge Pictures

seeing this I just want to go out and scramble scramble scramble ... 

so does he ;-) or at least dress up as if!