These past few weeks J and I discovered Kuerbisfests. Kuerbis in German means pumpkin in English. Having been sorely missing our State Fair back home, we finally got a comparable experience over here. Rich pumpkin soup, pumpkinseed bratwurst, corn on the cob, LOTS of people, fruits and veggies and cheese being sold, we bought a half block of blackforest ham, and we got to spend the day visiting with local friends.
We also found out that our town will host its own Kuerbisfest in mid-October. We'll see how that goes, but J and I are interested in checking it out. There will also be a shooting club competition at the same time with free admission. Sounds interesting :)
In other news, my car is now tired of being ignored for repairs. To its credit, it lasted roughly 4 or 5 months longer than I expected. I was forced to replace the exhaust system, and then the very next week it randomly stopped firing its 1st cylinder. That turned out to be a fuel injector pump failure. Now, the front discs for the brakes are finally starting to go. I'm going to try to repair those myself, but with supervision if I can manage it.
In getting the parts for the disc replacement, I was told by a German mechanic that my German was very good. Personally, I think he was lying but was sincerely appreciative of me actually trying to speak the language and not requiring him to speak English.
I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I've joined the local German soccer team for our cluster of towns. I feel like I'm getting better with each practice, and I'm certainly throwing down confidence that I've never had before, but I have yet to play a game. I've been asked to join practices with the men's over 30 division as well as practice with the Men's II team. I think some would view this as a step down, but I'm viewing it at a compliment that they think that their Ueber 30 team would be better with me on it. I know that I'm no longer a detriment to the Men's II team. I also recently met a new neighbor who is on his second tour in this area of Germany. He also asked independently if I wanted to join him on the Ueber 30 team. We'll carpool starting next week. Two teams? I haven't practiced on two teams simultaneously in...ever really. This is pretty exciting.
It's official, I'm currently working on getting into Medical School. I'm presently setting up shadowing doctors over here, I have a mentor, and I plan on taking the MCAT April 2014. I'm currently leaning toward General Practice as a focus, but I will use the shadowing as a tool to aid in my specialties of choice to study. It's been 2 months and counting for me to get set up for shadowing because of all of the red tape involved on post, and I'm now finding that I may have to take an additional ABA accredited course for admission into at least one medical school of interest. The work continues, but thus far it's been a lot of stop and go. Restudying all of the material is not boring, but it is tedious. I am almost done with an overall review book, and will start branching off into other materials soon.
In the near future, with family members' generous birthday gifts, J and I will get a pocketwatch for me. The plan is to get a new one made at a local jeweler's store and have it engraved. It will be a fantastic piece of nostalgia from out time here and support from family during our time here. I will post pictures once this happens.
