I tend to our garden. I see to it that the grass is always watered so it stay green. I also see to it that the lavenders we planted in our small front yard are watered. I mow the grass too. I don’t mind doing all of these at all because it is such a tiny garden and it doesn’t take a lot of time and energy to mow it and to water it. I like doing it and I am happy to see the healthy grass and plant in our front and back yard.

But why do I always kill the plants in our house?

It’s not like I don’t care for them. I do. But they still always die on me.

I get plants as gifts from my pupils and their moms and I appreciate all these plants. I placed all of them somewhere I think they will fit and thrive better.  I talk to them, water them, weed them, etc. but they always die. Remember that orchid we bought for our guest toilet? Yeah. That died too.

And the orchid shown on the picture is an orchid given to us on our wedding day.  It stayed at my in-laws house during the time we’ve been in China and it had been healthy there. When we moved to our own place here in Graz, we took it from them to bring to our new place.  We call it our wedding orchid and I am the steward of it.

Maybe it was a mistake to take it from my in-laws’ house because it’s never healthy as it was when it was there. I think I might be killing it too. I am not sure but when we took it, it has a lot of blooms. Now there’s just one and only bloom and the other branches are dead.  I said to myself, it is sad that I unintentionally killed all the other plants in our house but killing this one too would be a catastrophe. I can’t kill our wedding orchid! That’s just simply not right. It should thrive better under my care.

I had to do something to prevent myself from killing it.

So I googled some articles on how to take care of orchids and other plants and I learned that I should not water them that often.  Ha! It’s like that the best way to take care of orchids is not to take care of them at all. But I followed the tips I got from the net. I took out all the dead roots of our wedding orchid and repotted it. I still water it but not that often and not that much anymore. So far, it looks good because it is growing some new leaves.

I really hope that it can recover from my overwatering. I hope that it will live and bloom many flowers again.

First, I thought of creating a list of my new year’s resolution but I decided against it because of two reasons. One, it think it is too late. The first month of the year’s gone and no, I won’t be creating a New Year’s resolution for the Chinese New Year (which is next week, I think). Two, I am, anyhow, not good at keeping resolutions so why bother? I won’t put myself under the pressure of having to resolve things within a time frame.

winter in graz

But I will list my plans. I like plans.  At least with plans, there are always alternatives if they don’t work out. Resolutions, on the other hand, sound so drastic. Like, I “need” to change things or else I will be the same person I was in the previous year and my life will stay the way it is. Resolutions are more like promises to yourself you have to keep. They just have to be fulfilled.

Who wants such pressure? Obviously, not me.

So here are my plans for this year.

1. Put the house together in accordance to what we need and what we can afford. My husband and I just bought a house and like many other young couples who are from humble families, most of our savings went to the purchase of the house. It was also necessary for us to take a housing loan to cover that which can’t be covered by our savings. The house is “Belagsfertig”. That means, it is completely finished outside but it still needs work inside.  The heating, electrical circuits, floor, kitchen, toilet, bathroom, and the painting still need to be done and those are what we are working on right now. We decided to do some things ourselves to save some money and because we already have a very handsome credit, we agreed not to take more credit.  Hopefully, we will still be able to save money for some nice stuff for the house.

Alternative: if in case, we are not able to save money, we can always use our old stuff and be content with it until we are able to afford fancier things.

1. Make teaching props during the summer break. The most difficult part of my job is preparing teaching materials. It is taking so much of my energy and my time so to make my life easier for the next school year; I plan to prepare my teaching props this summer.

Alternative: If by chance, I can’t find time to do this during the summer break, I’ll just have to be content with the teaching props available at the learning center or I’ll just have to accept that my second year of teaching won’t be that much easier from my first year.

Those are the two main things. The less import things are as follows.

1. I plan to visit home.
2. I plan to take more pictures. I am living in a very nice city so why not compile my impressions of it?
3. I plan to save for an iMac. I do have a lappy and it is still very good but an iMac is just so… beautiful. I don’t plan to buy it this year. I just would like to save for it.
4. I plan to learn how to bake. I am already excited because I am getting my very own kitchen soon! With all the things I need for baking and cooking.
5. I plan to start a garden. The house we bought has a tiny garden! Excited, excited, excited!

Those are my plans and some of them I share with my husband.

I know. You’re probably a bit disappointed. I imagine you saying like… that’s it?!? Really? What about having a baby?

I’ve been asked about that question several times.

Baby…. hmmmm.

That will have to wait a bit.

I don’t know when exactly but I still have enough hormone pills for six months.  Haha.

Seriously though, we think we are ready but we still have wait until the house is ready and then we can start trying. *wink

I thought ironing is the thing I hate doing the most but I was wrong.

I realized that I hate packing more.

Why?

Because it is a lot of work and it is messy.

First, I have to gather all the things I need to pack (and in our case, it’s A LOT of things), clean them, wrap them carefully with air bubble plastic, and put them orderly in a box. That may sound simple, but consider lifting some heavy stuff and moving them around the house. Tough, right? Of course I also have to make a list of what I put in a box because I would need a very detailed packing list of all of our moving boxes. And while packing, I won’t be able to avoid creating a mess and sometimes it could be a real eye sore.

Most of all, I hate packing because while doing it I am constantly reminded that I will be leaving some things behind.

Since we came to live here in Shanghai, I never really cooked something other than rice, easy to prepare viand (for me and), and simple pasta recipes (for Marcus). Reason for this is our addiction to Sherpa’s—Shanghai’s excellent home delivery system.

Last Sunday I was in a cooking mood but a quick glace in our fridge told me that there’s nothing for me to cook. That and the awful weather didn’t stop me though. Impulsively, I put on my thick jacket and went to this small grocery store nearby our flat. Without any idea what to cook, I fiddled through the store’s shelves and was pleased afterwards to learn that they have all the ingredients needed to cook meatballs. After buying what I need, I rushed back home and for an hour and a half or so, I busied myself in my tiny kitchen.

The meatballs were not as delicious as I had imagined them to be but nonetheless, I enjoyed preparing them.

I like cooking and I just realized how much I missed it.

I was chatting with a friend yesterday and I mentioned that my husband is away on a business trip again and that I am bored. So yeah, Marcus went on a business trip again but unlike last time, this trip is only for a day (and a night). He’ll be back later in the evening. So anyway, I said that the fact that Marcus needs to go to these frequent business trips sucks. Then my friend asked me if I have other “feelings” about it. I gather that by that she meant; do I think Marcus is having an affair? I know it’s a totally innocent question. My friend just wanted to make sure that everything is fine with me. But now that she raised the issue, I thought about it and laughed afterwards. Marcus loves me too much to do that.

It’s a good feeling to be completely confident in Marcus and in what we have. A few weeks from now, we’ll have our first year anniversary and I can honestly  say that after a year of being married, nothing has changed. We are still like we were before. We still look in the same direction. Sometimes we also have some small misunderstandings but we always managed to fix these before that day ends. I can never be sure that we’ll be like this forever but based on how things are between us at the moment, I can say that we will last for a very looooooooong time.

I found an old video of us making music at home. My father-in-law, Hans, is a hobbyist musician. Hans is a nice and funny guy. He’s always making jokes and funny faces. He plays the accordion but he can also play other musical instruments like keyboards, guitar, and drums. He has a regular job and he also used to earn decent amount of money from being a musician but early in spring of 2007 he got an accident. He was cutting some woods and somehow the machine he was using malfunctioned cutting three fingers of his right hand. Right after his accident and until now he feels that playing accordion or the keyboards will never be as easy as it used to and everybody can understand why.

Benjamin is Marcus’ younger brother. At the time of this video, he was 13. Like their father, Benjamin is also musically inclined. He’s currently studying how to play the trumpet. In this video, he plays the acoustic bass guitar. He doesn’t have formal lessons on how to play it but somehow, it was sounding okay.

We did this video last June 2007 just a few months after Hans’ accident. Marcus and Lia (their mom) were the ones videotaping us. I am not used to being video taped so you’ll notice my uneasiness all throughout the video.

It was a simple song with just four chords. When Hans heard me sing it and play it with the guitar, he suggested that we do it all together so we did it and the outcome is of course nothing close to professional or practiced performance but it’s nice and it show candid setting within the family.