Alien in America

Flo and I – as you may already know – aren’t very much into sports. But with living in the US comes a little love for sports I guess. For the second weekend in a row we have been watching the Ice Hockey Play Offs. And yes, I am sure next week we will actually watch the finals as well. Funny thing is that our Canadian friend actually made us watch hockey – yes, a total double cliché.

It is kind of weird to see how different every country deals with sports. In Germany the one big thing to watch was soccer. If the soccer european or world championships were on, you could hear people screaming in excitement and the streets would be empty whenever Germany played. Over here I feel like this excitement happens every other week.

When we still lived in the smaller apartment complex in West Hollywood we had a neighbour who would watch sports loudly and not hide his excitement bascially every weekend! As a non sports person, I feel like there is a finals game going on pretty much all year long, with people getting all excited. It amazes me how big of a deal sports is over here and how patriotic people root for their teams. Flo has a Baseball Cap from a Streetwear Brand that has a LA logo that looks similar to the Dodgers one. Everytime he wears it, one of our neighbours asks him, if he is happy on the Dodger’s performance. And everytime he has to say he isn’t interested in sports he gets a weird look from the nieghbours.

Maybe we should get more into sports to fit in a little more. But for now watching hockey with our Canadian super fan, is as much sports as I can handle.

We decided t take a little beach trip to the Crystal Cove on Saturday. In my eyes the Crystal Cove is one of the prettiest beaches down here. It doesn’t get crazily busy, you can take nice walks by the water and you can get a little snack at the local Ruby’s, with a super pretty view on the ocean. But to me the Crystal Cove isn’t only a pretty beach. It always takes me on a little time journey.

Three years ago – in October 2010 – we visited the US for the last time before moving here. I weirdly remember the vacation and how it felt like to be here for the last time as a tourist as if it was yesterday. Especially those walks on the beach we took made me think: Wow, this pretty place will soon be our new home! Back in 2010 we were so full of fears that our dream might not work out and that we would never feel home here.

Now – nearly thee years later – we can stand on this beach and actually be happy to call this coast our home. I never would have imagined how pretty, hard, fearful but also rewarding this journey has been. But looking back now I also can’t really believe the crazy things we were worried about and how much we underestimated the real problems.

Three years aren’t a huge part of one person’s life. But it is crazy how much difference three years can make!

This Memorial Day weekend we were extra American and did the best thing to do on Memorial Day: We got a new car. We actually wanted to wait with that until summer. But since every Memorial Day car dealers lay out their best deals, we thought let’s just do it now. When we moved here two years ago we got a 2003 Ford Explorer, which we both absolutely loved. But since that car had about 130k miles down and needed a ton of repairs constantly, it wasn’t the best car for my daily commute of 60 miles.

For a while now we had our eyes on a Ford Edge. Flo had been investigating good deals online for a few weeks, so on Saturday we felt ready to give it a try. The first dealer we went to wasn’t very helpful, since they only had bigger and more expensive models of the Ford Edge on the lot. But the second dealer we hit, actually had what we were looking for. Instead of buying a new car, Flo and I decided to lease one, and since we both had never done that before, we were a little nervous to not get a good deal.

After taking our potential new car for a test drive, we checked out a few other versions of the Edge and picked one pretty fast. I was actually expecting the whole thing to take at least 5 hours, but we were actually completely done within about 2 and a half. We both aren’t experts in negotiating good deals, but we got them down to the price we wanted to pay monthly, so we were happy with that. And since we are in the United States at the end of the whole procedure we left our old car and took off with the new one.

Now we will be driving around without real license plates for the next weeks most likely – which is unthinkable for a German like us. But we are super stoked about our brand new and reliable car!