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Save! This days post is dedicated to my cute friend C from Germany, who I always kind of laughed at for being the cute little bargain hunter she is. This country would be a paradise for her and her little addiction. Because shopping over here is all about saving money – at least for us. With this I don’t mean that we don’t have any money left for shopping or that we find ourselves in a bad situation money-wise. We are doing really good over here with us both having jobs. But I already kind of grew into this whole savings-thing.

Let’s take grocery shopping as an example (Note: It’s just an example, you can really save a lot over here, if you know how to). When we first arrived here, we mostly shopped grocerys at Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s is a discounter, which mostly sells organic stuff. It is a real nice place to shop groceries, some sorts of meat (for all germans here reading this: Their Bratwurst is good!) and a few organic things. But you definitely can’t buy everything over there. So we decided to get a second shopping place with one of the big grocery chains. There is a Ralphs just down our street, so we chose Ralphs. Ralphs is a huge store who sells everything within the grocery, drinks and beauty articles area – but it is kind of expensive with a few things. All the big grocery chains do offer rewards cards, which you really should take. It sometimes sucks to have all that rewards cards in your purse, but it really saves you money. What I do before we shop is to check their weekly ads. Ralphs for example always offers at least one deal I could use. What you really should learn over here real fast is buying things for storage. It really saves you money to buy when the deals are on and not only when you want stuff. We always buy drinks like water or sodas whenever they are on sale for example. We are lucky enough to have some storage in our flat, so we can really take advantage of it.

You also often get coupons when you buy certain things. Today we bought 2 12-packs of coke and got a 1 dollar coupon for the next 12-pack we buy. This really sounds ridiculous, but if you get into it you can save a lot of money through this.

And guess the funniest way of saving money while grocery shopping over here: Bring your own shopping bag. Ralphs gives you 5 cents for every bag you don’t use!

So, Flo and me will board a plane to our last vacation before the US tomorrow. We will fly to London for a long New Year’s weekend and visit my best friend Petra and her boyfriend Robert. I am so looking forward to this. Not only because I will see my best friend one last time before our big adventure. But also because this will be our last weekend without organising stuff for our emigration.

Right now – only four weeks before we leave Germany for good – everything centers around the emigration. There is no single day on which the topic won’t come up or on which we don’t have to deal with something regarding the US. So it is nice to have a little and last break in the next days.

Especially because what lies ahead of us. I never had such an exiting year lying ahead of me. So much will happen next year. I really can’t wait for it, but at the same time this huge perspective is kind of scary. Being around Petra right now may be the best thing for both Flo and me, because she already emigrated to two different countries, has no plans on moving back to her home country in the next years and kind of knows how we feel right now and how she can help or just courage us. Also being around her english boyfriend is a good exercise for our english skills.

I will not take my laptop with me to London and will not post a new blog till next week. Therefor I want to wish everyone a very happy New Year’s Eve and a wonderful, exciting and successful 2011! See you on the other side

Sometimes I am so afraid that I am gonna miss out on everything important that will happen to my loved ones in the future! Weddings, children, new boy- or girlfriends, new jobs, new flats, new houses, new cars and so much more. That thought sometimes nearly kills me. And in all those moments I am so thankful for the generation I grew up in, the job I am working in and about the web 2.0.

E-Mail, Facebook, Skype – all of those things make it so much easier for me to leave and for me to keep up with everyone I love! I kind of realized it when I called my ex colleague to congratulate her to her birthday and she told me that she got married today. She waited for her boyfriend to ask her for ages and when he finally popped the question they decided to get married alone and not tell anyone before the big day. When I finally got her on the phone today I asked her, if she will post her new status on Facebook and she was like “yes, I already did”. And guess what: I missed out on that, because I wasn’t on Facebook at that moment, but in the kitchen baking cupcakes.

Sometimes it scares me how far our lives are becoming online. But for me as a future american resident, this is kind of the best devolopment ever! If only it weren’t for the time difference. But I will learn how to cope with that, too!

PS: 2011 = 20 + 11 = 31