Archive for the ‘Visiting our new home’ Category

So, we arrived at LAX for our last stay in the US as tourists yesterday. It was not only a very good feeling to finally be back in California, we were also welcomed very nicely by the airport officer. We were a bit afraid of that moment, because we read horror stories of Greencard winners getting in trouble for being out of the US for six months. But in our case the guy was very nice, asked us only one question about when we will move here and than sent us off with a warm “Welcome back and good luck!”.

For this is our first morning here, there hasn’t happened much, yet. But, I do have a huge change to announce: I finally figured out what to do with my name here. The last times we were in the US I noticed that Americans can’t spell my name Janina. I tried everything from saying it very slowly to saying it letter by letter. But, it just didn’t work. My parents call me Nina since my birth, so I thought why not try this name out. I know from the movie “Father of the Bride” that Nina is an existing name here. So at our coffee run today I told the nice lady that I was named Nina and it worked!

On Wednesday one of my good friends visited us and she had a brilliant idea for Flo. His real name is Florian, but everyone calls him Flo. The only problem is that Flo is a girls name over here. But my friend Sabine noticed that Florian is a combination of Flo and Rian. I can’t get Flo to try out the Rian-thing right now, but perhaps it will be an alternative for the future.

Stay tuned for more news from our visit to our future home
Nina and future-Rian

I am pretty excited for my first Halloween in the US. Yeah, we will only be there for our vacation, but anyways I am pretty stoked about it. I am a huge fan of everything linked to Horror in any way. I love watching horror movies, horror series and even wrote my degree dissertation about them. The problem is that with horror on TV I am not very sensible, but I hate being scared by real people a lot!

Our lovely friends Jeana and Scott will take us to a Halloween party their friends are throwing this year and also want to take us to the Halloween Haunt at Knott’s Berry Farm. I already told them that I can’t go there, because I will have a nervous breakdown when a Freddy Krueger double only touches me.

So right now my biggest problem is to find the right Halloween dress! I don’t want to wear a dress that catches people’s attention, because that will make me a even bigger and more attractive target for scare attacs. But on the other hand I love cute Halloween customs like little sailor ones, or Snow White or a cheerleader one. So what am I gonna do? Get dressed up pretty girly and sexy and attract the scary boys or dress up like a corpse and look nothing but creepy at my first real Halloween?

So, which costume would you recommend? And what was your funniest or creepiest Halloween story? Tell me or I will trick you…

In the last couple of weeks we coincidently showed our vacation pictures to several of our friends that hadn’t seen them, yet. And seeing those pictures of us in Florida and California suddenly made me realize how much I already miss my future home country. When I see these pictures I remember the way Flo and I felt when being there – and I guess it is not only the country that I miss, but more the way how happy, comfortable and careless I felt when being there. And that makes me think a lot!

Will I feel the same way when I actually live in the US? Or will I look at pictures from Germany and be homesick for everything I had in my old live then? Right now I think about the US a lot. About how it will feel to pick my parents up at LAX for the first time. About what I will want to show my parents and friends when they come to visit. About how our lives will be like in California. And about how our relationship will develop with all these hard and exciting days ahead of us.

Everyone tells us how brave we are to actually do this. I don’t think that we are brave! I don’t feel like I am doing a brave thing. I think we are only doing what we have to do! We have to take this chance. We have to try out our luck, try living our dreams and try to find somewhere to call home.

Right now my parents-in-law are doing a little round trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. I am so jealous. But not only, because they are in the area that I miss so much right now. But because I would so love to be there with them and show them everything that makes my heart beat like crazy.

I hope that they will develop a even bigger love for Orange County than they already have throughout their vacation, because I want them and everyone else I love to visit us as often as possible and see and understand why we wanted to make our dreams come true!