Jamie, Author at North of Something

Regensburg Christmas Market

23/12/2014 by Jamie 30 Comments

On Sunday we went to the Regensburg Christmas Market – not the big one at the palace, but the smaller one in the city center by St. Peter’s Cathedral. It was a beautiful winter day in Germany and we took the train so we could enjoy watching the countryside fly by, and also because when you’re three and a half years old, trains are the coolest thing EVA.

I found my fave street vendor with a wicked handlebar mustache who only got slightly frustrated with me when I didn’t understand everything he was saying in German.

This was the fastest moving carousel I have EVER seen. I was worried one of the kids were going to try and get off while it was going. Many of the kids’ rides we’ve seen in Germany seem more dangerous than their counterparts in the U.S. Maybe Germans don’t sue as often.

We walked over to the Regensburg Cathedral (Dom St. Peter) and we got lucky enough to see a service going on inside since it was Sunday morning. There was a small area in the back for visitors and sightseers so we didn’t disrupt the service. It was as gorgeous on the inside as it was on the outside.

Train rides are the best! We got to listen to other families speak in German and my son was brave enough to walk up to a little German girl his age and offer her some of his starbursts. There are no language barriers when you have starbursts.

The German countryside is so pretty. I’m lovin’ all the different shades of green in the forest and it will be even better in the spring – yay!

Well, we only hit two Christmas markets this year. Hopefully next year we can do more. They are a lot of fun if you like to eat pastries, buy Christmas stuff, and walk around cool German villages.

Have you been to a German Christmas Market? Which one is your favorite?!

Trains, Christmas Markets, and Crutches

21/12/2014 by Jamie 27 Comments

Well we arrived in Germany a month ago, and there has been a lot of unpacking, studying for my EUSAREUR drivers license, and then dropping a ginormous tube TV on my left foot whilst unpacking.

Along with all the normal stresses of moving, this one has been harder with the language barrier and twelve hour time difference. Coming from 70-80 degree weather in Hawaii with plenty of sunshine, going straight into a Bavarian winter has been strange. So I found myself at the lowest point of this new adventure while icing my black and purple foot, trying to connect my wireless internet with German instructions, surrounded by boxes that still needed to be unpacked.

But, there have been great moments, too:

When I see my son playing with his new friends, giggling and chasing each other around the playground as if they’ve known each other their whole lives
Our first snow fall of the year
Drinking hot chocolate at my very first German Christmas market
The way my dog smiles with his head held high as he prances through the forest by our house

I can see train tracks from our new house and I recently discovered that these tracks carried Jewish men and women to concentration camps during World War II. From my upstairs office I can see the neighboring village with its smoking chimneys and stone castle built in the seventeenth century – green farmland in between. Being on crutches for the last couple weeks I haven’t been on too many adventures yet, but we have been doing a lot of research and trip planning for the next year. Pretty excited for our trips to Italy and France! I’m also excited for a German class I’m starting next month.

Here are some pics from the first Christmas Market we went to this year!

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Book Review)

08/12/2014 by Jamie 33 Comments

I just finished Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail for my winter grad class and I LOVED it. Plus it just came out as a movie featuring Reese Witherspoon, so I will definitely have to see it!

The story begins on a somber note with the death of Strayed’s mother. A woman she initially writes about with almost saintly narration, but reveals her few weaknesses and moments of humanity as well. Among my favorite: “She was optimistic and serene, except a few times when she lost her temper and spanked us with a wooden spoon. Or the one time when she screamed F#CK and broke down crying because we wouldn’t clean our room” (14).

As her mother goes through the medical steps that often come before death, Strayed realizes at 21 that she was going to be alone. “I almost choked to death on what I knew before I knew. I was going to live the rest of my life without my mother” (11). The sorrow that she is thrown into after that death brought years of dangerous, self-loathing living that her estranged husband tries to save her from. On a whim she picks up a book about the Pacific Crest Trail, and ultimately decides that her salvation is in those mountains.

Besides a few trips to REI to buy stuff, she begins her journey virtually unprepared, with a backpack she can barely lift. “I’d set out to hike the trail so that I could reflect upon my life, to think about everything that had broken me and make myself whole again. But the truth was, at least so far, I was consumed only with my most immediate and physical suffering” (84). While her body was hard at work, her mind finally had the luxury of resting. Perhaps for the first time since her mother’s death. A couple days before she made that statement, she made the realization: “Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart” (70).

Throughout the memoir there are touches of an existential theme. When her boot goes cascading down the rocky cliff, she has the feeling that someone was playing a joke on her. “But no one laughed. No one would. The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back” (209). Many of the animals she met on the trail were happy enough to part ways with her, especially the deer and the fox, who both seemed to ignore her very existence, seeing her as blended into the landscape. And as much as she had enjoyed becoming one with the nature around her, I think being ignored made her long to be seen. Then, when she loses her Vietnam War bracelet and tries to think of a positive symbol for its disappearance, she comes up dry: “The universe had simply taken it into its hungry, ruthless maw” (238).

But I think the strongest theme of all in this story is the very opposite of existentialism – a mother’s love. “‘I’ve given you everything,’ she insisted again and again in her last days… She did. She’d come at us with maximum maternal velocity. She hadn’t held back a thing, not a single lick of her love. ‘I’ll always be with you, no matter what,’ she said” (268). As Strayed nears the end of her journey, she kneels at a river after crossing it. “Where is my mother? I wondered, I’d carried her so long, staggering beneath her weight. On the other side of the river, I let myself think. And something inside of me released” (306). This reminded me of the River Styx of Greek mythology, which separates the world of the living from the afterlife. By going on her journey, Strayed confronts her own wide range of emotions about her mother, and finally releases her to be at peace.

Ultimately it’s her mother’s love blended with her love/hate relationship with the universe and nature in general, that heals her. She finishes her quest with the feeling of wholeness for perhaps the first time in her life. She comes to terms with the unknowable about this world and her place in it all. “It was my life—like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be” (311).

Here’s the movie preview!

Have you ever been hiking? Are you going to see the movie?

Military Monday | Stephanie’s Interview

01/12/2014 by Jamie 23 Comments

I would like to introduce a friend of mine who is smart, athletic, and has a wonderful outlook on military life. Our husbands worked together a few years ago and we keep in touch via Facebook. Their family goes on lots of adventures and they have no trouble strapping those little ones in their carriers and hitting the road! Meet Stephanie…

I am a mother. That is mostly what defines me these days. I like to sew when I have time and always enjoy trying new projects to challenge myself. There is such joy in creating a soft blanket or shirt that your child loves to cuddle with. I have started making blankets as baby gifts for friends as well! I love, love, love to read. It’s not something I get to do often with 2 under 3, but my kids have started to have the patience to sit down for entire books so we spend time throughout the day reading. I am so excited to see their passion for books growing. I grew up as a competitive athlete; I played through college. I miss being on a team, but I try to stay active as much as my schedule allows. I also work a few days a week in my church’s nursery. Nothing is sweeter than loving a room full of children.

Josh joined over 10 years ago. We met 5 years ago July. Wow, I can’t believe its been that long. Time is flying by! In that 5 years, we did 4 deployments together. He has done 7 total.

Life Achievements | I completed my masters degree and had our daughter. I gave birth with a few classes left and my clinical hours to finish. I took a quarter off and then went back and completed those last classes while working to gain my clinical hours. Plus, Josh deployed a few weeks into the quarter. It gave me such strength to see that I could be a full time grad student, new mother, counselor and military spouse all at the same time.

Major Challenges | Josh’s work isn’t always something that I can talk about or share. This is especially hard when he is deployed. I can’t share that he is gone but yet I have to tell friends or family that he won’t make events. At first, I struggled with this. I wanted to be proud of what he was doing, and to share my stress and anxiety. It took me awhile to finally find the balance. I needed him to not worry about me at home. That I was handling the deployment just fine, while still getting out and socializing. I also started to really understand the importance of not sharing information when wives started getting phone calls from the enemy while the men were overseas. That really hit home why, as a spouse, my role is just as important in helping fight this war while at home.

Advice for a New Military Wife | Always talk to your husband, especially when your struggling. He can’t help you, if he doesn’t know there is something wrong. Be supportive. His job seems like a lot of fun, but they are always worrying about you, your family and how your handling this. He needs your support to be able to focus on his job and staying safe. You are strong and able. Everything will break the week he deploys. Your kids will stop sleeping the month he is gone for training. It will seem overwhelming and too much, but you have the ability to handle it all. And when you need an extra hand, ask for help. No community bands together like military wives. We are always a phone call away to help you clean your house, watch your kids, walk you dogs, or more importantly share stress over a glass of wine, or encouragement over a much needed cup of coffee. You are surrounded by a group that takes care of their own, and you are now a part of this family.

Last Book I Read | The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler. I highly recommend it. Its packed with great tips on all areas of families with young and older kids.

Mentor Wives | There have been two wives that have had the biggest impact on my transition into military life. The first, Julie, I met shortly after I met my husband. She was his boss’s wife. She was seasoned, intelligent and welcoming. She gave me all the information I needed and why there were all these rules. She was funny and so real. I am always a person who gravitates towards real, honest people. My life is too raw to have fake friendships. She has been the one person who taught me the most about this lifestyle. I got a very upfront look at how often my husband will be gone, what to tell family when I needed to tell family he was gone without telling them where, and how to handle our home life by myself. The second, Dana, showed me about compassion and passion. She was so loving towards all those she met. So friendly and always there to help if you needed anything. She introduced me to wear blue: run to remember. I remember the shame when I showed up to the first meeting and she ran twice the miles I did! Everywhere she goes, she just wants to lift up others and be that shining light in the military community.

My Military Experience in Two Words | (this is so hard!!) Enlightening + Inspiring. Enlightening as it forces you to see the world on a global scale, not just the town you live in. Inspiring because of the stories of strength, loss and hope that I have witnessed or heard.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now | I had a hard conversation with myself before we got married. I knew that life would be hard. He was attached to a very active unit at the time and deploying often. He was ambitious. If I married him, I had to accept his career and support him in whatever we wanted to do. I couldn’t love him conditionally as long as he was home. And that’s what I have done. It’s not always easy to say yes when he wants to take a job that will move us across the country, or to one that will have him deploying often. But it’s what makes him happy and it’s what he was doing before we met. I can’t change who he is and what he wants to do with his career. I can just support him and be here when he is home. In return, he has always been my biggest cheerleader and supportive in all that I have wanted to do.

Best Memory While He was Gone | Makena had just turned one and the whole family was able to meet up at Disney World for the half marathon. I had a photographer friend meet us at the park and she captured the day for us. The pictures are beautiful. You can see the joy of having Josh’s family and mine all together. Plus the innocent joy of a toddler experiencing all that love while being in an exciting park. It’s something I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Thanks so much for sharing with us, Stephanie!

The purpose of the Military Monday Series is to highlight the many women that help make the military community a great place to be. Some women are experienced, some are new and hesitant, but we are all a part of something bigger than ourselves, and it benefits everyone when we support each other!

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