Help!! Bears!

The most impressive moment in my New Jersey life was seeing a black bear with my own eyes. I was absolutely unprepared, sitting in the kitchen, chatting with a friend on the phone and watching out the kitchen window… And here they were! Mama bear and two smaller bears walking slowly along our backyard fence. I was terrified, I called my neighbour who was not so excited about it and just said: When they do not come to your patio that is fine. Fortunately they did not.

My next visitor climbed even over the fence and explored which of my plants he could eat. There are not so many left because of all the deer we have constantly here. But after a while he went back into the woods too.

Meanwhile, we even saw a bear crossing a main street at the shopping center.

Last summer we were already brave enough to get outside (not to stay behind the glass doors) and watch how the small bears climbed on the tree. We enjoyed it…but just because the open door was just behind us!

My furry nightmare

After a few months living here we got a dog. For Jakob (I thought so…).

Actually it was not a dog, it was a puppy, a Golden Retriever. We named him Joey. He was 8 weeks old and looked very cute.

The breeder warned us to be aware that it will be tough in the beginning. An understatement! The first 4-6 months were a nightmare. My husband went to his office, my son went to school and I stayed with the dog. I could not leave the house for longer than 2 hours (4 months long)!! I do not know anymore how many times I cleaned the floor and carpets until I taught him to go outside to the bathroom. The big challenge was to keep him from chewing on our furniture and shoes and not to let him go upstairs.

But at the end it was worth it. Of course! Joey became a member of our family and he always warns me when we get visitors, the human but also the furry ones. He sounds like a lion, but he is a chicken. Sometime he is a pain in the neck, and once a while he takes me for a walk …

Ps. My husband just paid $220 at animal clinic today (for Joey`s check up). Like I said: our furry nightmare.

Adapting in New Jersey

It was not so easy as it was in Connecticut. It took us one year to meet new people, make friends, and find our way. After the always exhausting move, when all the boxes are unpacked and the house looks at least a little like it supposed to be, we started to explore the area. First discovery: everything is far away and you need much more time to get somewhere. Except to NYC, it takes just one hour, thank God. After a while we found the doctors, the cleaner, the good restaurants and everything else. We have good and supportive neighbours. Jakob has friends and regular play dates. He even joined the Cub Scouts and plays team sports. And we spend the summer at the lake. But most important of all: we know you can meet wonderful people everywhere, even in New Jersey. We found great friends and we have, of course, a very close connection to Connecticut. Our guest room is not empty for long. I love our house, and I did not think that it would happen, but I really enjoy leaving in New Jersey. It seems I am becoming a Jersey girl!

Farewell, again...

As the day of the move arrived we were very sad. There were many tears. Jakob was crying as he was leaving the school. The kids and their parents had a good-bye party for him and gave him an album with the pictures of all his class mates. Every child made something for him. It was heart breaking to separate them… Our friends cried, we cried…but the truck was waiting and I think I did not have time to really say bye to our beach house. It was rainy and a big storm the night before had knocked down many trees when we arrived in New Jersey. Our son, who just has a great attitude, said while we were crossing the Tappan Zee bridge: “Mom, I smell home”. And he was laughing! My good boy! And you would not believe it, but there was even a rainbow. I just took it as a good sign.

House hunting, part 2

Here we go again… After moving not even 2 years ago to Connecticut we had to go house hunting again, this time to New Jersey.

But this time we were better prepared. We checked the schools and the “good area” on Internet and went to see 4 to 6 houses each trip, not 25 in three days. The first trips were disappointing. The houses were all somewhere in the woods, too old or too expensive. I wanted to have at least a few neighbours, some kids for Jakob and…water. I wanted to exchange “my” ocean for a lake. And then in the winter we had luck. We found “our” house in a lake community with a cute small town.

The backyard was big so I promised my son that we finally will get a dog, hoping to make the move easier for him.

The house was new, so we would be able to move in three months at the latest… How to leave all our friends again? How will Jakob deal with it? How I would adapt again?

Good food in the USA?? Yes, definitely!

While living in Connecticut we were surprised and happy(!) about the variety of (good) restaurants in our area. We like good food and to go out and I never thought that this would be something I could enjoy in the USA. You know, all those prejudices about the American food… Okay, unfortunately many are true. Yeah, the fast food… But! I discovered my absolute favourite food here: sushi and all kinds of sea food. We do not have so many good sushi restaurants in Germany, so I tried it just once before and did not like it. But here we visited many Japanese restaurants in the last few years.

Our next favourite: Indian food. Very difficult to find in our part of New Jersey. We had plenty of good Italian restaurants, even one excellent Spanish, Turkish, Chinese and so on. Not to mention all kinds of steak houses and…the sea food!! If you live at the ocean you can have fresh scallops, mussels, shrimps, all kind of fish, even lobster every day. (And they are not so ridiculously expensive here as in Germany!) Of course, as everywhere you can make bad choices here too. There are fast food restaurants at every corner and for sure many not good restaurants. And yes, sometimes we like to go to a diner too. I think it is always up to you what you eat, even in the USA…And yes, it depends on the money you can spend, for sure too.

I just wanted to say that it is an old prejudice about the USA that the food is generally bad. Not here. I do not know how it is if you go to Montana, Texas or Idaho. Probably more steaks…But at the East Cost and at the places I visited so far I always ate well.

Where is New Jersey?!

Back to our life (last year) in Connecticut…

As I already mentioned we adapted very fast and well in Connecticut. We enjoyed being so close to the ocean, just one block away. I took my cup of coffee to the beach every day and spent hours reading, walking or just watching the ocean. Jakob could not get enough of swimming and spent every single day of his summer vacation there. Our friends lived nearby, so we had always many visitors. Some of them even came from Germany.

Life could not get better for us, so it really hit us hard when we heard that my husbands company was moving to New Jersey. Where is New Jersey??

On the first free weekend we went for an exploring trip to this foreign state. It was very devastating. Obviously, we did not see the right area, so far… Hopefully. But the worst part was to tell Jakob that we would have to move again, after not even two years in Connecticut. He loved his school and his class mates so much and I knew he would take it hard. But there was no other option, except go back to Germany, which we could also do but did not want. We did not want to leave the USA. Two years were definitely not enough for us. New Jersey, we are coming!

Who wouldn`t love Cape Cod ?!

We just returned from Cape Cod where we spent a wonderful week.

I can not believe that we never made it there while we lived in Connecticut!

The beaches are between gorgeous and spectacular. I never saw 60 feet high dunes. And all those cute small villages! (And no fast food restaurants! I did not know that such a place exists in the USA).

Of course, in April you are pretty lonely there, but you have Cape Cod for yourself. Swimming is not an option but you can go for long walks on the beach and a lot of biking on the biking trails (which are absolutely safe for kids).

There is just one small problem: to find a place for lunch and dinner. Arriving after a 15 miles bike ride (with our son!) in Wellfleet we were looking desperately for a place to rest. This gave us the opportunity to make some contacts and meet nice people. Everybody was so helpful that they even called for us to check where we can get a sandwich. And we even got a lobster roll!

So what could be better?! Blue sky, sun, white beaches, the ocean and lobster rolls! Life is good!