Munich

Greetings from Germany! The Chendowan crew is back on this side of the pond, and we're currently on the train to Munich. After flying to Frankfurt yesterday we spent the night in our apartment, had dinner with friends, repacked, and headed out the door late this morning. It was fun to see Rowan rediscover the apartment as well as the toys he hasn't played with since June. He's changed a lot since then. Fortunately, he continues to be great at adapting to different places. After tonight we will have slept in six different places over the past eight days (Door County, Minneapolis, Ankeny, the plane, Frankfurt, and Munich), but we'll be in Munich for a month so we can enjoy some continuity there.

Rowan wanted to go for a walk after I finished the previous paragraph, so now it's the next day and I'm sitting in the kitchen in our airbnb apartment while Rowan naps and Brenda is at work. She's singing Strauss this time around, and I imagine the rehearsal is going smoothly. She already knows the music and staging very well because she performed this opera (Strauss's Die Schweigsame Frau) previously in Munich during the 2014/15 season. The conductor and much of the cast have changed, however, and since it's been a few years, and since Strauss can be very difficult musically (not to mention vocally), it's good she's getting a couple weeks of rehearsal. Since we're on the topic of Brenda's career, I thought I should mention that she is a nominee for International Artist of the Year in the Australian classical music magazine Limelight. (Apparently we all missed a good concert in Melbourne earlier this month.) If you'd care to see who the other nominees are, you can do so here.

There are some holidays in Germany coming up next week so Brenda is going to have a few days off. We're looking forward to settling in to our temporary abode and visiting some of our favorite places in Munich.

I hope you all have a great week, and we'll talk to you again soon!

a new place to call home

Hey all! Well the blog has certainly fallen off the rails over the past month. Sorry about that! Here's a short recap of what we've been up to. Brenda spent two weeks in Tokyo followed by a week in Melbourne, Australia. Her performances both places went splendidly. In Australia she did a radio interview that included Bill Nye the Science Guy. If you'd care to take a listen, you can do so here (Brenda starts chatting about 32:20).

While she was away Rowan and I spent some time relaxing with my parents, and I also made final preparations to move into our new house in Minneapolis. The day Brenda flew back to the states was the day we moved all of our stuff into the new place. Before we relocated to Germany in 2008 we put all of our belongings that weren't going to Germany into plastic tubs for storage in my brother's and parents' basements. We placed all of those tubs, along with our few pieces of furniture, into a 16 foot truck and drove it to Minneapolis the day Brenda got back from Australia. Conveniently, Brenda flew into Minneapolis, so I dropped off the moving truck at the house, Rowan and I went and picked her up at the airport and then drove back to the house and moved in. Of course we couldn't have done it all without the help of my parents, brother, Drew, Dan and Whitney, and Brenda's parents who came a couple days later to look after Rowan while we unpacked and shopped for furniture to put into the house.

We took a break from unpacking on Monday to drive to Door County to celebrate my parents' milestone birthdays over the summer, and Brenda and I are currently relaxing in our rental house while Rowan naps and my parents explore Sister Bay. Here are a few pics from our outing yesterday:

Cana Island Lighthouse

 A view from the top.

and another...

and one more. 

I forgot to mention I passed the Minnesota bar exam! The best part about that news is that I don't have to spend two more months of my life studying for it again. So even though the major hurdles of becoming an attorney (i.e. law school and the bar exam) are behind me, I still have one more thing to do before I can be subject to disbarment: I need to swear an oath during a monthly admission ceremony. Brenda, Rowan, and I are back off to Germany in less than a week so I'm going to miss the ceremony this month, but I'm hoping to be sworn in in December. That way I can ring in the new year by suing somebody. I can't wait.

I hope you're all having a wonderful fall, and we'll talk to you again soon!