Our own cave in

Not to diminish the horror in Chile (a cave in in a mine, my own personal nightmare times ten), but we've had our own small-scale cave in right here in the Marino household.

Before leaving Germany, we set ourselves some serious rules. We were NOT going to get sucked back into our old ways. One car was good enough in Germany, it'd be good enough in the USA- Russ was going to bike! And we didn't need cable, since we watch TV on the computer anyway. And certainly we'd wait for a long time, lots and lots of paychecks, to get any sort of cell phone contract. Prepaid phones were just fine for us for two years, thankyouverymuch.

The first to go was the car. We have weather. We lack public transport. Anything we need to get to requires serious hill-biking. Cars don't look for bike and there are no bike paths. So we now own two cars (again). Granted, we didn't get TWO new cars this time, and we'll drive them both forever, and we're not of the lease-for-three-years-so-we-can-drive-new philosophy. But still.

Then, Russ wanted cable TV. We got free TVs from family members and for the most part they sit collecting dust. So again, we went Euro-American as I like to call it and got 12 channels. We can watch Glee in its full screened glory, and Russ can watch repetitive crime investigation shows to his heart's content. And we've added a Comcast bill to our lives.

And yesterday, in what I call a celebration of Russ's new job but is really and truly one of our bigger cave ins to American lifestyle, we got ourselves two, two-year contracts on iPhones. Again, we settled for the older version, fewer minutes, and it really almost equals what we were paying on our prepaid phones. However... as we drive around in our two cars with our two iPhones, listening to Fiona talk to Fairy Sarah, it almost feels like we never went to Germany. It's surreal. So I'm trying, with our thrice weekly language classes for Fiona, our nearly empty kitchen cabinets (we try to buy fresh and only what we need) and our persistence in calling them Herbs and pronouncing the "H", to actively incorporate our Germanness into our everyday lives. It works, a little. But when I stop to think about it, the biggest reminder is there every time Fiona talks to Russ. He remains "Papa" in a "Daddy" world. That, I hope, will stick forever.