Kanadier aus Briest läuft auf der kurzen Strecke allen davon!

It's my third week here and I already made the newspaper: "Canadian from Briest runs away from them all on the short course". Yesterday I won a seven kilometer race in a town called Schönhausen about 20km away from Briest. It went pretty well. Until the gun went off, my plan was to run with Veronika, but then I got a big rush of adrenaline. She was cool with me racing out front, so I took off after the leaders. Fortunately the pace was pedestrian in the first kilometer, so I easily caught up. I almost decided to take it out hard right then to try and drop the rest of the pack, but I decided to hold back to see if there were any other fast runners. There was, and at the 1 kilometer mark he made a move. I followed right on his shoulder and we soon left the rest of the runners behind us. The next few kilometers it was just him and I. He actually dropped me a bit by the three kilometer mark, but I hung back about 40 meters, still in contact. At the four kilometer mark I could see he was hurting and started making a bit of ground up on him. My plan was to get within ten meters between the fifth and sixth kilometer markers and then outsprint him to the finish. There was no need. At the five kilometer mark he stopped, fell to his knees and started puking. A course martial was there to help him, so I kept going. I was all alone now, and ran steady in to the line to finish in 22:29. Not bad for a first run after not training for a month. The next guy (puker) finished in 23:26, and the third place finisher finished in 24:28. Veronika also ran very well, finishing ninth among the women, and first in her age category in 32:38. Not bad for never training and running in soccer cleats!
In the afternoon we went to make apple juice from all of the apples we’ve been picking over the last week. We picked a lot of apples. We didn’t even bring them all and we still made about 110 liters of juice. Today we have to bottle it all.
Volker and Christa Magdanz, my Great Aunt and Uncle who live in Schermbeck are coming to visit me today on their way back from Berlin. I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t seen them since I was in Germany last time in 2005, and they’re really nice people.

Random comment: My favourite band of the day is Underoath.

In Germany

I live in Germany . --- I’m not here visiting for a few weeks, or on exchange, or working on a co-op term, - I actually live here. Instead of going to see the Dom or Brandenburg Tor I’m mucking corrals and driving tractor --- and I love it.
For those who haven’t heard from me in a while, Veronika and I moved to Germany after she finished her practicum in Vancouver this summer. For those who haven’t heard from me in a really long while, I graduated from engineering in April, and Veronika is my girlfriend. We’re living at her parents’ farm in a small village of about 60 people called Briest. The only things you can buy here are beer and stamps. Fortunately there’s a larger town about 12 km away to buy groceries and so on. Briest is located between Braunschweig and Berlin, near the Elba river (look for Rathenow or Genthin on a map). The farm is a mixed horse ranch and wheat farm. I spend my days doing a variety of things. In the morning I usually do computer work. At the moment I’m running a small website design and computer programming business. I’ll skip over the details though since they would interest only the nerdiest (hi Brady and Wes). The rest of the day I spend working on the farm, plowing fields, training horses, sweeping out the barn, or picking apples.
We eat potatoes every day. Baked potatoes, boiled potatoes, fried potatoes, potato soup, potato salad, potato sausage – ok, well maybe not potato sausage, but we eat a lot of sausage too. Breakfast is rye bread (no potatoes!) with butter and your choice of a whole bunch of cheeses, sausages, and jams. One of my favourites for breakfast is this cheese called quark (which kind of looks like whipping cream gone wrong) with jam on top. Ten o-clock is snack time, lunch is potatoes, three o-clock is coffee and cake, and supper is more bread. One thing that’s tough to get used to is that lunch is the big meal. I’m used to finishing up a day’s work and wolfing down a huge supper, but you have to eat a lot of rye bread to get full (at least I do).
I’m learning how to ride a horse (again) – this time English style. I’ve had three lessons so far and apparently I’m doing pretty well. I have to wear a helmet though. The cool thing is that I’m getting lessons for free from Veronika’s sister. I’ve also started to train some of the horses with Veronika’s help. We basically run them around in a circle using a really long leash so that they get some exercise in, get used to running at a constant pace, and get used to a saddle on their back. With a couple of them we are just starting to transition into putting some weight on the saddle. The horses are awesome. There are about twenty of them here on the farm and some are very big – I can barely see over some of their backs. There are also a couple horses that are better called mules – one actually bit me on the ass today as I was cleaning out its hoof.
It’s ten after nine, or rather 21:10 here, and I’m tired. Everyone else is in bed so I should probably go too – six o-clock comes early. I’ll try to write more soon and get some pictures up, but I left my camera in Cologne, so I have to wait for it to arrive. :(