Deutschland sucht den Superstar

To be honest I have never been a fan of DSDS. DSDS (WIKI) is the German version of American Idol and whenever it was on TV I zapped away like I do with every annoying casting show or Big Brother…

This was our last “Superstar” …

DSDS Alexander Take Me Tonight - MyVideo

Horrible, isn’t it? *SHUDDER* It makes my brain hurt. He sounds gay and looks like a girl….

But things changed. This season they’ve got great singers and one of them ROCKS GERMANY and even I watch parts of the show when Thomas is on air. Watch and listen to that, it’s awesome, isn’t it? It’s the best Let it Be Version I’ve ever heard in my life.

Thomas Godoj - let it be - MyVideo

Ironman

Yay! Tonight we are heading over to the movies theater to watch Ironman. I love going to the movie theaters. In my youth I maybe went once a year to the theaters but thats about it. So I really enjoy being out there watching a movie on the big screen, it’s just so much better than watching them at home. Even though German movie theaters are extremely expensive but we don’t go to German theaters, we simply head over to PHV and watch it there. It’s always a good practice for school watching movies in original language. :)

We also were invited over to Mannheim but oh well… since we go to the movie theaters we can’t go there and next time I simply organize the next meeting then… and it will be so much fun to meet other girlfriends and spouses from nato-forces.

I don’t know what is going to happen. Don’t know how the relationship to TJ is going to turn. Don’t know if we have a future or not. Fact is he is going back to the States in August. He will go on that plane and than he is gone and I have to stay here to get that frickin degree. I just don’t want to lose him so now I am going to spend as much as time as possible with him and probably won’t write very often…

Keep praying…

Sometimes life isn’t fair at all. It’s just not fair and to be honest I don’t know if I have got the strength to keep going. Last January I’ve had a surgery, now they have to open it up again because something went wrong. It’s crazy and I just hope they don’t do it while I have the preleminaries. That’d be baaad. Real bad. So keep praying that everything is going to turn out well.

Whatever I’ve catched from TJ got better but even though I take antiobiotics for over a week I still have to cough bad. TJ instead feels a lot better. He has a PT test tomorrow but I am sure he’s doing just fine. He’s one of the best when it comes up to PT :)

However, he finally got answer about the tests he took to change his MOS. HE PASSED!!! He signed the papers and is going back to the States to go to school for a year. I don’t know what is going to happen with the both of us though. It’ll be tough on the relationship but we will see. He’s still here and won’t leave before August so maybe we can work something out. One is for sure. I’ve got to stay here to get my degree. The plan was to go to the UK to take the HND after that but things have changed…maybe I can find a job in the States. We will see…

Great…I’ve catched it…

While TJ seems to be okay I’ve got it now. It started Saturday. I feel weak, dizzy, got a headache and my belly hurts. Cough and I am sweating and pale as death. Today we had to take an exam but I couldn’t. So I went to my business class instructor and she said that it’d be fine because everybody can see that I am not feeling well… so I went home went to bed and drink liters of tea and water.

Testicular Cancer and Self Exams

This post was brought to my attention by Maryann from Soldiers’ Angels Germany. She cares about the wounded Soldiers over at Landstuhl Rammstein and doing an awesome job.

However, today she wrote about something that people should take more seriously: Testicular Cancer!

Guys, there is not just Breast Cancer out there. It’s not just us women that can get cancer. It’s also you guys that can get it. You should not be ashamed of doing a self-test just because it looks like you are playing with yourself. Doing these self-tests won’t hurt you, It can safe your life doing them and when we women can do it you can do it too! And even if you are playing with yourself … you can always tell your battle buddies that you are doing a self-test for testicular cancer and that they should make one too.

Ok, this is an unusual post. But it’s really important because we see quite a few cases of testicular cancer at Landstuhl due to the gender/age group of our patients.

Please help raise awareness about the importance of deployed men doing testicular self-exams.

There’s very high awareness for breast cancer and the need for women to carry out self-exams.

However, there’s much less awareness about testicular cancer (TC), which is the most common type of cancer affecting guys between the ages of 15 and 35.

Most often, TC is found by men themselves. The thing with being deployed is that you don’t want to look like you’re playing with yourself in the shower or whatever while you’re checking yourself out. Also, back home, it’s often found by wives/girlfriends.

But a monthly self-exam of the testicles is the best way of becoming familiar with your body and thus enabling detection of TC at an early — and highly curable — stage.

Information about self-exams can be found here

General information about TC can be found here

Important to Know:

• TC has a VERY high cure rate.
• Treatment usually involves removal of the affected testicle and follow up.
• Having one testicle is almost always sufficient to keep everything “working”.

Please pass this on to your deployed Heroes.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming

This time it’s bad

I’ve already seen TJ with a couple of very bad colds and the flu. Usually he catched it from me or I catched it from him. This time it’s worse than just a bad cold. I don’t know what he catched but it’s really really bad. The day before everything was fine and a day later “WHAM!” he’s sick. Monday morning he didn’t feel well and I thought it was because of the hungover. During the day it got worse and worse. I told him to drink water. I made him drink something in the morning but it probably wasn’t enough and I know him.. .he’s a Gatorade addicted. He has Gatorade everywhere and always three or four bottles of Gatorade in the car. Doesn’t matter what flavor but it gotta be Gatorade. Anyway, he probably drank a little and went straight to bed. He should have drank a whole liter though…

However, in the evening his condition got even worse and I told him that I’d go back to my place so he could get some sleep. He said that I’d probably have it by wednesday too. Well.. today is wednesday and thank god I’m fine. Tuesday evening I went back on post to check on him and it kind off shocked me what I saw. He looked like a living death and I haven’t seen him that weak… I wished I could be there for him but I know that it would drives him crazy if somebody would be around all day long while he wants nothing but sleep. If we had an apartement it would be different though… so all I can do is waiting and to get him a small “Get well soon” basket with healthy stuff that will help his body fighting what ever he catched there…

So now he’s on “Quarters” and all they gave him is “Codein”!… Antibiotics would have been a lot better but oh well… that’s the military.

“Broken leg? Take your motrin…”

Got an A

To fully understand why I am so proud of myself you’ve got to know what happened Sunday.

TJ came back from leave and still has three more days off, PLUS he was on a mission. He had to kill a bottle of the strongest Rum I’ve ever seen in my life. But it was a great Rum. Vanilla Rum actually.

So he gave me a call and I joined his mission even though I knew I had to take an exam the very next day. After we killed the bottle together we had some Jelzin and some other stuff he brought from Spain which also tasted very very good. We’ve watched young Frankenstein and then we went to the pub…while we walked there he got very sentimental and said stuff like “I thought about you everyday but can’t tell you that…” Oookay…whatever… at the pub we’ve spend a little over 40 Euros and went back to his place.

Long story short we woke up having a hell of a hungover and so I killed a full liter of water and felt better. I know you just gotta drink water and get some vitamins and you feel better. Then I looked at the clock and OH MY GOD I WAS LATE!!!! Went to school took the exam and passed with an A.

I don’t know how I did it but it’s an A!

Today I have to take two more exams… and one thing is for sure. I won’t drink any alcohol the next half a year… AT LEAST!

He had guts! And so has his family.

TJ and I’ve made that trip to Luxembourg to visit the Memorial Military Cemetery to pay our respect to those who gave all. It was quite a trip to get there. Even though we printed the route earlier because TJ thought he’d know better than the route planner and well… surprisingly he did! I will never again say anything about him not using the suggested route.

However when we arrived in Luxembourg we first checked where the cemetery is and then went to a small town named Ham. Of course TJ couldn’t help it and had to laugh about the name and we’ve made jokes like “Hey now we can tell our friends that we’ve been over at Ham&Cheese” … when I think about it… stupid jokes, eh?

Well, we went there to have some lunch and we wanted to go somewhere where you get original Luxembourg food but all we found were Italian food restaurants. There also were small cafés but they didn’t speak any english and they looked kind of dirty so in the end we ended up with Italian food, like we couldn’t get that in Germany either.

After we had our highly expensive meal (yes Luxembourg is expensive…) we went to the cemetery. Only a few visitors were there with us and it was sad to walk through all these graves reading the names of all these fallen heroes. To me they are heroes because they died to free our country from a tyran and dictator.

Then we went to General Pattons grave and put down the coin and angel pin as we’ve promised. It was like a little personal ceremony and I could not hold back my tears. Thinking of what this man has accomplished and what an impact he had in todays world. Maybe without him they could not have won the war… but this man had guts! And so has his family.

After that we went to the German military cemetery and this one was even worse. So many graves with no names. So many unknown soldiers and nobody to remember them. I wished I would have had more pins with me to put them down on every single grave of an unknown soldier but all I had left was a single pin; so I walked to one of these graves where two unknown soldiers are buried and put down the pin and said a prayer for all of them. It broke my heart to see all of these men. Just because they fought for Germany doesn’t mean that they weren’t brave. All of these men, if American or German went through the same thing. They went through the cruelty of war and died… because of these men we are who we are today. They made a difference and sometimes we should say a prayer and remember them. So many died… and so many still die because of stupid wars. We could all live together in peace but there are a few out there that think differently so the only thing we can do is to remember those who gave all and reach out with our hearts to those on active duty. But that’s just me…

Don’t we all have a responsibility?

In 2004 somebody I’ve truly loved deployed to the middle east. Back then I didn’t know nothing about the war. Only what we’ve got presented by the german media which was quite anti American and anti-war at the very least. People harrassed me because I’ve loved a soldier. Every day when I went to school they’ve discussed Iraq and that they’d deserve to be killed and when one day this somebody got killed by an IED I decided to talk to my instructor to take a couple of days off. My instructor told the class and some of my classmates had nothing better to do then saying “Good, he deserved it, the world is better without him.”
A couple of days later I decided to quit that school. I could not understand why people would say something like that. Especially in my old town where a lot of Germans and NATO troops are stationed.

However, a friend of mine (Army Captain) suggested to join Soldiers’ Angels. He said that’d be exactly what I need. He was right. Never before in my life I have met a group of people who are supportive and understanding like them. We were all in the same boat and it didn’t make any difference that I am German. So I adopted my first Soldier. In the beginning I didn’t really know what it fully means to adopt a Soldier. Some people may think that it is just sending parcels and letters… and when you’ve got a silent Soldier who never writes back… well then it is only sending parcels and letters but even then you treat this soldier like a part of your family.

I’ve never had a silent Soldier, mine were always chatty and we’ve talked about anything and everything. With all my Soldiers I share a special bond. And I more and more realized of how important this kind of support actually is. Some of my Soldiers didn’t receive any letters at all. Others found out that their wife filed a divorce, others were the only survivors of an IED attack and wanted to kill themselves… so what are you actually doing as a civilian? I am not a psychdoctor and didn’t know nothing about PTSD and of how to handle people with PTSD. All I knew is that I could not let them down. So I did research on PTSD and got myself more and more into the support thingy. I’ve made British friends and they told me that they barely receive support and I always asked myself of why people back home do not care about them? Why do we send them out to a warzone and then let them fall when they come back? Why do we only remember them when they gave all but don’t care about those on active duty? Don’t we as a society have a responsibility? We can’t just send them to war and not care about them, we’ve got to be there for them. We have to make sure that they know that they are not forgotten nor unloved. Especially after I’ve seen of how much one single letter can mean to somebody who is out there and not having anyone back home who cares.

For example, there was that one soldier. A young lad. His tour got extended over and over again. From day one he was in the shit. Lost a lot of his mates and sometimes we’ve had the feeling that he’d crack anytime. He couldn’t get new combat boots and he lost his jacket in winter. His sneakers fell apart and he had no possibility to get new ones so Amy got him some new sneakers and we were lucky that he got the right ones. Everyday that passed by he cracked a bit more… but we knew we had to stick with him. Then he said that he got some fng’s and they’d knew nothing about war. Making deadly mistakes and they’d be worse than a box of flees. They fucked up his papers and he couldn’t go on leave…. during that time he became more important than my own friends or family. My family never understood why I have joined the Angels. They never got that it wasn’t because of political reasons and they deeper I got into it they more I’ve got problems with the civilian world. I’ve got the Soldiers point of view and even I will never understand what it is like to be there even though I live with their memories but I can do something to make them feel better, to give them something to look forward to and there is nothing better in life than to put a smile on a soldiers face. Because I don’t look away, I (as many others) answer the call and take the responsibility, I will not let them down and we all should do something for them, because if one of them gets killed it could be always someone we know… and then we moan and realize that we should have told him of how much we loved and cared for him.