Denglish

Last week I got to visit a friend from Germany. He's doing an internship at Fossil Gate Farms outside of Dallas, TX. I felt that a 5 hour drive was worth it, since I'd normally have a 13 hour plane ride to endure to see him. It was a great visit! He worked on Tuesday so I went to Dallas and spent time at the Botanical Gardens. They were gorgeous and full of... not flowers. It was about 65 degrees and really windy, so most of the gardens were in autumn mode. There were pumpkins lining all the paths and there were colorful hastas galore. I've put up my favorite picture, and of course, it involves an animal! I then was really lazy and ordered pizza to my hotel room while watching a Big Bang Theory and Law and Order SVU marathon. I got to talk to my friend Allison for almost an hour which was amazing seeing as she's in China and our internet on both ends have been so spotty.

The next day, I picked up Clemens at his ranch and we went into Dallas for the day. Apparently Texas does rodeos best because the State Fair we went to was not packed, not very big, and only had the basic foods fried and they were not all on a stick. Sigh. Not the same as the Minnesota State Fair at all. Oh well. It was awesome to spend time with Clemens and speak Denglish. He tried to speak English the whole time and I tried to speak German the entire time. If we forgot a word or two, we'd switch into our home languages. It involved a lot of miming, laughing, and staring from other people.

Baby season is finally starting to slow down. At one point I think I calculated we had over 200 baby raccoons and someone just told me we have 8. 8! We're not getting in any new babies, almost all our new arrivals are injured raptors coming in from their migrations. Most of my days have been spent in surgeries now. It's been pretty good practice. Well, I'm off for a fun day of shopping for Halloween! A bunch of us are going to Austin (the southern version of Madison for Halloween) and we're dressing up as Miss America contestants. We're from all over the country, and I'm going to represent as Miss Minnesota. It'll be great fun. Hope your Halloweens are going to be fun-filled! Miss and love you all.

Sara