English Thread

[ratlady]

Hi all together,

Most motels I've seen in the states had those emergency lights. It thought of them as kind of regulation that is strictly checked?

Yes, I remember ... the motel (a Super 8 ) had emergency lights (we saw them next morning), but unfortunatelly, they didn't work...
So I don't know, how strict the regulations for that really are.

well, who knows... maybe they just make sure they're in "good shape" when it's time for an "official inspection"... ?   Although I'm not sure there is such a thing either, but I think certain safety features (in "public places") do get inspected on a moreless regular base... (at least, I would hope so...   )

Oh, talking about weather, again - just heard it on the radio this afternoon (today's "Cat Country Conundrum"   )... "today in History" - on Jan 31, 1977 was the only day ever (in "recorded history" of the United States) that all of the "Lower 48's" had snow on the ground... all the way down to south Florida!! Now, imagine that...  

[ratlady]

...ok, I guess you could call this doing a "push-up" (with this thread)...  

WHERE IS EVERYBODY????  

And, I still hope there's more people out there that are reading this, apart from those that so far have been actively participating - C'mon y'all, help us keep this alive...   ...just a short hello and maybe a sentence or two about yourself and/or how you "got interested" in the US... nothing to be afraid of!! And then take it from there - and who knows, you may be surprised how easy it might turn out to be...  

[Stephan_]

...ok, I guess you could call this doing a "push-up" (with this thread)...  

WHERE IS EVERYBODY????  

Hi ratlady,

I'm still here, still reading...

I think it is very difficult to keep a thread alive that has no specific topic (except of writing everything in English )

At the moment I’m looking forward to my next stay in the US. I’ll be there in may, starting with an RV from Los Angeles, via Page – Yellowstone – San Francisco – Los Angeles. Now I’m in the phase of ‘tuning’ the route. I’m looking for must sees along the route, for campgrounds, and so on.

I had a look at the impressive pictures from CrimsonTide and the Canyon Tour. Bryce and Antelope canyon are already fixed. I’ve been several times at Bryce Canyon, but it’s my first visit at Antelope Canyon.

Greetings from Stuttgart, where ist’s cold and foggy for the moment

stephan

[americanhero]

...ok, I guess you could call this doing a "push-up" (with this thread)...  

WHERE IS EVERYBODY????  

Hi ratlady,

I´m still here, too. But as Stephan told, it`s difficult to keep a thread up to date without a special topic.
It would be better to get an English section where we could write and open threads in English. Maybe more people would join us.

At the moment I`m very busy and have lot to do at work. So sometimes it`s really difficult to get home on time. But that`s life. At least I can visit that board the whole night, ´cause I´m working at noon, that`s great.


Like Stefan I´m actually planning my US Southwest trip in May and at least my route is ready so far. For now I have to check the rates for flights and hotels and I think in two or three weeks I´m ready with everything and wait as time goes by and our trip will start. Yeah, I´m really looking forward to it.
I will also visit the Antelope Canyon but yet I´m not sure which part of it to visit. One of the other highlights beside Antelope Canyon will be the Cottonwood Canyon Road, a gravel road which is also a shortcut between Page and Bryce Canyon. And I hope the conditions will be all right, so we can enjoy using it and see all the wonderful scenic views beside it.
While I´m writing my journal for years in English, I can also write something about our trip here in this thread. Sounds cool somehow.

So, Folks, have a nice day, I will be online again this evening.



Greetz,

Yvonne

[Crimson Tide]

Hi evreryone!
There You are again!
I don't think that the thread will die because of a few days without an answer!
And the topics will change all the time, when someone begins to tell any story which happened just in their life, ore actual the day before.

You see, Ratlady called us, and here we are!  

What's going on this weekend? Do vou have plans, or do you have to work, Yvonne, for example?

We have an invitaion to a Birthday Party, and we are very glad that the reason is a Birthday, and not a "Good Bye" Party like the last three events!

That is always very hard to go to one of these parties, when a German family goes back to Germany forever!
It is a mixture between being happy to go back and being sad to go away!

In Germany we would say, you're going with one laughing and one crying eye!    

The house is nearly empty then, because the container is packed, or they have sold everything in an exciting Garage Sale!

Have you ever been at a Garage Sale? That's fun!  
It is like a flea market in your own garage.
You can sell,and buy   anything you really (don't) need!
And you cannot imagine how many people are coming to such a sale!
They begin to drive in front of your house at 6am and waiting for the opening!  

[Crimson Tide]

 it’s my first visit at Antelope Canyon.

Greetings from Stuttgart, where ist’s cold and foggy for the moment

stephan

Hi, Stephan!
Then I wish you (finger crossing   ) good weather with sunshine in the Upper Antilope Canyon for good pictures with (perhaps) spotlights,therefore you have to visit the Canyon in midday time, and don't forget the tripod (or 800-ASA- Films like I used for my old fashioned "Spiegelreflexkamera").
That looked very funny, my husband's little digital camera, fixed at the huge tripod, but it was very successful!

We are waiting for...guess what...right...,for severe thunderstorms in a few hours,   and we enjoyed the last warm day, because now we'll get the "normal" February average temperatures after a too warm January....we appreciated that...  

[americanhero]

What's going on this weekend? Do vou have plans, or do you have to work, Yvonne, for example?

@ CrimsonTide,

you´re absolutely right, this weekend I have to work. That´s not as awful as it sounds, ´cause weekends are less stressful than during the week. But tomorrow I´ll start with the early morning shift and that means getting up at 5:15 am. Normally that´s a time I´m going to bed (you know, like Thuesday   ) and I´m not used to get up in the middle of the night.

And Sunday night is Superbowl!! Yeah, that´s something I won`t miss for anything in the world. And this year I´m watching it for the 12th time. And Superbowl night means to have some friends with me who are also interested in football and we will have a small nice Superbowl party with beer and Fingerfood. Is someone else watching it on TV?


Greetz,

Yvonne

[Crimson Tide]

Live Report!  


Wow, what a thunderstorm....our road in front of our house is a river!  
I'm very happy about our electrician garage, so we can go to our party pretty dry! Just the way from the car to the hosts housedoor we have to go through the rain!
Let's go!  

[ratlady]

Hi evreryone!
There You are again!
I don't think that the thread will die because of a few days without an answer!
And the topics will change all the time, when someone begins to tell any story which happened just in their life, ore actual the day before.

Hey y'all - good to see you're still here!!  

And I agree with Crimson Tide... whatever topic comes to mind, just bring it up... as in, "The Art of Small Talk" - you know, when you talk forever on end about nothing at all...

Funny you mention garages sales - reminds me of our own "yard sale", which we've been "planning" to hold for I don't even know how long... about a year and a half ago, we actually had a date set for that, but just that weekend it was pouring rain...  

Well, so what's going on... let's see... my work truck "let me down" for the 3rd time in two weeks... we were supposed to have a "mostly sunny day" but basically I wasn't able to see anything outside a radius of about 50-100m all day long because of the fog (weird to stand on the beach unable to see the water!   )... been joking about all of the above quite a bit today  

I'll be doing some work tomorrow (Saturday), too, but "work from home" - put in a long "field-day" today so I wouldn't have to go back in this weekend. Usually, though, what happens is that I'll enjoy the weekend and catch up on my "homework" starting sometime Sunday evening. .. and then stay up till way after midnight to get it all done (although I admit it depends a little on how many "breaks" I take in between to "play" on the computer...    ) Sunday we'll probably spend with friends for the most part...  

@Yvonne-
I saw you up way late that day... was about to "speak up", too, but at that time you'd already left...   And, I'm definitely not going to watch the Superbowl but we may end up in one of the "sports bars" - my husband's got a bet going "in the game"...

Getting back to thunderstorms again... we had a pretty good "system" moving through Thursday morning - I later heard that the same system did considerable damage in some areas in and around New Orleans...   We only had some minor "flooding" in low-lying areas around here but that's something that happens with almost every major rain event...

[cleoxx]

Hi everyone,

I'm still here, too. Last week I had a lot of work to do, so I only read here. Sorry, I didn't have time for writing!
At the first of February I changed my job - still the same company, but another team. So I have to learn a lot at the moment! But I try to follow this thread as often as possible... So I hope (like you all) that we will keep this thread alive!

While I´m writing my journal for years in English, I can also write something about our trip here in this thread. Sounds cool somehow.

That would be really great, if you could do that!

At the moment, I'm sorting our digital pictures which we took on our last vacation: 4 weeks from Chicago to Seattle in September/October 2005.
We took a lot of(maybe too much) digital pictures there: about 1500!
And the problem with that now is, that all these pictures are on our hard disk, but they are not in the right order. We used two different cameras and put the pictures in different directories on our PC (not very clever...). And to make it more difficult, many of them don't have a date (when it was taken), because the camera took an initial date(which was 99991231)  So I don't know, which pictures we took on which day of our vacation... So I really have to take my notes, remember where we were and try to put all this pictures in the right order. Sometimes it's easy (like the geysirs in Yellowstone...), sometimes more difficult (we saw buffalos in different National Parks...).
But of course, it also is a lot of fun for me, remembering all this great things we saw and did! We really had wonderful and great vacations there!
Goal of all this is to get a CD with about 250 to 300 pictures to show our friends. They always ask about our pictures, but 1500 (and some short films...) are definitely to much to show anyone!

[americanhero]

Hi everyone,

At the moment, I'm sorting our digital pictures which we took on our last vacation: 4 weeks from Chicago to Seattle in September/October 2005.
We took a lot of(maybe too much) digital pictures there: about 1500!

Hi Cleoxx,

1500 pics in 4 weeks are not too much. I think that`s just the average number of pics for that period . I shot in Washington DC in only one week something about 450 Pics and afterwards I thought that it wasn´t enough and I won´t have pics of all the important sights.
Will you write a travel report of your trip for this board? Not in English, just the ordinary one in the report thread.


Greetz,

Yvonne

[America_Crazy]

Hi there,

talking about the amount of pictures that were being taken during vacation is very interesting.

Here is just a little list of my own experiences:  

I took about 620 pictures in Washington DC last March in 2005 within 11 full days.

I did not own a digital camera in the year 2004 when I was in New York but I took about 700 pictures in 7 days.

When I was in the North East and Canada in 2003 I took a lot of pictures as well within 13 days.
The problems in the years 2003 and 2004 were very clear: I had a lot of expenses on developing my pictures. I do not develop all of my pictures anymore these days just the ones that I really like. Normally I just copy them onto a CD and also save them on my computer.

When I fly to America this year I am using 2 512MB and one 128MB SD cards to make sure to be able to take a lot of pictures. I also want to burn CDs in America already to be able to take even more pictures. I am excited to see how many pictures I am going to take.

America_Crazy

[Crimson Tide]

Hi, Y'all!

I know very well the addiction of making too many pics!

But the best thing is in case of the digital cameras, that (at first) it doesn't cost any Dollar to see the pics on your computer!
Nevertheless, I love my old Spiegelreflexkamera,(sorry, I don't know the English vocabulary!   ), because I believe in my old camera, and in my opinion the pictures are sometimes BETTER!  
Especially when you want to shoot very fast, the motive is sometimes gone before the camera reacts!  
Very often, when we're trying to get pics from dolphins, for example, or whales near Seattle, last October, they had been under water too fast!    

[Stephan_]

Hi CrimsonTide,

I used a SLR (that's the English word for Spiegelreflex ) for several years and I used it during my trips to the states. In 2004 I bought a new digital SLR, a D70 made by Nikon.

I'm very happy with the camera, and what was important to me: it worked with the lenses from my old analog camera, a F70 from Nikon.

For the matter of speed, there is no difference between the analog and the digital SLR.

You may be right about the quality of pictures. Due to cost and limited amount of films, I've been very carefully with shooting pictures with my analog camera, very plannig.

Now, with no specific costs and almost unlimited memory resources, I'm shooting a lot of pictures, often several pictures of the same object. That makes it difficult to choose the right picture for a photo book or a presentation. On the other hand you have a better chance for the perfect picture

And to make a contribution to the weather discussion, in the last days we had glazed frost (as leo would say) on the trees and this morning we had some snowflakes. Temperatures are between 25-20 degrees, during the day over 30.

Greetings from cold and icy Germany, from the wild south

stephan

[Crimson Tide]

Hi CrimsonTide,

I used a SLR (that's the English word for Spiegelreflex )
I'm very happy with the camera, and what was important to me: it worked with the lenses from my old analog camera, a F70 from Nikon.

stephan

Hi, Stephan!
Oh, that's great!
We have two old SLR-Cameras from Canon, (what does SLR mean exactly, I'm just curious!), and I would like to buy the digital SLR Camera from Canon one day,(not now, we are constantly bankrupt, because of too much vacation   ) but in this case all our lenses wouldn't fit!