Laura Beth in Germany

Since watching way too much Aladdin as a kid, I've wanted a colorful house full of Eastern patterns and giant pillows. I'm slowly moving in that direction. Last week I put up the new tapestry. Sure, it doesn't match perfectly. And yes, maybe it makes me look like a pot-smoker, having tapestries all over my house. But whatever. It's my place! and I'm probably going to make a pillow to tie all the colors together.   As a matter of fact, I've done a lot of rearranging this week. When big life changes are around the corner (e.g. my first visit home since moving to Germany), I tend to get a little restless. Sometimes I get a haircut. This time the nervous energy burst out of me in the form of creativity. In the past three days, I've redecorated the living room, rearranged the bedroom and turned a pair of $7 jeans from Goodwill into stylish, modest shorts. (Unlike the hotpants I've seen in Stuttgart lately. So many teenage butt cheeks. So many.) ...

In the middle of June, the two Stuttgart Berlitz schools officially combined. I was automatically transferred to the new school as a freelance teacher. It's nice to change things up, but there are a few things to get used to, of course. We moved out of the luxurious location near the main station, but kept the old "Stuttgart 2" office. It has a few classrooms, but it mostly houses the administration - our director, secretary, the supervisor of pedagogy, our materials library, etc. That space is located on the Rotebühlplatz, across from a C&A department store and the Stuttgart Stadtmitte subway stop. The new space, with about 10 classrooms, is located at Marienstraße 28. Thanks to Google and its ever-increasing creeping skills, I was able to locate a photo of the building for you: You can see the windows of our new school on the third floor, just above Sophie's Brewery. We keep joking that we'll never get any work done because we'll spend all our tim...