Remembering Florida II

Half a year ago, I started to write about my life in Florida back in the nineties, and neglected to finish up… Let's pick up where we left off!

So, what do two foreign children do when they arrive in a new country?

Well, of course, like any conscientious immigrant, we were making a concerted effort to integrate by going to a big, strange school in big, strange yellow buses.

And after school, what better way to spend your time than hanging out with your new friends? I expect this was my 7th birthday party which, unlike the following year’s debacle (another story for a another time) looks to be a fine success.

One of our favourite spots was an incredible playground downtown. My mum would bring us here to wreak havoc and release energy.

Having fun in Florida!

And here’s the whole family: my dad, my mum, me, and my brother. Uprooted in 1998 from idyllic Alpine Germany and dropped into a world of fast food, fast cars, and beautiful beaches – which bizarrely closed to the public at sundown.

Not that that stopped us from enjoying it in the daytime!

And with views like this, who’s really complaining?

When I was a teenager in cloud-muddled Reading, I often wished I were a High School student back in Florida, a life with summer camps and malls and beaches and – from what I could glean from television – buckets of glamour.

That feeling passed, of course, but I do want to go back to see the Everglades, eat Key Lime Pie in an art deco cafe, and spend the day reading a book on the beach. My one big regret is that we failed on a magnificent scale to stay in touch with anyone from that time. A lesson I have now learned!

Remembering Florida I

I used to live in southern Florida (south even of Miami – yes, there’s more than just swamp and beach down there), something which surprises every single person I tell. Nothing about me screams ex-American.

But if you pay attention there are whispers: my ‘r’s are rounded and soft, which may also be put down to the Scottish heritage but probably stem largely from the soft US dialect; I "misspell" words such as colour/color on a regular basis; and last year I infuriated my translation teacher by translating a German word as ‘obligated’, rather than ‘obliged’. There’s a difference apparently – who knew?

Honestly, though, that’s pretty much it apart from a couple of welcome marks on my personality and the odd hazy childhood memory. Thank god my grandma captured that last bit on film when she visited us back in the first few months, or else I might think it was all just a strange and lucid dream…

  
Meet me (dancing? if you can call it that…) and my younger brother, Niall (pirate hat). If he finds this, he’ll hate me (SORRY!) but I don’t care. Don’t we look like obnoxious rascals? We almost certainly were.

Not all the time though. We could be utterly delightful when satiated with food, though Niall is already showing an irritating habit he has of just not being interested in food. People like that just freak me out. Niall, I think you’re broken. I also think I spy a pot of Nutella at the right… pure bliss.

  
As Germans from the most traditional part of Germany, we were utterly baffled by American Christmas. Plastic trees? No snow? You can see that Niall and I just don’t really get it in the photos above.

  
There’s another thing which a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old didn’t “get”, but thankfully my grandma did: the unique beauty of southern urban Florida.

  
My Mum appreciated it too!

Niall and I were far more interested in hunting for alligators in the everglades.

And here’s the lady herself, the one behind the camera! My beloved grandmother who just turned 92. Here she is, standing on our roof-terrace.

Next time, you can look forward to a Yellow School Bus, and playground acrobatics! If you subscribe you’ll get notified immediately – and you know you don’t want to miss out on hearing all about my odd little life.

Right?

Find part two here.