Stoned German Alpacas (woaw dude we're totally alpacas dude)

Sylke sometimes sends us to work for Lutz, another villager. He's an old hippy and very friendly. He speaks some English but speaks to us almost entirely in German. He's a wood worker and I've ben trying to explain that I work in a wood shop in the states but I seem to continuously fail to get the point across. I decided I liked him when he showed us pictures of the shamanic wedding he had last year.
Lutz's neighbor has alpacas and I like to visit them before we start work. Lutz says alpacas are permanently stoned and then he does a very convincing impression of a stoned alpaca. The brown one is particularly stoned I think and he has a long forelock that falls in his face and enhances the effect. Lutz says the brown one is the boss of the herd. If you have never encountered an alpaca I would very  much recomend  meeting one at some point. They're like llamas but smaller. I don't think they spit at you either which is always a plus. They make noises like teenagers who have put too much pot in the cookies, a sort of depressed groan as though they are having a hard time adjusting to being alpacas.
We're leaving for the Czech Republic soon and Sylke doesn't know what she's going to do without us. She's trying to hook me up with a guy my age in the village, and in true mother fashion she took me over to his house and asked his mother if we could look at him. I  just stood there smiling like an idiot because I didn't know what there were saying but she told me after and I was mortified. I feel like I'm in school again with mothers trying to hook me up with strangers. I think she's hoping I fall in love and stay here and she never has to muck out the stalls again.
Burble has been sick the last week but still manages to do all his work. He just does it looking really pale and unhappy. Sylke has lots of strange remedies but also has Paracetamol which might do the trick. He doesn't seem to want to take anything, he just develops a tough facade and occasionally groans. The other day we had to split wood for four hours and I think that made him a lot worse. I'm sleeping outside to try to avoid getting what he has. Also I am hunting the hedgehog that apparently lives around here so I need to do stake-outs in the garden. Sylke says they make loads of noise when they're wandering around at night so they're easily found but I don't seem to be able to find one anywhere.  

It's been really hot here and the only place to cool down is inside or under the trees. I have endless pictures of pretty trees on my camera that I need to delete to save space for others. The main crops here are hay and mustard so the fields are brilliant yellow and green.
Burble hates the camera that he bought in Munich so I take most of the pictures. (If anyone has a camera that they have been trying to get rid of he would probably pay fair money for one that doesn't suck.)
We also engage in an endless debate: Burble likes to take photos of people on the street, but often they get really confused or irritated. I think he needs to ask their permission but then the moment is lost. People in Berlin especially hate people taking their pictures, (probably because everyone in Berlin is engaged in some kind of subversive behavior). So the question becomes, how do you take un-posed pictures of people? Is it a matter of trying to take them when the people aren't looking? Also I HATE when random people take my picture so should he always ask permission? If you're a photographer and have an opinion leave it in the comments below and settle this month-long argument.

We have to make our own fun in our free time here. Burble likes to pretend he's a cat. The cats are not amused. One of them however has attached herself to me while I work on the computer. She likes the hot air that comes out of the fan so she lies on it and occasionally gets up to walk around on the keyboard. Then she rolls around. I've never had a cat but I tolerate their sudden fickle mood swings and strange behavior pretty well after traveling with The Burble for a month. He has fickle mood swings and behaves strangely too.

We take pictures of each other jumping on the trampoline. I'm out of books so we really don't have that much to do.

Burble also reads to Clara since she has two books in English. They are Froggy Gets Dressed and Froggy Goes to School. Burble even does different voices for Froggy's parents.  I think Froggy Goes to School is horrible, it's about this frog who has one of those dreams where he goes to school naked and everyone laughs at him but Clara seems to like it. I think she's a little scared of Burble but I guess that's a good thing cause boys should have cooties for her for at least another 10 years. I miss cooties. Life was so much simpler when boys had cooties and the thing I stressed out about the most in life was how to get tickets to the opening night of Lord of the Rings.

It's looking like I have to come back to the states at the end of the summer but I have NO idea what I should do when I get there. A lot of people I've talked to have just finished Paramedic school and not are out of a lot of money and can't find work. While looking online for jobs the other day I realized Paramedics Plus (the 911 company for the bay area) required 10 full time years as a medic before you even apply with them. Where are you supposed to get that experience when every company wants you to have experience to begin with? What are new graduates supposed to do? I feel weird abandoning my life goals because there are no jobs. (Stupid economy...)