Adwoa und Ama

I was thinking the other day that Liz and I have already internalized a lot of things here and will probably forget to mention them to you later. I thought that I’d make a list of things that might be interesting. First though, the most important things right now: Our checkup for the new baby went fine earlier in the week and E starts daycare on Monday. E has had two morning practice sessions yesterday and today. Things went well. There was plenty of singing and crafts.

Den set up a phone call using Skype on the computer last weekend and it went very well. Grandma and Grandpa (B-pa) were able to hear E clearly. The office is almost set up. We will try it with some video soon.

Things you might not know:

1) Mainland Europe drives on the right-hand side of the road like the US (England drives on the left). I thought that they all drive on the left.

2) Street lights turn from red (at a stop) to yellow briefly and then to green – They also go green-yellow-red, but red-yellow-green gets everyone ready to go. It’s nice.

3) No vitamin D in the milk

4) No fluoride in the water (The doctor gave E supplements.)

5) E’s babysitter lives next to a prison

6) E’s babysitter owns a duck (that E does not play with, the duck is also kept in a cage)

7) Household trash is a commodity that is meticulously sorted by each and every family. Understanding what trash goes in what bin and when it gets picked up takes several hours of study. Really.

No screens on windows. (People say that there are no bugs here. We’ll see.)

9) Washer or dryer cycles each take about 1.5 hours. I’m so used to 20 min washes.

10) Most buildings (including our house) have external window shades that are brought down at night for privacy. They look like giant metal shields. We don’t have any curtains at our house, only the exterior shades. You can hear them being raised in the mornings around the neighborhood. Kind of a city version of roosters crowing?

11) ‘It’s raining men!’ is very popular on the radio. While talk is in German, most songs played are in English.

It rained most of the weekend, but we had a very pretty and warm afternoon here. Spring is coming! (In fact, we think Germany went to “Summer Time” (i.e. “Daylight Saving”) today because our computer’s clock changed! Thank goodness for technology… when you don’t read a paper or watch TV and you can’t understand the radio, you’re pretty lost about these things!) Anyway– it sure was an appropriate start to Summer Time, it seems…

Our weekend was spent mostly on errands (stores only open on Saturday…) and unpacking boxes, but we made time for a walk this afternoon. We all needed to get out of the house and enjoy the fresh air. We’re so glad that we decided to rent a house near downtown– it’s only a few minutes and we’re on the pedestrian street. Lots of people were out and about, even though all the stores are closed (except 2 ice cream shops with outdoor seating!). All along the pedestrian street are pieces of playground equipment for kids. We took our time, stopped at all of them, and gave E a chance to play at her pace. She calls everything that rocks (including rocking chairs) a “see-saw”, because one of her books has the nursery rhyme “See-saw Margery Daw, Jackie shall have a new master…” I guess whenever we read it we rock to the beat… Anyway. … she said “see-saw” a lot on our journey because of all these rocking toys. She really loved them.

Sometimes we’re not really sure if she’s learning any of her colors yet, but when we were rocking on the other one, next to this one, she pointed and said “blue! blue!” indicating that she wanted to move to the blue one. So I guess today she knows blue. Or she thought that the toy looked like her stuffed dog, Blue. Could be.

She’s very demanding with her limited (but growing) vocabulary. One of her favorite things to say is “sit down.” She uses it as a description (”Daddy sit down”) when Mike is sitting. She also uses it to say that she herself would like to sit down (”sit down”) and then there is the most common form– the command form…. “Daddy, sit down!” That is what she is saying here at a table with benches also on the pedestrian street. As you can see, the command form usually comes with gestures.

And here’s a sweet girl with her daddy… Maybe you can see some scratches on her nose…?

She did a face plant as we left the house. She trips a lot these days– she’s so busy and in a hurry that she’s not always paying attention. She’s fine. She’s quite dramatic, though. One of the funnier things she does is that when she falls or doesn’t get her way, she will sometimes break out into a full-scale wail with tears and everything. In the middle of that, you can say, “E, are you okay?” And she’ll say (with a bit of a whine), “yes,” and then she immediately stops wailing and crying. It’s quite amusing to bystanders, too.

Last night we had dinner with a couple of Americans who work for Deere who live here, too. A nice dinner at a tasty Italian restaurant. Adding to our restaurant repertoire! Anyway, they thought it was pretty funny when she fell on their tile floor, starting this wailing, and then the hysteria stopped suddenly.

All is well with us. We estimate that we’re 80% unpacked, which feels very good.

We finally have our DSL modem working. Liz worked hard with an IT guy at work to get it sorted out. It is hard when all of the software is in German. We haven’t had a lot of time to post because of unpacking. Please don’t send us any bullion for soup (not gold bullion. You can send us that). For some reason, we have enough for our stay in Germany. E is doing fine. She may have some teeth coming in or she just likes to bite things/parents. Above is a picture from Bill’s 70th birthday party in South Carolina. We visited a plantation. Liz and E are sitting in front of the guest house. The main house was destroyed at some point. The tour guide said that a party scene from The Patriot was filmed here. (Someone else told us that Zweibruecken is mentioned in The Patriot. I guess we have to see that movie sometime soon.) Below is a picture of the whole crew walking through the garden. E liked the carriage ride very much, but I think she liked chasing around the sheep on the lawn the best.