Out with the Old and in with the New

We got a fun fondue set for Christmas.  We were glad Santa could contribute.

We had some visitors coming, and I wanted to be able to share a fun, easy Easter treat.  Unfortunatley, when I first googled "easy Easter treats," I got nothing but fanciness with either cupcakes or marshmallows (something hard to find here).  I knew I didn't have the time, ingredients or the expertise to make anything look like they did in the pictures.  And, since my children informed our last visitors that the word "overwhelming" in English means "something stressful, you know, like making cookies with Mom," then I knew I needed something that truly was easy and fun.  So, luckily, I found these Easter hummingbird nests.

 

The lighting in the picture didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but they were really cute, as well as easy and yummy!  We took someone's advice and used pretzels (something we have a lot of here in Germany) instead of coconut, which I do think looks like little twigs.  I also found tiny jelly beans, which were perfect.  We put them in the fridge to harden.

I am so happy that Spring is here and that Easter is right around the corner. Today is cooler and overcast, but this week we have enjoyed the sunshine.  We've been biking, rollerblading, running, going to the park with friends...  We're enjoying the blossoms and the flowers.  I am loving the lighter, longer days.

Happy Spring!  

Friends

People here are nice, really nice.  Our neighbors and other people we've met through the girls' schools and our church have all been friendly and helpful.  Despite all this, last week I was feeling lonely as I walked home from school with Macy.  I missed the days when the kids could run up and down our street  to play with friends and I could chat with my friends...in English.  I wished for a friend and to speak English.  A no effort kind of thing.

Well, the girls' favorite thing to do when they get home before we go inside is to check the mailbox.  We couldn't believe our eyes.  After 9 months of waiting, a magazine called The Friend (in English) was there that day just waiting for us.  To top it off, a friend of ours from our old neighborhood had designed the cover!  You can check it out here.

Say What?!

Myles (at the bus stop):  When people are willing to practice German with us, we should.
Carly:  Why?  They already speak German.

Carly (about a DVD she checked out from her school bookmobile):  Mom, can we just watch this in German?  The English accent is so strong, I can't even understand it!

Macy (pointing to a sign with a picture symbol on the bus):  You know, Mom, that's for people who are letter blind.

Carly:  Night always has a smell to it.  It just smells like night.

Carly (while watching a Faschings song on You Tube):  If all the girls knew the words, then why did they go to that concert?
Me:  That's the fun--to sing along.
Carly:  But, when we go to concerts, we're not allowed to sing along.
Myles:  Yeah, those are different kinds of concerts.  They're usually free.  When people pay that much to go to a concert then they're allowed to sing along.

Carly (after Robyn got invited to a co-ed B-day slumber party):  Why can't we go to sleepovers like that?
Me:  Well, we don't feel like that's appropriate.
Macy:  Yeah, the boys might be really crazy.
Carly:  I think they'd be less crazy if there were girls there.

Macy:  I can't live very well without the so-good milk from The Creamery.

Carly (watching The Chipmunks sing the Portuguese Faschings song on You Tube):  Man, those Chick-munks know every language!

Just some thoughts

The longer we're here, the fewer posts I seem to have.  I think partly because everything isn't so new, and life has just taken over.

We knew Robyn would be a happy camper for sure once she could read for fun again (now in German).  The day has come!  She started Harry Potter 2 days ago and is half-way through.  She was up by 6AM today reading away.  When we registered her for school in the fall, they said they wouldn't grade her for her first year in German.  I guess she was able to keep up so well that they forgot.  The big half-year grades came in, and she did wonderfully!

The kids here have a report card book where their grades are recorded for all of their years throughout school.  Grading and discipline seems much more public here in general.  For example, if you get a "strike" for forgetting something, not doing your homework, etc, everybody knows.  There is also a lot more emphasis on oral competency, even in math.    Only 50% of grades are based on written tests, which is very different from The States.

Carly has caught up with her peers, as well.  She has especially enjoyed sewing and other art projects.  When her friend came over to play, they sculpted and painted cats for a class project.  My kind of pets!

Macy is ready to start "real" school in the fall.  They make a very big deal of it here.  I'm already going to parents' nights and appointments about it now.  The parents are obviously way more worried about it than the kids!

I thought I wouldn't like year-round school, but I think it's the best!  It's always time for another break right when we all need one.  I guess we haven't come to June yet when we're used to being out and will be in school, but so far, we've loved it.

We continue to meet friendly people from all over--an opera singer and cellist from Mexico, families from Italy, Poland, Spain, Brazil...  In church last week, Myles translated for a woman from Portuguese into German!  Now that I've got German down a little bit better, I can start to think/speak in Spanish again.

 We are starting to see signs of spring.  Ya-hoo!  It's hard to believe it was over a year ago now that Myles and I came for the first time to check things out.

Our First Fasching

Fasching is a celebration like Carnival--party hard before Ash Wednesday and Lent.  I can't say we partied too hard, but we did have fun dressing up, seeing a small-town parade, eating Berliners, and playing/hearing some good accordion music!

We watched a few of the big parades on TV with some friends.  I can't remember the exact numbers now, but tons of candy (mostly chocolate) is thrown.  In the slideshow above, I included a woman watching the parade from her window.  On TV they showed people leaning out their windows with baskets attached to long poles so they could catch the candy!  Some friends of ours who went to one of those big parades said they literally couldn't carry all their candy/chocolate back to their car!

The best thing thrown to us was bakery rolls.  The oddest thing was little packages of Kleenex.  We also got popcorn, which is really rare here.

I got a kick out of all the fun hats people wore.  I also enjoyed watching Robyn jam to a song played during the parade that she learned at her school Faschings party.  Who would've thought we'd come to Germany for her to learn Portuguese?  She said there was a fun dance competition/game at her school party where the participants had to dance on a a newspaper.  Every time the music stopped, they had to fold the newspaper in half.

So, it was different to have a kind-of-like Halloween holiday in February, but made the month more fun.