Postings from Germany

Happy New Year


It's been busy since Christmas - the trip to Tangermünde, Ulli's 60th Birthday, New Year's Eve, Amina's visit from January 1 - January 7, and as soon as we got back home dropping her off at home, Nicole and Jeremy from Berlin arrived for the remainder of the weekend! Monday, classes started and so it goes .... I feel again like I need a vacation from my vacation.

No pictures from Ulli's birthday (at least not yet - we may get some later) but as usual with these German birthday fests, lots of food, lots of wine, lots of little presentations and poems. I wrote one with lots of input from Werner, Klaus and Johanna and it turned out really cute- English and German all mixed up together. Naturally, EVERYONE understands English. Don't know why I bother to learn German, sometimes.



New Year's Eve we went with the usual suspects (Klaus, Johanna, Ulli and Ilsemarie) to a concert in the Cathedral (Bruckner, loud enough to keep me from dozing off) and afterwards we joined the crowds in front of the Theater for a little "fill the skies with smoke and fire as much as possible in the shortest time possible" event.

Amina

And then Amina arrived. We watched Nemo, went to the Museum downtown that's a bit like a VERY SMALL Smithsonian (dinosaur skeletons, stuffed wild animals, dioramas of American Indians hunting buffalo, butterflies stuck on boards), watched Nemo, visited the Marine Zoo in Bremerhaven and tried not to get blown away by the wind and the rain, watched Nemo, visited Ur-Oma, read books, and the other normal stuff, like watching Nemo. She still eats like a champ and sleeps till late in the morning. Unfortunately, the nap has disappeared.


Here's something new - if it works - a video. We went out with her on her bike and I took a little video with the camera. It is cute. Hope you enjoy it. (Here's the approximate transcript:

Amina, can you say something?
Ja. (A lot of "words" follow.)
What language is that?
(Werner: Gobbledygook)
Is that Gobbledydegook?
No, that's Endloosch.
Endloosch? (Werner: English.)
That's ENGLISH?
Ja.
Say: Okey-dokey.

Okey-dokey. Tschuss