There is NOTHING good on daytime TV!

I'm not sure why I even qualify that with daytime, but even Miguel is getting tired of watching TV.  There seems to be an interminable amount of Johnny Test, Timmy someone or other, and some shark & mermaid program, not to mention Hannah Montana, which my kids wouldn't be caught dead watching. However, we're willing to sacrifice our brains in the pursuit of learning German.  After all, we all now know how to say platypus in German:  Schnabeltier.  If that's not useful enough, we've also picked up on the word for taxes (Steuern) from watching Robin Hood.  So it's not a total waste time.

Besides watching TV, we've been busy with all sorts of paperwork and mundane things like shopping.  Imagine standing in front of a bunch of toiletries and having to read half of them to figure out which are shampoo, which conditioner, and making sure that you won't be washing your hair with something like Nair.  Not that I came close to that, but I do like to make sure that I'm buying what I think I am.  And who knew that Germans have the same word for eggwhite and protein?  What tipped me off was the high content of eggwhite in our milk.  It took me a little while, but I eventually remembered that egg whites are protein and that made a lot more sense.  I still haven't figured out what sort of margarine I'm feeding Pablo though:  relatively benign in the cholesterol sense, or the stuff that clogs your arteries just by looking at it.  They don't spell it out on the label.  Anyway, all that to say that shopping trips take longer than usual.  To make matters worse, everything we buy has to be carted down the street and up the steps.  I'm rethinking our 7 gallon a week milk habit.  That's a lot of weight to be carrying, although when I tell the kids to stop drinking as much, they assure me that they'll carry my share of the milk.  I think they think I'm old and frail, when really it's just laziness.  :-)

Vicente and Miguel are registered at school now, which starts on Monday.  It turns out that one of the 4 middle schools with German as a Second Language is actually within walking distance of us.  It's about 10 minutes away and there will be around 20 other kids in that program.  Apparently they'll be in school from 7:30-12:00 every day for the first 6-8 weeks until they're ready to start attending afternoon classes like gym, art, etc.  At some point, they'll transition completely into regular classes, although no one expects them to do so completely until the end of the year.  We'll see how it goes.  Vicente & Miguel will be doing math at home in the afternoons since they actually like it and neither of them wants to "get behind".  They are their father's sons.

By the way, I'll post some pictures if I figure out how.  If anyone already knows and wants to tell me, I would certainly appreciate it!

Week 1

As of today, we've been in Dresden for a week.  Somehow or other, it's hotter here than in Baltimore, so I haven't had a chance to use my fleece-lined jeans yet.  The flights all went smoothly and Blackjack's paperwork presented no problems, thanks to Pablo being willing to drive all the way to Richmond in order to get the right form stamped.  On arrival to our apartment, the reality of living on the top floor set in:  we had to lug nearly 200 pounds of luggage up 102 steps.  The apartment is fantastic though:  2 bathrooms, one room for Vicente & Miguel which is larger than their room at home, a smaller room for us, a living room/work area, kitchen/dining room, and the crowning glory is a small atrium in the middle with a glassed-in roof.  Despite being more in the city, you can see the stars better here than in Towson.  We have a nice view of the city center out our back windows.  We live on a fairly busy street and right across from us is a bakery.  Good thing we have 102 steps to climb multiple times a day!  So far we've been busy trying to get all the details set up here:  bank account, cell phone, registering with the foreigner's office, visiting a church, and today hopefully we'll find out about school.

Vicente, when offered a chance to put down his own impressions of life in Germany, refused.  So I'll just have to say that I think he's doing well, and I think he's even looking forward to school starting since a week of getting settled in is fairly boring.  Miguel has also declined to comment, merely asking that I tell everyone to have a good school year.