tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17596540949428470742024-03-05T17:16:35.263+02:00Always somewhere...Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.comBlogger242125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-41990451417860242362018-12-27T15:15:00.001+02:002018-12-27T15:15:31.189+02:00Advent Gratitude Calendar<br />
When I unpacked the Advent box this year, I found a piece of paper in it headed "Advent Gratitude Calendar." I have no idea where it came from, and googling turned up MANY different ones, but not this exact one. I am assuming that the author does not mind it being shared, considering the topic and attitude behind it!<br />
<br />
It is headed with John 1:16: "<b>For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace</b>."<br />
<br />
Then follows the explanation: <i>Most Advent Calendars present us with a gift each day leading up to Christmas. The purpose of this Advent of Gratitude is to remind us of the gifts we already have, what we often take for granted, what we can and should be grateful for. Each daiy reminder includes a suggestion for payment, a small monetary gift that in 24 days will grow into a donation payable to a charity of your choice.</i><br />
<br />
Every few days throughout the first 24 days of December, after lunch or dinner, I got down the donation jar and read what was suggested each day, and each person in the family made a decision whether or not to donate. The most important part to me, though, was reflecting on what it means that every single thing listed on this page is a LUXURY: it is above and beyond what we need to live. (I've left the dollar amounts in. We obviously use Euros, and didn't follow this exactly anyway.)<br />
<br />
<b>Day 1</b>: <i>Pay 50 cents for each woman in your family
who graduated from high school</i>.<br />
<br />
The first question for us was how we
define "graduate from high school". Marie, for example, didn't graduate from high school, never
having attended high school, but is now nearly halfway through her
second year of university. Since the point is that females having the
opportunity to receive formal education to the same extent as males is
very unusual in many places, we decided that Marie counts. But she
doesn't live here...so then do we count extended family? My mother,
grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, etc, have all graduated from high
school, so it could quickly get out of hand. We decided to count Marie
for this one, both as a family member and as having had that opportunity
at education, but no extended family, and for the rest of the "family" questions, we're just
going with the six people who live in this house.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 2</b>: <i>If you rode in a car today, pay $1. Pay $2 if you drove the car. </i><br />
<br />
There have been many days in the last couple of
months in which I have NOT actually ridden in a car, but as Jacob now
has the use of another vehicle and I have my car back, and it's been
raining a lot, I've been in my car a lot more lately. And almost every time I ride in a car, I drive it.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 3</b>: C<i>ount the light switches in your home. Pay $.25 for each one.</i><br />
<br />
This one got expensive--we have 34!
Two of them don't turn on lights at the moment (one because of a light
bulb that needs replacing, on our back porch, and one because there
isn't yet a light there, on our bedroom balcony), but we didn't think
that was a reason to disqualify them. Also, there are quite a few lights
that have two switches, and we agreed that both switches should still
be counted. All three original bedrooms have two light switches just for
the ceiling light: one by the door and one by the bed. An additional luxury, that one can get into bed and THEN turn off the light! Both sets of
stair lights have two switches and two of the living room lights do,
too. And we currently have four reading lights plugged in, and will have
five when I finally figure out which box my reading light is packed in.<br />
<br />
<b>Day
4</b>: <i>How many pairs of shoes/boots do you own? Pay $.10 per pair.</i><br />
<br />
This was interesting: Lukas has only two pairs of shoes, and Elisabeth
claimed seven (and I'm sure she has more), although when it's time to
leave the house, she can hardly ever find any. And when I stopped to
count them, I had a LOT more than I thought I did--six pairs, I think. Helen has no real idea how many pairs of shoes she have. I just know that both of the younger girls have a LOT, and can rarely find them when it's time to go anywhere.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 5</b>: <i>If you have never experienced having your electricity or heat shut off due to inability to pay the bill, pay $5.</i><br />
<br />
This one had nothing to negotiate, as this has never happened to us, but it generated a great deal of thoughtfulness in
the girls: It was fascinating watching their
faces as they realized just what that meant, how it would affect their
lives to not have electricity.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 6</b>: <i>If you have travelled outside of the U.S., pay $2. Pay an extra $2 if you have travelled within the past 6 months.</i><br />
<br />
We adjusted
this slightly, considering that I'm the only one of all of us who was even BORN
in the U.S., so we changed it to "traveled outside of your country of
birth." That's all of us, obviously, Elisabeth at eight and a half being
the only person who even lives in the same country in which she was
born, and she left that country for the first time at six months of age. And
double if having traveled in the last six months, which was four out of
six of us, although I just barely qualified for that one, as it was 5
1/2 months earlier that I had gone to England. 2018 is the second calendar year in the lives of Helen and Elisabeth to not have travelled by airplane, the first year being 2011, and 2011 being the ONLY year I haven't travelled by airplane since my trip to Japan in 1986. (And 1987 and 2011 are the only years of my life to have not travelled internationally since that Japan trip.)<br />
<br />
<b>Day 7</b>: <i>Pay $2 if you bought a gourmet cup of coffee in the past month.</i><br />
<br />
Defining "gourmet" as buying at a coffee shop instead of making at home, that was just two of us, but Katie said that the hot chocolate she bought herself should count, too. Another good discussion of what it means to be able to choose to occasionally (or ever) pay insane prices for something one can make oneself, or at least buy in a grocery store, for a tiny fraction of the price. So having a 200-ml glass of apple juice in a restaurant for 2.50 when a liter of apple juice costs about one Euro is paying 15 times more than necessary, just for the luxury of not having to pour it yourself and wash the glass.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 8</b>: <i>If you went to work today and earned an income, pay $2.</i><br />
<br />
This ended up being pretty funny, because I DON'T normally have a personal income. I do now have two English students, but they are on Tuesday and Wednesday, and this was a Saturday. But...this was the one day I babysat, and was paid, so I was caught out. Everything I earn goes straight to luxuries, too: piano lessons, dance classes, and drama classes for the girls. However, we as a couple do receive money from our mission agency, all of which is donated to them for that purpose, and we do not have concrete working hours, although Joern most certainly does put in at least as many hours a week as at any other job, which can be random hours any day of the week. (Nor, officially, do I "work" as far as our mission agency is concerned--however, it is the fact that I do not need to go to a regular job that means I can volunteer in various capacities as time allows.)<br />
<br />
<b>Day 9</b>: <i>Pay $1 for every refrigerator/freezer in your home.</i><br />
<br />
I don't remember if we counted the small one that is standing in the middle of our living room at the moment or not! It's not being used, and I want to sell it, but we do have it in our home. And we also have a brand-new one in our kitchen, bought in September, the first new fridge/freezer we've ever had.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 10</b>: <i>Count every cell phone in your home. Pay $1 per phone.</i><br />
<br />
Well...Joern has two, although one he uses only as a camera, and Lukas has two, and Katie and I have one each, so the six people living here have six, although two of the people don't have one at all...Four of them (one for each of us) are even smart phones, not a single one purchased by any member of our family.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 11</b>: <i>If you graduated from college, pay $1 per degree. </i><br />
<br />
This was a little complicated, because "college" in the American sense doesn't exist in Germany, and Joern never attended a normal university. However, he does have several German degrees in banking and translating, which are certainly the equivalent of U.S. B.A. and M.A. degrees, as well as an M.A. from the Open University in the UK (all done by correspondence), and I have an Early Childhood Education degree from Germany as well, which I think is somewhere in between an A.A. and a B.A. We counted them all.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 12</b>: <i>How many televisions do you have? Pay $1 per TV. Pay $1 extra if you subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, or a similar subscription.</i><br />
<br />
There was a certain amount of smugness in the room as I read this out loud. We have no televisions and no such subscriptions. However, looking ahead on the list, there was no mention of computers or internet, so we decided those should be counted here. The smartphones practically should have been, as well, as they access as much as a computer. However, we left it at Joern's laptop, the laptop that belongs to my friend Sue and I have here and occasionally use, my Kindle Fire, and Lukas's iPad (given to him by his saxophone teacher.) <br />
<br />
<b>Day 13</b>: <i>Open your pantry. If there is more food than you can consume in 2 days, pay $2.</i><br />
<br />
We don't have a pantry, but we didn't even bother getting out of our chairs and looking through cupboards and the fridge. Even the teenagers who often claim "there's nothing in the house to eat!" immediately realized that we most certainly had enough food to last way more than two days.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 14</b>: <i>Pay $2 if you have more than one bank account. Pay an extra $2 if you have investments that earn income.</i><br />
<br />
My banker husband (who worked in the bank in Germany for 25 years, but doesn't like to be referred to as a banker, but truly still is...) started asking what kind of accounts were meant and arguing about which ones shouldn't count. I told him it didn't matter, and in any case, if we just count the main account in Germany and the main account in Cyprus, that's two right there. There was also a bit of discussion on the definition of "investments"--Germans love insurance policies, and while we've cashed in some of them in the last few years for various reasons, we haven't used them all up. For the most part, yes, they will return more than we pay into them, if we don't cash them too soon. (I've said before that I think the German for "insurance" actually means "savings account"...)<br />
<br />
<b>Day 15</b>: <i>If you slept in a warm bed last night, pay $2.</i><br />
<br />
Not much to discuss here, we definitely all did.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 16</b>:<i> If you have visited your doctor this past year, for something relatively minor, pay $2.</i><br />
<br />
Quite a lot of discussion on this. Is a dental check-up "relatively minor"? A broken leg isn't, we agreed, but what about the number of check-ups Lukas went to afterwards? When we had our excellent German insurance, I was pretty good about taking everyone to the dentist and the optician regularly, but I've done that a lot less in the two and a half years since we lost the German insurance, as the Cypriot insurance doesn't cover those. There have been some other things that I might have gone to a doctor about with our German insurance, which I haven't because of not having it, so...it definitely gave us food for thought.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 17</b>: <i>Count the faucets in your home. Pay $.50 per faucet.</i><br />
<br />
We have seven: two bathrooms with sink and a shower each, the kitchen sink, and two outdoor faucets. Not counting various other water attachments, such as the inlets to the toilets or the connections between water tank and pumps, etc.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 18</b>: <i>If you've bought gifts for others this season, pay $1. If you added "a little something" for yourself, pay an extra $1.</i><br />
<br />
Yep, all six of us. Even me, and I'm lousy at gifts and hate having to deal with them. I did a lot less than usual this year, though, after money was stolen from my wallet a couple of weeks ago. There has been no confession, so no direct consequences for the perpetrator. However, I declared that I wasn't doing stockings, which did relieve my stress a great deal.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 19</b>: <i>If your home has more than 25 books, pay $1. If more than 50, $2.</i><br />
<br />
We all started laughing when I read this. And were glad it wasn't $1 per 25 books, seeing as we have an estimated 3000 books...<br />
<br />
<b>Day 20</b>:<i> If your parents had a high school education, pay $1. If one attended college, pay $2. Pay $3 if both attended college.</i><br />
<br />
We weren't sure just whose parents were meant. However, both of my parents and both of Joern's parents attended college, as did both Joern and I in the sense meant, so there was no getting out of the maximum amount there.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 21</b>: <i>If you are travelling more than 100 miles for Christmas festivities, pay $1. Pay $2 if ou are confident your vehicle will get you there.</i><br />
<br />
Weeeellll...we actually walked 15 minutes to where we were going, and wouldn't have taken a car at all, except that then I walked home (long story...), and ended up driving back. Not that I was confident that my car WOULD get me there, as it has been sporadic about starting, twice not starting on Saturday, then no problem on Monday or Tuesday (Christmas day), but not starting today (Thursday)...<br />
<br />
I probably should have gone to the mechanic today to see what's going on, but I didn't need to go anywhere (once I couldn't go swimming) and it's raining and I just didn't feel like it. But it occurs to me that we're supposed to be going to the north next Wednesday (over 100 miles, I guess), and the mechanic will definitely not be open either Monday or Tuesday, so I really should have gone today...<br />
<br />
<b>Day 22</b>: <i>Count the coats in your closet. Pay $.25 per coat or jacket.</i><br />
<br />
We didn't do this. We just listed the ones we actually use, which was a rather large number, considering the mild weather in Cyprus. But I do have an additional cupboard stuffed absolutely full of coats, so if anyone needs one, we'll be able to find one. Not that we've actually BOUGHT more than about three or four of them. Okay, four: the one that I use most (it was my summer jacket in Germany and is usually the only one I use here in the winter) I bought 18 years ago, and my winter coat I bought 21 years ago, Joern's long winter coat was bought at a second-hand store in Germany probably 15 years ago, and his short winter coat from Peru was 12 1/2 years ago.<br />
<br />
Every time someone does need a new coat, I open up the coat cupboard and dump them all out, one is chosen, and half a dozen or so are sorted out and taken to the thrift store...<br />
<br />
<b>Day 23</b>: <i>Pay $2 if you can name more than 5 people who love you.</i><br />
<br />
Even the people in the very worst moods at the moment we discussed this had to grudgingly agree than each of us has WAY more than five people who love us, even not counting immediate family.<br />
<br />
<b>Day 24</b>: <i>If you have a pet, pay $2. Pay an additional $2 if you have more than one.</i><br />
<br />
We have three cats. Or three cats have us. Two more cats than I consider necessary. But whoever has whomever, we buy the cat food, so...yep, more than one pet. <br />
<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-35118636766836819602018-12-27T13:26:00.000+02:002018-12-27T21:23:01.035+02:00Advent 2018, part threeHere's <a href="http://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.com/2018/12/advent-2018-part-one.html">part one</a> and here's <a href="http://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.com/2018/12/advent-2018-part-two.html">part two</a>. And now, to the third and final part of Advent 2018 in the Lange chaos...<br />
<br />
<b>December 17th</b>: I didn't go swimming because I couldn't bear the thought of getting home to a cold shower, but the plumber came at 8:00 to replace the heating element in the hot water tank. Which meant emptying 250 liters of water onto our non-waterproof roof...<br />
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See the black part where all the water is puddling? There's a drain about where the left-hand yogurt pot is floating, and the water did go down that drain just fine (and out into the courtyard behind our kitchen, where it is NOT draining very well...), but the reason that area is black is because extra water-proofing stuff has been painted on there over the original white, obviously because it pools there and has leaked before. And it wasn't working. (And the yogurt pot had been to catch a leak from the pump, which the plumber also fixed.) I have since re-waterproofed the entire roof (the roof over the stairs and our landing, that is, which the water tanks are on top of, so not a huge area), but it hasn't rained much since I finished that, so I don't know yet how well it will work. (My paint is white, not black, so that will hopefully help keep it a little cooler in the summer, especially when I've done the whole rest of the roof, over Katie's room, Helen and Elisabeth's room, and the bathroom, which is currently all black. It's only leaking in Katie's room, but I just want to do all of it BEFORE it springs new leaks. I can't do it until everything with our room is finished, though, because wood and drainpipes and tools and such are occupying a large part of the roof.)<br />
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The rest of the day was a more-or-less usual Monday, with Oasis in the morning and 3-5-year-old drama class in the afternoon, which was also a Christmas party. I wore my footie pajamas, but I'm pretty sure there aren't any photos of me! (For one, I have the camera during most of the class! There were photos taken of me while I was Santa Claus, but then I'm in a Santa Claus costume, obviously...)<br />
<br />
Okay...so here's one of those, taken from Catherine's page. As the page is public, I'm assuming it's okay for me to post this? You can see my pajama feet. :-) (I got those pajamas for Christmas when I was 17, I think, and those are the only ones I own, and I have NEVER worn them to bed, as I really can't stand anything on my legs when I sleep, except bedding. But they're awesome for pajama parties!)<br />
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Unfortunately, the evening class for adults was cancelled, as too many people were unable to make it. I really hope we'll be able to continue in January, as I've very much enjoyed the half dozen or so classes we've had in the last several months.<br />
<br />
<b>December 18th</b>: Piano lessons for Helen and Elisabeth as usual in the morning, then we stopped by the home of a refugee lady and her month-old baby to give them a gift from Oasis, as she wasn't able to be there the day before. I have lots of photos of Helen and Elisabeth holding the baby. :-)<br />
<br />
No English student in the afternoon, as she had left for Slovakia for Christmas, and no dance class for the girls, so I imagine we played games and I probably got a decent amount of schoolwork done with the girls. Elisabeth also declared that she wanted her hair cut, so I went with her to our neighbor at number 3 (we're number 7 of seven houses in this court), who has a hair-cutting salon. She doesn't speak any English, which was why I took Elisabeth with me, to be able to explain better. I just wanted to make an appointment, but she said she had time right then, and when I asked how much it would cost, she refused the idea of any payment. Elisabeth's hair needed to be washed, however, and she couldn't reach the sink, so we went home again and Elisabeth showered. I then took a photo before her hair was cut, but forgot to take one afterwards. It doesn't look much different, it's just that much shorter that Elisabeth can now reach to comb it herself better. Here's the before photo, though:<br />
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Oh, and our electric kettle stopped working, and when I unplugged it I discovered this:<br />
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I threw the adapter away, but we got a new plug and changed it, but the kettle still wouldn't work. So we had to boil water on the stove for about a week, but now have a new kettle.<br />
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<b>December 19th</b>: We cancelled swimming in the morning because of the rain--I took this photo of our garden to send to the friend who said it wasn't raining at her house:<br />
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I had my Wednesday afternoon English student as usual, and I took this photo at dinner:<br />
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Well, after dinner, to be more precise. The cake Lukas made was delicious.<br />
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<b>December 20th</b>: We finally had clear weather, with several consecutive dry days forecast, so Jacob worked on the house. (I think it was about the 18th of December that the news said that there had been 123% of the usual December rainfall so far...there's been a lot of rain, which Cyprus very much needs, but is not conducive to construction!) Here he's filling in a gap between our house and the neighbor's:<br />
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All the water from the side of the roof on our room (which is at least 80% of the roof) was running straight down into the space between the wall on the neighbor's roof (that's where Jacob is standing) and the wall of our room, which starts on the top of the wall on our roof, which is about 20 centimeters lower than theirs. The two houses have separated over the years, so there was a gap of maybe 1-2 centimeters between them at the top, which is no big deal with just rain. However, with the addition of the room and the collection of all of the roof rainwater, a huge amount of water was essentially being funneled into that gap. And from there down between the houses and into our kitchen, which is why one wall of our kitchen looks like this:<br />
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Hopefully, that problem has now been taken care of, but we won't know until this has dried out enough to re-paint AND it rains heavily again...<br />
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In the afternoon Elisabeth had a Christmas party at Midi-club. Parents were invited, but I really, really wanted to be working on the roof in the sunshine, so Joern went for the first part of the party and I went at the very end. Then we had guests for dinner--lots of photos, all of which include one or more adorable children, as well as some of my children. The next day it did occur to me to take a photo of the plate of goodies they'd given us, but unfortunately, not until we'd eaten most of them...<br />
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<b>December 21st</b>: Elisabeth wanted a photo of her playing the piano, so here it is. (With no evidence of the fact that she CAN now comb her own hair...)<br />
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Jacob got a great deal of the plastering done, and I took this photo from the parking lot behind our house (not our parking lot):<br />
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The dark part (looked nearly black before it dried, now it's much lighter grey) is our room, and that little balcony on the top right is off of our bedroom. (And a whole bunch of water was pouring into Lukas's room, which is just under ours, but I don't have any photos. It's in the process of being dealt with.) The big balcony underneath that is Lukas's, and his room and his balcony are over the kitchen. The green mesh is on the wall around our garden (yard in American). The building to the left is a separate house.<br />
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And yes, Jacob is in a safety harness in the photo, suspended from ropes over the roof and tied to the frame holding the water tank.<br />
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In the evening, Sue and Richard came for dinner, as they do every Friday, along with their son Tim, who was here from the UK for just a week.<br />
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<b>December 22nd</b>: In the morning, Helen went to Tim's house for a sort of "master class" in music (he was her first piano teacher, an extremely accomplished pianist and all-round musician), which she absolutely loved. I basically did understand the theory the two of them were telling me about, with accompanying chords and such, but I still can't do what Helen was doing, which was singing a melody and accompanying it with broken chords. It sounds awesome. (Our piano does rather desperately need tuning, though...)<br />
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While Helen was out, Joern and Katie went shopping, and Lukas was still in bed. Elisabeth used to complain mightily when she was the only child around, but she was quite cheerful about it, and while I worked on the roof, she entertained herself in the garden. I took a photo of her, but you can't really see her, so took a blurry close-up, as well:<br />
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At some point, I went to run some errands, after having Jacob jump start my car, then having to have it jump started again, then going to the mechanic, which was closed, but one guy was working on his own car and looked at mine and said the battery and the alternator were both fine. He turned the engine off and it started again with no problem. It started again all the other times I used it in the last several days, but not this morning. Not cool.<br />
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Anyway, when I got home, I found out that Elisabeth and Sophia had been on the phone quite a bit. (This is why, when Joern suggested that maybe we don't need a land-line anymore, I said yes, absolutely we do, as long as we have children too young for cell phones. And Sophia's mother is of the same opinion, especially when Sophia and Elisabeth are talking to each other on their respective mother's cell phones...) They've been trying to talk us into a sleepover for ages, and I'd said not until the girls' room was cleaned up. So Sophia phoned ME and asked if she could come over to help clean up the girls' room! I caved and said yes. However, they didn't finish it, and Saturday is not a good time for a sleepover anyway.<br />
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We did keep her until after 9:00 p.m., though, as we went to the carol service at the Greek Evangelical Church. (Where, incidentally, some songs were sung in Greek and some in English, but the lyrics were up on the screen in both, and were often not even an attempt at a translation, but simply an entirely different song! Also, I interpreted the sermon for Katie, but before anyone gets too excited about my Greek, there are three points to make: the speaker is a non-native speaker of Greek (but very, very good), which means that he speaks Athenian Greek and is very clear; the sermon was quite short; and the topic was Light and the phrase "Jesus in the light of the world" was repeated in various ways many, many times, so it really wasn't too challenging.)<br />
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<b>December 23rd</b>: This was the fourth Sunday in Advent, but the morning was rather hectic and I didn't get a photo of the Advent wreath until later. We were allowed to take photos at church (usually, we weren't), but still can't post any faces on-line of anyone except our own children, and I don't have any of mine without other people. I did love this photo I took of one of the other teachers and two angels, which I think is okay to post:<br />
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Our friend Ingeborg and her friend Pamela (whom we've met several times at Ingeborg's house) came for lunch, as did Sophia, who spends many Sunday afternoons with us, and from whose mother I have permission to post her photo:<br />
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And we set up and decorated the tree:<br />
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Later in the afternoon we went to a "Christmas drop-in", where we saw lots of people and had a wonderful time, but of course, lots of photos with lots of other people! Here's one of Joern and Katie, though:<br />
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December 24th: I went swimming in the morning, and when I got home, the door to the girls' room was open, and this was what I saw:<br />
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It's taken a long time, but I love seeing Helen enjoying reading now.<br />
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Helen still had a couple of Christmas presents to get, so while we were out, I finally took her to get her promised tenth-birthday present (and yes, her birthday was in September):<br />
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If I think about it at all long, I really don't have a very positive opinion about bodily mutilation for the sake of fashion, but I'm just generally not at all legalistic, so now Helen has joined her two older sisters and her mother in having intentional, permanent wounds through her ears.<br />
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And I liked this photo of Katie using Connie to keep her feet warm:<br />
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In the afternoon we had more guests, a family who moved to Cyprus just a month ago and have two ten-year-olds. We had a very nice time, and I took a few photos, but once again...other children are in every photo!<br />
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The plan to finish Advent with finishing our "Advent of Gratitude" donation jar didn't go so well, as when I went up to my room after dinner to get it, I discovered that most of the money had been stolen from it. So I got my car keys instead and took a book and sat at the Salt Lake Park for three hours. Which is not festive and not something I should write, but it is what happened. I didn't take any photos. I did finish my second Agatha Christie (<i>Murder at the Vicarage</i>), which I enjoyed very much, but I think I liked <i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> better, which I read last week.<br />
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Christmas Day is a whole 'nother story that I probably won't blog. Short version is that I've never cried so much on Christmas day in my life, Jesus was not, that I recall, mentioned a single time (I imagine he was mentioned in grace before lunch, but I wasn't at lunch), but I did get the whole roof over our stairs and landing painted, so that's good. It's been raining off and on for the last two days, with no leaks, so that may have worked, but then again, it hasn't leaked in Katie's room in that time either, and I haven't done the part over her room yet, so it might not have leaked only because there hasn't been such heavy continual rain as there was before.<br />
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<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-8206681584784961752018-12-16T22:19:00.000+02:002018-12-16T22:25:34.288+02:00Advent 2018, part twoSo, I had a <a href="https://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.com/2018/12/advent-2018-part-one.html">part one</a>, which covered six days, and here's part two for the next 10 days. Again, we don't have any specific Advent plans this year, no calendar or anything like that, just the Advent wreath.<br />
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<b>December 7</b>: So December 6th was Nikolaus Day, which we didn't really do anything about, but that evening, Elisabeth told us all to put our shoes in front of our bedroom doors. Which we did. Both Joern and I were rather unimpressed with the notes that told us, so we thought, that we weren't getting anything. <br />
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No, not a lot in it--nothing at all. Apparently. I didn't see Joern's note itself until the next morning, though, and I don't remember now exactly what it said, but it wasn't the same as mine and seemed to hint more strongly that one had to look rather harder. So I tipped out my shoes completely, and in one I found a candy, and in the other a candy and a little hand-made bag of gummy candies:<br />
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The only other photo I took that day was of Makenzy getting cosy. She doesn't like the cold. Not that it's been very cold yet--it's 19 degrees Celsius in my bedroom right now, at 9:30 p.m., which is quite comfortable to me. <br />
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<b>December 8th</b>: I babysat the little girl I used to have several afternoons a week (now she goes to preschool--which she loves, but I miss her!) and her older brother, and took lots of photos, most of which include one or both of the children. We also went to Tochni to have lunch and spend the afternoon with a German friend of ours, Ingeborg. We went in two cars (taking six children--four of our own and my two borrowed ones), and with one thing and another, Joern and I hadn't really seen each other until we got there. At which point some child noticed that we had unintentionally "twinned"--matching sweatshirts (except mine has a LOT more holes, because I wear mine a lot more often...) from our DTS in 2006, black jeans, and sandals, although our socks aren't the same color. <br />
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<b>December 9th</b>: Second Sunday in Advent, burning one of the new candles and continuing to work on the old ones: <br />
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In the morning I taught Sunday school, and Joern sold tickets for the morning performance of Catherine's "Alice," which Helen and Elisabeth went to see, and in the afternoon I sold tickets for the afternoon performance and Katie took tickets at the door. I only got to go in halfway through, but I have seen it at least three or four times already. Even only getting to see half of it, I still loved it.<br />
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At the end, Catherine has all of the children come up on the stage with her. Public setting, so I think it's alright to post this photo!<br />
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<b>December 10th</b>: Once a month on a Monday morning, I go to writers' group, which I thoroughly enjoy. Twice a year we have a shared meal, so instead of getting home at 1:00 or so, I was home around 3:30, I think. That counts as Adventy, as that was our Christmas meal. Then I had the 3-5-year-old drama class in the afternoon as always. :-)<br />
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<b>December 11th</b>: Usual Tuesday of piano lessons and then going to Sue's house, and this last Tuesday was what has become pretty much a tradition, in that my daughters put together and decorated Sue's Christmas tree (of which I took no photos...oops!), as well as some picture frames... <br />
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...and each other.<br />
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Definitely Christmas prep.<br />
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In the afternoon, Helen helped in the small children's dance class as always, and then I went to watch part of Helen and Elisabeth's dance class, as it was the last one before Christmas and was open to watch. Elisabeth is on the left, all in pink, and Helen is the next one in the photo, with the BRIGHT pink top: <br />
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I had to leave early to get home for my Tuesday English student, also for the last time this year, as she's off to Slovakia for Christmas. (Her mother is Slovakian, her father is Cypriot.) <br />
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<b>December 12th</b>: My Wednesday English student was in Slovakia (both of her parents are Slovakian), so it was a quieter afternoon than usual. Joern is usually at the staff meeting Wednesday from 3:00 to 5:00, the same time as Elisabeth's drama class, but once a month there's a gathering with the families, and this month it was a "Mexican meal" from 5:00 to 7:00. As we were getting ready to eat, I was startled to be asked to pray in Spanish, but I did so, wondering why, as nobody else there speaks much (or any) Spanish, as far as I know. But oh well, God does, so that's fine. Awhile later I suddenly went, "Duh...the theme was "Mexican meal..." I can be rather slow on the uptake at times. In my defense, the food was fine, but none of it resembled in any way anything I ate in my year in Mexico!<br />
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I did take a few photos, but most of them had other people in them, so here's the one of Joern and Helen:<br />
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Not that Helen was originally supposed to be there...she was going to be singing in another Christmas concert (same choir as the week before), but had a cold and was sniffing non-stop. She wasn't at all happy about not being able to sing, but she did cheer up.<br />
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<b>December 13th</b>: Nothing Christmasy at all, that I can remember. We did light the Advent candles as usual, but I don't know which day which candle stub was replaced. It would have been the 89th birthday of my father-in-law, who died 13 years ago, the girls had their usual activities, and we played a game with our friends in the evening.<br />
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And a lazy cat decided to pee in the living room, and I discovered that our living room marble tiles are NOT grey, but white. <br />
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I spent a ridiculous amount of time scrubbing maybe 1/20 of the living room floor with a mixture of baking soda, washing up liquid, and warm water, which works very well...but we not only have a lot of floor, most of it is now covered with furniture and boxes.<br />
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<b>December 14th</b>: No photos of any interest. I went to the hardware
store and bought painty-stuff to fix the leak on the roof, but Saturday
afternoon (the next day, because it was dark by the time I was home with
the painty stuff) when I went up to put it on, I discovered that one of
the water pumps is leaking. So I put a bucket under that so the roof
could dry out, then this afternoon I went to check it out and discovered
another leak, so have a bucket under that. And now it's raining again.
The plumber is coming tomorrow because the water heater isn't working,
so obviously I'll ask him to do something about the leaks. (I did try,
of course, but unsuccessfully, to tighten the pipes.) I can't paint the
painty stuff (which must have another name, but I don't know what it is)
on until it's dry, and until I can be fairly sure that it won't rain
for at least 4-6 hours, so at the moment, we'll just keep the bucket
under the light fixture on the landing outside our bedroom, and Katie
will keep a bucket in her bedroom...<br />
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<b>December 15th</b>: Helen has been sailing with Richard in his boat, Liza, several times, and twice I was there too, and the last time, Lukas had also gone. Katie and Elisabeth had been asking to go, and yesterday they finally got a chance. It was a lot more fun for me this time, because when Lukas and Helen were there, they were very interested in (and capable of) helping out, with untying and bringing in the fenders and fending off and helming, etc. Katie, on the other hand, is quite content to just be a passenger, and Elisabeth is not only only eight years old, she was feeling quite seasick, so I got to be much more involved in actually sailing, helming most of the way. <a href="https://kingfisher-yacht-cyprus.blogspot.com/2018/12/wind.html?fbclid=IwAR3zDSYBvWKOJMfytEBghKtmJgS7r1mqW_RY_sKf2px-xIhvpNVZt0qRu6c">And there was also wind this time</a>, which obviously improves the actual sailing! (<a href="https://kingfisher-yacht-cyprus.blogspot.com/2018/12/what-no-wind-again.html">Last time, there was virtually no wind at all</a>. We did paddle some, and laughed a lot, and I enjoyed it very much, but it wasn't exactly sailing!)<br />
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I didn't take any photos while we were out, so this is after we were back in the marina:<br />
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We got home to Lukas and Elisabeth busily making won tons, which, together with rice and vegetables, we had for lunch. They were scrumptious. (And the Advent wreath finally has four nice candles! I think the final stub was finished on Friday.)<br />
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After lunch the girls and I headed to LCC for a Christmas party for refugee children. It was loud and chaotic and fun, and somewhat amusing that I spent most of the time speaking Greek, being assigned to a craft table as "the Greek speaker" for that table. <br />
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<b>December 16th</b>: Today, and the third Sunday in Advent! <br />
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Our eating area is much smaller than in our other house, which is convenient, as we're generally many fewer people than we were most of the time there, but I still can't get used to it. Lukas was still in bed for lunch, so it was just five of us. <br />
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I call this Weasley's "cat pose." Yes, I know that's silly, as he IS a cat, but he just does it so well. His tail is so nice and long and it curves all the way around his paws, as he sits on the piano looking regal. (And on a book of Christmas carols...) <br />
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Just to be fair, I took a photo of Connie, too. She wasn't very impressed. <br />
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We spent the afternoon at Sue and Richard's house, as we do every other Sunday afternoon, and now the house is nice and quiet, with the two youngest in bed, and the other two doing something that isn't internet, because thanks to Richard, they only have access on their devices until 10:00 p.m., and it is now 10:18. </div>
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<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-5438426072217169022018-12-06T22:12:00.000+02:002018-12-06T22:12:00.686+02:00Advent 2018, part oneNot "week one," because it's only been six days, and because I don't know if I'll try this once a week or not anyway. I probably shouldn't even call it "part one" until I know for sure that there's more, but anyway, here goes, for Advent 2018 so far...<br />
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<b>December 1st</b>: It was the staff-plus-family Christmas party for the organization my husband works with, so that checked off "doing something Christmasy." I do have photos, but they all include other people.<br />
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And before I went to bed, I remembered that the next day was the first Sunday in Advent, so I got the Advent wreath out of Lukas's closet. (All of the children have large built-in floor-to-ceiling closets, so the top parts are for our use. Katie's top ones are filled with Marie's things, the top ones in Helen's and Elisabeth's room have car seats and clothes-to-grow-into, and Lukas's have clothes, bedding, Christmas stuff, and suitcases--he has the most closet space.)<br /><br /><b>December 2nd</b>: Before very many people had had breakfast (we do NOT have breakfast together, this decision having saved at least our marriage, if perhaps too late for my sanity), I remembered to set up the Advent wreath. We have plenty of candles, but not many of them overly useful for the wreath...<br />
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And this candle didn't do well with spending summer in Cyprus in a box... <br />
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However, there being little other choice, I made the melted candle into three candles and found another stub. Certain (male) members of my family were not impressed, but I'm rather dedicated to "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." <br />
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Melted vertically into place, and the first candle lit! <br />
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And after the girls were in bed, Jörn and I went for a walk, the first walk we've taken since we moved in. Usually, we manage at least a walk or two a week, but with Rock and moving and all the rest of everything, it hadn't happened.<br />
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<b>December 3rd:</b> A typical Monday: I went swimming with friends, did a little bit of schoolwork with the girls, went to Oasis (community center for refugees) supposedly for an hour to meet with pregnant women and young mothers and stayed for an hour and a half, fell down on my walk home and made one elbow and both knees bleed without putting any holes in my clothes, helped in the drama class for 3-5-year-olds, and got to participate in the adult drama class in the evening. I don't think we managed anything Adventy or Christmasy...<br />
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<b>December 4th</b>: A typical Tuesday: I went for a walk with my friend Sue, took Helen and Elisabeth to their piano lesson, we spent the rest of the morning with Sue, Helen and Elisabeth had dance class (Helen helps in the first class, for small children, and then she and Elisabeth are both participants in the second one), my Tuesday English student (an eight-year-old girl) came and we made cookies (oops--no photos, but if I'd taken photos, they'd probably have included her, because I forget to think about taking photos for my blog, so I couldn't have posted them anyway...), and in the evening my husband and I played a game with friends. No photos. Oh, except for of Helen rescuing the mammoth from the water tank, but that's another story, which all of my FB friends know anyway.<br />
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<b>December 5th</b>: Usually I'm home Wednesday mornings, but there was some concern about one of the pregnant women. It took a little while to get sorted out what her name is and where she lives, and then I went to see her, because I wasn't understanding enough on the phone. She was fine, though, not in labor after all, and now I know where she lives, which is useful, since I may be the one taking her to the hospital when it's time to go. Communication is difficult, as I don't speak either of her native languages and her English is limited, but it was good. (And quite amusing that it took a few minutes to convince her and her flat mates that I do NOT speak French, since I apparently pronounce her name very well!!)<br />
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Anyway, I was eventually home, and Jörn had gotten some greenery for the wreath. He'd also bought four red candles, but, well, see above on my "Use it up..." etc. <br />
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In the afternoon my Wednesday English student came (a nine-year-old girl), and we drew a lot of pictures of Christmas-themed things and labeled them (I was going to make cookies with her, too, but not being home in the morning, I hadn't made dough). And then we got out the Advent boxes, so she got to learn lots of really useful words like "stocking" and "camel" and so on. I used to always make sure everyone was home to do ANY decorating, but I gave up on that years ago, so it was just Katie and Helen and my student and I. (I have no idea where Lukas was, Jörn was at a staff meeting, and Elisabeth was at drama class.)<br />
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So here are the bookcases with our current (not necessarily permanent) solution: <br />
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Close-up of the stockings, which were hung in random order, and then today Katie noticed that the girls are together and the boys are together and they're symmetrical in their basic color: green, blue, red, green, red, blue, green. <br />
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I haven't asked Jacob yet if he wants his stocking at his place or here, or if/when he's coming for Christmas Eve/Christmas morning etc. It was one thing having Marie in a different country for Christmas (2015 and 2016 she stayed in the U.S., last year she came to Cyprus for Christmas), but confusing having Jacob living a five-minute walk away!<br />
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Katie arranged all the various nativity scenes:<br />
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The wise men and the camels are on the opposite side of the room. I reached up to put them there, and held the phone over my head to take the photo...only now am I seeing how dusty it is... <br />
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The plan, as every year, is to move the wise men and camels a little closer each day, and for them to arrive at the main Nativity scene on January 6th, Epiphany. The reality is that we might remember to move them once or twice between now and then, and we might not, so on January 6th they will take a flying jump to get to where they belong.<br />
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Anyway, as soon as my English student was picked up, Helen and I left for her to get to rehearsal for the choir concert that night, where I was also helping out with raffle tickets and stuff. If I could figure out how to put the video of her solo in here, I would, but I haven't figured that out yet, so oh well.<br />
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<b>December 6th</b>: This morning I took the lady I visited yesterday to her regular check-up. I don't think I will ever understand the system. She had an appointment for 11:20, but we were there over an hour earlier. First she had to wait in line to register downstairs and get part of her file, then she had to wait in line upstairs to sign in and get her file, then she waited for awhile and finally was weighed and had her blood pressure measured, and then she got a number. Apparently, the time of the appointment wasn't relevant, just in which order she arrived. She ended up being the very last one to see the doctor, and we weren't done until nearly 1:00.<br />
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On the way home I stopped quickly and bought chocolate Nikoläuse, as it's Nikolaus day. We'd talked about making plates of goodies for the neighbors, but...yesterday was sort of busy. Anyway, I can't count: it was a package of five, so I thought I'd have to get two packages, but then I calculated that without Marie or Jacob, five would be plenty, and if Jacob showed up for lunch, I just wouldn't have one. But six of us live here. Jacob didn't come for lunch, but I still didn't get one.<br />
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Then at lunch the first of the white candle stubs burned down completely, so got replaced with a nice new red candle. There was further discussion about whether this looked stupid, but as we do generally remember to light the candles at least one or two meals (usually all three) every single day, we're very likely to go through all four of the red candles also and need to replace them before Christmas. So, once again, my "Use it up..." took precedence over aesthetics:<br />
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When I unpacked the Advent boxes yesterday, I also found some Advent activities that I'd either found or been given rather late last year (some arrived in a Christmas package in January, for example), but thought to pack in the box for this year. Six days in, we did decide to start this, or our version of it: <br />
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The idea is to make a small donation every day of the first 24 days of December that reflect the fact that something that seems totally normal to us is something not at all taken for granted by much of the world, and that if we stop to think about it at all, we are likely to be extremely grateful. Catching up on the first six days at once got rather chaotic, but we have a jar and will see if we keep it up. Definitely got some good discussion out of it, anyway. And that may become another blogpost, but for now, here's our first quarter of Advent.<br />
Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-19502194786357692382018-11-29T23:32:00.001+02:002018-11-29T23:32:29.571+02:00Keepin' it realI hear that fewer and fewer people read blogs, but I still do. One that I read regularly is about ex-pats, written by ex-pats, all over the world. Single and married, with and without children, homeschooling or public schooling or private schooling, Christians, non-Christians, temporarily where they are, permanently where they are, speaking the local language or not, multi-language families or not, etc. A large majority are originally from the U.S., some are not. In October they ran a feature called "This Global Home," with a post each day from a different country, introducing the houses. I haven't actually finished reading them yet, although nearly--I've read 22 of them, I think.<br />
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One of the early ones had a phrase which then recurred several times over the month: "Keepin' it real." The photo with that statement was of a bedroom with a toddler in it. The toddler was sitting on the floor, and there were several things on the floor. A teddy bear, a book, a pair of shoes. Or something like that. Definitely not more than three or four items, anyway. The author said something like, "Keepin' it real, folks--impossible to keep everything cleared up with children in the house."<br />
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Personally, I would have considered that bedroom sparkling clean and completely tidy. Never in my life has any room of any house I have ever lived in looked anywhere that close to an Ikea display room.<br />
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I've been wanting to blog for MONTHS about our move. I've wanted everything to be finished, so I could write a nice concise (yeah, right) post about the process of our room being built, moving in, and finally living here. Photos of boxes everywhere, then photos of no boxes. Photos of the roof with spray paint marking where walls would go, then photos of the frame going up, then the finished room.<br />
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The four younger children and Joern and I were in the mountains for a few days when Jacob actually got started, August 27th. This is our room when we got back September 1st. Keepin' it real, folks, keepin' it real: <br />
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The place where a door was supposed to go turned out to have rebar in it... <br />
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...so here is our doorway, which also made the room several square meters larger. <br />
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A week later, with the rubble finally removed: <br />
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...and our room, looking rather more cleaned up: <br />
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The materials that would eventually become our room: <br />
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The whole getting-the-house process was ridiculously long, for reasons having nothing to do with us (well, unless one counts the fact that our insistence on honesty did slow things down a bit...): we put in the first offer in April, which was turned down, then after meeting with another bank, put in an offer on May 9th, which was accepted. August 10th the deposit was paid and the first contract signed, and we got keys the next week. (The owner still had keys, and was coming and going, watering the garden ("yard" in American English), feeding a cat, and phoning us every time she thought we hadn't closed enough shutters or turned the key enough times.) August 27th, Jacob started work on the roof, building a fourth bedroom. And September 6th we finally paid the balance (well, the bank did) and got all the keys. (And stopped closing all the shutters every time we left the house for ten minutes.) Four months.<br />
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We "moved in" (in that we slept here for the first time) September 26th, but our bedroom was nowhere near finished. Lukas, however, was in England from September 8th until October 30th, so we were able to stay in his room.<br />
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We moved into our room October 30th, while Lukas was literally in the air on his way back from England.<br />
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And I'm pretty sure he'd already actually landed by the time I had his bed put together in his room: <br />
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Those boxes, by the way, are all ours. Everything of Lukas's, with the exception of one large painting, fit into one of the closets in his room. (Oh, except for the stuff he has stored at Jacob's workshop/warehouse...)<br />
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And I take no responsibility for the color--Lukas painted that before he left for England.<br />
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Anyway, here is our door now, three months later: <br />
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I have plans for that landing, for a desk and my very own space for the first time in 24 years, but the wall isn't finished and Jacob still has a ton of stuff there.</div>
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And here's what the outside looks like:</div>
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It was supposed to take three, maybe four weeks. It's been three months. And rather obviously, is not finished. Keepin' it real, folks. Keepin' it real.<br />
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A friend has told me several times that she admires my patience. I had to tell her a story about Elisabeth, three years ago. We were in the U.S. and five-and-a-half-year-old Elisabeth tried to talk to my sister, Erin, while Erin was talking to me. Erin asked her to wait for a moment, and after she (Erin) had finished, she turned to Elisabeth and said, "Thank you for being so patient. What would you like to say?"<br />
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Elisabeth said very firmly, "I was NOT patient. I was just QUIET."<br />
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I never had much in the way of patience, and I'm running out of quiet.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-66878804351302352732018-09-08T21:24:00.003+03:002018-09-08T21:44:11.031+03:00Blogposts written in my headIn no particular order, here are some blogposts I've meant to write and haven't. (I should add "yet," but...some of them are definitely not going to get written anyway, probably none of them...)<br />
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Throughout 2017 I kept a list of all the books I read. (After about February or March I limited it to just the books I was reading for the first time.) I still have my list of books read in December 2017, so I could still do a blogpost on that. A lot of people keep ongoing lists of what they've read, but I never had. I did so for a year, got no joy out of it, and was absolutely thrilled when I finished my first book of 2018 and thought "I don't have to go write this down anywhere!!" All cool for those who love to do it, but I don't love to do it. Every single book I've finished this year has reminded me that I'm very happy to not feel like I have to write it down!<br />
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So-called "bullet journaling" got so popular that I had no interest in it whatsoever. But as I kept seeing post after post about it, I started to get more and more intrigued, and it's sort of what I do. Nothing decorative, and almost no "journaling," but lots of ideas taken from the concept that have worked excellently for me for almost two years now. But...that could be written at any time, so no hurry.<br />
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In May I wrote a post called "<a href="http://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-my-children-are-not-taking-swimming.html">Why my children are not taking swimming lessons this month,</a>" about all of our everyday things and why there simply wasn't time to add swimming lessons to the schedule. June was supposed to be way less busy, but it wasn't, so I was going to write an ironic post called "Why my children have time to take swimming lessons this month," with the just-as-crazy-as-May-but-different schedule. But I didn't, and sure won't now.<br />
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Oh yeah, and I was also going to finish writing about our trip last year, six countries in nine weeks. I don't think that will happen, either.<br />
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Then there's the fact that we looked at 25--TWENTY-FIVE!!!--properties between January (or Februrary--I can't remember, but I have it written down, but I don't feel like going and looking for that notebook at this moment...) and May this year. When we made the appointment to look at the final one, we both said that this was the last one we were looking at. We were pretty resigned to not buying a house after all, were considering other options, fine. I paid very little attention to that last house, and when the owner wouldn't come down enough in price, I wasn't surprised. And then...things happened, and that house is now ours. I thought a blogpost on some of those properties that estate agents dared show us could be interesting, or one about the issues with this house, or even one with photos of the new house...<br />
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Oh, and then there's the fact that I've been using a smartphone since April (given to me last November, but it took me that long to get up the courage to try it out...), but I'm not finding it straightforward to get photos from there to the computer, so although I have plenty of photos (way, way, WAY too many photos...), I haven't posted any on FB since June. Our camera works sporadically, but it doesn't seem worth it to replace it, with smartphones taking better quality photos now than any camera we could possibly afford.<br />
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Speaking of June, I got to go to Oxford for a weekend for a "reunion" at which I had no business being, as the people I HAD met before I had only met once, 15 years earlier...but they'd invited me, and my husband who loves to give good gifts had booked my flight before I'd absolutely confirmed that I'd understood which dates it would be!! It was an amazingly awesome time. And it was the first trip I've done all by myself since I started dating Jörn. (Which will be 25 years ago next week. So my last "all by myself" trip was to Costa Rica, just over 25 years ago, July/August 1993.)<br />
<br />
Another topic is helicopter parenting, lawnmower parenting, and who has accused me of what. And what makes me laugh and what doesn't.<br />
<br />
Also, how I "take criticism" in general. I had an interesting experience a few months ago, receiving two batches of fairly strong negative criticism (in that two different people told me very loudly and clearly what I had done wrong, on two different topics) on the same day. One of them, I immediately recognized what I had done wrong, apologized, and corrected it. It in no way affected our relationship, and I bore no grudges of any kind. I was wrong, and was glad to be corrected! The other, I disagreed (and still disagree), but I could have just listened and gotten over it, but what really wound me up was all the "fluff" around it, "don't want to hurt you," "hear my heart," and so on. She's welcome to her opinion. She needs to allow me to have mine. I will not do what she asked me to not do, and I will not grudge her that. But when it has nothing to do with her, I'm not going to go along with her opinion, either! (If Person B is happy with me picking her flowers, I don't need to let the fact that Person A doesn't want me to pick Person A's flowers stop me from picking Person B's flowers! And no, it had nothing to do with flowers.) Still, it wasn't even the difference of opinion that bothered me so much, but the fact that she wouldn't acknowledge that it WAS an opinion. And even more than that was the beating around the bush and claiming a bunch of other things that were irrelevant to the topic at hand. If you don't want me to pick your flowers, that's fine. I won't pick your flowers. But whether I like your dog or not is not the same topic and not relevant. Now I'm really rambling on it (practically doing the blogpost already, I guess...), so I'll stop there. Maybe I'll expand another time.<br />
<br />
Then, as every year, there are the dates of the births of the babies we had who were born dead. (Common phrasing is "miscarried," simply because they were born before they could possibly have been revived. I don't even actually know if they were already dead at birth, since the problem was never with the babies themselves, but with the ability of my body to carry them.) I don't often think of their original due dates (I never think of the original due dates of any of my living children, either), but today was the due date for our fourth child, who was born 14 and a half years ago.<br />
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I could always throw in a post or two about home education (or homeschooling or unschooling or free range learning, or change the topic altogether and just discuss semantics...) and what my children are up to.<br />
<br />
And I keep wanting to write about our friend Bobby, who died several weeks ago. How can there be a world without Bobby? But I can't.<br />
<br />
And there's always the fallback of just describing a day or week in our lives. Which isn't too crazy yet, because most activities won't get started until the third week of September, or even October. (Even less crazy over the next few days, because there are only three of us at home!! Except that since the only two children home are the two youngest, I might need to arrange babysitting a couple of times, which is something I haven't had to do for awhile, with a range of resident teens to choose from...)<br />
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Any other ideas? I have lots. But in the meantime, I'm getting accolades for "all I'm doing," when the reality is that I'm not doing terribly well any of the things I'm supposed to be doing. (That could be another blogpost, a list of all the activities I've somehow found myself a part of, and WANT to be a part of, and COULD do well, but...maybe there are too many...)Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-91802670707992538192018-09-08T20:05:00.000+03:002018-09-08T21:58:09.763+03:00This and that, buying a house, children scattered, etc....So...I just read <a href="http://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-my-children-are-not-taking-swimming.html">my last blogpost</a>, and was interested to see that we'd just met with someone about a house, but she couldn't come down in price and we couldn't go up. That was, by the way, house number 25 that we had looked at, having started in January or February. We weren't really all that serious about buying when we started looking, more just extremely frustrated with the situation with the house where we've been living for 9 1/2 years. Then when we found out that we couldn't get a mortgage past Jörn's 65th birthday, we got a little more serious, because that put a lower cap on our maximum than we'd expected, and also meant that we would have to buy NOW or not until we have no children at home, because all we'd be able to get would be a one-bedroom flat...<br />
<br />
Well, newsflash: we have now bought that house.<br />
<br />
The then-owner of that house suggested contacting a different bank to see if we could get a bigger mortgage. We didn't see much point in it, as Hellenic Bank told us the age-65 limit was Cyprus law, but Jörn phoned Bank of Cyprus. They told him that Cyprus law is age 70, but usually they only give loans until age 65. There are some exceptions, but he "wouldn't qualify." They refused to tell him over the phone what the exceptions might be, so he made an appointment to meet with them in person. Eventually, they said that the reason is that retirement is at age 65. Jörn pointed out that he has a German contract and won't/can't retire before he's 67. That gives us two more years, juuuust enough to put in an offer on that house. Which was accepted. (And then the bank randomly offered to extend the mortgage for an extra year, "just because," which is fine with us. I could do a daily series for a year on the rest of the chaos, but I'll leave it at that for now.)<br />
<br />
So...with all of our savings (the entire amount we got out of selling our flat in Germany ), a loan against one of Jörn's life insurance policies in Germany (Germans love insurance, but as we cash in one after another for things like going to the U.S. and buying a house, I'm getting the impression that "life insurance" is just German for "savings account"...), and a mortgage from the Bank of Cyprus, we bought a house last Thursday. Because yes, four months is how long it took for the bank, the seller, the lawyers, the municipality, and the land registry to all get their acts together all at the same time. And with an additional amount of credit that Jörn was able to get from the bank in Germany because he's still an employee there (on unpaid parental leave since January 2009, but still with a contract...), Jacob is building a fourth bedroom on the roof.<br />
<br />
Lukas sort of painted one wall of his room and the majority of his stuff is now piled there. (He also took a bunch of stuff to be stored at Jacob's warehouse this morning.) He's now on his way to England to do a work experience in landscaping and gardening, for at least three or four weeks, maybe up to six weeks. (In fact, looking at the time, he should be at the airport in Paphos by now. I was going to drive him, but I have an infected tooth or something that is making my jaw hurt, meaning I didn't get much sleep and am probably not safe to drive, so when our friend Mick offered to drive Lukas, I was happy to accept. I hope to have a text within the next half hour or so saying that he's gotten through passport control okay. He's traveling on his U.S. passport, but that's another story.) (*Update* Lukas phoned to say that he got through passport control with no problems!)<br />
<br />
Katie painted most of her room and I might finish it for her tomorrow afternoon. She and Jörn left for Germany at 5:00 this morning. Katie will be seeing an orthodontist in Germany for a second opinion, because the one here wants to do waaaaay more than we think necessary. However, no longer having German health insurance (as of two years ago when German residence laws changed), she won't be able to have treatment there anyway, we're just hoping that that orthodontist (who handled Lukas several years ago) will agree with us that "wait and see" is a viable option. Next Wednesday, Katie will fly home (her first flight by herself!), and Jörn will fly to England for another art conference.<br />
<br />
Helen and Elisabeth and I painted Helen and Elisabeth's room a couple of weeks ago already. (After we'd paid the down payment, the owner gave us keys to the house so we could get started.) They were excellent painters. They've taken a couple of boxes over already, too.<br />
<br />
Helen and Elisabeth and I have also put paint on a large portion of the living room walls, and Jörn did most of one wall, but some parts need a second coat, and some parts can't yet be done because I'm waiting for Jacob to repair some plaster.<br />
<br />
We're not painting the kitchen at this point, because the kitchen is fairly ugly, and we kind of hope that in a year or two we can somehow redo the kitchen...<br />
<br />
As for Jörn's and my bedroom...it doesn't exist yet. A doorway from the top of the stairs onto the roof has been knocked through the wall, but not evened out, and a bunch of stuff has been delivered, but nothing else has happened. Jacob said "three to four weeks," but started two weeks ago, so I admit that I'm getting a little nervous about whether it will be finished by the end of September...<br />
<br />
And no bedroom for Jacob, because he plans to move out on the first of October. He's welcome to stay with us if he shares with Lukas, or puts a tent in the garden, or builds another room on the roof at his expense... <br />
<br />
There was a break in there for dinner, during which Lukas phoned, and Helen is on the phone with my sister Erin at the moment. Elisabeth is getting ready for bed, and when she and Helen are ready, I'll read to them.<br />
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I've written a lot of imaginary blogposts in my head, maybe after the girls are in bed I'll write another one. But don't count on it...Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-49986825456894987702018-05-04T08:19:00.000+03:002018-05-04T08:19:00.309+03:00Why my children are not taking swimming lessons this monthIt is May again, and this May is very similar to the last several Mays, with regards to busy-ness, but with more variety in the past. However, no children are taking swimming lessons this May.<br />
<br />
<b>Monday</b>: Okay, so the Monday of this week was actually still April, but as a typical Monday, I'll include it.<br />
<br />
At 5:35 a.m. I wake up to an alarm, something I hadn't done regularly for the last 20 years until last June, and which totally scared me this Monday, because it my first time using my new-to-me phone given to me over five months ago. My friend Dagmar collects me and (usually, although not this particular Monday) another friend, Jeannette, and we go swimming at Makenzy Beach. The water this Monday was REALLY calm (λάδι, we have learned to say, which means oil or something to do with oil, and I have no idea if I spelled that right) and they'd put in some new buoys, so instead of just swimming to one and back, as we often do, we swam from one to another, about six in all, I think. We didn't draw any faces on buoys this time.<br />
<br />
At 9:00, three children arrived who will be joining us Monday and Thursday mornings for the next month or two. They've lived in Cyprus on and off, but had been gone for the last year, and just got back (temporarily) last week. Neither of their parents are native speakers of English, so I'm giving a bit of support to the two seven-year-olds. (The parents speak excellent English, but they understandably prefer to speak their respective native languages with their children.) The 13-year-old is a very good friend of Katie's, and the two of them disappear into Katie's room for the duration. I do some things together with the boys and Helen and Elisabeth, and then I rotate who I work with individually in the living room while the others occupy themselves otherwise.<br />
<br />
At 1:30, the little girl, M., I've been taking care of several hours a week for the last year and a half arrived, and Helen left with M's mother. She teaches really awesome children's dance/movement/gymnastic classes, which Helen now goes to as of a couple of months ago. (I got to watch a class several weeks ago, and was very impressed, and Helen loves it.)<br />
<br />
I didn't take anyone to Pathfinders (a church activity group for 6-11-year-olds) this week, because our church building sustained pretty serious water damage a month or so ago and has been meeting in a hotel at Makenzy. It's not THAT far away, but it's very difficult to be at Makenzy at 4:00, return M. at 4:00, and be at Catherine's at 4:00, so I just do two out of the three at the moment. So Jörn and I BOTH drive to essentially the same place, where I park at Catherine's and take M. over to her mother at the American Academy (where the dance class happens), and Jörn picks up Helen and drives her and Elisabeth (and this week, Katie, who has been helping, but usually has to be there early, but didn't this time) to Pathfinders.<br />
<br />
From 4:00 to 5:00 I help in Catherine's "First Steps" drama class, for 3-4-year-olds. Helen attended that class from when it was first started, I think six years ago, and then Elisabeth did, and and some point, I started helping. Elisabeth outgrew the class, but I didn't. It's one of my favorite times of the week.<br />
<br />
At 5:30 I picked up Lukas (who also helps at Pathfinders, but had gotten a ride with the leader to be there early), Katie, Helen, and Elisabeth from Pathfinders. At that point, I also had to take M.'s car seat out, but when I opened the trunk (or boot, or as Jacob informed me, simply "the back" to avoid confusion) to put it in there, I discovered a pallet-board creation and my guitar, both left there by Jacob, who has been using my car rather a lot lately. I was not happy. The pallet-board thing had to go across the girls' laps, and the guitar had to go in the front with Lukas. I was not happy with Jacob.<br />
<br />
Normally, Jacob, Lukas, and Katie all go to Youth Alpha (dinner and a Bible Study) Monday nights, but because we had guests coming for dinner, Lukas decided not to go. Also, Jacob stopped by the house with his friend Max, because they'd been working all day and hadn't eaten. So we'd thought we'd have eight people at dinner (only half of them Langes), but ended up having 12 (because at the last minute, Katie decided to eat something too). Jacob, Max, and Katie then headed off to Alpha, while the rest of us had a very enjoyable evening at home.<br />
<br />
One Monday morning a month I have Writers' Group, and having two extra children in the morning is a new thing, but that was a fairly typical Monday.<br />
<br />
<b>Tuesday</b>: This week's Tuesday was a holiday, but we didn't do anything different than usual, except that grocery shopping wasn't possible. (And since I don't do the grocery shopping anyway, that's not actually relevant.)<br />
<br />
I walked in the Salt Lake Park with my friend Sue (no alarm for that--she texts when she's awake, and I'm almost always awake before that), and then we sat on her garden swing and chatted until Jörn phoned and asked if I was aware of the time. Oops. So at 8:15 I rushed home, rushed a shower, rushed breakfast, rushed children, and left late, stopping at the bank for money for piano and saxophone lessons, then realized that my darling son had left me with an empty gas tank, so stopped at the gas station as well. As we pay the saxophone teacher per month and the piano teacher per lesson, I paid for that from the saxophone money and will pay him the rest next month.<br />
<br />
So Lukas had his saxophone lesson while Helen and Elisabeth had their piano lessons (the teachers live across the street from each other!), each of them doing their written music theory with me during the other one's lesson. They're supposed to do that at home, but often don't. When there's time, they also each do math during the other's lesson.<br />
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From there we drove to Sue's house, where we've been going Tuesday mornings for about eight years, I think. Lukas walked home from there.<br />
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I'd accidentally turned off my new-to-me phone after Katie had called me during the music lessons, so I didn't get any of Jörn's many attempts to call me and tell me we were rather late for lunch, until he called Richard instead.<br />
<br />
Home for lunch and reading with the girls until Helen had to be at drama rehearsal at 3:00. As Katie was out, we took Elisabeth with us, and after dropping off Helen, met a lady for coffee to discuss the house she has for sale, which is more than we can afford. A very nice conversation, but, very understandably, she really can't sell the house for what we can pay.<br />
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Back home, and then Jörn picked up Helen at 5:00. Dinner (bread and stuff--I'd made bread after lunch, lunch being a cooked meal), read to the girls (Swallows and Amazons at the moment), then once they were in bed, Jörn and I went for a walk of about 7 kilometers, which we do once or twice a week.<br />
<br />
<b>Wednesday</b>:<br />
<br />
Swimming with Dagmar, schoolwork with the girls until 10:30, and then I went to Oasis, the refugee community center where I taught English last year, but haven't this year.<br />
<br />
Between the two English classes Wednesday morning, another lady (a retired midwife) and I are trying to get a support system for pregnant women and new mothers going. Nobody has actually showed up yet, but because of it being announced, one woman who was there for English told another woman back at the refugee camp about it, and she contacted us, back in February. I was able to accompany her to a couple of check-ups, and then support her through labor and the birth of her baby. We've also visited a couple of others in the hospital, and been to Kofinou (the refugee camp) once, but as both of us have fairly limited time, we've unfortunately not been able to do as much as we'd like. Still, people are starting to know we exist, so that is good.<br />
<br />
As I was about to leave, Katie phoned me and asked me to pick her up. She'd walked to church in the morning to help with cleaning up, but I'd said I might be able to pick her up, as it's getting rather warm. (In fact, it was 30 degrees yesterday (86 F), and very humid, so I would actually call that "hot" rather than warm...) I picked her up, and then we went downtown, where I wanted to try on some Birkenstocks. Seeing the prices, I think it's just as well that they did not have my size in the style I like.<br />
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Elisabeth's rehearsal for "Alice in the News" (to be performed May 27th) was 2:30 to 5:00, and I'm also helping in that class. There's a certain amount of telling people to be quiet and not sit on each other backstage, etc., but I really love this group of 7-9-year-olds, and I actually have things to DO backstage. Of the three plays, this is the one that I really enjoy working with.<br />
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And Wednesday night, after the girls were in bed, we went to Sue's and Richard's to play Cities and Knights (Settlers of Catan extention), as we do most Wednesday.<br />
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<b>Thursday:</b><br />
<br />
Thursday morning was walking with Sue again, and having the three extra children in the morning. Also, at the last minute I had M. for the morning (well, from late morning, and then until 4:00 p.m.), as well. She mostly sat on my lap and listened to the boys reading to me. None of my own toddlers would have done that!<br />
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Normally M. arrives at 1:30 on Thursdays, and M.'s mother takes Helen, but since I already had M., Jörn took Helen to the dance class. At 3:00 I took Katie to her drama rehearsal and picked up Helen, then we went shopping for birthday presents for Jörn, then we picked up Helen's and Elisabeth's friend Sophia, came back to the house (very close) to put the presents in the house, and then drove to the Greek Evangelical Church, where the three girls go to Midiclub, an activity group similar to Pathfinders, but as of age 3 and really only until about 8 or 9. They started it for ages 3-6, as there wasn't anything for that age group, but they've expanded it as the participants got older, and now divide into two age groups for some of the activities. That's from 4:00 to 5:30, and I used to stay and help a bit, but now I have M. until about 4:15 and Greek class at 4:30. So I drop off the girls and drive to the American Academy (which isn't far at all and I should walk...) to return M., but yesterday, M. had fallen asleep after shopping, so I parked in the shade and cleaned out the car while I waited for M.'s mother. A pair of shoes and socks belonged to Elisabeth. EVERYTHING else (drink bottles, candy wrappers, receipts, etc.) were from Jacob or Jacob's friends. I put everything in the back. Once M. had been collected, I drove back to GEC to park, as Oasis, which is where my Greek class is, is across the street.<br />
<br />
The classes are free and are actually meant for refugees, but were made available to other people in the community if there was space. I started a week late, and the only class in which there was space was the most advanced class, which is about halfway through a book I finished eight years ago. However, since there are only two or three of us in the class, and the teacher (at my insistence!) does NOT speak English with us, it's a very good opportunity for me, and I'm hoping to finally make some more progress. We're really just using the book as a way to start conversation, and are talking much more than in any other class I've had, except for the one-on-one lessons I had last year (and would like to continue, but schedules are difficult to coordinate...). Greek finishes at 6:00, so Jörn picks up the girls (including Katie, who walks from drama) and takes Sophia home.<br />
<br />
Last night at 8:00 I had a phone call scheduled on the topic of home education in Cyprus, which was very interesting. Jörn and I often go for a walk, but I had to wait for the phone call (which ended up being about 45 minutes long), so he went for a walk by himself.<br />
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<b>Friday:</b><br />
<br />
This morning I went swimming as usual, and it's almost 8:00 now and I haven't showered yet. In the winter, I turned on the water heater before I left to go swimming, and got in the shower the moment I got home, to thaw out, but it's 28 degrees already today, so no danger of freezing, nor have I needed to use the electric water heater for a couple of months already. The girls are required to appear by 9:00, so I have some time. Lukas left with Jacob before I even got home from swimming.<br />
<br />
Normally, Friday morning I would be home all morning and we'd get a decent amount of schoolwork done, but today I have a meeting at 11:00, with the group planning Roger Jones' upcoming tour of Cyprus with the musical "Rock," about the life of Simon Peter.<br />
<br />
Friday is unique in that is the one day that none of us are in any way involved in theater! However, Some of us have discussed the possibility of getting involved with the drama club at the British military base, which has a group Friday afternoons...<br />
<br />
I have M. again from 1:30 to about 3:30 (sometimes 4:30), and Sue and Richard come for dinner. Jacob, Lukas, and Katie go to youth group, and we usually have to pick up Katie.<br />
<br />
<b>Saturday:</b><br />
<br />
The last several Saturdays have only had one rehearsal, but this Saturday will be Helen's group (8-10-year-olds, performing "The Twits" May 20th, and Helen is one terribly awesome Mrs. Twit) in the morning and Katie's (11-13-year-olds, "Bog Boy") in the afternoon. I'll help at both rehearsals, which with Helen's group isn't much more than occasionally raising an eyebrow, and putting away props and scenery at the end. The main reason I'm there, really, is to be familiar enough with the show to be of help to Richard in the sound box for the performance. I'm happy to do it, and it's not exciting, but it's fine.<br />
<br />
Katie's group, on the other hand, is one that should absolutely not need anyone helping. They do not need any help with props or changing, they're old enough to help with scenery, etc., and they OUGHT to be old enough to sit quietly backstage. I spend the whole 3 1/2 hours glaring at people, physically moving people away from each other, removing props from people's hands, and holding my finger to my lips. I'm supposed to be getting familiar with the show, but haven't been able to watch much of it at all, because I'm running crowd control in the back. And their play is this Sunday.<br />
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After the rehearsal, Jacob will be arriving with his truck, and we'll be loading the scenery into it in preparation for Sunday morning. <br />
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Saturday evening, I usually go over to Sue's and Richard's to play some game that is NOT Settlers of Catan. Jörn doesn't go, because he only wants to play Settlers.<br />
<br />
<b>Sunday:</b><br />
<br />
The last several Sundays there have been two rehearsals, but this Sunday, I'll be at the theater (REAL theater, or I should spell it theatre, as in Scala Theatre in Larnaka!) from 8:00 in the morning, transporting and setting up scenery. The children will arrive at 10:00 for rehearsal, at some point there will be a lunch break, and then the play is at 5:00 p.m., so we'll probably be there from 3:00 or 3:30, I guess. It's a very nice theater, but doesn't have any real dressing rooms, so most of my time back there is spent telling the boys to stay where they were told and the girls to stay where they were told. At least, that was my experience the last two years with this age group!<br />
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And this is why nobody is taking swimming lessons this year in May.<br />
<br />
At the end of May, Catherine is off to China for a month, to perform "Just Imagine," and is taking Jacob with her for lights and sound. So there will be no drama classes or rehearsals at ALL, after having them every day of the week except Friday for the last couple of months! Unless, of course, we do check out the Dekhelia base drama clubs...Lukas and I are both interested in lights, sound, and backstage stuff, and Helen in acting.<br />
<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-50554379431660810962018-04-20T08:16:00.000+03:002018-04-20T17:07:58.109+03:00Facts about me, according to my daughter<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="90l40-0-0">
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<span data-offset-key="90l40-0-0"><span data-text="true"> My oldest daughter, Marie, who is 20 and lives in the U.S., answered a questionnaire on Facebook for adult daughters to fill in for their mothers. She did extremely well, and I started to respond in far too much detail, so decided to make a blogpost out of it instead. :-)</span></span></div>
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<b><i><span data-offset-key="90l40-0-0"><span data-text="true">1. What is she doing right now?</span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span data-offset-key="8ah16-0-0"><span data-text="true">*checks time* At 9 pm, probably either on her computer or playing a game with the Fairheads.</span></span></i></div>
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<span data-offset-key="29s4i-0-0">Those were excellent guesses, but last night at 9:00 p.m., I was actually out with my husband. For that matter, I was actually with both my husband AND my oldest son, in the backyard/courtyard of a house that we had looked at earlier in the day, so that Jacob could have a look at it and tell us what the possibility of building another room on might be.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4bvc7-0-0"><span data-text="true">We do play a game with the Fairheads once or twice a week in the evening, so there was perhaps a 3/14 chance of that being right, and Jörn and I go for a walk at least once or twice, sometimes three times a week, so there was a 2/7 chance of that one. Of the other half the time, at 9:00 p.m. specifically, Jörn is actually more likely to be on the computer than I am, because my computer is out of commission, so he'll be on the computer at that point and I'll be reading, and then I go on the computer later.</span></span></div>
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<b><i><span data-offset-key="1vlok-0-0"><span data-text="true">2. What dressing does she eat on her salad?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="h8n1-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="h8n1-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="h8n1-0-0"><span data-text="true">None? I think.</span></span></i></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="4ut29-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4ut29-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4ut29-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="erekq-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="erekq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="erekq-0-0"><span data-text="true">Correct. Maybe lemon juice, or salt on tomatoes, but no dressing, ever. Yuck. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="8e94r-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8e94r-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8e94r-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="v0q7-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="v0q7-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="v0q7-0-0"><span data-text="true">3. Name something she hates?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="a24h7-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a24h7-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="a24h7-0-0"><span data-text="true">Being told what to think</span></span></i></div>
</div>
<br />
I absolutely love it that Marie got this one 100% correct. :-)<br />
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="ng2r-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ng2r-0-0">
<b><span data-offset-key="ng2r-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="cmr3p-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="cmr3p-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="cmr3p-0-0"><span data-text="true">4. What does she like to drink?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="92rqb-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="92rqb-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="92rqb-0-0"><span data-text="true">My coffee. At least, I conclude that she must like drinking it, because even though she always complains that I put too much milk/sugar in, she still likes to take a sip when she sees I have coffee...</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="92rqb-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="92rqb-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="92rqb-0-0"><span data-text="true">Weeeelll...yes, I admit that I have a tendency to take a sip of Marie's (or Jörn's) coffee, especially at church, but I have no idea why I do so, because I never like it! </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="6jnmv-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6jnmv-0-0">
<b><span data-offset-key="6jnmv-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="7ku89-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7ku89-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="7ku89-0-0"><span data-text="true">5. Favorite music to listen to?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="amlpk-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="amlpk-0-0">
<i><span class="_247o" data-offset-key="amlpk-0-0" spellcheck="false" start="0"><span data-offset-key="amlpk-0-0"><span data-text="true">Sandra Boynton</span></span></span></i></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="dhq6a-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dhq6a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="dhq6a-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="515n4-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="515n4-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="515n4-0-0"><span data-text="true">Hmmm...depends on the moment, really, but that's true often enough. Brian Doerksen and anything Roger Jones (especially with Devon Brown) are higher on my list, though. I also love hearing Helen and Elisabeth playing the piano and Lukas the saxophone, and also love hearing Helen just singing all day long. I also love singing with Marie while we wash and dry dishes, but haven't gotten to do that for a long time. Likewise I love hearing Marie play the violin.</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="515n4-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="515n4-0-0"><span data-text="true"><br /></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy8Og2IN_2RysZApAIEusiEZF29rxqr5OEgiRky0Q4coyN-MW7lJOQ5nWjDSs4vXSq_p30LN62r9T33Afl7XAq2INMEKu7zQZ6wh3xggKaHOor7vldBNEfmj5sKWA9SFzywqThlAzpVfU/s1600/IMG_8759.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy8Og2IN_2RysZApAIEusiEZF29rxqr5OEgiRky0Q4coyN-MW7lJOQ5nWjDSs4vXSq_p30LN62r9T33Afl7XAq2INMEKu7zQZ6wh3xggKaHOor7vldBNEfmj5sKWA9SFzywqThlAzpVfU/s320/IMG_8759.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="515n4-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="515n4-0-0"><span data-text="true"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="btcf8-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="btcf8-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="btcf8-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></i></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="1a07v-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1a07v-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="1a07v-0-0"><span data-text="true">6. What is her nickname for you?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="ba0mo-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ba0mo-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="ba0mo-0-0"><span data-text="true">“Ja- Luk- Ka- whatever your name is!”</span></span></i></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="cirv1-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="cirv1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="cirv1-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="bve2a-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bve2a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bve2a-0-0"><span data-text="true">Um...guilty as charged...</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="4lvne-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4lvne-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4lvne-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="7sjp7-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7sjp7-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="7sjp7-0-0"><span data-text="true">7. What is something she collects?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="379jl-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="379jl-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="379jl-0-0"><span data-text="true">Books</span></span></i></div>
</div>
<br />
Can't contest that one, either.<br />
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="465kj-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="465kj-0-0">
<b><span data-offset-key="465kj-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="7sr4f-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7sr4f-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="7sr4f-0-0"><span data-text="true">8. What would she eat every day if she could?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="5bfhq-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5bfhq-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="5bfhq-0-0"><span data-text="true">Chocolate. And “anything I don’t have to cook myself”.</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5bfhq-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5bfhq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="5bfhq-0-0"><span data-text="true">My daughter knows me. Especially the second part. And the first.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="7qlqs-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7qlqs-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="7qlqs-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="f728e-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f728e-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="f728e-0-0"><span data-text="true">9. What is her favorite color?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="2ak8e-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2ak8e-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="2ak8e-0-0"><span data-text="true">Blue</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2ak8e-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2ak8e-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2ak8e-0-0"><span data-text="true">Except for eyes, yes. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="4j94n-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4j94n-0-0">
<b><span data-offset-key="4j94n-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="eikgm-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="eikgm-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="eikgm-0-0"><span data-text="true">10. What would she never wear?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="fh8ho-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fh8ho-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="fh8ho-0-0"><span data-text="true">Yoga pants</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fh8ho-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fh8ho-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="fh8ho-0-0"><span data-text="true">That's for sure. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="e4c66-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e4c66-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="e4c66-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="ccnlt-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ccnlt-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="ccnlt-0-0"><span data-text="true">11. What is her favorite sports team?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="dmfgl-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dmfgl-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="dmfgl-0-0"><span data-text="true">I’m fairly sure she doesn’t care.</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dmfgl-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dmfgl-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="dmfgl-0-0"><span data-text="true">Correct. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="evo7p-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="evo7p-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="evo7p-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="7549r-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7549r-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="7549r-0-0"><span data-text="true">12. What is something that you don't do that she wishes you did?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="890gh-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="890gh-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="890gh-0-0"><span data-text="true">When I lived at home the answers would have varied from “Get up at a ‘reasonable’ time” to “Keep my room clean” - now that I live in California though, I have no idea. Maybe call her more?</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="890gh-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="890gh-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="890gh-0-0"><span data-text="true">Oooh....loaded! I think I'd better not respond to this one... But phone calls are so complicated, with a ten-hour time difference, etc., that although I enjoy them, I don't mope around wishing she'd call more. E-mails would be cool, though. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="2iinp-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2iinp-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2iinp-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="2o1b0-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2o1b0-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="2o1b0-0-0"><span data-text="true">13. You bake her a cake - what kind is it?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="9vovq-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9vovq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9vovq-0-0"><span data-text="true"><i>Chocolate, obviously. Although if it were a generic dessert that is not specifically cake then I would make oatmeal cookies.</i><br /><br />Absolutely. :-)</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="fqm08-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fqm08-0-0">
<b><span data-offset-key="fqm08-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="9pjp3-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9pjp3-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="9pjp3-0-0"><span data-text="true">14. Favorite animal?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="a2mj3-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a2mj3-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="a2mj3-0-0"><span data-text="true">I’m not sure... Cats that sit on her lap without attacking?</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a2mj3-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a2mj3-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="a2mj3-0-0"><span data-text="true">Marie!!!! Don't you remember the socks you gave me for Christmas??? </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="a2mj3-0-0"><span data-text="true"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="d2563-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d2563-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d2563-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="8etq4-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8etq4-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="8etq4-0-0"><span data-text="true">15. What could she spend all day doing?</span></span></i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="edan4-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="edan4-0-0">
<i><span data-offset-key="edan4-0-0"><span data-text="true">Reading</span></span></i></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="edan4-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="edan4-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="edan4-0-0"><span data-text="true">And have. :-) </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="e5d4b-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e5d4b-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="e5d4b-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8s1ou" data-offset-key="2n5bb-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2n5bb-0-0">
<b><i><span data-offset-key="2n5bb-0-0"><span data-text="true">16. Who is her favorite child?</span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span data-offset-key="9f49o-0-0"><span data-text="true">She always says she doesn’t have one</span></span></i></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9f49o-0-0"><span data-text="true">Correct. Although children can gain temporary favorite child status. For example, by doing dishes without being asked. Or by being the only one out of six to say "Mama" before "Papa" as a baby. Or by giving giraffe socks for Christmas. Or by cleaning my car. I can think of a lot of other things, too. ;-)</span></span></div>
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<b><i><span data-offset-key="60r6h-0-0"><span data-text="true">17. What's her favorite sweet?</span></span></i></b></div>
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<span data-offset-key="2gn7n-0-0"><span data-text="true"><i>Assuming the person I copied this from (thanks Molly!) copied it from someone who was writing in British, I’m going to go with either Jelly Bellies or Bassett’s Licorice Allsorts.</i><br />Close, as I do like those very much, but nope. Correct answer (if one has to exclude chocolate) would be gummy bears or other gummy candy.</span></span></div>
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<b><i><span data-offset-key="3c9kf-0-0"><span data-text="true">18. How many brothers & sisters does she have?</span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span data-offset-key="6ani5-0-0"><span data-text="true">Two brothers and two sisters who are genetically related, four brothers and two sisters who are not, and too many in-laws for me to remember</span></span></i></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6ani5-0-0"><span data-text="true">I like this answer. :-) (And seven in-laws.) </span></span></div>
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<b><i><span data-offset-key="akdgj-0-0"><span data-text="true">19. Favorite alcoholic drink?</span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span data-offset-key="du6fg-0-0"><span data-text="true">Uhhhhh I know she likes a glass of wine with dinner but I don’t know if she has a favourite</span></span></i></div>
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<span data-offset-key="du6fg-0-0"><span data-text="true">I don't, really. Sometimes one is particularly delicious, but I never can remember what it was. </span></span></div>
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<b><i><span data-offset-key="da1qa-0-0"><span data-text="true">20. You're in jail & you call her, what's her response?</span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span data-offset-key="6flbk-0-0"><span data-text="true">“I appreciate you wanting to talk to me, but you probably should have used your call to contact someone who’s in the same country and can actually come bail you out.”</span></span></i></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6flbk-0-0"><span data-text="true">This answer made me literally laugh out loud, because I'm pretty sure that's about exactly what I would say!! </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6flbk-0-0"><span data-text="true">I love you, Marie!</span></span></div>
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Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-24183851571518945042017-12-27T18:26:00.001+02:002017-12-27T18:26:43.430+02:00Traveling, Part Three: California Part TwoNow it's December and we've been to Costa Rica, Mexico, back to the U.S., to Germany again, to Scotland, to England, and home to Cyprus since I posted <a href="http://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/traveling-part-two-california-part-one.html">Part Two.</a> If I take the same amount of time and include the same amount of detail for each part of the rest of our trip, I won't finish blogging the trip until...well, until all the children are grown, I would guess. So I'm going to go ahead and upload here the photos from our camping trip (way too many photos, and nowhere near all of them--with a great deal of effort, I got it down to only 23 essential ones...) that I already sorted out and watermarked in Picasa back in October, and I will attempt to make minimal comments (I say that now, but the likelihood is that I will ramble on quite a bit...), and after this I will try to make much shorter posts. In any case, the people who read my blog are all on Facebook with me, so I really should just upload all the photos to Facebook and leave it at that. (If there's ANYBODY, just one person, reading this who is NOT on Facebook with me, let me know!!)<br />
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So...on Wednesday, September 27th, we eventually arrived at <a href="https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=546">Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park</a>, where we set up camp. (And as an aside, finding that link just now, I learned something I may expound on later!!) Marie, Katie, and Helen shared one tent...<br />
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...and Elisabeth had (by choice) her own tent, where she slept the first night until about 2:00 a.m.</div>
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As of about 2:00, she slept in the tent with Jörn and me, and did the second and third nights as well.</div>
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Mom and Dad slept in their RV, of course, and Lukas did, too, in the bed over the cab. </div>
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Once camp was set up, we went for what at least my mother and I would call a walk and my husband and some of the children would call a hike. Either way, the redwoods fascinate me as much as they ever did. <br />
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Interestingly, there is also quite a lot of sand there, where a lot of ancient sea creatures have been found. The park is not far from the coast, but much higher, but was evidently under water at some point in the distant past. <br />
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Back at camp, I got this photo of my four daughters: <br />
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At some point, my brother Shawn and his wife Lindsey and their two daughters arrived. S is 4 1/2 and we'd met her several times, as they had visited us in Cyprus when she was a baby, but we hadn't seen her since we were last in the U.S., two years ago. We hadn't yet met N, though, as she won't be two until January. S jumped right in with the cousins, but N was a little more wary. Helen, as usual, was immediately entranced with N, who was happy to be followed around by H. All of the girls spent a lot of time coloring while we were in camp.<br />
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Thursday morning Shawn and Mom made breakfast...</div>
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..and shortly after, Shawn had to leave for work.</div>
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I had gotten up early Thursday morning and gone for a walk, but didn't take the camera. Nor did I take a map, but when I looked a map later on, I realized that a lot of the trails weren't on the map anyway. The trails themselves are well-marked and I have a good sense of direction, so I wasn't worried about getting actually lost, but I like returning a different way that I started out, so it took a bit longer than I'd anticipated.<br />
<br />
After breakfast we packed lunches and everybody set out. We found Cable Car Beach, as planned, so those who like freezing cold water put on their swimsuits and splashed around. <br />
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Mom, Jörn, Marie, and I decided to walk a bit further to the visitor center: <br />
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From the visitor center there's a fenced-in loop one can walk around, but we only walked through half of it, back the way we'd come but parallel to the trails, and then out of that at the end and back to the trail.<br />
<br />
When we got back to where the others were still at the river, Dad asked if Katie had found us. No, she had not. Apparently, not long after we had left, Katie said she was going to catch up with us. Mom and I immediately started back towards the visitor center, Mom on the road and I on a path at the side. I hadn't jogged since last year November, but found myself moving pretty quickly, and in sandals, too. When I got to the parking lot and still hadn't found her, I was not feeling particularly calm, but as I headed towards the building, I saw Katie through the window, talking to a ranger inside. The time I made on the last 25-ish-meter sprint is probably the best time I've ever made. Neither Katie and I had cried until I was hugging her.<br />
<br />
While there was basically only one road from where we were to the visitor center (the footpath and the road are usually visible from each other), we'd been inside the loop while Katie was still on the road, so didn't join the road/footpath again until Katie had already passed that part, which was how we missed each other.<br />
<br />
Friday morning I went for an even longer map, still without camera or map, but I was intrigued by a sign to Big Rock Hole and tried to find it. I went about half a mile down a very narrow, very steep path that had a lot of cobwebs across it, so I slipped and slid down the trail with my arms in front of my face, thinking "I sure hope that the next person on this trail appreciates the lack of spider webs!" And then I got to a river, and to a sign saying "trail closed." At least on the climb back up, I appreciated that there were no spider webs...<br />
<br />
Shawn arrived back in camp sometime late Thursday night, and on Friday he and Lukas headed back to Cable Car Beach to go fishing. They caught several crawdads and fish and Lukas, at least, had a wonderful time.<br />
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My dad volunteered to stay in camp and all the girls (my four daughters, my two nieces, my sister-in-law, my mother, and I) drove to the visitor center and walked the Redwood Grove loop. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKutq9yrDzObVY5MJR-SF-fvD_FwNKO10MxhLHq4nByF1gdStw2X68iDZngRuGmV0QcfGxN1BaAE_21GkLD8nFhQaWeQ_ctlnDrMfHe7kiRiNzVarUPHrA7C-8rqEyAvqEYu09UjHlvU/s1600/IMG_7246.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKutq9yrDzObVY5MJR-SF-fvD_FwNKO10MxhLHq4nByF1gdStw2X68iDZngRuGmV0QcfGxN1BaAE_21GkLD8nFhQaWeQ_ctlnDrMfHe7kiRiNzVarUPHrA7C-8rqEyAvqEYu09UjHlvU/s320/IMG_7246.JPG" width="240" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwvC6XnSK-pDeGT1Dxv5R3Yom9Bp-J338hCLfY28fkbQgsQ0G7A6U3uvyn0zMKNo_B3XW_FhEYKgVsoWr5cQXiN6OppnP19UZ8pZOwZgmAQVicOA95yhDbjPfiMH4FWYVP7RR9QHNkJ0/s1600/IMG_7248.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwvC6XnSK-pDeGT1Dxv5R3Yom9Bp-J338hCLfY28fkbQgsQ0G7A6U3uvyn0zMKNo_B3XW_FhEYKgVsoWr5cQXiN6OppnP19UZ8pZOwZgmAQVicOA95yhDbjPfiMH4FWYVP7RR9QHNkJ0/s320/IMG_7248.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
This is INSIDE a living tree. <br />
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The girls played on this natural slide for ages: <br />
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Then we went to a playground, where there was also an old covered bridge. S got a splinter in her foot, which Lindsey removed with the tweezers from my pocketknife: easily the most used part of my pocketknife in all 22 years that I've had it! I included this photo more because it shows N wearing an outfit that had been a hand-me-down to Katie and was also worn by Helen and Elisabeth. :-) <br />
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Friday night my youngest sister arrived, together with her daughter, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's two daughters, but I don't have permission to post any photos of them. There was one really cool moment with one of her boyfriend's daughters, about six years old. She'd asked my daughters what grade they're in in school, and Helen said, "Oh, Mommy teaches us." Without the slightest bit of confusion, M responded, "Oh, you're homeschooled. My cousin is, too." It was incredibly refreshing to have someone just see it as totally NORMAL!!<br />
<br />
Saturday morning I went for yet another walk, still determined to find Big Rock Hole. I'd looked at a map and determined that Buckeye Trail was the way to go, and and figured out one way to go there and another to go back, and that I would have to cross a river without a bridge. The river wasn't very deep, so I took off my shoes and socks and crossed it and picked up the trail on the other side...but didn't find any signposts, and the trail petered out and I was no longer sure if I was on an actual trail or just a deer path. When I found another loop of the river, a bit narrower and therefore a bit deeper, I stood there for quite awhile trying to see any trail on the other side, but there was nothing obvious, so I very reluctantly turned around and went back the way I came.<br /><br />And TODAY, three months later, when looking for the link to the Park, the first thing I saw on the webpage was this: <br />
<div class="alert alert-danger">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><strong>BUCKEYE TRAIL CLOSED</strong> BETWEEN RIVER CROSSINGS</i></div>
<i>
</i><div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Buckeye Trail is closed between river crossings due to extremely
rough terrain, making hiking between Buckeye Trail and Big Rock Hole
impassible. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Ah. It would have been nice if that had been marked on the trails or on the maps...<br />
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I got back to camp when breakfast was over (they'd saved some for me) and the rest of the morning was spent packing up camp (at least for the grownups), and then Shawn gave everyone who wanted one a ride on his motorcycle, which is what is being admired at this point: <br />
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...And here is a photo of the first time ever that I've been on a motorcycle!!<br />
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S had never been on her dad's motorcycle before, either, but wanted to do what everyone else had!<br />
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She was pretty pleased. :-)<br />
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N also wanted to go on, but the helmet was already rather too big for S, so there was no way it was going to work for a 20-month-old! She wasn't very happy about that, but did accept a cuddle from Lukas, of which I have an adorable photo, but it has other people in the photo, so isn't here.<br />
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We drove back to San Bruno where my parents dropped off the seven of us and picked up their dog, and then started their 6-hour drive home to Eureka. Erin was out of town and we just relaxed (and did laundry) the rest of the day.<br />
<br />
I originally had an even longer title for this post, but the sub
categories were getting a bit ridiculous, so I just left it with
California Part Two...but there's going to have to be a California Part
Three, as well, as we had another three full days. After that, though, I'm going to have to scale waaaaay down on details of the rest of our trip...<br />
<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-23488284810711063922017-12-11T22:21:00.000+02:002017-12-11T22:21:30.377+02:00Books finished in November 2017I read a lot more books in November than in December. Part of the number increase was due to the number of short books (mainly Hourly Histories, which only take about half an hour to read), part was because of having the opportunity to read actual paper books (five of them, in fact), and part was because for the two weeks we were in Scotland, we had no internet in our room so when I should have been in bed, instead of going on-line I read on my Kindle.<br />
<br />
We'd arrived in Germany October 26th, stayed two days with our friends Margaret and Phil in Düesseldorf, then stayed the rest of our time in Germany in Hamminkeln at the guest house of our mission agency. On November 1st Jörn flew to England for an art conference, on Friday the 3rd Lukas left to spend the weekend with friends before starting his two-week introduction apprenticeship in gardening and landscaping in Mülheim, and on Saturday the 4th, the three girls and I flew to Scotland (from Dortmund to Luton to Glasgow, all three being new airports to me, and Scotland being a new country to me), where Jörn joined us the next day. We participated in an awesome retreat for long-term missionaries for the next two weeks, where the children also had a great program, and there was lots of free time and some group outings. After that finished, we slowly made our way to Birmingham, visiting friends near Manchester for two days, then staying another two days with friends in Birmingham and getting to visit with four others there. November 23rd, nine weeks to the day after the girls and I had left Cyprus, we flew home. (Lukas had returned home on his own from Germany three days earlier, and Jörn had been gone for 10 weeks and one day, having left Cyprus eight days before we did.)<br />
<br />
For some odd reason, I haven't managed to read anywhere near as much since we got home...<br />
<br />
<b><i>Isambard Kindom Brunel</i>, Hourly History</b> I felt like I'd heard of this engineer before, probably in something I'd read out loud to the children, but nothing at all sounded familiar, and it was very interesting. And in the five weeks or so since I finished this, I must have seen his name mentioned at least half a dozen times! I never would have picked up a biography of any length (not even a 30-minute read) on an engineer, but since it was there...I read it. I'm enjoying the Hourly Histories for the opportunity to be introduced to historical figures I wouldn't have looked up on my own.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Born a Crime</i>, Trevor Noah </b> On the Monday that we were in Germany, I got to visit my friend Leigh for six hours. I've probably known her for about 26 years, although the first conversation I remember with her took place only 24 years ago, when her oldest daughter was about six months old. We had never, ever, in those 24 years, spent time together without children around. We used to talk on the phone fairly often, but always with interruptions from her children or mine, or more likely both. I absolutely loved the afternoon/evening with her, both of us finishing whole sentences and even stories. It wasn't quite long enough, though. And she gave me this book, which was fascinating. Trevor Noah was born in South Africa five years before Apartheid ended, to a black mother and white father. Most of his first five years were spent hiding, because if anyone in authority had found out he existed, his parents could have both been arrested and imprisoned. This is biographical, but not chronological, and there are some inconsistencies, such as his constant mention of never having had any friends, except in the many chapters that detail escapades with his friends. He's apparently now a famous comedian in the U.S., but I'd never heard of him. Jacob had, however, and was quite excited to see me unpack this book. Language warning for people who will be offended by that, but otherwise a great book.<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<b><i>So Deeply Scarred</i>, Howard Morgan </b> Friends gave me this book, which is about how the Jewish community has been persecuted throughout their history, all over the world. It could be quite an eye-opener to someone who hasn't read much on the topic, but I have. Much of it consisted of lists and statistics, so not exactly smooth reading, but not long.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Like Grounded Swallows</i>, Gerhard P. Drumm</b> My mother gave me this book in September and I started reading it while in Costa Rica, but most of my reading was done at night on my Kindle, so I didn't get into it until we were in Scotland, when I read it every available moment until I finished it. Gerhard Drumm is, like my mother, a United Methodist pastor (although he is now retired and she is not yet), and he signed this copy of the first part of his biography, covering the time from his birth in Serbia (then part of Yugoslavia) in 1929 until his escape, together with most of his siblings, to Austria in 1947. It was extremely interesting reading this book, about the persecution of ethnic Germans during and after World War II, around the same time as reading <i>So Deeply Scarred</i>, five biographies of important political figures (see below), and two other Hourly Histories about World War II. I've read so much about World War II, but never before had heard about persecution of ethnic Germans in non-German countries. <a href="http://www.times-standard.com/article/NJ/20170508/NEWS/170509870">Gerhard Drumm is 88 years old and living in California</a>, and it's strange to think that he was born the same year as my father-in-law, who has now been dead for over 12 years.<br />
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<b><i>Emma & I</i>, Sheila Hocken</b> I actually paid money for this book, I think something like 90 pence, at a second-hand bookshop in West Kilbride, Scotland. It was admittedly the author's name that first caught my eye and made me pull the book off the shelf, but the topic then interested me as well. I enjoy memoirs and biographies in any case, and this was autobiographical. The author had a congenital condition that meant she'd never been able to see well, and eventually lost her sight completely as a teenager. The "Emma" referred to in the title is the guide dog she received when she was 17, and which changed her life completely. There was quite a surprising ending. This isn't the most well-written book in the world, but I did deem it worth bringing back with me to Cyprus, although I finished it while still in Scotland.<br />
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<b><i>World War II Biographies: Adolf Hitler, Erwin Rommel, Benito Mussolini, George Patton, Joseph Stalin</i>, Hourly History </b>These were really five books, each one taking half an hour. I'd never read biographies, even short ones, of any of these people before. I'd started the book quite awhile before finishing it, definitely in October, and probably while still in Costa Rica. These key characters in the Second World War have remarkably different backgrounds, histories, and characters. I was left thinking with Hitler in particular that "if only...." so many things had been different, he wouldn't have turned out as he so infamously did, whereas Rommel's character is so awful from childhood on, that one wonders how he could possibly have become involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. I knew that Mussolini was more of a follower than a leader, who changed sides constantly, but not that that had also been a life-long pattern. George Patton should be seen as a "good guy," being on the Allied side, but he was just plain not a nice person. Joseph Stalin held the fewest surprises for me, probably because I'd read more about him previously.<br />
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<b><i>Ivan the Terrible</i>, Hourly History </b> More of the same, as far as most of the Hourly Histories are concerned: a few bits of new information about someone I had known something about, found it interesting, and don't now remember much.<br />
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<b><i>A Field Full of Butterflies: Memories of a Romany Childhood</i>, Rosemary Penfold </b> I bought this one in Scotland at the second-hand bookstore, as well. It was everything I like in a book: well-written memoirs, memorable characters who were a mix of good and bad, some photos of the real people, and as a bonus, about a topic that I know very little about. I'd only ever read about Romanies, or Gypsies, as side characters in other books. Sometimes "good" and sometimes "bad" and sometimes "neutral," but never as the main characters. I enjoyed also the dropping of various Romany words in the conversation, sometimes explained and sometimes needing to be understood from context (although there was also a glossary in the back), in just the right amount: enough to be interesting, but not so much as to make it stilted or frustrating to read.<br />
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<b><i>World War II D-Day, </i>Hourly History </b> Having just finished the five World War II biographies, much of this information was still fresh in my memory, especially as three of those five were key figures in the Normandy Invasion. Having a picture of the personalities of those people in involved also lead to a much deeper understanding of this event beyond the mere facts.<br />
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<b><i>George Stephenson</i>, Hourly History </b> This started out by dispelling several myths about George Stephenson, listing one thing after another that he did NOT do, to the point where I was starting to wonder why they'd bothered writing a book about him. However, they did finally end up getting to the point, and one thing he certainly had was perseverance. He wasn't, after all, the first person to do many of the things that are credited to him (such as inventing the first steam locomotive), but he WAS the person who made many of these inventions into viable components of modern society. A great idea isn't of much use if it doesn't get put into practice, and putting into practice was George Stephenson's strength.<br />
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<b><i>The Book of Dragons</i>, Edith Nesbit</b> I'm not sure when I started this children's book, but it may have been six or more months ago. I finally finished it in November. I'm not sure what even made me start reading a book by an author I'm not really crazy about, but since the book consisted of unconnected short stories (all about, surprise surprise, dragons), it didn't matter if I went months between stories. I like fantasy just fine, but even fantasy needs to follow rules. None of these stories, as I recall, did. Random things happen with no logical (even fantastically logical) reason behind them, everything has an improbable happy ending, and characters are all completely two-dimensional, if that. (I'm not sure how to make a one-dimensional character, but Edith Nesbit is.)<br />
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<b><i>An Awakened Heart</i>, Jody Hedlund </b> Unbelievable Christian romance, in which one speech makes another person change character completely, and you know in the first couple of pages who is going to marry whom. A free book that was worth what I paid, and worth less than the time spent reading it. Also the last book I finished reading in November of this year.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-70760647501127159012017-12-11T20:32:00.001+02:002017-12-11T20:32:59.726+02:00Books finished in October 2017Here it is December and I never even got around to blogging the rest of our trip after the first week, and we were gone for nine weeks altogether. Maybe I eventually will, but don't hold your breath.<br />
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All but one of the books I read in October were on my Kindle, all of the Kindle books being free. We were in the U.S until October 2nd, when we flew to Costa Rica via Guadalajara and Mexico City. We had a ten-hour layover during which we just hung out in the airport, because after our flight leaving at midnight and having virtually no sleep, we weren't up to trying to leave the airport, especially since when I looked for ideas on-line as to what to do in Guadalajara, most of the suggestions were to go someplace outside of the city. Various members of the family slept at various times throughout the day and I read a lot of the day. We were then in Costa Rica for three weeks (well, about 18 hours less than three weeks), returning to San Francisco via Mexico City. (That's another long story, but it worked out very well, and we even went into the city for the afternoon, which was pretty cool.) One night in California at my sister's house, then on to Germany, where we stayed until November...so maybe I'll mention more about that if I blog November's books...<br />
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In the meantime, here are the books I read in October this year:<br />
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<b><i>The Wisdom of Walt</i>, Jeffrey A. Barnes </b> This wasn't a very long book and had some interesting tidbits about Walt Disney, but the overtone of obsession with making money and with Disneyland was kind of off-putting.<br />
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<b><i>The Time Traveler's Wife</i>, Audrey Niffenegger</b> This was the one paper book I read in the entire month, gleaned from the bookcase of my host sister, Cristina. It was quite a fascinating idea, with a man who time traveled, but had no control over when or where. He often met up with himself in other times, but especially often met up with his wife-to-be, from when she was about six years old. There were many poignant and a few tragic moments, but not, really, a whole lot of story. That each chapter started with a date and the respective ages of the two main characters (or three, if Henry was represented twice), which really helped to keep it all straight for me. Then on the flight from Mexico City to San Francisco, I was able to watch the movie. It was surprisingly well-done (I actually approved of some of the changes they made, for various reasons, but they of course left out far, far too much), but there is no way I would have been able to follow it at all without having read the book first.<br />
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<b><i>Triple Creek Ranch, Book One, Unbroken</i>, Rebekah A. Morris</b> Umm...I had to think about this for a minute. If I remember correctly, it was a totally predictable Christian romance, not a genre I favor...<br />
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Okay, I just looked it up (and, incidentally, it's still free at amazon), and it's not actually a romance. But it is totally predictable Christian fiction, where the good guys are too good and the bad guys are too bad and there's one terrible character who becomes perfect. Still not a genre I favor.<br />
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<b><i>Thomas Jefferson</i>, Hourly History</b> Like the other Hourly Histories, able to be read in about half an hour, with a good overview of Thomas Jefforson's life, and with a few details that were new and interesting to me and which I have completely forgotten in the intervening two months.<br />
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<b><i>Amish Faith Renewed</i>, Becca Fisher</b> Well, now, that was interesting: I had to look it up, and the description did not spark any memories. Amish romance. I started looking at the reviews to see if they would say something else interesting, and I found a one-star review with the title "Reads like a summary" that I thought might be apt to copy and paste, and then noticed the name of the commenter: it was me, in August 2015. So I actually read the book in October 2017 for the SECOND time, and still don't remember it. With no concern about copyright or plagiarism, since it's what I wrote, here it is: <i><span class="a-size-base review-text" data-hook="review-body">I'm just
glad this "book" was free and that it took less than ten minutes to
read. I kept hoping that the introduction would end and something
approaching character development and a story would happen, but they
didn't.</span></i><br />
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<b><i>The Author Startup</i>, Ray Brehm</b> This was all about marketing a book for the purpose of making money. In fact, it was even about writing a book for the purpose of making money. And the author must know about that, since he's apparently written lots of books about how to write books to make money, and he links to them over and over again. He seemed rather obsessed with making money. This one was free, the others aren't. I didn't buy any of them.<br />
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<b><i>Angels Watching Over Me</i>, Michael Phillips </b> I actually enjoyed and remember this book. I think it was a little unrealistic for the white plantation owner's daughter and the black slave girl to both be so utterly clueless about the realities of the society around them, and to so easily become friends, but it was still a good story. It's set in the South of the United States just after the Civil War. Unfortunately, it ends rather abruptly, my assumption being because then the author hopes that it will make you buy the next book after getting this one free. It wasn't a bad book, but not good enough for me to spend money on the sequel.<br />
<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-47346992358692323002017-11-07T18:41:00.002+02:002017-11-07T18:41:51.535+02:00Books finished in September 2017This list looks long, but most of the "books" were free Kindle books that were quite short, some of them read in half an hour or not much more. It did, however, help that my husband was gone for a week in September (so I could read one paper book in bed, but even then I didn't manage to finish it before leaving for Germany, so had to take it with us and finish it in an airport), and that for most of the 10 days of September that we were traveling, I didn't have consistent reasonable internet access, so read more than I do when I do have internet access! Also, time in airports and on airplanes (six of them in September...) contributed to available reading time.<br />
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(The above was written at the beginning of October, as was the bare list of books/authors below. I am now, over a month later, going to attempt to give extremely short comments on each one, to just get around to publishing this...) <br />
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<b><i>Days on the Road</i>, Sarah Raymond Herndon</b> As I recall, this was a pioneer trip and an actual diary, and I enjoyed it very much, even it was free.<br />
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<b><i>The Measure of Katie Calloway,</i> Serena Miller</b> Yet another very good book, with certain predictable events (who was going to show up where and why, and who was going to get married).<br />
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<b><i>Ten Days in a Mad-House</i>, Nellie Bly</b> Non-fiction, by a woman reporter in a time when it was rare for women to have "real" jobs. She got herself committed to an insane asylum for the sake of the story, and the scary thing is, that once she was committed, she reverted to acting 100% her normal self and telling the complete truth, but without it having been arranged for someone else to get her out 10 days later, she never would have gotten out.<br />
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<b><i>Queen Victoria</i>, Hourly History </b> This was the first "Hourly History" that I read, and have read quite a few in the last couple of months. Nowhere could I find an actual author's name. Most of them take me about half an hour to read, but give an interesting overview with tidbits I either never knew or didn't remember. (Contrast this book, on the life of someone who lived for over 80 years, to the book it took me MONTHS to get through, on the life of Lady Jane Grey, who lived only 17 years!) Some of these books could do with better proofreading, but I like having this "history-lite" library on my Kindle.<br />
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<b><i>Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths,</i> Mark Shepard </b> Another very short book, but at the very least, I should now remember how to spell GandHi, as I'm pretty sure I used to, as I see regularly, put the H after the G...<br />
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<b><i>Eden Park,</i> Charlotte Bingham</b> This was the one and only paperback book (as opposed to Kindle book) that I finished in the month of September. The description on the back was one of those that makes the reader think that a particular event is the main event, when it isn't at all, but as the book was better than the back cover, that was fine with me. I like books that follow different people's lives and then show how they intersect with each other.<br />
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<b><i>Embers of Love</i>, Tracie Peterson</b> Umm....trying to remember this one, but don't. And it's one of the first ones on my Kindle carousel at the moment, because Katie is reading it. I suspect that it's a Christian romance and basically harmless. And I feel kind of the same way about the use of the word "harmless" when describing a book as Emily Starr did. (Or was it even her Aunt Elizabeth who said that? Lucy Maud Montgomery, anyway.)<br />
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<b><i>The Mayflower</i>, Hourly History</b> Again, a good overview, and some facts that I'd either never learned or long since forgotten, despite having grown up in the U.S.-history-centric U.S. school system.<br />
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<b><i>Ashley's Amish Adventures: An Outsider Living with the Amish</i>, Ashley Emma </b> This is supposed to be an actual account, and may well be, but I found it a little unbelievable. The author was researching for writing an "Amish romance," and the Amish and Mennonite people with whom I've actually spoken about Amish romances have been generally quite disdainful about them, so it surprises me that this entire community was so happy to host the author (who was homeschooled) for her purposes.<br />
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<b><i>Benny and the Bank Robber</i>, Mary C. Findley </b> This was a book that started out really slow for me, and then I couldn't put it down, even when I got extremely annoyed with a twist that should NOT have happened, and yet was predictable, too. I'd guess it's written for about ages 10-12, not a difficult read, but not too terribly preachy.<br />
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<b><i>Benjamin Franklin</i>, Hourly History </b> No comments to add to the other "Hourly History" comments, except that I may have gotten less out of this having already read so much about Benjamin Franklin.<br />
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<b><i>Andrew Jackson, </i>Hourly History</b> Unlike the previous Hourly History books I'd read, I previously knew very little about Andrew Jackson, so there was much more new information for me in this book, yet I was glad to only spend half an hour on the topic!Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-15570981517928324902017-10-20T16:49:00.004+03:002017-10-20T22:38:12.762+03:00Traveling, Part Two: California Part OneEither I hardly blog for years or a manage a bunch of posts at once. (The "books I finished" posts don't really count, I think.) And for the week we were in California, I can EITHER write a sentence or two ("We stayed with one of my sisters at the beginning and end and went camping with much of the rest of the family in the middle, and it was cool that Marie was able to join us for that, too.") or write way too much. I'm opting for the way too much. Oh well, nobody is obligated to read this.<br />
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So we arrived late Monday night (September 25th), California time, in San Francisco. My sister Erin lives in San Bruno, ten minutes from the airport, in the house where my dad grew up, and in fact, where I lived from when I was three and a half until I was nearly six. The first couple of times returning to that house without my uncle and Grandma there were really strange, and even now, I half expect to see Grandma walking out of the kitchen, asking us what we want to eat while already preparing half a dozen things and sending Uncle Rich across the street to 7-11 to buy something else. Uncle Rich died in December 2007 and Grandma in August 2008, so it's been awhile now, but we don't go that often, either. (Katie and I visited Grandma in May 2008, our whole family went in December 2009/January 2010 to celebrate my parents 40th wedding anniversary and my brother's wedding, we went again not quite a year later in November/December 2010 for my sister's wedding, and then in November 2015 for my mother's 65th birthday.)<br />
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Anyway, Erin came to meet us, taking half of the family to the house and then going back for the rest. It was well past midnight and we'd been traveling for well over 24 hours by the time we arrived, so the only thing on the agenda that night was to collapse. Jörn and I got our own room and the children distributed themselves over the living room.<br />
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Tuesday, the main thing on the agenda was to Stay Awake. Erin and I took the girls shopping for underwear (that's the one thing, after 26 years of living in Europe, that I still regularly buy in the U.S. when I can...in Europe, I can EITHER pay for it OR buy sufficient numbers), and as usual, I was way overwhelmed by the sheer quantities and varieties of EVERYTHING. Oh, and we got Elisabeth shoes, too. In Germany she informed me that her shoes were too small, and I had a look, and sure enough, they were. It would have been nice to know that before leaving Cyprus, as she probably has at least a dozen pairs of shoes. Oh well.<br />
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Then we packed a picnic and walked to the park.<br />
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When I first moved to Germany, the U.S. was in a phase of freaking out about dangerous playground equipment and they were taking out all the merry-go-rounds, swings, and fun slides. So for many years, I've thought of German playgrounds as being awesome and U.S. ones as being pretty boring. However, they've apparently come up with compromises in safety and fun, and we got to visit several pretty cool playgrounds in our short time in the U.S. Still no merry-go-rounds, but swings are back, and big climbing things. <br />
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We kept them awake as long as possible, but at some point, the battle was lost with Elisabeth and Helen... <br />
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Lukas was the only one who didn't fall asleep and didn't even doze, and he also slept through the first night and every night and was never up early. It was like he didn't have jet lag at all. (My sister-in-law told me that my brother doesn't believe in jet lag. I guess Lukas doesn't, either. I'd love to not believe in jet lag, but I'm not convinced that I can just "choose" not to...) <br />
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Lukas and Jörn made, and all of us ate, dinner, and then my parents arrived. I don't have a photo of my mom, but here's one of my dad, with the girls awake (but ready for bed) and Jörn nearly asleep.<br />
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Shortly after, Katie succumbed: <br />
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And finally, Marie arrived!<br />
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She was shocked to see how much all the girls have grown, but that does happen when it's been a full year! Marie spent December 2015-June 2016 living with my sister Erin, just for a "different experience," including taking one psychology class at the community college, and working in a pretzel store in the mall. Then after the summer in Cyprus, she returned to the U.S. last year in September to help take care of my other sister's daughter. In August she moved out, to a shared apartment in Rocklin, and is enrolled full-time at Sierra College, where my dad got his AS degree when I was a child, and where I took a few classes during high school and an over-full load between Mexico and Germany (1990-1991), but never finished. At least one of my siblings, possibly two, also took classes there.<br />
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So here we are, still not the whole family, because Jacob stayed in Cyprus. Lukas trying hard to look tall... <br />
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Without a spirit level, it's STILL not conclusive if Lukas has quite passed up Marie in height yet. I think the book slants slightly to the right, but it also appears to be angled slightly back, so...I don't know. His shoulders definitely seem higher, anyway. By Christmas, the next time we see Marie, I'm sure that Lukas will have gotten another half centimeter or so and it won't be a debatable topic anymore. He's been slow to take off growing, but has grown quite a bit in the last year, finally. <br />
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And...one last photo, of the girls coloring. They spent a LOT of time doing that, both in San Bruno and while camping, and it was such a peaceful activity that my sister even lent us some nice pencils and a mandala book, but they unfortunately haven't been as interested here in Costa Rica.<br />
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On the Wednesday my sister took Helen and me to Target again, to look for socks for me (unsuccessfully--I was annoyingly picky, because I don't need socks in general, I wanted some specific running ones like I've found at Lidl in Cyprus occasionally), and to get more underpants for Helen, since the first ones we got were too small. (So now Elisabeth has a very large supply.) I also fixed the insides of my walking shoes with duct tape, which worked very well.<br />
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And at some point, we loaded ourselves and lots of stuff into my parents' RV and my mother's car, and set off for Santa Cruz...and so the next blogpost will be about the camping trip, but yet again, I hear small people stirring, so it's time to close the computer.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-28831255460347458872017-10-19T17:18:00.000+03:002017-10-20T16:53:14.414+03:00Traveling, Part One: GermanyJörn and Lukas left Cyprus way back on September 13th, to go to an art conference in Germany. The three younger girls and I then flew to Germany (via Belgrade and Berlin to finally arrive in Düsseldorf: exactly 13 hours of travel when a direct flight would be about 4 1/2 hours, but saving lots of money) September 21st, which is when I got the camera back in my possession. And here it's already nearly an entire month later, we've been in Costa Rica for over two weeks, and I figured if I'm going to blog about our trip at all, I'd better get started!<br />
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Jörn and Lukas had stayed with friends during the conference, then Tuesday (19th) they went to the Daniells' in Angermund, Düsseldorf, where another friend also visited them, unfortunately before the rest of us arrived.<br />
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Düsseldorf is where I lived for my first three years and a bit in Germany, just down the street from Margaret and Phil Daniell. It was through the house group that met at their house that Jörn and I met each other. :-)<br />
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Thursday evening was dinner and hanging out and bed, and no photos. Their flat/apartment has only two bedrooms, but is perfectly laid out for guests and we've stayed there several times for a night or two. The three girls and Jörn and I all slept in the upstairs guest room, and Lukas slept on a mattress in the living room. Friday morning the children and Margaret and Phil played outside (there is a huge back garden) while I did a major re-packing: Jörn had sold a couple of paintings and a sculpture, so suddenly had LOTS of room in his suitcase, and we also didn't want to take everything with us to our church retreat that weekend, partly because it simply wouldn't fit in a vehicle. Once I'd finished, we all went for a walk.<br />
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This bridge is right at the entrance to the woods, maybe a five-minute walk from where I lived as a nanny. Margaret and Phil have moved now, but not very far away and live nearly as close to it as they did then. We played Pooh Sticks, which Lukas pointed out happily that we ALWAYS do.<br />
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In the photo above, see that moss-covered pipe on the bottom left? It's fairly wide and nearly flat, and I started to walk across it...and very quickly felt very dizzy and had to stand still for quite awhile before I could back slowly off of it. That was rather annoying and embarrassing, and then I realized the reason: a few days earlier, I had gotten new glasses. This is my third prescription of varifocals (progressive lenses), and the lower portion, for reading, was what had changed the most since the last prescription. So when I tried to look down at my feet, it was impossible, as they were just a big blur. Oh well.<br />
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Here's the only posed photo we took--Phil's head is just barely visible there behind/between Lukas and Jörn, but it's nice of Margaret. The only evidence there is that I was at the Daniells' was that someone must have been holding the camera.<br />
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As we continued our walk, Elisabeth got upset about something, I don't remember what, and stormed off and sat down. Lukas was very sweet with her. And look at all that GREEN!!! <br />
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Friday afternoon our friend Christian came, and we loaded all the luggage and all of us into his car and Phil's car, and drove to our church, where we stored all of the suitcases. Then the six of us and our carry-ons fit into the car with Christian, and we said goodbye to Phil and headed off to the church retreat, less than an hour away.<br />
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The retreat was in a hostel in the mountains, and it was beautiful. And for us, coming from Cyprus, a little bit chilly, as evidenced by Lukas NOT in shorts, but jeans, and Helen playing chess with her hands inside her t-shirt! <br />
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We did take more photos at the retreat, but all of them have photos of other people's children. We had a great time re-connecting with friends from when we lived in Germany as well as friends who were just acquaintances when we left but we've gotten to know better since, and meeting lots of new people.<br />
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On each of the mornings (Saturday and Sunday) I also went for a long walk, which was wonderful. It didn't occur to me to take the camera, however. I was also a little puzzled about my heels hurting the second day, and about having holes in the heels of both of my socks, which I'd only worn maybe once or twice before. When I looked in my shoes, I discovered holes on the inside almost down to the soles! The soles themselves and the entire rest of the shoe look practically new, still, so that was very strange. I've never had a shoe wear like that before.<br />
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Christian unfortunately had to leave on Saturday, but left us his car. Sunday afternoon Katie left with our friends Gary and Elisabeth, leaving five of us to take Christian's car to go pick up our luggage (which then fit in the car because there were only five of us, not seven), and then go to Neukirchen-Vluyn, where Gary and Elisabeth live. Once again, I spent a lot of time there re-packing, after doing laundry, which was a nice treat. And once again, we took no photos, but had a very nice time with them.<br />
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Monday morning at something like 6:00 we loaded ourselves and our luggage into two cars (theirs and Christian's) and drove to the airport in Düsseldorf. Our flight wasn't until 10:50, but security personnel were on strike, so we were told to get to the airport three hours before our flight. At the airport, it occurred to us that we ought to take at least ONE photo, and hey, I'm even in this one, as it was taken by Lukas. Katie and my Elisabeth don't look all that pleased about being awake, but Helen sure looks chipper!<br />
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So, Düsseldorf to London, London to Dallas, and Dallas to San Francisco: another 22 hours of traveling instead of a direct flight that would have cost three to four times as much.<br />
<a href="http://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.com/2017/10/traveling-part-two-california-part-one.html"><br /></a>
<a href="http://sheilasomewhere.blogspot.com/2017/10/traveling-part-two-california-part-one.html">To be continued..</a>.but who knows when, because I hear children stirring.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-1725449014099922462017-08-31T22:19:00.002+03:002017-08-31T22:19:29.306+03:00Books finished in August 2017When I opened my notebook (made of paper, people!) to write (with a ballpoint pen!) the titles of the last three books I finished, I was very surprised to see that I had already finished three other books this month. It sure didn't FEEL like I'd read that many, because the last two weeks were totally consumed with one book that I spent approximately 25 hours with, and didn't even really read. But I'll explain when I get there, in the meantime, here are the books I completed in August...<br />
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<b><i>Farewell to the East End, </i>Jennifer Worth </b>I'd never even heard of Jennifer Worth until my husband gave me <i>Call a Midwife </i>last Christmas, and then a friend lent me the second book, and then I found this third one in the give-away pile at the library just before the library closed for the summer! (Aside: the library opens again this Saturday! Yay!) Again, I enjoyed the writing style and the stories, in one of my favorite genres: memoirs that read like fiction.<br />
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<b><i>Gypsy</i>, Lesley Pearse</b> This was a story of the kind I very much enjoy, historical fiction about people braving the trip to the New World in the 19th century, and then even beyond, to Alaska. I can't actually remember having read anything about the Alaskan Gold Rush before, except that it happened. I really could have done without the rather explicit bedroom scenes that seemed dropped into the story just for the sake of having them, rather than to further the plot, and without them, I could have handed this book to Katie to read. Also, too many people died, which I suppose was pretty realistic, but it sometimes felt like the author was killing them off to prove a point, not because it had to happen. And I felt that one rather main character changed character rather suddenly just to make it easy for the author, but that was one of only very few moments during the book when I remembered I was reading a book, rather than living in England, traveling across North America, climbing a mountain, etc. It was awesome reading this in the summer--I was startled sometimes to look up and realize that it was hot out, because I'd thought I was shivering in the snow! Despite my comments of what I DIDN'T like, what I enjoyed stood out to me much more.<br />
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<b><i>Change of Heart</i>, Charlotte Bingham </b> Parts of this book felt totally surreal, all the more so because of how realistic most of it felt. Unusually for a novel (at least, of those I've read), and even more unusually for a novel written by a woman, the main character is a man. Or at least...the main character for the first part and the last part. The middle part (I don't have the book in front of me and can't say what fractions these parts are) is not exactly a flashback, but a backtracking to fill in the childhood of the woman to whom he is attracted. I found it frustrating how dense some of the characters seemed, not realizing what was going on, but also thought that was probably a better reflection of the complexities of real life than the books that have everybody always understanding everything immediately. And I liked the ending, although I had to read the last several pages several times to figure out what exactly had happened!<br />
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<b><i>Housewives Can Change the World</i>, Ann S. Eagle</b> I received this book from the author at the end of July and started reading it immediately. This is her story (but not her real name) from childhood until about seven years ago. The combination of title and content brought somewhat the same feelings as a book I read many years ago that was written by a homeschooling mother of ten, called <i>A Mom Just Like You</i>. In that case, although I enjoyed the book, it was a bit difficult to believe that a mother of ten, who was homeschooling all of her children and whose husband was traveling a lot AND who wrote a book, could realistically claim to be anything at all like me. I think I had three children at the time and couldn't write a page, much less a book! (On the other hand, now that I have six children and the youngest is seven years old, I also realize that time runs differently when they're all small and many things ARE easier now than it was then with only half as many...but not all things.) In this case, "Ann" had rather more challenges to overcome than I've ever had, and moved as a married adult to a foreign country, which I think is considerably more difficult than to do so as a single 20-year-old, which is what I did. She also moved to a considerably more different culture than I did. She claims that she's "just a housewife," but certainly appears to be more involved in the work than I've ever been. (Not to mention that I refuse to call myself a housewife: I am not married to my house. But I do realize that that's just a matter of semantics.) I was fascinated by the story and then misplaced the book not just in the middle of a chapter, but the middle of an emergency scene, and didn't get the book back until the day before yesterday! I didn't actually think there was any chance at all of finishing the book that day, because I had way too much other stuff to do (see the next book...), but ended up reading for nearly an hour during the girls' piano lessons, then drove Jacob somewhere that evening and had to wait for him "just for ten minutes," which turned out to be just over half an hour and exactly enough time to finish the book.<br />
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<b><i>Intercession through Creative Expression</i>, Jörn Lange</b> You may be very interested in this book written by my husband, which is available at Amazon and at CreateSpace, but please do NOT order it until at least the 5th of September or so, because the version currently available is NOT the final proofread version! The new one was uploaded in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday (29th to 30th), but could take 5 business days to actually have the changes. I wasn't entirely sure whether I should include this book, because although I read every single word of it, much of it out loud, and took approximately 25 hours over 12 days to do so (over half of that in the last three days of that time), I can't say that I took a whole lot of it in. I wasn't actually going to have anything to do with the proofreading of this book, nor did my husband want me to, because, so he claims, he wanted "British English" rather than American. But when I saw the proof copy and saw about ten errors on the first page, I more or less begged to proofread it, although I do not at all enjoy proofreading and am sure that I missed many things. And, of course, with very few exceptions, I much prefer American spelling, so it wasn't like I was even going to notice things like "realize"...until I saw "realizing" and "realising" both in the very same paragraph. The biggest issue wasn't errors so much as inconsistencies, in punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. Our friend Richard spent countless hours on the layout of the book (and also designed the awesome cover), during which he found and corrected plenty of typos himself although he wasn't even intentionally reading the text, and then countless more making all the changes I'd marked. Richard is very good at very many things, and one of them is using "search and replace" effectively. So they searched for the letter-combinations "ize" and "izing" and if the word was realize or symbolize or such, he changed it to realise or symbolise. And if it was size or seize, he of course did know better than to change it to sise or seise, although that would have been interesting. ;-) Likewise capitalized Nouns (my husband is German, and in German, ALL nouns are capitalized...) I definitely should add that the parts of the book that got through to me I found quite interesting, and not too much to disagree with theologically. It's not at all the type of book I would read normally, but I think it's an excellent book for the people to whom it will be interesting, namely, artists who seek to use their arts (painting, dancing, composing, etc.) in worship and intercession. I apologize (not apologise) in advance for typos and inconsistencies I missed.<br />
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<b><i>It's a Sunrise, Not a Sunset</i>, Ann S. Eagle </b> After finishing the proofreading of Jörn's book Tuesday night (August 29th) just before 10:30 p.m., and handing the final page to Richard while he was working on the third to last page (timing...), I most certainly did not expect to finish reading another book this month, or at least, not one that I wasn't nearly finished with anyway. However, yesterday the children wanted to go to the playground to meet with some friends who have been here for the summer and are going home on Sunday. I do not DO the playground in the summer. But it's been a little bit cooler (well, less hot) the last few days, and there is some shade there, so I finally agreed to take them, with the understanding that I was going to sit and read and was not going to play. (I do usually play when we go to the playground, just ignoring the signs that have some random comments about ages on them...) So I took this book with me and read for over two hours, and at the risk of using Christianese, it really "spoke to me." I must admit, that after 25 hours proofreading one 300-page book, I had considerably more sympathy with proofing errors in this book than I had had while reading the first one by this author, and was able to appreciate the content more. Either way, I think I could relate personally to this book more than to the first anyway, because it's about Ann in the last several years, as a mature woman with children of ages similar to my children's ages, facing changes in her life similar to ones that we may be facing soon. So when the children all wanted to meet up again in the afternoon at the beach, I said yes, as long as I could stay in the shade. (I normally only go to the beach in the early morning or late afternoon/evening: in 8 1/2 years in Cyprus, yesterday was the SECOND TIME I was at the beach during the day.) And so I got to read for another hour or so (we were there for two hours, but the time was much more interrupted, with keeping an eye on the children, and talking with them, and talking with the other children's grandmother, etc.), and then tonight after Helen and Elisabeth had gone to bed (and after I'd finished reading the last chapter of <i>Peter Pan</i> to them--now THERE'S a weird book!!), I actually finished it.<br />
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I'm fairly sure that I read some books on my Kindle this month, but didn't write them down. I have another three weeks to read books on paper, and then it will be pretty much only my Kindle for at least...well, I don't really know how long. That's another story. Which I don't know yet.<br />
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Oh yes, one paragraph in particular in <i>It's a Sunrise, Not a Sunset</i> that I felt like I could have written:<br />
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<i>"Have you ever been so hurt, disappointed, disillusioned, without hope of any reconciliation and yet not giving up on God? It's a weird feeling. To have peace with God, feel secure in His love, not blame Him for all that happened around you, yet feel absolutely hopeless with your surrounding circumstances."</i><br />
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Yep.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-46972192276371533332017-08-25T23:08:00.001+03:002017-08-25T23:08:51.507+03:00Days Four and Five of just Elisabeth and Mommy at homeOur five-day week alone is up, and we enjoyed it very much. <br /><br />Yesterday and today involved more games of Enchanted Forest, Ticket to Ride, and Hase und Igel. I might be done with those games for a little while. Also did more laundry (I'm caught up!!!!), finished cleaning and sorting the refrigerator (tomatoes from three different bags are now in ONE plastic container, onions from two bags in ONE box in the door, carrots from TWO bags as well as all of the cucumbers and one zucchini in a drawer, all the bell peppers in the other drawer, plums that I didn't know existed in one container, except for the four or five I ate...), did more proofreading, made halloumi bread (yesterday, and there is still some left today!), cleaned the bathroom (but nothing else), washed dishes (takes two minutes once a day for two of us), and continued reading <i>Little House in the Big Woods</i> to Elisabeth.<br />
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Yesterday we also went to WOW! Action Park (an indoor playground) with a friend, getting in for half price. It was nice chatting with that friend and another who was there, but it's so LOUD in there...when we left two hours later, I realized my ears were ringing. We then drove to Sue and Richard's house to help with an airport run. There were four people (their son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren) needing to go to the airport, along with their luggage for two years, and they and the luggage wouldn't all fit in the one car with the driver (or without the driver, for that matter.) Three months ago we'd helped collect them from the airport, but I'd used Jörn's new car, which has lots of space. Jörn's car is parked in the north at the moment, and the luggage wasn't going to fit in my car, so I drove their big van. I've driven it often for deliveries with Jacob, so am fairly comfortable with it, and am insured on that but not on their car anyway. Daniel (and Elisabeth) rode with me, and at the airport we got out and said goodbye to everyone. I returned the van, while Sue and Richard stayed at the airport for a bit to say goodbye. That was my first and probably only airport run in August--just squeaked by to not break my record of having been to the airport at least once every single month of every year from at least 2012 onward! (It's very possible I did that in previous years, as well, but 2012 was when I noticed it.)<br /><br />Today we also had some diversion, going to a friend's house about 10 minutes away. Elisabeth played very happily with their children, and I probably talked off the ear off my friend. Elisabeth and I have gotten along very well this week, but I've been somewhat starved of conversation with adults... We got there at about 10:00 and didn't leave until after 2:00, at which point Elisabeth and I headed for Souvlaki Express, just around the corner from home, for the promised and long-awaited treat of "eating out." I was happy that Elisabeth opted to bring it home to eat, though, as it was hot and noisy there.<br />
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At 5:00 we met Sue and Richard at the beach--from being seven of them (the four who left today and their other son were all there with them last week) and four of us (only four because three children were at youth group) last week, we were down to two of them and two of us today. I played in the water with Elisabeth for awhile, but then she went off playing on her own, as well. I think the fact that Sue and I were talking was boring to her, but she didn't whine or complain, just occupied herself otherwise. Richard ended up in conversation with an acquaintance of mine (the mother of a drama classmate of Elisabeth's, but I've interacted with her more on Facebook than in real life) we happened to meet there.<br /><br />And then at 6:30 the campers called that they were ready to be collected. Sue and Richard offered to take Elisabeth home so I could leave quickly and I thought she would jump at the chance, but instead, when I suggested that to her she came out of the water immediately and was ready to go faster than I was! She really missed Katie, and still misses Helen, who will be home tomorrow night.<br />
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So, five people under the roof tonight, and my bed to myself. (Just for the record, Elisabeth no longer sleeps Desperate-Octopus style. However, she does still do Starfish very well when she's in the bed alone, so I had to fold her up to find space for myself. She flung her leg over me one time only, which isn't bad for four nights, and when I removed it, she rolled over. And she talks in her sleep, as do all of my other children and both of their parents, but I didn't understand any specific words except for possibly "table".)Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-73435715001101728162017-08-23T22:00:00.000+03:002017-08-23T22:02:43.486+03:00Days Two and Three of just Elisabeth and Mommy homeYesterday was a nice full day. I noticed Elisabeth getting out of bed at about 7:00, but I carefully kept my eyes closed (looked at the time after she'd left the room) so she wouldn't notice I was awake, and then I fell back asleep. I didn't wake up until Elisabeth knocked on my "door" (my bedroom doesn't actually have a door, but the children are supposed to knock on the bookcase outside of the curtain, or at least say "knock, knock"...) just after 8:00. <br />
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On Monday I'd given each of the camp-goers some little juice boxes, which are a rare treat, and Elisabeth of course wanted some too, but I told her that she was having enough treats on Monday and she could have hers on Tuesday. She put it in the freezer on Monday and reminded me Enough that I'd said she could have it on Tuesday. She'd asked if she could have it after breakfast, and I said that as far as I was concerned, she could have it WITH breakfast.<br />
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So...Tuesday morning just after 8:00 she informed me that she'd gotten her frozen juice out, cut it open, eaten half of it, put half of it back in the freezer, cleaned up the mess on the table, and had a bath, because she'd also gotten juice all over herself. She hadn't washed her dishes, though, she told me, because one of the shelves for the refrigerator was balanced across the whole sink, soaking. Since she doesn't normally ever wash dishes, it hadn't occurred to me that the sink needed to be kept free for her...<br />
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She wanted to play a game with me, but agreed that I could get up, have a shower, get dressed, and even have breakfast. As it turned out that she hadn't had breakfast yet either, just the juice, she also had breakfast.<br />
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Then we played Hase und Igel again, which I won by only three moves. She likes to take the chance option on that game more than I do, which means that my carefully planned strategy sometimes gets wasted!<br />
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A little after 10:00 we left for Sue's house, where we go every Tuesday morning. Elisabeth and Sue's three-year-old grandson played quite happily together, and it wasn't difficult to accept the invitation to stay for lunch. Elisabeth should have had a piano lesson at noon, but had adamantly refused to go without her sisters.<br />
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We left there at 2:30 and stopped by the house briefly to collect our swimsuits and towels, and then drove half an hour to Mazotos where other friends live. Actually, last week was the first time we'd ever socialized with them, the main person in the family with whom we'd had contact being their two-year-old daughter, Mi. I'd babysat her two afternoons a week for the last year, and two or three times her four-year-old brother, Ma, as well, but had never spent time with their mother except when we first met, and for drop-off and pick-up, and had only met their father, very briefly, twice. <br />
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When we arrived last week, Mi had first looked shocked and clung to her mother, but once my children had jumped in the pool and I'd sat down and been handed a frappe, it was easy to see the wheels turning in her head. Normally, my appearance meant the disappearance of her mother, which she was fine with at OUR house, but certainly couldn't allow to happen at HER house. "But...the children are all in the pool, and She-ah is sitting down, so maybe Mama won't disappear?" After she'd looked back and forth between the others in the pool and me on the sofa several times, she then climbed up on my lap and requested some of the games we play, and she stayed with me most of the time we were there. :-) Ma also had plenty of fun with us, and I got a message from his mother the next day that he wanted to know when we were coming again. Also, when we were leaving last week, he was very disappointed that we hadn't played trains with him, so I'd promised him we'd play trains with him when we came again.<br />
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When Elisabeth and I arrived yesterday, there was no hesitation at all on Mi's part, and she cuddled with me almost the whole time. I read her one book in German (actually, a book of songs, which I sang to her...) about 15 or 20 times, and I also got to read her a book in English, as well as one in Hungarian. No, I do not speak ANY Hungarian. Mi giggled all through it. We also played with trains, and Mi and I played with a balancing game. The children were in and out of the pool, and then after dinner (Hungarian pancakes with a meat filling that were scrumptious) the three adults joined them. We didn't end up leaving their house until 10:00!<br />
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Elisabeth slept well last night and I woke up before she did this morning. :-)<br />
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Today, in contrast, we never left the house. I lost count of how many times we played Hase und Igel, but only played Ticket to Ride once (Elisabeth wasn't very happy that I won 177 to 100 and claimed I cheated) and Enchanted Forest once (Elisabeth won that one, of course). I also finished proofreading the third chapter of Jörn's book and Elisabeth had a very long bath, and during dinner I cleaned yet another shelf of the refrigerator. (The last shelf is in the drying rack now, so tomorrow I'll do the drawers. It's an exciting life. I also hung up one load of laundry and put another on to wash.) After dinner we were in my room looking at some things on the computer when we heard someone calling to us. It was three GROWN-UPS who were here to pick up something. It was nice to see them and get to say hi (and bye--two of them are leaving Cyprus tomorrow), but they didn't have time to come in. They probably sensed my desperation, too, which would increase their need to hurry off...<br />
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Finally, I read the first chapter of "Little House in the Big Woods" to Elisabeth (she read part of it to me, but she wants me to read it to her, because I've read it to all the other children, so she thinks she should have a turn, too), and she officially went to bed. Since she claims she doesn't go to sleep for hours anyway (not true, of course, but it's true that she doesn't go to sleep right away), I told her that she obviously wouldn't mind me doing my Greek lesson, and she couldn't really protest. LOL<br />
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I did get to talk to another grown-up today, when my sister Erin phoned. Elisabeth was very miffed and not getting to talk with her, and after I got off of the phone, she said, "It's not FAIR! Not even letting me talk to my AUNT! She's my AUNT, which means she's IMPORTANT." But she did indeed stay quiet through the phone call, which Erin had asked her to do, promising that she'll speak with her the next time she phones in the morning.<br />
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But I'm going just a little bit stir-crazy. The only concrete plans we have tomorrow are driving someone to the airport, and Friday Elisabeth has been invited somewhere, but I haven't, and don't know what I'll do during that time. I can only proof-read for a maximum of an hour or so at a time, sometimes not that long. We're probably going to the beach Friday afternoon with friends (two GROWN-UPS!! Yay!!), and the three campers get back Friday evening. I imagine that on Saturday I'll be missing the quiet week we've had. Elisabeth is a great companion--never whiny or bored, spending a lot of time with me and talking, but also wanting to go off and do her own thing as well--but I've simply never had so much quiet time in my whole life. It's still WEIRD.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-63751159666617961432017-08-21T22:40:00.000+03:002017-08-21T22:40:10.700+03:00Day One of just Elisabeth and Mommy at homeThe first time I remember my husband being away for several days (it was a whole week, in fact) since Marie was born was in July 1999. Marie was 22 months old and Jacob was 6 weeks old. I was quite excited to manage a shower on about the third day. AND the three of us traveled on our own from Germany to England, where we met up with Jörn and continued on to Costa Rica and the U.S.<br /><br />The next time I remember was in March 2003. Jörn went to Uganda for ten days, and I had the most exhausting ten days of my entire life. Marie was 5 1/2, Jacob was nearly four, and Lukas was nine months old. They all got sick. I had three children throwing up on their beds, my bed, and me, all one night. <br /><br />If Jörn did any other traveling before we moved to Cyprus, I've blocked it out of my memory.<br /><br />However, since we moved to Cyprus in January 2009, he's traveled quite a lot, and often takes a child or two with him. This week he's in Turkey, and he took Helen, who will be nine in September. If I'm counting correctly, this is his sixth trip this year, the previous ones being to England in January, Israel in February (with Katie), Germany at some point, England again at some point, and Greece (with Jacob). In September he'll be going to Germany again, with Lukas, a week before the three younger girls and I join him, and then after our time together in Germany, the U.S., and Costa Rica, he will probably be going to yet another event in England.<br /><br />However, this is the first time EVER I have been home alone with just ONE child for an extended period of time. Jörn and Helen left yesterday after lunch, and this morning Jacob, Lukas, and Katie (first time for Katie) headed up to Youth Camp in the mountains and won't be back until Friday.<br /><br />WEEEIIIIRRRDDD!!!!<br /><br />Elisabeth was not very pleased when she found out that she was going to be home alone for nearly five whole days with just boring old Mommy. However, she was appeased somewhat when I mentioned that we might go out for souvlaki at some point, and she's been busily planning the week. (Including suggesting that we sleep in one room, so that we can use just one air conditioning unit and save money, so we can buy ice cream after the souvlaki. I said that that was very forward-thinking of her, and she said, "No, I'm just planning ahead.")<br />
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We even got a practice run yesterday afternoon, as the three youth headed for a pizza party at 4:00 in the afternoon, and Jörn and Helen had left at 1:00. Elisabeth and I played Ticket to Ride (I won 129 to 128--she's become an extremely competent player, but doesn't take new destination cards until she's finished what she has in her hand. I often do, which often works out well...but not always. My record lowest score was negative 3.) Afterwards she informed me grandly that she was going to go listen to a tape in her room and I was free to do whatever I wanted. She also got herself dinner (we just have bread 'n' stuff for our evening meal) and went for a walk. But she was very relieved that Katie was home for bedtime--as was I, because I then went out for the evening myself, and played Settlers of Catan with five friends!<br /><br />This morning I got to go swimming as usual, because the older children were all still home, but not long after I got home from swimming, children started waking up.<br /><br />Very hyper children. Okay, Jacob wasn't "hyper," but he WAS awake at an earlier time than usual (he got collected to go shopping for camp with another one of the leaders), and Lukas is in a mode of EITHER acting like an overgrown two-year-old OR a too-cool-to-look-interested-in-anything teenager, and happily, he was more in the second mode most of the morning. But Katie was very excited to be going to camp for the first time, and Elisabeth was even more excited to finally start on all our "plans." Before that, though, Katie had to make cookies to take to camp, and discovered that we were out of eggs. So I sent her to the bakery to buy eggs, as well as bread for breakfast and for their packed lunches.<br />
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After hours and hours and hours between 8:00 and 10:15, it was finally time to take the teens and almost-teen to the drop-off for camp. While waiting in what passes for a traffic jam in Cyprus (Cyprus has plenty of traffic issues, but after having lived in the most densely populated part of Germany for 17 years, I cannot truly label anything I've experienced in Cyprus a "traffic jam"), just around the corner from where we were going, Jacob remembered he'd forgotten the ice cream in the freezer at home. He needed it for a game he will be leading. I don't think I want to know. I said I'd drop them off first and go back home for it. As we pulled up, Katie remembered she'd forgotten her phone. And as I started to pull away, Jacob remembered he'd offered to lend someone a sleeping bag. So I drove the five minutes home muttering "ice cream, phone, sleeping bag" the whole way, and it worked. I returned with all of those items AND Jacob's hat AND someone else's bicycle helmet that had been left at our house. <br /><br />When Marie went to camp the first time, eight years ago, I took lots of photos and was a little bit emotional. I stayed until the bus drove away, waving after the bus just in case she was looking out the window. The last few years, I haven't even waited every time for them to get on the bus, but it being Katie's first time this year, I did. And I couldn't take photos, because our camera is in Turkey. (I did borrow Katie's phone to take a photo of her, at least, though.) Elisabeth and I left before the bus did, but Katie's phone was on the bus anyway, so I couldn't have taken more photos.<br />
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My first stop of the morning with just one child was at my friend Dagmar's house, as I'd left my phone in her car after swimming this morning. We only stayed for about a minute, and then drove to what we call "the grain store," although I'm not sure we've ever bought any grain there. All I wanted was dried coconut (for making coconut milk), but Elisabeth also talked me into a package of sweetened dried coconut as a treat. Then we finally went to Coffee Island, which is actually just a short walk from our house. We got milkshakes--as all of the youth and all of their parents must know, as Elisabeth made sure to tell all of them that that's what we were going to do. Elisabeth had had a milkshake only once before, about two years ago, I think, and it was also as a consolation for being a temporary only child: Katie and Helen were at a birthday party and the older children were at a youth event. So this was exciting, and came only second to souvlaki in her request for treats this week. She didn't want to stay at Coffee Island to drink them, though, so we came home. (They didn't have air conditioning anyway, and they did have smoke, so home was more pleasant.)<br /><br />Once we were home, I started doing the usual stuff of laundry and dishes and such, with the idea that I was hanging out with Elisabeth in the kitchen, but when Elisabeth started listening to a cassette tape, I headed for my bedroom with my milkshake and told her to let me know when she wanted to do anything with me. I only meant to go on the computer for a little while and then do some proofreading, but...<br /><br />Anyway, after maybe 20 minutes or so, Elisabeth came in and asked if she could go on the computer. So I let her do that and I put about an hour and a half into proofreading 12 pages of Jörn's book...at this rate, I will NOT be finishing all 300ish pages in time, but I'll see how far I get. (I've done about 70 so far, and these 12 did go more slowly than the previous ones, without being able to clarify things with Jörn, so maybe we'll manage it when he's back, if we don't do anything else until it's done...) (And lest reading this blog has you worried about me proofreading, I'm taking out more commas than I'm putting in, even though he CLAIMED he wanted British English/punctuation rather than American. But I have to ignore sentences that start with conjunctions, because there are just so many of them. I'm also leaving the sentences ending in prepositions alone, because there are too many to deal with.) (And I'm typing here because I'm too tired to proofread, so this is not a reflection of my proofreading...skills...anyway.)<br /><br />Eventually we decided we should have lunch, so I started my usual process when Jörn's away of cleaning out the refrigerator. So far, I've actually only thrown away one apple. I also consolidated five separate nearly empty plastic containers of cut vegetables into one container, gathered halloumi from three different places in the fridge to one place, stacked the five containers of cream cheese in one stack with the started one on top, and washed the top shelf. Oh, and I made coconut milk and put almonds to soak so that I can make almond milk tomorrow. (I'm not making cashew milk at the moment, because cashew prices have skyrocketed.) We ate leftover casserole from yesterday and it occurred to me that I'm not at all sure how to cook for two people anyway, never having done so. In any case, there are enough leftovers in the fridge for me to not need to cook all week anyway, but there are also two packages of raw chicken. I guess I should check the date on them, because they probably need to be dealt with before Saturday, when the big eaters are home. Yuck.<br />
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At some point after lunch, Elisabeth and I played Ticket to Ride again (I got really, really lucky with my many overlapping destination cards, and won 145 to 99, but Elisabeth took it very well), and two games of Hase und Igel. (Hare and Hedgehog is the German version of Aesop's The Tortoise and the Hare, presumably because Germany are more familiar with hedgehogs than tortoises. This game is based on the idea that the players have to choose between slow and steady or lots of sporadic jumps. Either strategy can win.) Although it says ages 12 and up, Elisabeth grasped the strategy of it perfectly when I taught it to her a few weeks ago, and we had two excellent games, in which I just barely beat her.<br />
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After that she decided she wanted to go listen to a cassette on her own again, and I did a tiny bit more proofreading and of course turned on the computer. At least I thought to do my Greek lesson at that point, in case Elisabeth really did end up sleeping in my room and wouldn't go to sleep listening to Greek!<br /><br />During dinner, which for me was a slice of bread with cream cheese and bell peppers and took me about five minutes to eat because I put effort into eating slowly, and for Elisabeth was at least half an hour eating pretty much the same thing (in content, but multiplied in quantity), I finished the dishes and washed countertops and other miscellaneous things, while Elisabeth talked and talked and talked. (Maybe that was partly why it took her so long?) And afterwards she chose a book for us to take turns reading, which reminds me, I need to find some white-out, because those were most definitely sea lions, not seals, on one page!!<br />
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And now she's asleep in my bed, where she convinced me to let her sleep. Of all six children, she's the only one who virtually never climbed into bed with us again after she moved out of our bed. In fact, once I wanted her to sleep with me, because Jörn was traveling and she was sick, and I didn't want to have to get up in the night to check on her. She wasn't even three yet, but she absolutely refused, quite insistent that she sleep in her own bed. This is the first time I can remember in 4 1/2 years that she's slept in my bed, and here's to hoping that she no longer sleeps desperate-octopus style, because it's way too warm for that, even with the air conditioning on...<br />
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<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-71756567774687211062017-08-01T23:22:00.000+03:002017-08-01T23:39:05.746+03:00Books finished in July 2017It's the first of August and I'm already blogging the books finished in July!! There IS such a thing as catching up!!!<br />
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<b><i>Fools' Gold,</i> Philippa Gregory</b> This is the third book in "The Order of Darkness" series, and although I continued to be irritated by the denseness of some characters, I was also getting to like quite a few of the characters by this point, and was very disappointed when I went on-line to discover that Philippa Gregory has not yet published more books in the series, although she said the fourth one would be out in 2016.<br />
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<b><i>The Other Boleyn Girl</i>, Philippa Gregory </b> Having read the three supposedly "children's" books by this author, I finally picked up one of Marie's books. Historical fiction is my favorite genre, and I know I was fascinated by Anne Boleyn at some point as a teenager, but I don't really remember why. Especially as everything I've read since indicates that she wasn't a particularly nice person at all! This is mostly about Anne Boleyn's sister, Mary, and there are many more details about her relationship with Henry VIII (and many other women's relationships with him...) than I was happy about. Also, enormous liberties were taken with the historic facts, more so than I feel justified in historic fiction. In a way, the story made out of the (not all that many) known facts reminded me of a movie made from a book. It was more that the facts inspired a novel than that Philippa Gregory actually set out to write a plausible "it could have been this way" story.<br />
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<b><i>The Truth About Melody Browne</i>, Lisa Jewell</b> It was quite fascinating to find out about the main character's childhood at the same time she, as an adult, did. She'd lost virtually all of her memories from before the age of nine, and is completely surprised by them as they start coming back. The more she remembers, the more she goes searching for more memories and explanations.<br />
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<b><i>Blue-Eyed Son, The Story of an Adoption</i>, Nicky Campbell </b> I think this may have been a book that Jörn gave me long ago. In any case, it had been on my shelf for a long time, but I'd never read it. This is yet another British celebrity of whom I'd never heard (like Alan Titchmarsh), with a writing style I like very much, writing memoir-type non-fiction. It's mostly a very uplifting book about his search for his birth parents. There's nothing tremendously traumatic, but certainly issues that give him serious pause for thought.<br />
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<b><i>The Potluck Club</i>, Linda Evans Shepherd & Eva Marie Everson</b> Finally, a free book for the Kindle which I enjoyed very much! I got a little bit confused at first, with each chapter being from the viewpoint of a different person, but as I got to know the characters, I was able to know immediately who was talking without the name even being said. I never quite understood the point of the existence of the reporter guy, though, but at least his chapters (between almost all of the other chapters, which alternated between half a dozen or so women, all in first person) were very short.<br />
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<b><i>Ella Minnow Pea</i>, Mark Dunn </b>None of the other books I've included this year (except some of the books I've read to children, and those I only listed in January) were books I'd read before. We went up to Rocky Point (a private campground in the Troodos Mountains--this was our seventh year in a row to go!) last week, for five days, and I READ. I'd read a tiny bit of <i>The Potluck Club </i>before we went up, but I finished that by reading it at night after the others were asleep and I couldn't use a regular light. (I love my Kindle Fire for reading at night!) I do read at home most evenings, too, but less, because I first spend time on the computer (such as right now...it's 10:54 p.m. at this moment...) And I read this book, as well, one that I read when we went last year, and which I was pleased to see was still on the shelf in the lodge. Although I haven't included any other books I've re-read, I just had to include this one, partly because I enjoyed it very much, and partly because it almost didn't feel like reading the same book as a year ago. Last year, it was just amusing. This year, I saw so much deeper meaning in it, about how easy it is to get stuck having to go along with something that you totally disagree with, how easily that starts and how nearly impossible it is to escape. Basically, the entire book consists of letters written by Ella Minnow Pea, her cousin, her parents, and a few other people. They live on the island of Nollup, a utopian (quickly becoming dystopian, of course) society off the coast of North or South Carolina. (I don't remember which, but it's not important.) Their country is named after the person who came up with the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs," which includes all 26 letters of the English alphabet, and they of course have a monument to him, with the sentence on it, in tiles. And then the tile with the Z falls off. The council decides that this is a sign from Nollup that they should no longer use the letter Z...and the story goes on from there with fewer and fewer letters available for use, and almost nobody left on the island. The people who really feel it is absurd and have enough guts to put actions to their beliefs all emigrate or are exiled, leaving people who increasingly realize that they're in trouble but feel helpless to do anything. Which reminds me of a LOT of situations throughout history, and at this moment particularly, of the situation for home educating families in countries where home education is not allowed...<br />
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<b><i>A Short History of Nearly Everything,</i> Bill Bryson</b> I borrowed this the day before we left, started it in the mountains on Monday, and by Friday had read about 450 pages (as well as the other two books, and playing a lot of games with my family, and taking naps, and going for short walks (no hikes this year, not one!!), and hanging out with people, etc. The last 125 pages took me Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning before church, mostly in hurried moments of a few pages at a time. I very much enjoy Bill Bryson's writing style, the first book of his I read being <i>Mother Tongue:English and How It Got That Way</i>. Even in that first book, though, I knew that I didn't agree with everything he says, but that doesn't bother me. (I don't even agree with everything <b>I</b> say...) Overall, the book was a fascinating history of HOW people have researched and come to conclusions about many aspects of science. I did find it amusing, though, just how many times a chapter basically went, "First they thought this because of that. Then they realized they were wrong and thought that instead because of the other thing. Then it became clear that that wasn't right either, so they..." etc. over and over again, until the final sentence of, "But now we know this to be the fact." Really? After just spending a whole chapter explaining how many people sincerely believed something to be true, and then it was disproved?<br />
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I got in trouble three times that I remember in second grade. (Not counting all the times I got in trouble for reading. That was just constant, all through school.) One of the times was because I talked back to my mother in the hearing of my teacher, and my teacher gave me an extra page of math to do. Totally logical. Yep. Once was because we were given brown, orange, and yellow construction paper to make an owl, and the eyes were supposed to be yellow and the beak and feet were supposed to be orange, but I insisted on doing them the other way around. I was Wrong. That was Bad. (However, I got an A on the poem I wrote about it for a college English class.) And the other time was because when the teacher said that brontosaurus was the largest land creature that had ever lived, I asked how they could know that there wasn't anything bigger that just hadn't been found yet? I got told off for talking back. A couple of years later, we learned about several bigger dinosaurs. And MANY years later, I learned that "brontosaurus" didn't ever actually exist, because the specimen that was labeled as such was actually the body of one (already known) creature, with the head of another (already known) creature. Maybe. And much more recently, I researched some of the dates of discoveries, and learned not only that the so-called brontosaurus had been disproved a couple of years before I was in second grade, bigger dinosaurs had been discovered more than 70 years before I was in second grade!!. And even more recently (2015--I had to google to check on that, though), brontosaurus has been reinstated as having existed. They now "know." As they "knew" before. Basically, my take on it is that I wasn't there and I don't know, and that's cool.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-33012363965721813982017-08-01T21:43:00.001+03:002017-08-01T23:43:14.024+03:00Books finished in June 2017June looks rather better than May as far as books finished, but at least two of them were started before June (one of them many months before), and one was very short.<br />
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<b><i>The Very Thought of You</i>, Rosie Alison </b>I've read SO many books set during World War II, and a majority of them set mainly in England, and this is another one. It's also far from the first one I've read about children sent to the country to avoid the bombing in London. This one still stands out for many reasons, though. For one thing, it keeps switching points of view, so it's hard to say that the eight-year-old girl who first seems to be the main character IS the main character, but although most of the other characters are adults, and the book is intended for adults, the child's voice is very real and realistic, a child without being childish. This isn't a book about everything ending up wonderful, though. I had a premonition that certain people would die, who did, but other deaths took me totally by surprise. I think the thing that bothered me the most was the completely omniscient viewpoint. I don't mind when the reader knows what a particular character is thinking when other characters don't know, and when the author switches back and forth between characters (and these were not at all confusing, which some books are), but I think I generally feel that that's acceptable because that character COULD have written it down or told someone later...but it bugs me when there are things that nobody could possibly have known, such as a person's last thoughts before they died.<br />
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<b><i>Changeling</i>, Philippa Gregory</b> Marie left a pile of Philippa Gregory books here, and a friend was here when Katie picked one up and asked if she could read it. I didn't know the book, but our friend Dena happened to be here at that moment and suggested that it might not be appropriate, but said she had some other books by that author, which were written for children. This is the first of the three books Dena gave Katie, and Katie talked me into reading it. I wouldn't have said it was "for children," so much, as I'd say Katie (just turned 12 last week) would be more or less the minimum age for this book...except then later I read one of Marie's books that is targeted at adults, and all of a sudden, <i>Changeling</i> (and the sequels) seemed totally innocent... Anyway, this book is the first of "The Order of Darkness" series, set in the 15th century in Europe (at least, the first three books are, and no more have been published as of yet). While it (and the others) CAN be read independently, there's definitely a story thread going through all of them that make them better to read one after another, and some plot points that only make sense when taking them together.<br />
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<b><i>The Wings of a Falcon</i>, Cynthia Voigt </b>I have maybe a dozen or so of Cynthia Voigt's books, most of them from when I was a teenager. Homecoming is probably her most well-known one, contemporary and totally realistic fiction, along with its several sequels or spin-offs. <i>Jackaroo</i> was always my favorite of her books, though, set in an undetermined place or time, but giving the impression of being Medieval times in Europe, and never entirely clear about whether there was an element of fantasy or not. This book I picked up from the give-aways at the library, very excited to see a Cynthia Voigt book I didn't have (and the price was right!), then even more so when I noticed it said that it was a "companion" (not a sequel, but somehow related) to <i>Jackaroo</i>. I don't remember when I started this...probably last year. I found this very hard to get into, starting with a Lord-of-the-Flies situation, really (and THAT's a book I HATED...), and it mostly stayed on the shelf next to my bed. Sometimes I would pick it up and read a page or two, usually having to backtrack to figure out what on earth (or wherever this is set...) was going on and who the people were. (It didn't help any that one of the main characters didn't even have a name for quite awhile...) But at some point in June, I started to get into the book and I probably read 90% of it over two or three days. The connection to <i>Jackaroo </i>is extremely loose (I think the name of the possibly mythical character of Jackaroo is mentioned once, and that's it), but I take it that it's the same country, more clearly a made-up country in this book. I did enjoy the book...mostly. One person died who most certainly should NOT have died, but then, not a single one of Cynthia Voigt's books go for unequivocal happy endings, although possibly <i>Jackaroo</i> comes the closest. (Maybe that's why that's one of my favorite books. I like neatly tied up and basically happy endings. Real life doesn't have many of those, and I read to have something DIFFERENT from real life...)<br />
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<b><i>Stormbringers</i>, Philippa Gregory</b> This is the second "Order of Darkness" book, and the "Order" gets "darker". I had many moments of wanting to tell off dense characters. But it was compelling enough to finish...<br />
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<b><i>At Home in the World</i>, Tsh Oxenreider</b> This one is proof that my husband reads my blog! I'm pretty sure I never mentioned the book to him, but I did mention it in a blogpost, and all of a sudden, he presented me with this book. :-) Tsh's family (and no, her name is not a pseudonym nor is that a typo...her parents had decided that her name didn't need vowels) traveled around the world for one year, and this is a chronicle of that trip, with quite a lot more than just "we went there and did that." I enjoyed it very much.<br />
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<b><i>A Miracle in the Making</i>, Patricia Batoba Jones</b> Well, once again...there's a reason that some books are only available free for Kindle. My main complaint about this book was that it would have seriously benefited from some decent proofreading. From ANY proofreading. Anyone can make typos, anyone can write run-on sentences, anyone can use non-standard grammar...but if one is going to get a book published, I think it's reasonable to at least make an attempt at having it proofread. This was about the author having a micro-preemie who (spoiler alert) survived, and that's wonderful. And her own spiritual journey during that time. Cool. Completely the kind of book I like, and with a happy ending. But exhausting to read, because there wasn't a page in it without multiple typos and weird grammar. And sentences starting with conjunctions. Fragments, too. It reads like a collection of blogposts. Maybe it was.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-6485164208602271942017-08-01T20:54:00.000+03:002017-08-01T23:44:00.767+03:00Books finished in May 2017So now that it's August 1st, maybe I'll blog the books I read (or at least finished) in May, June, AND July??<br />
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Starting with May, anyway...<br />
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Ah...and now that I've gotten my list out, this is impressively short.<br />
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<b><i>the totally and completely <span style="font-size: x-large;">perfect</span> even when you feel like the worst <span style="font-size: x-large;">mom</span> ever</i>, Michelle Wilson </b>Yes, that's how the title was written. Very irritating. And the book was too. I shouldn't even count it. I don't know how long it was. It was another free book for the Kindle that was worth what I paid...<br />
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<b><i>Running Wild</i>, Victoria Clayton</b> This book on the other hand, was awesome. Even though there are similarities (of course) in style and plot, Victoria Clayton's books don't seem "same-y" to me. Yes, there was one rather major plot point that I think was meant to startle people but I guessed pretty much immediately, but that didn't spoil it. And there were a LOT of characters that really beggared belief (one of which I also guessed very nearly immediately was the person I thought he was, even though the main character didn't have a clue), but it still managed to feel realistic.<br />
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And...that was it. I did start or continue other books which got finished later (or haven't been finished yet), but May was rather consumed with drama rehearsals. Mondays I helped in the class for three- and four-year-olds (okay, no rehearsal, just an hour of FUN); Tuesdays when I could I helped in Helen's class (mostly ages 8-9, I think), rehearsing <i>The Giant's Giant Pizza</i> (Helen made an awesome queen), although I usually could only help for part or not at all because I was babysitting a little girl; Wednesdays I helped in Elisabeth's class (ages 6-8, although Elisabeth was the only one who was six, and she turned seven the day before the exam performance), rehearsing <i>Daffodil Scissors</i>; Thursdays I had adorable little girl again as well as going to Midi-Club with Helen and Elisabeth, where I sometimes helped (and Katie and Lukas had their rehearsal for <i>Shut Up</i>, followed by Jacob's for <i>Nuts</i>, but I wasn't involved in either of those at all); Fridays I only had to show up ten minutes before the end of Elisabeth's other drama class (for ages 5-7) to watch their weekly performance; Saturdays there were a few rehearsals; and Sundays there were rehearsals with Helen and with Elisabeth and sometimes for Katie and Lukas. Then the performances were on two Sundays in May, plus the exam performances (of all four plays) in June.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-34838805845981851612017-07-24T00:02:00.002+03:002017-07-24T07:40:56.491+03:00Books finished in April 2017July is nearing its end, so why not finally blog the books I read (or finished) in April?<br />
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<b><i>Folly</i>, Alan Titchmarsh </b> Yet another book by this author (also given to me for my birthday by Sue), I enjoyed it very much, definitely my favorite of his books that I've read so far. Most of the chapters alternate between the years 2007 and 1949 and it was fascinating putting together some pieces, suspecting some things before the characters did, but mostly having "aha!" moments about the same time as they did.<br />
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<b><i>Finding You</i>, Giselle Green</b> This is the sequel to <i>Little Miracles</i>, which I read sometime last year. I was EXTREMELY disappointed with the ending of <i>Little Miracles</i>, which ended without solving the mystery of nearly the entire book. Sue admitted that she knew the answer to the one burning question, and I begged her to tell me, which she finally did. I don't remember if she found it out by reading this book, or by looking it up on-line. Either way, despite having a wonderful writing style, I highly disapproved of Giselle Green's ending! I like tied-up ends, or at least, the hope of them happening. This book answers that one burning question in one fell swoop, and poses a whole lot more. While leaving the ending open as to what might happen next, it was still a satisfying ending. In particular, very early in the book I thought, "Hmm...it's interesting that the trauma of <i>this</i> situation would mimic <i>that</i> particular diagnosis." It turned out that it wasn't the case at all...<i>that</i> particular diagnosis was actually correct.<br />
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<b><i>Crown of Blood, The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey</i>, Nicola Tallis</b> This book rather dominated April. The first two books had both been started in March, and then Jörn gave me this one as a late birthday present right at the beginning of April. I like history in general. I love historical fiction. I very much like biographies that READ like historical fiction. This didn't. This was loooooooong. And yet...compelling. Just as I was deciding I was giving up on it (like, 135 times or so...), there would suddenly be a new, intriguing fact or link or something, and I kept reading. For at least a few weeks after finally finishing it, I could have told you just about anything you might have wanted to know (or not) about Lady Jane Grey and her nine (or 13, depending on how you count) as Queen of England, and why so many paintings are inaccurate, and what kind of things probably happened and probably didn't. I think I've probably forgotten most of it now.<br />
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<b><i>The Narrative of Sojourner Truth</i>, Sojourner Truth </b> This was a free book for the Kindle, and although I'd heard of Sojourner Truth, I didn't really know anything about her. She was born a slave and escaped to freedom in 1826, only half a year before all slavery was ended in New York anyway. She never learned to read (her books were dictated) and she never stopped fighting for abolition, and after the legal end of slavery, for equal rights for former slaves, for women, and for anybody and everybody who was oppressed. This book was published in 1850, well before slavery was finally abolished completely in the United States. Quite fascinating.Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-89060160569575501382017-07-03T22:31:00.000+03:002017-07-03T22:34:40.252+03:00Books finished in March 2017Since I wrote them down (at least some of them...), I figure I may as well go ahead and list the books I finished reading in March this year. I'm curious how many of them I'll even remember!<br />
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<b><i>Dance With Me</i>, Victoria Clayton</b> I continue to enjoy Victoria Clayton's style, although by the third or fourth book of hers I read, I knew certain things about the plot for the whole book by the end of the first page. Still, I don't mind predictable when it's well written (which this is) and has lots of surprises despite the overall predictability, and just the right number of loose ends are tied up.<br />
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<b><i>Rosie</i>, Alan Titchmarsh</b> I discovered Alan Titchmarsh at the library a year or so ago, never having heard of him (he's apparently well-known in the U.K. as a TV gardener...), and really enjoyed the couple of books I read then. My friend Sue, who is better at remembering what interests me than I am, gave me two Alan Titchmarsh books for my birthday in March! It's a little debatable who the main character of this book is. Rosie is definitely central, but it's really her grandson Nick who is the one changing and growing throughout the story, and most of it (if I remember correctly) is told from his point of view. I haven't particularly enjoyed very many novels written by men, but this is a wonderful exception.<br />
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<b><i>The Midwife's Tale</i>, Delia Parr</b> Every week I get several free books for my Kindle, and this was one of them. It was...okay. It was one of those that reminded me that sometimes things that are free are worth about what was paid for them. There were quite a few anachronisms that irritated me, but the story was interesting enough to keep going. I disagreed with one plot twist. Not so much that it happened (that's up to the author, and it DID surprise me...), but because it wasn't, in my opinion, at all foreshadowed, and depended on yet another anachronism and so felt totally fake...<br />
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<b><i>Beautiful Child</i>, Torey Hayden</b> I thought I'd read all of Torey Hayden's books (and I think I have most of them), but came across this in the give-aways at the library and it didn't look familiar. I can't ever read more than one Torey Hayden book in a row, as they can be too depressing. The author has received a certain amount of criticism for allegedly implying that she is perfect, "look at all the children she has saved." I don't think she comes across that way at all. She's honest about her failures, signs she's missed, etc., but yes, obviously she writes about cases where she was successful in her job with children with some pretty extreme special needs. I find HER encouraging, while the situations of some of the children make me very sad.<br />
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<b><i>Good Omens, </i>Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett</b> Despite the best efforts of several people, I haven't been able to get into Terry Pratchett, really. But this book was lying around (sort of...it's Marie's, and I was moving some of her stuff from one place to another and saw this and it appealed...) and I started reading it, and actually finished it. Neil Gaiman is apparently also famous, but I'd never heard of him. Surreal and very funny and thought-provoking, too.<br />
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<b><i>Parker Twins Bundle: Cave of the Inca Re, Jungle Hideout, Captured in Colombia, Mystery at Death Canyon, Secret of the Dragon mark, Race for the Secret Code</i> Jeanette Windle</b> I think I started this last November or so. I got it (them?) free for the Kindle, and it's pretty much another case of getting what I paid for. I think the target age group is around 10-12 and they're certainly very easy reading, but I have nothing against well-written children's books. These aren't, particularly. There's a pair of twins who get to travel to South America with their uncle. In the first book they're in Peru and stumble across smugglers. Spoiler: the twins don't get murdered. (That's clear anyway, because there are five more books.) The smugglers also get caught. This is because the twins pray. In the second book, they're in...Bolivia, I think and they stumble across...hmm...some other lawbreakers. The lawbreakers get caught. The twins don't get murdered. This is because they pray. In the third book they stumble across drug smugglers. The smugglers get caught. The twins don't get murdered. This is because they pray. (Sorry, I know I'm giving away the whole and complete plot of each and every book here...) In the fourth book they're actually back in the U.S. They stumble across smugglers. The smugglers get caught. The twins don't get murdered. This is because they pray. In the fifth book they're also in the U.S. They stumble across a violent gang. The gang gets caught. The twins don't get murdered. This is because they pray. In the sixth book--PLOT TWIST--the boy twin doesn't pray. He gets tricked into doing stuff he shouldn't. This leads him to stumble across more illegal behavior. Finally, like a couple of pages before the end, he prays. So he doesn't get murdered and the bad people get caught. I don't really know why I finished these books, unless it was because I was reading them when I couldn't sleep...<br />
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I also read lots and lots of books to the children and don't feel like leaving my comfortable seat in the air conditioning (set at 28 Celsius) to look at the list in the living room, which isn't even a complete list. None of the books I read to them were books I hadn't read before, except maybe a few picture books from the library.<br />
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<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1759654094942847074.post-70291790128041590532017-04-17T23:50:00.002+03:002017-04-17T23:50:24.526+03:00At home in the world...I've sort of sometimes kind of skimmed the blogposts at "<a href="http://theartofsimple.net/blog/">The Art of Simple,</a>" but there are a lot of posts, and many of them just aren't all that interesting to me, personally. There are several contributors to the blog, and some of them have ideas of "simple" that are way more complicated than my ideas of simple. For example, a recent blogpost about "packing light" included at least twice as much as I pack! But every once in awhile a post catches my eye and I read the whole one, and I WOULD like Tsh Oxenrider's book, which is being released tomorrow.<br />
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The <a href="http://theartofsimple.net/athome/">newest post</a>, in honor of the release of the book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Home-World-Reflections-Belonging-Wandering-ebook/dp/B01HAK36DK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492458217&sr=8-1&keywords=at+home+in+the+world">At Home in the World,</a>" posed several questions and challenged people to answer them. That appeals to me, partly because I'm not particularly creative but love talking (= writing), but also for the sake of the topic itself. So for those three people who sometimes read my blog, here goes. (For all I know, at least two of those people skim my occasional blogpost the way I skim most of those I "read", but that's why I like blogs...nobody is forced to listen, but I get to ramble all I want without feeling guilty for doing so, because if YOU decide to read the whole thing, it's YOUR problem.)<br />
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So finally getting to the point, here's the first question (in italics) and my response below.<br />
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<i><b>1. Share about a place where you feel at home in the world.</b></i><br />
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</i><em>This can be anything from a little coffee shop in an obscure back
alley in a tiny village in Central Asia, all the way to your favorite
armchair in the corner of your bedroom. Tell me why you love being there so much, and why it feels like home to you.</em><br />
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My spontaneous response to the title of the blogpost was "anywhere but in the U.S." Despite having lived in the United States for just over 19 years (not consecutive, but from birth until 20 1/2, so nearly), and that still being my only passport, I never "fit in." And the problem is that when one doesn't fit in where one is expected to fit in, the result is, at best, being ignored. Maybe that's mostly just childhood (and definitely teenagerhood) in general, but the three months I spent in the U.S. at the age of 35 weren't any different. I don't particularly "fit in" anywhere else, either, but nobody expects me to anywhere else. Outside of my passport country it's kind of that I'm given more freedom to be me, but I mostly take the freedom to be me whether it's given to me or not, so it's not even that. At the very least, outside of the U.S. people can shrug and blame my me-ness on my passport, but they don't reject me because of it. At least, that's the impression I get.<br />
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There ARE specific attitudes I enjoy in other places that I never knew I missed in the U.S. until I met them other places. In Latin America, for example, hugs and kisses are everyday life, every day, multiple times a day. I like that. When with my host family in Costa Rica (I was an exchange student there for seven weeks when I was 17, and have been back to visit ten times since), I enjoy greeting and being greeted every morning, by every member of the family. When anyone leaves or arrives, it's hugs and kisses all around, and the same when anyone goes to bed. Some people would hate that (and most U.S.ians seem to), but I love it.<br />
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In Germany, where I lived for over 17 years, it's "only" handshakes, but there's still always a connection. In some ways, Latino culture and Northern European culture are totally opposite (maybe "warm climate culture" vs. "cold climate culture" could be the topic of another post...), but I feel very at home in both.<br />
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Another aspect with both is that I KNOW where I stand. In Costa Rica and in Mexico (I lived in Mexico for one year when I was 18-19), people say, "Stop by anytime!" and they really mean it, and if you don't stop by, they'll ask you why you didn't and when you are coming. I've only been back to visit Mexico once, for one week, and at the end of that week I flew back to Germany from a city 20 hours away by bus from where I'd been staying with a friend. When my friend realized I'd be arriving at 9:00 at night and my flight was the next morning, she said I should stay with her cousin. Her cousin didn't have a phone and there was no other way for anyone to get a message through, but they gave me the cousin's address. When I arrived, I took a taxi to the address. These people who had never even HEARD of me before opened the door to a stranger, in the rain, late at night. When I said I was a friend of Carolina in Tuxtla, they welcomed me in, fed me, and put me not only in the room but in the bed with a teenage daughter, and were disappointed that I was leaving the next day.<br /><br />In Germany, it's nearly the opposite in that people only invite you if they really want you, and they don't necessarily, so one doesn't get the "open invitation" of Latino culture. However, again, I'm comfortable with that because I know where I stand. If they invite me to stop by next week for coffee, they want me to do so and they expect me to do so, and if I don't do so, they'll wonder what's wrong and probably feel hurt. I don't have to wonder whether they're just being polite, because in my experience, Germans don't bother "just being polite." (And having been married to one particular German for 22 years, I do have a little bit of experience to go on.) Some U.S.ians mean it when they issue an open invitation, and some even expect to be taken up on it, but I am so utterly lacking in intuition that I can't figure out who does and who doesn't, so it's just a source of confusion for me.<br />
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And now I live in Cyprus. The friendly attitude here to large families (which we also experienced in Costa Rica, Peru, Thailand, and South Africa, but not, unfortunately, Germany) is a huge bonus, and I do very well with the laid-back attitudes about time that resemble my experiences in Latin America. And hugging and kisses (on both cheeks, as opposed to only one in Mexico and Costa Rica) are normal and people are hospitable and mean it. That's all cool. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten to be really immersed in Cypriot culture, the way I was in Costa Rica, Mexico, Germany, and even some in our short time (two months) in Thailand. There are certainly practical reasons for that, one being that virtually everyone speaks such good English that it's not been necessary to learn Greek (I'm the only member of the family who can communicate in Greek beyond greetings and set phrases), and there are so many ex-pats that it's very easy to have a very full life without encountering many Cypriots. All the children take drama classes, four are currently taking music lessons (from British teachers), we're active in an English-language church which includes activities during the week for all ages, etc.<br />
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At the end of all this rambling, though, there's still the question of how I define "home." I'm good at feeling AT home nearly anyplace (except in the U.S., where I mostly feel stressed...), and I'm good at LIVING where I am. We were only in South Africa for four months, but we had library cards within days of arriving, I joined a homeschool mothers Bible study and a mother-toddler group, the children played with the neighbors, I taught Sunday school, we took the train regularly, we knew where to go grocery shopping: we lived there. Still, "home" was in Germany, where my books were, and that's a definition I've used before. By that definition, the only homes I've had were my childhood homes (five, although three were the same neighborhood, two of those three literally in the EXACT same place, seeing as the last house was built on the site of the house that burned down when I was ten) in the United States, Germany (seven different houses in five different cities), and this house in Cyprus, where we've been for over eight years now, the longest consecutive time my books have stayed on the same shelves in my entire life.<br />
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I like my bed, too (we brought it with us from Germany), and no matter how much I enjoy traveling and how comfortable other beds were, there's definitely a moment of sighing happily, "It's so good to be home," when I get back to my own bed. And as it's 10 minutes until tomorrow, that's where I'm headed now.<br />
<br />Sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00622417957827047706noreply@blogger.com1