Welcoming 2012

We just had the quietest New Year's Eve ever, with just three (adult) friends by the time we reached midnight, the very first without children since Marie was born! Yes, Marie has stayed up for New Year's Eve every single year, even her first one when she was only three months old. And she did this year, as well, but not at home--my first baby went to her first New Year's Eve party. 14 does not seem old enough!!!!

Jacob, who is only 12, was also out for the evening. I'm not sure how wild the partying got at the Prayer House, though. His only complaint when he arrived home at 1:20 a.m. was that they didn't sing enough.

Lukas and Katie were going to stay up, but their behaviour left a lot to be desired yesterday and I couldn't face it. Helen went to bed right after dinner, totally exhausted (she's been in the "outgrowing-a-nap" phase for about two years: either she has a nap and is impossible to get to bed, or she doesn't have a nap and is fussy all evening until she collapses) and anyway not having any clue that anyone could ever think there WOULD be a reason to stay up, since the only time she celebrated New Year's Eve in Germany, with fireworks and greeting the neighbors and everything, was when she was not quite four months old. Katie went to bed a bit later than usual, but not a lot, and with almost no protest. Lukas stayed up until about 9:30, when Jörn got back from taking Marie to her party, and then went to his room with plenty of protest. He was allowed to have the light on and stay up as long as he wanted, but in his room. I know, spoilsport Mommy. He of course fell asleep long before midnight, but we kept our promise and didn't turn off his light until after midnight, and it was nice to NOT have him (or Katie) grumpy and miserable this morning.

As for Elisabeth, she neither had a nap yesterday nor was she fussy. She happily bee-bopped around until about 10:00, when she suddenly asked to nurse (breastfeed), but when I wanted to nurse her at the table (we were playing Settlers of Catan), she protested and pointed out of the room and said "Bed!" As I started to carry her out of the room, she turned back and wanted to hug Richard (oh, I wish I could figure out how to spell the way she pronounces his name, but I have no idea!), then Tim, but not Sue, but then as I started out of the room again, she turned back so fast I almost dropped her, as she called out "cuddle Sue!" So I took her back to hug Sue, then took her to bed, where she giggled as I lay her down, and quickly nursed to sleep. And that child slept until 10:25 this morning!!!!!

Sue, Richard, Tim, and I started a game of Settlers of Catan when Jörn and Marie left, which ended up being a very slow game, then after we finished that, played a five-player Settlers with Jörn, too, which was much more interesting. I know Sue won the second game, but I can't remember who won the first one. Jörn was rather bored, waiting for us to finish, but Elisabeth was enjoying entertaining Papa! We finished the second game around 11:30, I think, and then chatted until midnight. The others hadn't necessarily planned to stay that long, but there not being that much time left, went ahead and did so.

And here is the proof that I made it to midnight, the only two photos I took the entire evening:

This is Richard's phone, and the time is correct, so from that I was able to determine that my camera time is nine minutes off. It's very, very rare that I go to bed before midnight anyway, but Sue was more than ready to go home by that time, so they left minutes later. I sent texts to Marie and Jacob and stood outside looking at...well, nothing, really...for awhile. So different from Germany!

Our phone/internet connection wasn't working, so I couldn't make all the phone calls I'd been planning to make to my parents and siblings in the U.S. and Costa Rica. I did call my parents from my cell phone, but had no idea how fast that might use up credit, so didn't talk long. This morning I called the phone company (PrimeTel--we've been very happy with their prices and their service) and they said that a lot of phones had gone out in the thunderstorms last night, but they were quickly able to get it working again without even having to come to the house.

Internet being down last night also meant that I wasn't able to upload the last 50 photos I had to kodakgallery.de, nor to order any, so at this point I guess I'll wait until I get the next special offer from them to order photos, and will just continue working on sorting and editing 2011 photos in the meantime.

Some statistics for 2011

The population of the southern part of Cyprus was determined by this year's census to be at just under 839,000. Interesting, I suppose, but the most interesting part to me was the following quotation:

Georgiou noted that the increase in the population was also due to the number of foreign nationals, which reached 21.4% of the total population, compared to 9.4% in 2001. A total of 179,547 foreigners were recorded, of which 62.6% from EU countries and 37.4% from third countries.

My question is this: how were we counted? Eight of us live in this house, all of us "foreign nationals", seven of us from an EU country (Germany), seven of us from a third country (USA). We are by no means an unusual representation. I'm pretty sure that I know more people with dual nationality than with just one. I imagine that for the state of statistics, anyone with Cypriot nationality was counted only as a Cypriot, and non-Cypriot Europeans counted only as Europeans, which would mean that our family consists of seven non-Cypriot Europeans and one U.S.ian, but I couldn't find anything to confirm that. And of course, there's the little issue that after nearly three years here, I'm still not actually legally registered here. I'm also not illegally here, my paperwork is officially "in process". For that matter, it just occurred to me that we haven't bothered to get Elisabeth a residence permit, either, so only six members of the family have their yellow slips. So maybe we were counted as six Europeans and two non-residents?

Of more interest to me personally are a couple of other statistics that are of no interest whatsover to the rest of the world. One is that 2011 was the first year since 1985 that I was not in an airplane, not even once, and the first year since 1987 that I haven't traveled internationally. The furthest away I went the entire year was to the Troodos mountains, less than two hours away by car, and my guess is that 2011 was the first year of my entire LIFE that I spent every single moment within two hours of my home.

Another milestone to me was that, at near as I could calculate, in April or May of this year I passed the 50% point and have now spent over half of my life outside of my birth country. That is calculating both the times that I spent outside of the U.S. while I still actually lived there (to Japan with my family when I was three, to Japan as an exchange student when I was 15, and to Costa Rica as an exchange student when I was 17) as well as all the visits back to the U.S. since I left. However, I won't have lived in Europe for half of my life until the end of February 2012, and that still won't have been half of my life actually IN Europe.

2011 was also the first year since 2000 that I didn't spend any part of the year pregnant. There have been some years in there that I didn't spend very much of pregnant, but I had been pregnant at least part of every single year since 1996 except for 2000, and now 2011.

Another topic: December 26, 2010 I set a goal of breaking a particular habit and have kept track throughout the year. There have been about 15 days in which I slipped up, but compared to probably more like 360 the year before, I guess I should be pleased.

One goal I set for this year was to get caught up with photos, not too happy with being well over a year behind. In October, very briefly, I was just under a year behind with putting photos in albums, but as time marches on, I was quickly behind again. However, I have continued with sorting and editing on the computer, and as I write this post, I am in the process of uploading the photos from the second half of November 2010 to kodakgallery.de, already did December 2010, and have May 2011 ready to upload and will then be able to place an order today. I've already gotten January through April 2011 printed, so as soon as my November-December 2010 photos arrive, I'll have six months' worth of photos to put in albums. (I couldn't do November-December before because I was waiting on copies of my sister-in-law's photos from our last visit to the U.S..) I plan to spend January continuing the sorting of 2011 photos and hope to have June through December ready to order by the time I receive the order I place today, and don't want to be more than a month or two behind after this. Yes, I'm probably slightly OCD in this area.

I don't think I'm making any "New Year's Resolutions" for 2012, just continuing on with some of my goals, which aren't tied to a particular year. I guess I figure that if a particular habit is a good one to start or a good one to stop, then today is the best day to start/stop it, whatever the date. But I don't want to write about any of those goals in such a (theoretically) public place, even though the only person I know for sure who reads this probably knows all of them anyway.