Today…another one of those anniversaries I’d rather not have. After two days on bed-rest in the hospital, our seventh child was born 30 weeks early, three years ago today. The city in which we lived has an "anonymous" funeral (anonymous meaning that it doesn’t cost us anything and there’s no marker) twice a year for all babies under 500 grams, but we were the only parents who responded to the invitation and met with the pastor taking the service, so our baby was the only one mentioned by name, we chose the only song that was played ( Your Faithfulness, by Brian Doerkson), and the sermon was mostly for us.
And now I’m at nearly 32 weeks with our ninth child, who is actively kicking away and reminding me not to lean too close to the computer! We spent the day near Limassol at a homeschool get-together with four other families, our five running-around, living children being one-third of those present. A good day.
Then we were supposed to see friends off at the airport this evening (a family of four, moving back to Norway), but because of the currently erupting volcano in Iceland, their flight was cancelled. We don’t mind in the slightest having them around for another week (at least…we’ll have to see what the volcano does–could be longer!!), but it’s of course rather unsettling for them. A relatively calm evening for us wasn’t a bad thing, either.
Last week I did actually find a doctor (ob/gyn) who after much grumbling said that although he’s never done so before, he would be willing to attend a homebirth for me, "because I’m from Germany." I did explain where I’m actually from originally, but when he realized that I lived in Germany before we moved here, he switched to German with me, as he studied medicine in Germany. Many, many years ago, however…and I’m not at all sure that I’ll go to him even for a check-up (haven’t had one since I saw my own doctor in Germany in January), much less call him for the birth. Seeing as he’s been practicing for 30 years and has attended over 4000 births, but had no idea that it’s even possible to have a first baby of any size with neither an episiotomy nor tearing, nor a 4000-gram baby at any time without either of the above, I’m really not very encouraged. (I’ve done both–only had a first baby once, but had two others that were just over 4000 grams each, and those were two of my three homebirths, and no episiotomy, no tearing with any of the five.) But at least SOMEONE was willing, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll find someone else in the next eight weeks who sees birth as something normal, not something medical…
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
April 5, 2010: Nothing unusual–visitors, emergency room, etc.
We have friends from Germany visiting, which we’re enjoying very much–spending time with them, but also getting some breaks because they keep offering to babysit! At the moment, they’ve taken Katie and Helen out for a walk, so it’s quite peaceful here. (Edited to add: I started writing this at 11:30 this morning, now it’s almost 6:00 p.m. and a little less peaceful. But it’s been a nice, calm day overall, which is nice after the last week…)
I met Barbara nearly nine years ago, as she ran (runs still…) the playgroup that I started going to when Marie was four and Jacob was two. Other people came and went, most people only having one or at the most two children, and most people only go with a first child anyway, in my experience, but I’m harder to get rid of. I kept changing which child/ren I was taking, but thoroughly enjoyed "my" Thursday mornings all those years. Barbara also occasionally babysat for us (including having the three older children overnight the night Katie was born, the four children overnight when I was in the hospital with my third miscarriage, and the girls overnight the night Helen was born) and my children are all crazy about her. She left her husband and 15-year-old son at home in Germany and is spending two weeks here with us, along with her nearly-17-year-old daughter, Andrea. Andrea will probably be coming back in September to stay with us for about six months and do volunteer work in a rest home.
As we usually do with visitors, we did do a little bit of sightseeing. Marie, Jacob, and Lukas went on a two-day hike last week, Wednesday to Thursday, which made for more space in the car, so Wednesday afternoon we drove up to Nikosia. We couldn’t go across the border to the northern part of Cyprus, as Barbara and Andrea only have European ID cards, not passports, but we walked around and enjoyed the farmers’ market. Then on Thursday we drove to Lefkara, a traditional village where lace and silver are made, before heading further up in the mountains for a picnic and then a short stop at Mount Olympus, the highest point in Cyprus. We got home less than an hour before the children did–good timing.
And on Friday, we went to the beach, for the first time this season. When we lived in Germany, I would have considered the slightly overcast and windy day to have been quite a warm one, and most certainly would have gone swimming if we’d gone to the beach in the Netherlands with that weather, and with the water MUCH colder than the Mediterranean. But having survived my first summer in Cyprus last year, I know that it will get much warmer here, to put it mildly, so it wasn’t worth the effort for me to actually go swimming, but I was perfectly happy to sit on the beach. Barbara and Andrea considered the water actually warm, and the children NEVER think it’s cold. (Well, Marie actually stayed home. But the other four were all in the water.)
When we’d been there maybe half an hour, Jacob came out of the water, crying, saying that he’d cut his foot. I went to him, thinking it’s good that I have a little plastic box with antibiotic ointment and bandages (Band-aids, sticking plasters?) in my bag…but quickly realized that that wasn’t going to be enough. He had a great jagged hole with blood pouring out, so the decision was quickly made to head for the hospital. The most sense would have been for Jörn to take him, or even to take the extra five minutes to pile all of us back in the car and drop off the extra people at home (which is on the way to the hospital anyway), but although we don’t exactly panic, the sight of lots of blood gushing out of our child does hinder us a bit in thinking logically. So I put Helen in the car and Barbara and Jörn carried Jacob to the car, then Barbara came too, and we headed for the hospital. Meanwhile, Jörn called our friend Richard to pick up the rest of them at the beach and take them home, as we of course couldn’t know if our visit to the emergency room would be 20 minutes or several hours.
At the hospital I dropped Barbara and Jacob off at the entrance to the emergency room and then parked the car, and we were able to register within a couple of minutes, and it wasn’t more than about 10 more minutes until they called Jacob’s name. But they wouldn’t let me go with him because I’m pregnant, so I was really glad Barbara was there to stay with him. They x-rayed his foot, and then they sat around waiting for awhile inside, but I had no idea what was happening all that time. Richard dropped Jörn off at the hospital, so Jörn went in to find out what was happening, came back and told me that he’d been x-rayed and they were just waiting for the doctor, and then Jörn stayed with Jacob and Barbara, Helen, and I went home.
All in all, it was "only" two hours from Jacob’s arrival at the hospital until Jörn called me to pick them up, just as I was dropping Marie and Andrea off at youth group to walk to one of the English-speaking churches for their Good Friday service. They put three stitches in Jacob’s foot, which seemed a sort of strange number to me–I would have thought it would need a lot more if they stitched it at all, rather than gluing or taping it, but although they did have to dig a piece of rock out of it, it was rather more superficial than it had looked at first. Jörn and I even had time to have a sandwich each and we made it to the Good Friday service we’d been planning to attend (at a different English-language church) only 15 minutes after it was scheduled to start, and at least 5 minutes before it actually did, leaving the children home with Barbara.
Today Jörn took Jacob back for a check-up, and they discovered that his foot is infected. So now he’s going to get antibiotics (starting tomorrow–the pharmacies were all closed today, as it’s a holiday) and has to be checked again on Wednesday.
Easter Sunday we had breakfast together (a big concession on my part…I prefer my bowl of granola and yogurt a couple of hours before anyone else is up…), with Easter bread that I made that morning and hard-boiled eggs that I dyed the night before. After church (we arrived around 11:00–people arrive anytime between 10:00 and, well, anytime–and as always stayed for a shared lunch and chatting, and left a little past 4:00) we left the three younger children with Barbara and Andrea, who took them to a playground and for ice cream, and the rest of us went to Richard and Sue’s house for a game of Settlers of Catan, which Jacob had been begging for for a long time. Then Richard and Sue came back with us for dinner and another game of Settlers after the children had gone to bed.
Today has been fairly calm, really. Jörn took Barbara, Andrea, Lukas, and Katie to the beach this afternoon and I read to Marie and Jacob for awhile, then we played a game of Alhambra, and in a few minutes we’re going out to dinner (all nine of us), for a Meze (sp.?), a traditional Cypriot meal, which we’ve never had before, so having visitors is a good excuse to try it out.
I met Barbara nearly nine years ago, as she ran (runs still…) the playgroup that I started going to when Marie was four and Jacob was two. Other people came and went, most people only having one or at the most two children, and most people only go with a first child anyway, in my experience, but I’m harder to get rid of. I kept changing which child/ren I was taking, but thoroughly enjoyed "my" Thursday mornings all those years. Barbara also occasionally babysat for us (including having the three older children overnight the night Katie was born, the four children overnight when I was in the hospital with my third miscarriage, and the girls overnight the night Helen was born) and my children are all crazy about her. She left her husband and 15-year-old son at home in Germany and is spending two weeks here with us, along with her nearly-17-year-old daughter, Andrea. Andrea will probably be coming back in September to stay with us for about six months and do volunteer work in a rest home.
As we usually do with visitors, we did do a little bit of sightseeing. Marie, Jacob, and Lukas went on a two-day hike last week, Wednesday to Thursday, which made for more space in the car, so Wednesday afternoon we drove up to Nikosia. We couldn’t go across the border to the northern part of Cyprus, as Barbara and Andrea only have European ID cards, not passports, but we walked around and enjoyed the farmers’ market. Then on Thursday we drove to Lefkara, a traditional village where lace and silver are made, before heading further up in the mountains for a picnic and then a short stop at Mount Olympus, the highest point in Cyprus. We got home less than an hour before the children did–good timing.
And on Friday, we went to the beach, for the first time this season. When we lived in Germany, I would have considered the slightly overcast and windy day to have been quite a warm one, and most certainly would have gone swimming if we’d gone to the beach in the Netherlands with that weather, and with the water MUCH colder than the Mediterranean. But having survived my first summer in Cyprus last year, I know that it will get much warmer here, to put it mildly, so it wasn’t worth the effort for me to actually go swimming, but I was perfectly happy to sit on the beach. Barbara and Andrea considered the water actually warm, and the children NEVER think it’s cold. (Well, Marie actually stayed home. But the other four were all in the water.)
When we’d been there maybe half an hour, Jacob came out of the water, crying, saying that he’d cut his foot. I went to him, thinking it’s good that I have a little plastic box with antibiotic ointment and bandages (Band-aids, sticking plasters?) in my bag…but quickly realized that that wasn’t going to be enough. He had a great jagged hole with blood pouring out, so the decision was quickly made to head for the hospital. The most sense would have been for Jörn to take him, or even to take the extra five minutes to pile all of us back in the car and drop off the extra people at home (which is on the way to the hospital anyway), but although we don’t exactly panic, the sight of lots of blood gushing out of our child does hinder us a bit in thinking logically. So I put Helen in the car and Barbara and Jörn carried Jacob to the car, then Barbara came too, and we headed for the hospital. Meanwhile, Jörn called our friend Richard to pick up the rest of them at the beach and take them home, as we of course couldn’t know if our visit to the emergency room would be 20 minutes or several hours.
At the hospital I dropped Barbara and Jacob off at the entrance to the emergency room and then parked the car, and we were able to register within a couple of minutes, and it wasn’t more than about 10 more minutes until they called Jacob’s name. But they wouldn’t let me go with him because I’m pregnant, so I was really glad Barbara was there to stay with him. They x-rayed his foot, and then they sat around waiting for awhile inside, but I had no idea what was happening all that time. Richard dropped Jörn off at the hospital, so Jörn went in to find out what was happening, came back and told me that he’d been x-rayed and they were just waiting for the doctor, and then Jörn stayed with Jacob and Barbara, Helen, and I went home.
All in all, it was "only" two hours from Jacob’s arrival at the hospital until Jörn called me to pick them up, just as I was dropping Marie and Andrea off at youth group to walk to one of the English-speaking churches for their Good Friday service. They put three stitches in Jacob’s foot, which seemed a sort of strange number to me–I would have thought it would need a lot more if they stitched it at all, rather than gluing or taping it, but although they did have to dig a piece of rock out of it, it was rather more superficial than it had looked at first. Jörn and I even had time to have a sandwich each and we made it to the Good Friday service we’d been planning to attend (at a different English-language church) only 15 minutes after it was scheduled to start, and at least 5 minutes before it actually did, leaving the children home with Barbara.
Today Jörn took Jacob back for a check-up, and they discovered that his foot is infected. So now he’s going to get antibiotics (starting tomorrow–the pharmacies were all closed today, as it’s a holiday) and has to be checked again on Wednesday.
Easter Sunday we had breakfast together (a big concession on my part…I prefer my bowl of granola and yogurt a couple of hours before anyone else is up…), with Easter bread that I made that morning and hard-boiled eggs that I dyed the night before. After church (we arrived around 11:00–people arrive anytime between 10:00 and, well, anytime–and as always stayed for a shared lunch and chatting, and left a little past 4:00) we left the three younger children with Barbara and Andrea, who took them to a playground and for ice cream, and the rest of us went to Richard and Sue’s house for a game of Settlers of Catan, which Jacob had been begging for for a long time. Then Richard and Sue came back with us for dinner and another game of Settlers after the children had gone to bed.
Today has been fairly calm, really. Jörn took Barbara, Andrea, Lukas, and Katie to the beach this afternoon and I read to Marie and Jacob for awhile, then we played a game of Alhambra, and in a few minutes we’re going out to dinner (all nine of us), for a Meze (sp.?), a traditional Cypriot meal, which we’ve never had before, so having visitors is a good excuse to try it out.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
March 23, 2010: This and that
Nothing spectacular to update, just thought I’d ramble for awhile.
I just got off of the phone with my friend Barbara, who is coming on Friday for two weeks, along with her 16-year-old daughter, Andrea. Aside from the fact that we’re of course looking forward to enjoying the time with them, I’m also glad that the children will get two weeks of German all day long, not just when my husband is home. It won’t hurt my German, either, which has been suffering noticably. When my husband and I first met, we spoke only English with each other, as if we had spoken German, the conversation couldn’t have consisted of much more than greetings, where’s the train station, and it’s raining again. (Those were the phrases I could say upon my arrival in Germany 18 1/2 years ago, and we met within the first month or two.) However, a few months after we got married (three years later), we switched to German only, just for five weeks, in preparation for my oral exams in early childhood development, and then stayed with only German for the next two and a half years. When Marie was born, I spoke English with her, so no longer being completely immersed in German, started speaking English with my husband again some, and it was pretty much half-and-half after that. However, whenever we’re in the U.S., he has a very hard time staying with German, and we’ve drifted to speaking mostly English with each other since we moved to Cyprus 14 months ago. He’ll even speak English to the children sometimes, or not correct their German, or even worse, use INcorrect German with them himself. More than once, I’ve been VERY close to carrying out my threat to speak German with the children myself if he won’t. So, a long explanation about why I’m quite happy to have a German-speaking friend visit, besides the fact that she’s a good friend and I like both her and her daughter.
Immigration news: Not much to say. My husband managed to fax the last three months’ worth of bank statements to Immigration today, we’ll see if I get my yellow slip in exchange….
Homeschooling: We’re loving Sonlight Core 4, American (mostly United States, but contrary to most U.S.-based history curricula, not ONLY U.S.) history, with lots and lots of other reading. That’s for Marie and Jacob mostly, but Lukas listens much of the time, and even Katie does often. Lukas just started Core 1 (introduction to World History), but rather slowly, as we’re reading quite a few other books, too. I just finished reading Winter Holiday (by Arthur Ransome) to him and was going to start Charlotte’s Web, but he asked for a biography of Gladys Aylward instead. Okay.
All four children are enjoying Exploring Creation with Zoology (book 1–about flying creatures) by Jeannie Fulbright, who happens to be the sister of a good friend of ours living in the Netherlands. It was pretty cool several years ago when Victor said, while visiting us, "You know, my sister writes homeschool science books–I wonder if you’ve heard of her?" I ran and got the two we had at the time (Botany and Astronomy) and we had fun looking through them and having Victor and Inga point out the photos of their nieces and nephews, and their children loved seeing the photos of their cousins in the books! After a pillow fight (unauthorized…) the other day, the children discovered that not only down feathers are used for pillows–also semi-plumes.
Jacob will finish his math book (Primary Mathematics 5B, aka Singapore Math) in the next few days, and he actually asked me to order his next books quickly. I was surprised and asked why, and he said because if he doesn’t have any math books, I’ll make up problems for him, which would be much more work for him to do! I asked him if I’d ever done that (not remembering having done so…), and he said, "Well, no…but I’m sure you’d come up with that idea." Still, he’s going to have to wait until the end of April, as I’m going to have it sent to friends who will be in England in April, to save a bit on postage. (For those interested, I order from a U.K. supplier in order to get the "old" 3rd Edition books, which are no longer available anywhere else that I’ve been able to find. It’s tempting to think of placing a huge order to get ALL the workbooks for ALL the children, even the baby that hasn’t been born yet, for all six levels, because we like the books SO much, but no, I’m not going to do that…)
Preschool: Last October YWAM opened a preschool outside of Larnaca, using the Montessori method and YWAM preschool curriculum. We started with four children, one of them being Katie and one being the six-year-old daughter of the director, and then added a fifth, which filled up the very nice, but very small, building pretty well. It only runs twice a week, so we were able to juggle schedules around to enable me to help there, taking Helen with me on Wednesdays (as Jörn has a meeting that day), and leaving her with Jörn on Fridays (his morning off). It’s gone very well, much better than I expected as far as scheduling conflicts and my own feeling of "conflict of interest" goes, and has been great for both Katie and myself. However, the director and her family are moving back to Norway in April, so this Friday will be the last day. That solves the question about how long I would manage to keep working there with my expanding belly and then a newborn, but I’m going to miss my two peaceful mornings a week!
Baby: From the shape of Baby’s mommy, I’d say Baby is getting big. Kicking a lot, and yesterday I was playing tag with an elbow or a knee or something of that sort, which was quite fun. My last check-up was with my doctor in Germany, back in January, and although my husband said then that he wasn’t thrilled with my wish to NOT have any more check-ups, he hasn’t said anything else since, and feeling the baby move regularly is very reassuring. We’re still working on finding a midwife or someone to attend the birth…we keep getting leads, but they haven’t led to anything concrete as of yet. With less than three months to go (I reasonably hope, as the due date is 12 weeks from today, and I have two children who were born at 40 weeks and one day, one born at 38 weeks and 6 days, and two born at 40 weeks EXACTLY, so I don’t expect to go over…but each baby has come up with SOME surprise…), I suppose I ought to be starting to get a little nervous about it, but I’m not yet. I’m much more concerned about finding a name. The baby will arrive whether we find a birth attendant or not, but will only have a name if my husband and I can agree on one…
I just got off of the phone with my friend Barbara, who is coming on Friday for two weeks, along with her 16-year-old daughter, Andrea. Aside from the fact that we’re of course looking forward to enjoying the time with them, I’m also glad that the children will get two weeks of German all day long, not just when my husband is home. It won’t hurt my German, either, which has been suffering noticably. When my husband and I first met, we spoke only English with each other, as if we had spoken German, the conversation couldn’t have consisted of much more than greetings, where’s the train station, and it’s raining again. (Those were the phrases I could say upon my arrival in Germany 18 1/2 years ago, and we met within the first month or two.) However, a few months after we got married (three years later), we switched to German only, just for five weeks, in preparation for my oral exams in early childhood development, and then stayed with only German for the next two and a half years. When Marie was born, I spoke English with her, so no longer being completely immersed in German, started speaking English with my husband again some, and it was pretty much half-and-half after that. However, whenever we’re in the U.S., he has a very hard time staying with German, and we’ve drifted to speaking mostly English with each other since we moved to Cyprus 14 months ago. He’ll even speak English to the children sometimes, or not correct their German, or even worse, use INcorrect German with them himself. More than once, I’ve been VERY close to carrying out my threat to speak German with the children myself if he won’t. So, a long explanation about why I’m quite happy to have a German-speaking friend visit, besides the fact that she’s a good friend and I like both her and her daughter.
Immigration news: Not much to say. My husband managed to fax the last three months’ worth of bank statements to Immigration today, we’ll see if I get my yellow slip in exchange….
Homeschooling: We’re loving Sonlight Core 4, American (mostly United States, but contrary to most U.S.-based history curricula, not ONLY U.S.) history, with lots and lots of other reading. That’s for Marie and Jacob mostly, but Lukas listens much of the time, and even Katie does often. Lukas just started Core 1 (introduction to World History), but rather slowly, as we’re reading quite a few other books, too. I just finished reading Winter Holiday (by Arthur Ransome) to him and was going to start Charlotte’s Web, but he asked for a biography of Gladys Aylward instead. Okay.
All four children are enjoying Exploring Creation with Zoology (book 1–about flying creatures) by Jeannie Fulbright, who happens to be the sister of a good friend of ours living in the Netherlands. It was pretty cool several years ago when Victor said, while visiting us, "You know, my sister writes homeschool science books–I wonder if you’ve heard of her?" I ran and got the two we had at the time (Botany and Astronomy) and we had fun looking through them and having Victor and Inga point out the photos of their nieces and nephews, and their children loved seeing the photos of their cousins in the books! After a pillow fight (unauthorized…) the other day, the children discovered that not only down feathers are used for pillows–also semi-plumes.
Jacob will finish his math book (Primary Mathematics 5B, aka Singapore Math) in the next few days, and he actually asked me to order his next books quickly. I was surprised and asked why, and he said because if he doesn’t have any math books, I’ll make up problems for him, which would be much more work for him to do! I asked him if I’d ever done that (not remembering having done so…), and he said, "Well, no…but I’m sure you’d come up with that idea." Still, he’s going to have to wait until the end of April, as I’m going to have it sent to friends who will be in England in April, to save a bit on postage. (For those interested, I order from a U.K. supplier in order to get the "old" 3rd Edition books, which are no longer available anywhere else that I’ve been able to find. It’s tempting to think of placing a huge order to get ALL the workbooks for ALL the children, even the baby that hasn’t been born yet, for all six levels, because we like the books SO much, but no, I’m not going to do that…)
Preschool: Last October YWAM opened a preschool outside of Larnaca, using the Montessori method and YWAM preschool curriculum. We started with four children, one of them being Katie and one being the six-year-old daughter of the director, and then added a fifth, which filled up the very nice, but very small, building pretty well. It only runs twice a week, so we were able to juggle schedules around to enable me to help there, taking Helen with me on Wednesdays (as Jörn has a meeting that day), and leaving her with Jörn on Fridays (his morning off). It’s gone very well, much better than I expected as far as scheduling conflicts and my own feeling of "conflict of interest" goes, and has been great for both Katie and myself. However, the director and her family are moving back to Norway in April, so this Friday will be the last day. That solves the question about how long I would manage to keep working there with my expanding belly and then a newborn, but I’m going to miss my two peaceful mornings a week!
Baby: From the shape of Baby’s mommy, I’d say Baby is getting big.
Kicking a lot, and yesterday I was playing tag with an elbow or a knee or something of that sort, which was quite fun. My last check-up was with my doctor in Germany, back in January, and although my husband said then that he wasn’t thrilled with my wish to NOT have any more check-ups, he hasn’t said anything else since, and feeling the baby move regularly is very reassuring. We’re still working on finding a midwife or someone to attend the birth…we keep getting leads, but they haven’t led to anything concrete as of yet. With less than three months to go (I reasonably hope, as the due date is 12 weeks from today, and I have two children who were born at 40 weeks and one day, one born at 38 weeks and 6 days, and two born at 40 weeks EXACTLY, so I don’t expect to go over…but each baby has come up with SOME surprise…), I suppose I ought to be starting to get a little nervous about it, but I’m not yet. I’m much more concerned about finding a name. The baby will arrive whether we find a birth attendant or not, but will only have a name if my husband and I can agree on one…
Saturday, February 13, 2010
February 13, 2010: Germany, part eight: the last few days and the trip home
Everything went as planned on Monday (February 8th), and we were pleased to
be given a ride back to the train station, as we would have had to take a bus at
7:30 to make all the connections to get the very last train from Wesel back to
Hamminkeln, arriving at 10:11. It was good reconnecting with the R family--ever
since we moved to Mülheim, and then their children changed schools and Aileen
started working (in the school library, which works wonderfully as far as hours
are concerned AND she loves her job), our visits with each other have been far
too few and far between, yet I don't feel like we're "strangers" to each other
when we finally do get together again. It was a very good ending to our time in
our "home area" of Germany.
The next morning I managed to get everything packed in good time, although I was pretty sure we had too much. At 22 Euros per extra kilogram, checking extra luggage was NOT an option, but we figured we were okay as long as they didn't weigh the carry-ons, and I knew exactly what I could take out of which suitcases if necessary. Our second train was over 15 minutes late, making our connection in Köln VERY close, but we made it, and once we got to the airport in Frankfurt, had no problem finding our bus stop. Although we'd just missed a bus, and they go every half hour, it wasn't too bad waiting, either, as our particular bus stop was right outside the doors, so we waited inside. That day was by far the coldest day of our whole trip. There was no more snow where we'd been staying and I'd already thought that that would be our first day without seeing snow anywhere (the day before we hadn't seen any until nearly to Ratingen), but it was snowing quite a bit in Frankfurt and did the whole time we were there.
Christin met us at the bus stop at her end (less than 20 minutes from the airport) and we walked to their house, where we spent awhile just warming up. That evening we were able to visit with Peter and Christin, and after the children had gone to bed, played two games of Settlers of Catan. We slept very well, Katie and Helen with us in their HUGE bed, Jacob on a mat on the floor, and Marie and Lukas on a sofa-bed, while Peter and Christin themselves slept in the living room. We didn't get up the next morning until long after they had left for work.
Around 10:00 a friend of Jörn's, Arndt, arrived, and at 11:30, as we were just about to brave the cold and head for the playground, our friend Annika (whom we met in South Africa, but she's from Hanover and now lives not far from Frankfurt) arrived, so we all went to the playground together. We were fairly well-frozen by the time we left after not much more than half an hour, and all had lunch, for which Peter (who works only a couple of blocks away) joined us. After lunch Arndt left, and Annika played Settlers of Catan with Marie, Jacob, and Lukas (and Jörn, who ended up taking over for Lukas), while I played Go Fish and Memory with Katie, and Helen slept.
Annika was able to stay until 5:30-ish, just after Christin got home, and our friends Jill and Alan arrived at about 6:00 for dinner, by which time Peter had also arrived home. More good conversation (and good food!), and then to bed for the last time this trip.
Packing was easy the next morning--just the one suitcase we'd used for the two days. I weighed everything again and hoped that the airport scales would be set a bit lower. Another friend of Jörn's, Bernd, came for a few hours, and Peter came home for lunch again, and Christin made it home in time to see us off to the airport in two taxis. Interestingly, although in our experience Düsseldorf, Ratingen, and Mülheim all have taxi vans that will easily hold a family of seven AND their luggage, Frankfurt doesn't have any, or at least the taxi company we called didn't, nor did they have proper children's seats (despite us having requested them on the phone the day before), AND they tried to claim that no taxis do. I've only taken a taxi four times that I can remember in all my years in Germany, the first time nine years ago, and every single taxi had two children's seats, and in fact, one of them had integrated seats with five-point harnesses. But maybe that's only the law in NRW, not in Hessen. At least my taxi driver was apologetic and quite friendly, also helping to load and unload the luggage, which earned him a tip--the other driver got his fee to the cent, and not a cent more. (Not the U.S.: one does not HAVE to tip, as a tip truly is based on the service rendered.)
We had a short moment of concern when we arrived at the airport and the displays were all blank, but it turned out that the monitors were out of order, not that all flights had been cancelled! Checking in went well. Czech Airlines has a limit of one bag and 20 kilos per passenger, as well as one bag up to 10 kilos for an infant without a seat, but unlike some other airlines, allows the weight to be shared around a group, as long as no one bag weighs more than 32 kilos, so we could take up to 7 bags, up to 130 kilos. Starting with our heaviest suitcase, which was 26 kilos, we started with the weighing in, and after the sixth bag were up to "only" 119 kilos. We then had to choose between two "carry-ons"--one filled with clothes, weighing about six kilos, one filled with books, weighing 14. I put on the 14 kilo one, hoping that maybe, maybe, it was actually only 11, but the airport scale agreed that it was 14, bringing our total to 133 kilos, three kilos over, definitely not worth 66 Euros!! I was all ready to switch for the lighter one (or take out three kilos of books), but the man said that was no problem. :-)
Going through security was uncomplicated, but at our gate there was a sign saying that our flight was leaving from a different gate. At that other one, however, they knew nothing about it. Eventually, it was determined that our flight was late and that they didn't yet know which gate. We ate up the Walker's shortbread that Jill and Alan had given us (exactly 21 pieces--three for each person, no fighting, and yes, Helen knew that three were for her, too) and wandered around a bit, and finally got on the plane, which left well over an hour late...and arrived in Prague close to two hours late.
Once we got to the monitors in Prague to find out if there was any hope of getting our next flight, it was exactly 9:55 p.m., the time our flight was scheduled to leave, and the status was "gate closed". So we stopped hurrying and got into the transfer line, wondering if we'd get to stay in Prague long enough to actually see something more than the airport. Almost immediately, however, an airport employee asked if there was anybody there for Larnaka, and then told us to hurry--they were holding the plane for us. Passport control, security again, and then onto the plane, where everybody else had already been waiting for half an hour or more...we made it.
Once in Larnaca, we first had to go through passport control, of course, where the officer barely glanced at the six German passports, then started flipping through my U.S. passport, finally arriving at the single-use re-entry visa, and said, "What is this?" I'd completely forgotten that I was supposed to be nervous about whether they would let me back into Cyprus, but we explained that yes, we live in Cyprus, but that I don't have a yellow slip yet because Nikosia lost my file, so that's why I have this visa. He rolled his eyes as if that wasn't unusual--didn't seem to think WE were being strange--and then said that he'd never seen that kind of visa in an American passport before. But he let me in!
And our luggage, obviously having been the very last to be put loaded in Prague, was the very first out in Larnaca, so not much waiting. As I started to text Richard that we had arrived, he called to say that "they" (turned out to be Richard and his sailing friend, Tim--he'd only e-mailed that he'd come with two cars, but hadn't said which of his many friends he was going to talk into going to the airport at 3:00 a.m.) were waiting right out front.
We slept in seven different beds in the last six and a half weeks, all of them comfortable, but oh, falling into my OWN bed, on my OWN pillow, at 3:40 a.m. was the most wonderful, comfortable feeling imaginable! I also very much enjoyed being able to reach for the switch on my reading light automatically, as well as waking up in the morning proper and seeing my wall of photos, and getting to walk to the kitchen in my nightgown, and knowing that I didn't have to go anywhere. I still love to travel, but it's fascinating to me how much more I love home with the passing of the years. And now it's the next day and I'm quite tired and heading to my very own bed again. :-)
The next morning I managed to get everything packed in good time, although I was pretty sure we had too much. At 22 Euros per extra kilogram, checking extra luggage was NOT an option, but we figured we were okay as long as they didn't weigh the carry-ons, and I knew exactly what I could take out of which suitcases if necessary. Our second train was over 15 minutes late, making our connection in Köln VERY close, but we made it, and once we got to the airport in Frankfurt, had no problem finding our bus stop. Although we'd just missed a bus, and they go every half hour, it wasn't too bad waiting, either, as our particular bus stop was right outside the doors, so we waited inside. That day was by far the coldest day of our whole trip. There was no more snow where we'd been staying and I'd already thought that that would be our first day without seeing snow anywhere (the day before we hadn't seen any until nearly to Ratingen), but it was snowing quite a bit in Frankfurt and did the whole time we were there.
Christin met us at the bus stop at her end (less than 20 minutes from the airport) and we walked to their house, where we spent awhile just warming up. That evening we were able to visit with Peter and Christin, and after the children had gone to bed, played two games of Settlers of Catan. We slept very well, Katie and Helen with us in their HUGE bed, Jacob on a mat on the floor, and Marie and Lukas on a sofa-bed, while Peter and Christin themselves slept in the living room. We didn't get up the next morning until long after they had left for work.
Around 10:00 a friend of Jörn's, Arndt, arrived, and at 11:30, as we were just about to brave the cold and head for the playground, our friend Annika (whom we met in South Africa, but she's from Hanover and now lives not far from Frankfurt) arrived, so we all went to the playground together. We were fairly well-frozen by the time we left after not much more than half an hour, and all had lunch, for which Peter (who works only a couple of blocks away) joined us. After lunch Arndt left, and Annika played Settlers of Catan with Marie, Jacob, and Lukas (and Jörn, who ended up taking over for Lukas), while I played Go Fish and Memory with Katie, and Helen slept.
Annika was able to stay until 5:30-ish, just after Christin got home, and our friends Jill and Alan arrived at about 6:00 for dinner, by which time Peter had also arrived home. More good conversation (and good food!), and then to bed for the last time this trip.
Packing was easy the next morning--just the one suitcase we'd used for the two days. I weighed everything again and hoped that the airport scales would be set a bit lower. Another friend of Jörn's, Bernd, came for a few hours, and Peter came home for lunch again, and Christin made it home in time to see us off to the airport in two taxis. Interestingly, although in our experience Düsseldorf, Ratingen, and Mülheim all have taxi vans that will easily hold a family of seven AND their luggage, Frankfurt doesn't have any, or at least the taxi company we called didn't, nor did they have proper children's seats (despite us having requested them on the phone the day before), AND they tried to claim that no taxis do. I've only taken a taxi four times that I can remember in all my years in Germany, the first time nine years ago, and every single taxi had two children's seats, and in fact, one of them had integrated seats with five-point harnesses. But maybe that's only the law in NRW, not in Hessen. At least my taxi driver was apologetic and quite friendly, also helping to load and unload the luggage, which earned him a tip--the other driver got his fee to the cent, and not a cent more. (Not the U.S.: one does not HAVE to tip, as a tip truly is based on the service rendered.)
We had a short moment of concern when we arrived at the airport and the displays were all blank, but it turned out that the monitors were out of order, not that all flights had been cancelled! Checking in went well. Czech Airlines has a limit of one bag and 20 kilos per passenger, as well as one bag up to 10 kilos for an infant without a seat, but unlike some other airlines, allows the weight to be shared around a group, as long as no one bag weighs more than 32 kilos, so we could take up to 7 bags, up to 130 kilos. Starting with our heaviest suitcase, which was 26 kilos, we started with the weighing in, and after the sixth bag were up to "only" 119 kilos. We then had to choose between two "carry-ons"--one filled with clothes, weighing about six kilos, one filled with books, weighing 14. I put on the 14 kilo one, hoping that maybe, maybe, it was actually only 11, but the airport scale agreed that it was 14, bringing our total to 133 kilos, three kilos over, definitely not worth 66 Euros!! I was all ready to switch for the lighter one (or take out three kilos of books), but the man said that was no problem. :-)
Going through security was uncomplicated, but at our gate there was a sign saying that our flight was leaving from a different gate. At that other one, however, they knew nothing about it. Eventually, it was determined that our flight was late and that they didn't yet know which gate. We ate up the Walker's shortbread that Jill and Alan had given us (exactly 21 pieces--three for each person, no fighting, and yes, Helen knew that three were for her, too) and wandered around a bit, and finally got on the plane, which left well over an hour late...and arrived in Prague close to two hours late.
Once we got to the monitors in Prague to find out if there was any hope of getting our next flight, it was exactly 9:55 p.m., the time our flight was scheduled to leave, and the status was "gate closed". So we stopped hurrying and got into the transfer line, wondering if we'd get to stay in Prague long enough to actually see something more than the airport. Almost immediately, however, an airport employee asked if there was anybody there for Larnaka, and then told us to hurry--they were holding the plane for us. Passport control, security again, and then onto the plane, where everybody else had already been waiting for half an hour or more...we made it.
Once in Larnaca, we first had to go through passport control, of course, where the officer barely glanced at the six German passports, then started flipping through my U.S. passport, finally arriving at the single-use re-entry visa, and said, "What is this?" I'd completely forgotten that I was supposed to be nervous about whether they would let me back into Cyprus, but we explained that yes, we live in Cyprus, but that I don't have a yellow slip yet because Nikosia lost my file, so that's why I have this visa. He rolled his eyes as if that wasn't unusual--didn't seem to think WE were being strange--and then said that he'd never seen that kind of visa in an American passport before. But he let me in!
And our luggage, obviously having been the very last to be put loaded in Prague, was the very first out in Larnaca, so not much waiting. As I started to text Richard that we had arrived, he called to say that "they" (turned out to be Richard and his sailing friend, Tim--he'd only e-mailed that he'd come with two cars, but hadn't said which of his many friends he was going to talk into going to the airport at 3:00 a.m.) were waiting right out front.
We slept in seven different beds in the last six and a half weeks, all of them comfortable, but oh, falling into my OWN bed, on my OWN pillow, at 3:40 a.m. was the most wonderful, comfortable feeling imaginable! I also very much enjoyed being able to reach for the switch on my reading light automatically, as well as waking up in the morning proper and seeing my wall of photos, and getting to walk to the kitchen in my nightgown, and knowing that I didn't have to go anywhere. I still love to travel, but it's fascinating to me how much more I love home with the passing of the years. And now it's the next day and I'm quite tired and heading to my very own bed again. :-)
Monday, February 8, 2010
February 8, 2010: Germany, part seven: the last weekend
Maybe I'll be able to keep at least one entry short? I REALLY don't have time
to be at the computer right now, but if I wait until we're home, I know I'll
never go back and write this, and as I said a few days ago, at this point, this
is more for myself than anyone else. Nobody else HAS to read this. :-)
Saturday morning (February 6th) two (of the three) elders and the pastor of our church came for a couple of hours, just to make sure we're all on the same page. It was very reassuring to know that the eldership is behind us, and that they will continue to represent us that way to the church.
Once they had left, we headed for Krefeld to have lunch with the H family. Again, too brief, but nice. Although their youngest son is 15, and the other two that were home are 17 and 18, they all spent good time with our children. At 3:00 I left, as we were expecting guests at 4:00 and I had to get gas first, as well, but Jörn didn't want to interrupt the good conversation at that point so I encouraged him to stay for a little while longer. Helen and I got back to Hamminkeln only a few minutes before Roddy and Erika and their son Alexander arrived. They moved to Switzerland about a year and a half ago, and then to Belgium just a few weeks ago, so came over this weekend just to see us. :-) It was great being able to chat with them with only Alexander (two years old) and Helen running around, before the rest of the loudness arrived with Jörn. They stayed for dinner and until Roddy was falling asleep and we wanted our children to be doing the same, and then we all went to bed early. We haven't been able to get rid of the colds we've had ever since we arrived (Jörn, Katie, Helen, and I), and none of us were feeling great.
Sunday, February 7th, Helen and I went in the C family's car and Jörn and the rest left a bit later in the B family's car to get to church for the end of the first service, to be able to say hi and bye to people. Very much enjoyed and appreciated William's sermon in the second service (he's so REAL--he doesn't sound like he's "preaching" at all, and his Irish accent doesn't hurt the delivery any, either--I certainly understand it better than some U.S. accents, to be honest!), they called us up and prayed for us to send us back to Cyprus, and then it was lots and lots of goodbyes and hugs and then a few more. I didn't cry too much...
After church we went out to a favorite Chinese restaurant that we used to go to with Jörn's father, and our friends from Belgium (well, now living there...she's from the U.S., he's from Scotland) joined us. More goodbyes, then both cars to Angermund, where we returned the C family's car to them and I put Helen in the sling and joined the rest of the family in the B family's car, which has 6 seats. And then we drove to Mülheim to have coffee and cake in our very own flat, as guests of our renter. It was admittedly bit of a strange feeling, and she is VERY different than we are, so that we hardly recognized it with all the fancy lighting and other elegance. However, she is very nice and obviously taking care of the place better than we did, so there's no cause for concern, rather, for reassurance. She intends to stay there at the very least until her daughter graduates from high school, which isn't for more than three more years, which was also reassuring, as we do NOT want to be trying to find renters from Cyprus.
After Lukas and Jacob had finished their cake, we all had a tour of the house to see the changes, and then the boys walked down the street to Peggy's house, and a little while later, Marie joined them. Without Marie to chase Helen around, it was a little less relaxing for us, but we stayed until nearly 6:00, and then went to Peggy's ourselves, where we stayed until a little past 8:00. It was great having one more evening with Peggy and Florian, only planned the day before, so reminding ourselves of the fact that that had been an unexpected treat was helpful in staying more-or-less cheerful as we said goodbye. This time, we put Helen in Katie's carseat and Katie and Lukas shared a seatbelt, and we were glad it was only a 35-minute drive, because Lukas, Katie, and Jacob squabbled the entire drive back. (We'd left Helen's carseat with the C family when we returned the car, as although it's our own carseat, we have more-or-less permanently loaned it to Margaret and Phil for their grandchildren, and had only "borrowed" it ourselves while we were here, so the Cs will return it to Margaret and Phil.)
And now it's Monday and I can't get away with any more time at the computer. We have a visitor at the moment (G from my August posts, for those interested) who will be here for lunch, then we're heading (via three trains and a bus) to spend the evening with the R family in Ratingen. That's our very last appointment while up in this part of Germany, as at 11:45 tomorrow we'll be getting on the train and heading for Frankfurt. On Thursday evening we fly back HOME, to Cyprus. :-)
Saturday morning (February 6th) two (of the three) elders and the pastor of our church came for a couple of hours, just to make sure we're all on the same page. It was very reassuring to know that the eldership is behind us, and that they will continue to represent us that way to the church.
Once they had left, we headed for Krefeld to have lunch with the H family. Again, too brief, but nice. Although their youngest son is 15, and the other two that were home are 17 and 18, they all spent good time with our children. At 3:00 I left, as we were expecting guests at 4:00 and I had to get gas first, as well, but Jörn didn't want to interrupt the good conversation at that point so I encouraged him to stay for a little while longer. Helen and I got back to Hamminkeln only a few minutes before Roddy and Erika and their son Alexander arrived. They moved to Switzerland about a year and a half ago, and then to Belgium just a few weeks ago, so came over this weekend just to see us. :-) It was great being able to chat with them with only Alexander (two years old) and Helen running around, before the rest of the loudness arrived with Jörn. They stayed for dinner and until Roddy was falling asleep and we wanted our children to be doing the same, and then we all went to bed early. We haven't been able to get rid of the colds we've had ever since we arrived (Jörn, Katie, Helen, and I), and none of us were feeling great.
Sunday, February 7th, Helen and I went in the C family's car and Jörn and the rest left a bit later in the B family's car to get to church for the end of the first service, to be able to say hi and bye to people. Very much enjoyed and appreciated William's sermon in the second service (he's so REAL--he doesn't sound like he's "preaching" at all, and his Irish accent doesn't hurt the delivery any, either--I certainly understand it better than some U.S. accents, to be honest!), they called us up and prayed for us to send us back to Cyprus, and then it was lots and lots of goodbyes and hugs and then a few more. I didn't cry too much...
After church we went out to a favorite Chinese restaurant that we used to go to with Jörn's father, and our friends from Belgium (well, now living there...she's from the U.S., he's from Scotland) joined us. More goodbyes, then both cars to Angermund, where we returned the C family's car to them and I put Helen in the sling and joined the rest of the family in the B family's car, which has 6 seats. And then we drove to Mülheim to have coffee and cake in our very own flat, as guests of our renter. It was admittedly bit of a strange feeling, and she is VERY different than we are, so that we hardly recognized it with all the fancy lighting and other elegance. However, she is very nice and obviously taking care of the place better than we did, so there's no cause for concern, rather, for reassurance. She intends to stay there at the very least until her daughter graduates from high school, which isn't for more than three more years, which was also reassuring, as we do NOT want to be trying to find renters from Cyprus.
After Lukas and Jacob had finished their cake, we all had a tour of the house to see the changes, and then the boys walked down the street to Peggy's house, and a little while later, Marie joined them. Without Marie to chase Helen around, it was a little less relaxing for us, but we stayed until nearly 6:00, and then went to Peggy's ourselves, where we stayed until a little past 8:00. It was great having one more evening with Peggy and Florian, only planned the day before, so reminding ourselves of the fact that that had been an unexpected treat was helpful in staying more-or-less cheerful as we said goodbye. This time, we put Helen in Katie's carseat and Katie and Lukas shared a seatbelt, and we were glad it was only a 35-minute drive, because Lukas, Katie, and Jacob squabbled the entire drive back. (We'd left Helen's carseat with the C family when we returned the car, as although it's our own carseat, we have more-or-less permanently loaned it to Margaret and Phil for their grandchildren, and had only "borrowed" it ourselves while we were here, so the Cs will return it to Margaret and Phil.)
And now it's Monday and I can't get away with any more time at the computer. We have a visitor at the moment (G from my August posts, for those interested) who will be here for lunch, then we're heading (via three trains and a bus) to spend the evening with the R family in Ratingen. That's our very last appointment while up in this part of Germany, as at 11:45 tomorrow we'll be getting on the train and heading for Frankfurt. On Thursday evening we fly back HOME, to Cyprus. :-)
February 8, 2010: Germany, part six: the third week
It's now Monday, February 8th, and I should be packing, but most of this had
been written already, so I'm going to go ahead and post it! Besides, it's hard
to pack when some clothes are still drying. :-)
Monday, February 1st: This was one of our earliest starts to a day, as Jörn drove me (and Helen and Helen's car seat) to a slightly further away train station to get the train at 7:30. If I'd taken the train from here, I would have had to leave at 6:45 and after a nine-minute train-ride, had to wait for my connection for 35 minutes, so my husband took pity on me. Unusually, I only had to take two trains: one from Mehrhoog to Duisburg, and then one more to Krefeld, where my friend Sabine picked us up at 9:00 for the La Leche League meeting that I had attended every first Monday of the month since Marie was four months old, and then after I qualified, had helped lead for a couple of years. After LLL (three of us leaders--Ute, who was the original leader and is still there, and with whom I've been pregnant at the same time several times, as she had three children when we met and I had one, and now she has six and I have five, Sabine, and myself--and only three "regular" mothers), our friend Elisabeth picked us up to take us to her house in Neukirchen-Vluyn, where Helen devoured grapes and I devoured made-by-Elisabeth candied almonds, and then I read and Helen slept, while Elisabeth went to pick up Jörn and the other children in Angermund.
In the meantime, Jörn and the others had left at 8:45 for a much less pleasant event. The children were happy to be dropped off at Jill's house, who had also kept her five-year-old, Eva, home from preschool to play with Katie, but then Jörn met Phil and Margaret to ride with them to a funeral. Just over a month before, Ralf had been perfectly healthy, traveling and evangelizing in Siberia, and his sudden, and very short, illness had been quite a shock. We'd heard last Sunday that he was in the hospital and not at all well, and Monday morning he died. While not the happiest of places to be, Jörn did say that it was a very good funeral, and he also got to see several people he wouldn't have otherwise seen, from the mission work he'd been involved in for the seven years before we left Germany. (He had planned to attend one scheduled meeting, but the date got changed on short notice, and he couldn't go to the new appointment.) After the funeral Jörn took the train back to Angermund (as Phil and Margaret were staying for the coffee time afterwards, which Jörn also would have liked to stay for had they known before-hand that it was planned.)
So when Elisabeth with Jörn and the children got home to Elisabeth's, as well as the two teenagers, John and Rebecca, we had lunch, and also climbed up in the attic to visit all the things we stored there when we left Germany just over a year ago. I'd really wanted to get the rest of our photo albums (we only took about ten years' worth with us to Cyprus, and I've missed not having Marie's baby pictures), but we just don't have space in our luggage and I don't want to risk sending them by mail, so I didn't even open the box. :-( Jörn got his winter coat (which, for no reason I could understand, he'd insisted on leaving there, and had really missed since we arrived in Germany, although he was able to borrow one) and I got my maternity clothes and the baby clothes that I'd stored. Maybe I should have let the doctor tell me the gender, because it seems silly to take all of them to Cyprus now, but oh well. There are very few boy clothes (I only kept my very favorite things, and although boy babies are just as cute as girl babies, their clothes aren't...) and girl clothes only for the first few months, as Helen was four months old when we moved to Cyprus, so everything girl and unisex from that size up is in Cyprus already anyway. But there are also the sweaters my grandma made and two snowsuits (one bright pink, one red), which we most certainly won't need in Cyprus...and are probably going to take anyway.
Gary arrived towards the end of lunch, in time for cake (I'm not sure I ever realized before how much cake one eats in Germany, even though I DID remember how good it is...), and we were all able to talk while John and Rebecca entertained the children. Around 5:00 Gary and Elisabeth took us (in two cars this time, so one trip) to the K family's house in Viersen.
Leigh K. is one of the two people at IBCD who have been there longer than I have (or had...but I AM technically still a member) been, definitely one of my longest-standing friends. She's another U.S.ian married to a German and I absolutely love her sense of humor and appreciate how well she understands me. And yes, Leigh, I'd be writing that even if I didn't know you're reading my blog, and no, there isn't anything else I would have written if I'd thought you weren't! LOL For several years in a row the K's hosted an open house on December 26th, to eat lots of food and play games, which we enjoyed very much, and we weren't the only family who thought it was a pity that it only happened once a year. So it got turned into a monthly "games evening", the first Friday of every month for another several years, almost always meeting at the K family's house. We weren't able to make it to the February games evening, but this Monday just for us was just as nice, and less chaotic with fewer people! Connie and her daughter Vida also came for the evening, Connie being the fourth-longest member of IBCD having arrived very shortly after I did. In a church with an annual turn-over of about 1/3 of the congregation, it's fairly noticable who the "old-timers" are!
Dieter went to sleep at his mother's house, as there were so many people in his, and he would be getting up early for work, Anna slept in her room, four of our children and Lindsey slept in the living room, and we were given Leigh and Dieter's room while Leigh slept in Lindsey's room. Except once we'd gotten everyone else settled down, Leigh and I hung out in Lindsey's room for another couple of hours talking. Another good reason that we're staying at the Globe Europe headquarters and not with friends, as I would stay up talking late EVERY night, but I certainly enjoyed it! Helen and I finally went to bed a little past midnight and slept very well.
Tuesday, February 2nd: The next morning Leigh drove us to the train station (in two trips--it was very icy and we definitely weren't risking squishing), where we took--as with almost every single trip we've taken!--three trains to Honrath, where Lisa S. had been going to pick us up in their 15-passenger van. (They have seven children, the seventh having been born a couple of weeks after we left Germany.) However, we were met by Paul in their five-passenger, four-wheel-drive jeep, as the van was iced in and they couldn't get it out. He'd taken time out of work just to get us and take us up to the house (and we did squish everyone in--it was a short drive on very quiet streets, in a 4WD), and then he went back to work. We had lunch and a wonderful afternoon with the S family, then Paul got home from work, so we had time with him, as well, and then dinner, and then he took six of us back to the train station. Marie stayed there to spend the night, as their daughter Alice is a good friend of hers.
Three trains later, Jacob, Lukas, Helen and I arrived in Hamminkeln. Jörn and Katie got out in Düsseldorf to take the train to Angermund to pick up the C family's car again, and didn't get home until quite awhile after we did. When we changed trains in Wesel, it was raining, and I was not looking forward to the walk home. It's quite short, but pouring rain gets one wet very quickly. However, by the time we arrived in Hamminkeln, only nine minutes later, it had changed to nice, fluffy snow! I was happy to not get wet--Jörn was less excited about the drive in the thickly falling snow.
Wednesday, February 3rd: Brad and Jan got back from the U.S. on Monday, so we'd arranged to meet with them this morning. Jan had all our sympathy for not making it because of the jet lag, but it was good talking with Brad for a couple of hours, and we arranged to have breakfast together on Friday. After lunch, Jörn left on the train to meet Marie in Düsseldorf, where she (together with Alice and Emma) arrived by train. He saw Alice and Emma off on their train back home, and then they took another two trains to Kaldenkirchen, where our friend Caro picked them up. They arrived at the house just a few minutes before the other children and I arrived there by car at 5:00 p.m.. Her husband, Lutz, unfortunately couldn't be there as he was on a business trip, but the children enjoyed Jonathan (21 months) and his toys, and we were pleased to have Spätzle, a type of noodle, for dinner. Caro took Jörn (and Jacob and Lukas--this time Jörn had a "schöner Tag ticket", which is good for the whole state and for up to five people, so it didn't matter if he took someone over six this time--he's often taken Katie because she doesn't have to pay, being under six years old) to the train station, and the girls and I headed home in the car.
Thursday, February 4th: Jörn and Katie got the train at 11:45 and the rest of us left a little bit later in the car to visit the H family in Oberhausen, in their new house. I found their house easily enough and left the three older children with Andrea and Nils (16 and 14), to go pick up Jörn and Katie. Finding the main train station with all the one-way streets was less easy, and then they weren't there. Drove around again, finally parked and got out to look for them. It turned out that their train was 20 minutes late, which is rather unusual. Also, the train station was eerily quiet, as all the public workers in the city were on strike today, so no busses or trams were running. That also explained why Andrea and Nils were home--anyone who lived more than a 30-minute walk from school was not required to go to school, and very few people in their right mind would go to school on a day they've been told that they don't have to!! But I did eventually find them and we got back to the house, where Barbara was starting to make lunch, having just gotten home from Mini-Club, the playgroup that she leads and that I attended for over seven years on Thursday mornings--first with Marie and Jacob, then with Lukas, and finally with Katie. Barbara also became a good friend of mine and had babysat for us some, including having Marie, Jacob, and Lukas overnight the night that Katie was born, and Marie and Katie overnight the night Helen was born, and was the very first person outside of our family (except for the midwives!) to see Katie and Helen after their respective births.
After lunch we headed for the place where Mini-Club meets, as Barbara had arranged a get-together for the "old-timers". Several of them came without children, but we made quite a large group--I think there were eight or 10 other children, and at least 14 parents. Some of them had been there with me with Lukas already, so people I'd met six or so years ago. The hottest topic was of course how all their children were doing in their respective pre-schools (or in some cases, schools), but it was a good afternoon.
Back at the Hs' house we talked a bunch, while the children played with Andrea, and then we had dinner (not much...a big lunch and all that cake again!) and came home, this time in two cars, as the B family from Mülheim came by to lend us their car until Sunday night.
Friday, February 5th: A friend came in the morning to meet with Jörn. We were actually a bit nervous about this meeting, as we thought we were going to be "told off" about something, and didn't know what, but it turned out that he wasn't upset with us and that his insistance about meeting with Jörn privately and face-to-face, and not on the phone, had more to do with what he wanted to share of his own life than anything else. It was a good meeting and we're glad it worked out at the last minute for him to come up to Hamminkeln.
At 12:00 we left for Düsseldorf, where we had lunch with Marie's violin teacher. Marie had looked forward to playing the violin together, but Katie ended up occupying rather too much of the limited time by locking herself in the bathroom and not being able to get the door open again. I was eventually able to talk her through turning the key to pull it out, and after trying several other keys from the house (German inside doors usually have what I think of as "old-fashioned" keys, and sometimes--but not always--all the keys in one house will be the same, or at least some of them will be), we found one that would unlock the door. Marie did get to play one piece for Frau S, but then we unfortunately had to rush off to get back to Mülheim for Mutter-Kind-Kreis and Jungschar.
After the playgroups, we went to the B family's house for dinner. Jörn sweated a bit parking their car in their narrow driveway (between a hedge and a step) while they watched, but other than that, cheese fondue and great conversation and our children all occupied with their three children made for a very nice evening that surprised us by not ending until after 11:00!
I did finally start to wonder why I bothered bringing pajamas for at least the little ones along on this trip...the vast majority of the evenings, they've been taken sleeping out of the car or off of the train and put in their beds in their clothes. At least, over the years, I've finally stopped packing more than one pair of pajamas per person: if the one pair they have is in the laundry at bedtime, oh well--a t-shirt works just as well!
Monday, February 1st: This was one of our earliest starts to a day, as Jörn drove me (and Helen and Helen's car seat) to a slightly further away train station to get the train at 7:30. If I'd taken the train from here, I would have had to leave at 6:45 and after a nine-minute train-ride, had to wait for my connection for 35 minutes, so my husband took pity on me. Unusually, I only had to take two trains: one from Mehrhoog to Duisburg, and then one more to Krefeld, where my friend Sabine picked us up at 9:00 for the La Leche League meeting that I had attended every first Monday of the month since Marie was four months old, and then after I qualified, had helped lead for a couple of years. After LLL (three of us leaders--Ute, who was the original leader and is still there, and with whom I've been pregnant at the same time several times, as she had three children when we met and I had one, and now she has six and I have five, Sabine, and myself--and only three "regular" mothers), our friend Elisabeth picked us up to take us to her house in Neukirchen-Vluyn, where Helen devoured grapes and I devoured made-by-Elisabeth candied almonds, and then I read and Helen slept, while Elisabeth went to pick up Jörn and the other children in Angermund.
In the meantime, Jörn and the others had left at 8:45 for a much less pleasant event. The children were happy to be dropped off at Jill's house, who had also kept her five-year-old, Eva, home from preschool to play with Katie, but then Jörn met Phil and Margaret to ride with them to a funeral. Just over a month before, Ralf had been perfectly healthy, traveling and evangelizing in Siberia, and his sudden, and very short, illness had been quite a shock. We'd heard last Sunday that he was in the hospital and not at all well, and Monday morning he died. While not the happiest of places to be, Jörn did say that it was a very good funeral, and he also got to see several people he wouldn't have otherwise seen, from the mission work he'd been involved in for the seven years before we left Germany. (He had planned to attend one scheduled meeting, but the date got changed on short notice, and he couldn't go to the new appointment.) After the funeral Jörn took the train back to Angermund (as Phil and Margaret were staying for the coffee time afterwards, which Jörn also would have liked to stay for had they known before-hand that it was planned.)
So when Elisabeth with Jörn and the children got home to Elisabeth's, as well as the two teenagers, John and Rebecca, we had lunch, and also climbed up in the attic to visit all the things we stored there when we left Germany just over a year ago. I'd really wanted to get the rest of our photo albums (we only took about ten years' worth with us to Cyprus, and I've missed not having Marie's baby pictures), but we just don't have space in our luggage and I don't want to risk sending them by mail, so I didn't even open the box. :-( Jörn got his winter coat (which, for no reason I could understand, he'd insisted on leaving there, and had really missed since we arrived in Germany, although he was able to borrow one) and I got my maternity clothes and the baby clothes that I'd stored. Maybe I should have let the doctor tell me the gender, because it seems silly to take all of them to Cyprus now, but oh well. There are very few boy clothes (I only kept my very favorite things, and although boy babies are just as cute as girl babies, their clothes aren't...) and girl clothes only for the first few months, as Helen was four months old when we moved to Cyprus, so everything girl and unisex from that size up is in Cyprus already anyway. But there are also the sweaters my grandma made and two snowsuits (one bright pink, one red), which we most certainly won't need in Cyprus...and are probably going to take anyway.
Gary arrived towards the end of lunch, in time for cake (I'm not sure I ever realized before how much cake one eats in Germany, even though I DID remember how good it is...), and we were all able to talk while John and Rebecca entertained the children. Around 5:00 Gary and Elisabeth took us (in two cars this time, so one trip) to the K family's house in Viersen.
Leigh K. is one of the two people at IBCD who have been there longer than I have (or had...but I AM technically still a member) been, definitely one of my longest-standing friends. She's another U.S.ian married to a German and I absolutely love her sense of humor and appreciate how well she understands me. And yes, Leigh, I'd be writing that even if I didn't know you're reading my blog, and no, there isn't anything else I would have written if I'd thought you weren't! LOL For several years in a row the K's hosted an open house on December 26th, to eat lots of food and play games, which we enjoyed very much, and we weren't the only family who thought it was a pity that it only happened once a year. So it got turned into a monthly "games evening", the first Friday of every month for another several years, almost always meeting at the K family's house. We weren't able to make it to the February games evening, but this Monday just for us was just as nice, and less chaotic with fewer people! Connie and her daughter Vida also came for the evening, Connie being the fourth-longest member of IBCD having arrived very shortly after I did. In a church with an annual turn-over of about 1/3 of the congregation, it's fairly noticable who the "old-timers" are!
Dieter went to sleep at his mother's house, as there were so many people in his, and he would be getting up early for work, Anna slept in her room, four of our children and Lindsey slept in the living room, and we were given Leigh and Dieter's room while Leigh slept in Lindsey's room. Except once we'd gotten everyone else settled down, Leigh and I hung out in Lindsey's room for another couple of hours talking. Another good reason that we're staying at the Globe Europe headquarters and not with friends, as I would stay up talking late EVERY night, but I certainly enjoyed it! Helen and I finally went to bed a little past midnight and slept very well.
Tuesday, February 2nd: The next morning Leigh drove us to the train station (in two trips--it was very icy and we definitely weren't risking squishing), where we took--as with almost every single trip we've taken!--three trains to Honrath, where Lisa S. had been going to pick us up in their 15-passenger van. (They have seven children, the seventh having been born a couple of weeks after we left Germany.) However, we were met by Paul in their five-passenger, four-wheel-drive jeep, as the van was iced in and they couldn't get it out. He'd taken time out of work just to get us and take us up to the house (and we did squish everyone in--it was a short drive on very quiet streets, in a 4WD), and then he went back to work. We had lunch and a wonderful afternoon with the S family, then Paul got home from work, so we had time with him, as well, and then dinner, and then he took six of us back to the train station. Marie stayed there to spend the night, as their daughter Alice is a good friend of hers.
Three trains later, Jacob, Lukas, Helen and I arrived in Hamminkeln. Jörn and Katie got out in Düsseldorf to take the train to Angermund to pick up the C family's car again, and didn't get home until quite awhile after we did. When we changed trains in Wesel, it was raining, and I was not looking forward to the walk home. It's quite short, but pouring rain gets one wet very quickly. However, by the time we arrived in Hamminkeln, only nine minutes later, it had changed to nice, fluffy snow! I was happy to not get wet--Jörn was less excited about the drive in the thickly falling snow.
Wednesday, February 3rd: Brad and Jan got back from the U.S. on Monday, so we'd arranged to meet with them this morning. Jan had all our sympathy for not making it because of the jet lag, but it was good talking with Brad for a couple of hours, and we arranged to have breakfast together on Friday. After lunch, Jörn left on the train to meet Marie in Düsseldorf, where she (together with Alice and Emma) arrived by train. He saw Alice and Emma off on their train back home, and then they took another two trains to Kaldenkirchen, where our friend Caro picked them up. They arrived at the house just a few minutes before the other children and I arrived there by car at 5:00 p.m.. Her husband, Lutz, unfortunately couldn't be there as he was on a business trip, but the children enjoyed Jonathan (21 months) and his toys, and we were pleased to have Spätzle, a type of noodle, for dinner. Caro took Jörn (and Jacob and Lukas--this time Jörn had a "schöner Tag ticket", which is good for the whole state and for up to five people, so it didn't matter if he took someone over six this time--he's often taken Katie because she doesn't have to pay, being under six years old) to the train station, and the girls and I headed home in the car.
Thursday, February 4th: Jörn and Katie got the train at 11:45 and the rest of us left a little bit later in the car to visit the H family in Oberhausen, in their new house. I found their house easily enough and left the three older children with Andrea and Nils (16 and 14), to go pick up Jörn and Katie. Finding the main train station with all the one-way streets was less easy, and then they weren't there. Drove around again, finally parked and got out to look for them. It turned out that their train was 20 minutes late, which is rather unusual. Also, the train station was eerily quiet, as all the public workers in the city were on strike today, so no busses or trams were running. That also explained why Andrea and Nils were home--anyone who lived more than a 30-minute walk from school was not required to go to school, and very few people in their right mind would go to school on a day they've been told that they don't have to!! But I did eventually find them and we got back to the house, where Barbara was starting to make lunch, having just gotten home from Mini-Club, the playgroup that she leads and that I attended for over seven years on Thursday mornings--first with Marie and Jacob, then with Lukas, and finally with Katie. Barbara also became a good friend of mine and had babysat for us some, including having Marie, Jacob, and Lukas overnight the night that Katie was born, and Marie and Katie overnight the night Helen was born, and was the very first person outside of our family (except for the midwives!) to see Katie and Helen after their respective births.
After lunch we headed for the place where Mini-Club meets, as Barbara had arranged a get-together for the "old-timers". Several of them came without children, but we made quite a large group--I think there were eight or 10 other children, and at least 14 parents. Some of them had been there with me with Lukas already, so people I'd met six or so years ago. The hottest topic was of course how all their children were doing in their respective pre-schools (or in some cases, schools), but it was a good afternoon.
Back at the Hs' house we talked a bunch, while the children played with Andrea, and then we had dinner (not much...a big lunch and all that cake again!) and came home, this time in two cars, as the B family from Mülheim came by to lend us their car until Sunday night.
Friday, February 5th: A friend came in the morning to meet with Jörn. We were actually a bit nervous about this meeting, as we thought we were going to be "told off" about something, and didn't know what, but it turned out that he wasn't upset with us and that his insistance about meeting with Jörn privately and face-to-face, and not on the phone, had more to do with what he wanted to share of his own life than anything else. It was a good meeting and we're glad it worked out at the last minute for him to come up to Hamminkeln.
At 12:00 we left for Düsseldorf, where we had lunch with Marie's violin teacher. Marie had looked forward to playing the violin together, but Katie ended up occupying rather too much of the limited time by locking herself in the bathroom and not being able to get the door open again. I was eventually able to talk her through turning the key to pull it out, and after trying several other keys from the house (German inside doors usually have what I think of as "old-fashioned" keys, and sometimes--but not always--all the keys in one house will be the same, or at least some of them will be), we found one that would unlock the door. Marie did get to play one piece for Frau S, but then we unfortunately had to rush off to get back to Mülheim for Mutter-Kind-Kreis and Jungschar.
After the playgroups, we went to the B family's house for dinner. Jörn sweated a bit parking their car in their narrow driveway (between a hedge and a step) while they watched, but other than that, cheese fondue and great conversation and our children all occupied with their three children made for a very nice evening that surprised us by not ending until after 11:00!
I did finally start to wonder why I bothered bringing pajamas for at least the little ones along on this trip...the vast majority of the evenings, they've been taken sleeping out of the car or off of the train and put in their beds in their clothes. At least, over the years, I've finally stopped packing more than one pair of pajamas per person: if the one pair they have is in the laundry at bedtime, oh well--a t-shirt works just as well!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
February 3, 2010: Germany, part five: the second weekend
Saturday, January 30th, had been planned for months: the M family, who used
to live in Germany but had since moved to Belgium and then on to England, was
going to be in Germany for the weekend, so planned to come to breakfast. Then my
brother-and-law and his wife were going to drive from Hessen (well over three
hours one way) to have lunch and spend the afternoon with us. Well, a few weeks
ago, the M family had already let us know that they unfortunately weren't going
to make it to Germany after all, so I was able to arrange for my friend Andrea
(who was, like Caro, one of "my" first mothers at my La Leche League meetings)
and her family to come for breakfast. Silas is 14 months younger than Katie, but
although Katie is by no means petite, he was taller than she was when she was
two and he was one--now at not quite 3 1/2 he towers over her. And
seven-week-old Carlotta could easily pass for a four-month-old! Just before they
arrived, my brother-in-law called to say that after 45 minutes of shoveling
snow, he still couldn't get his car out of the driveway, so they weren't going
to be able to come after all, so we ended up inviting Andrea and Christian to
stay for lunch, as well, and telephoned another family, Amanda and Raymond with
their two-year-old Isaac, to come for coffee. Just as Andrea and her family were
leaving, Amanda and Raymond arrived. They weren't able to stay long, but it was
very pleasant, and having a quiet evening wasn't bad, either.
Sunday, January 31st: Jörn and Jacob left at 8:30 in Brad's car for the first service at our church, as Jörn was sharing at both services, and the rest of us joined them for the second service. We had a "faith lunch" (IBCD-ese for pot-luck) afterwards, so got to spend more time with a lot of people we wouldn't otherwise have seen, and as our family was told to go through the line first, we even got to eat something! (At our good-bye party, people were talking to us non-stop and by the time I got to go get food, a lot of people had already had seconds and there was no meat left, no bread, and not a lot of much else, either, so I confess to having much appreciated getting to go first this time.) We stayed until just about everyone had left, and then realized that if we left then, we would be 45 minutes too early to the M family's house in Dinslaken, which is WAY too early to arrive at a German home. (Five minutes at the most is acceptable, generally.) Judy pointed out that Daniel was sleeping and we'd be more than welcome to come hang out with her for awhile, which we very happily did. We'd been hoping to have lunch with her the week before, but she'd had to cancel because she wasn't feeling well, so it was great getting to spend some time with just her.
We then drove to Dinslaken for coffee and cake at Frank and Ulla's, with their three children, Daniel, Christina, and Benjamin. They used to live in Mülheim and I knew Ulla from Mutter-Kind-Kreis, but they'd moved to Dinslaken quite awhile ago (about six years ago, I think). However, we've kept in touch all this time, mostly with phone calls, and a very few-and-far-between visits. The last time they visited us they only had Benjamin with them, who is a year older than Lukas, so most of the children didn't even remember Daniel (18) and Christina (15). In the car Katie asked me again where we were going (it's been rather confusing to the children in any case!), and when I said "to Ulla and Frank, with their children Daniel, Christina, and Benjamin," she said, "No, the papa's name is Thomas!" I repeated all their names, not understanding at all why she was so sure that Frank must be Thomas...until Marie pointed out that our friends the H family, Ute and Thomas, who have seven children, also have a Daniel, a Christina, and a Benjamin! And "Ute" sounds pretty similar to "Ulla", so I could then understand quite well why Katie was so convinced that I had "the papa's" name wrong. :-)
Except for the tuba demonstration (Benjamin is learning to play the tuba, and for all I know, is doing very well, but it happened to be Jacob and Lukas doing the demontration...), we enjoyed the afternoon very much, and being "just us" for dinner for the second evening in a row once we got home wasn't bad either. Not that I actually had any dinner--once again, we had been completely filled up with the wonderful German "coffee and cake" time, which never, but never, includes only one type of cake, and obviously, one wants to taste the various types, all home-made. Far too delicious. Most of the others didn't eat much--except for Jacob, of course. And then we all, as always, collapsed into bed.
Sunday, January 31st: Jörn and Jacob left at 8:30 in Brad's car for the first service at our church, as Jörn was sharing at both services, and the rest of us joined them for the second service. We had a "faith lunch" (IBCD-ese for pot-luck) afterwards, so got to spend more time with a lot of people we wouldn't otherwise have seen, and as our family was told to go through the line first, we even got to eat something! (At our good-bye party, people were talking to us non-stop and by the time I got to go get food, a lot of people had already had seconds and there was no meat left, no bread, and not a lot of much else, either, so I confess to having much appreciated getting to go first this time.) We stayed until just about everyone had left, and then realized that if we left then, we would be 45 minutes too early to the M family's house in Dinslaken, which is WAY too early to arrive at a German home. (Five minutes at the most is acceptable, generally.) Judy pointed out that Daniel was sleeping and we'd be more than welcome to come hang out with her for awhile, which we very happily did. We'd been hoping to have lunch with her the week before, but she'd had to cancel because she wasn't feeling well, so it was great getting to spend some time with just her.
We then drove to Dinslaken for coffee and cake at Frank and Ulla's, with their three children, Daniel, Christina, and Benjamin. They used to live in Mülheim and I knew Ulla from Mutter-Kind-Kreis, but they'd moved to Dinslaken quite awhile ago (about six years ago, I think). However, we've kept in touch all this time, mostly with phone calls, and a very few-and-far-between visits. The last time they visited us they only had Benjamin with them, who is a year older than Lukas, so most of the children didn't even remember Daniel (18) and Christina (15). In the car Katie asked me again where we were going (it's been rather confusing to the children in any case!), and when I said "to Ulla and Frank, with their children Daniel, Christina, and Benjamin," she said, "No, the papa's name is Thomas!" I repeated all their names, not understanding at all why she was so sure that Frank must be Thomas...until Marie pointed out that our friends the H family, Ute and Thomas, who have seven children, also have a Daniel, a Christina, and a Benjamin! And "Ute" sounds pretty similar to "Ulla", so I could then understand quite well why Katie was so convinced that I had "the papa's" name wrong. :-)
Except for the tuba demonstration (Benjamin is learning to play the tuba, and for all I know, is doing very well, but it happened to be Jacob and Lukas doing the demontration...), we enjoyed the afternoon very much, and being "just us" for dinner for the second evening in a row once we got home wasn't bad either. Not that I actually had any dinner--once again, we had been completely filled up with the wonderful German "coffee and cake" time, which never, but never, includes only one type of cake, and obviously, one wants to taste the various types, all home-made. Far too delicious. Most of the others didn't eat much--except for Jacob, of course. And then we all, as always, collapsed into bed.
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