Ummm....

 

Manshow, hearing Taio Cruz in the cafe: "Who's this? Is this Bob Dylan?"

 

. . .

Little 'Strayan

 Manshow just said looked up at me and said, "G'day mama!" ...so he will be getting extra treats today. 

Don't tell Berry.

. . .

 

Zoom

 I just passed my US Forces (German) drivers license test! Unleash me all legal on the roads!

 

. . .

Walk the dinosaur

After promising Berry at least 38 times that the fibreglass dinosaurs weren't real, had never been real and couldn't become real, we headed to Gartenschau Kaiserslautern for a day in the sun after a week of rain.

Unlike their dinosaur-encyclopedia-reading cousins, our kids aren't real big on the nitty-gritty of prehistoric life, so there was a fair bit of joyous quadruped-climbing before we found the German sign that said (of course) Don't Ride The Dinosaurs.

The kids had their favourites – Triceratops and Seismosaurus – but mine by far and away was this guy:

Just, you know, stalking the rear carpark and the warehouse on his day off.

Urban dinosaurs. Now that's a park I'd like to see.


. . .

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

We've been in Germany 96 hours now, and Berry spins between acceptance and rejection. On Wednesday she wept bitterly and HATED GERMANY because the backerei had no muffins. Twenty minutes later she tried pain au chocolat for the first time and decided Germany was way better than America.

At the park in Queidersbach yesterday she again judged Germany "betterer" than America, but when she saw the local school she said "it makes me think of my school, and then I want to go home."

This morning something wasn't right with the bacon. It was American bacon, but she didn't know that. She burst into tears.

"German bacon!" she wailed.

"Everything here is German! GERMAN, GERMAN, GERMAN!"

. . .

Win!

 We found a house! The village is Queidersbach and it's absolutely lovely.

The landlord signed the papers this evening and after some processing by the military housing office next week (during which we'll vigorously cross our fingers and try not to think about it) we should get the keys next Friday.

We love everything about it, and there's a pear tree in the back yard.

It's Friday night and since we arrived on Tuesday we've managed to open a German bank account, get our temporary lodging fully set up, get German iPhones, start in-processing, join the gym, choose a village (we did choose the village first) and find a house, all with the kids in tow.

We're feeling very, very lucky and rather pleased with ourselves.

. . .

Got coffee

 

Actually, I got many coffees.  Lattes, cappuccinos, whatever they'll give me and whenever.  And straight away the sun shines and the birds sing, and all of life can carry on with a spring in its step.

I'm not addicted. I'm not.

I'm not.

. . .

in Gerrrrrmany (that's how Berry says it)

We'll be starting to look at German houses tomorrow. This is one of those situations where there's such a vast and daunting list of things that need to be handled immediately, you get rabbit-brain. But probably a house is a good place to start.

Honestly though, if my lesser brain took over it would focus purely on finding espresso, a gym, an excellent grocery store and a new iPhone. I am deeply uncomfortable.


. . .

(This post is a complete cheat – I cut-and-pasted it from a rather despondent email I sent to my sister on... I think... Tuesday night. Sometimes you get that.)

. . .

History

Me: You understand? We don't open the door when Mummy's not around, because we just don't know what's outside.

Man-show: Maybe dinosaurs!

Berry: Dinosaurs are not alive. They lived in the 1980s. That's a long time. Before people were born.


. . .

Galveston

We took a farewell trip to Texas to spend some great beach time with Nathan's side of the family and say our goodbyes before Germany. It really was terrific.

Although some of it was like this....

...and more of it was like this:

Do you even need to ask why?


. . .