Routine...

Not too much to post this week.  Catrin and Piet are back to school so the house has operated on the usual routine.  Jorn has had a bad cold though so he's been here all week.  I got a tiny version of the cold, but I'm doing fine.  Just decided not to run this week, which is not so bad seeing how it is freezing and windy.  We've had a couple of pretty days, but it's been mostly dreary.  Tuesday was pretty which made our little trip to Emden (I think I spelled it wrong before) very nice.  We went to a shmancy restaurant to celebrate the birthday of Catrin's mom.  She's a really cool lady.  She's petite and absolutely gorgeous; you would never think she's Catrin's mom if they stood beside each other, you'd assume sisters.  She carries herself with poise and is to me, the definition of a lady. Sadly, her husband didn't age as beautifully.  He's nice though.  So, lots of tasty food at the restaurant...baked chicken with basil over noodles in tomato sauce...mmmm, followed by dessert at their house.  Dessert started with a pear cake covered in some kind of egg liquor.  The pear part was good but I'm not a big fan of liquor in desserts.  Next came a chocolate cake with berries inside and cream on top.  Last was a light and extremely fluffy cheesecake.  Yes, three cakes.  I thought I was going to bust by the end.  Needless to say I didn't need to eat the rest of the day.  But one difference between most of their desserts and ours is that ours are much much sweeter. On the bus yesterday I sat beside a girl named Elisa from the Dominican Republic who complained of the same thing.  We both miss the dense, rich, near diabetic coma experience you have with a good dessert at home.  Here, you're just full from the quantity.  Elisa said she made a carrot cake for her host family and they could hardly eat it.  I told her I'd happily help her eat the next one : )  Back to Tuesday (food easily distracts me)....we spent most of the evening at Oma and Opa's house.  Piet and I had a good day of playing together.  We're having a lot of fun these days.  After playing we made it home.  It was an incredibly enjoyable day.

Wednesday was pretty normal.  I heard a big scary noise outside my window and realized that a big truck was dumping firewood in the driveway.  I went out to see what was going on a little later and realized that Catrin was moving all the wood to the back herself.  Crazy lady.  Of course I helped her and made sure she knew she could ask me to do this kind of stuff.  So we worked together and even so it took a while and a good bit of work to load it into the back room.  But now we're able to have a fire going in the furnace in the living room every night.  It makes everything feel cozy, I really like it.  Wednesday I also went back to the veggie cleaning place and again had a great time helping out and watching everybody tell jokes and stories.  It will be so nice to know what they're saying one of these days.   After that I came home and chilled with Piet for a while.  Since we've been having so much fun lately it is only natural that he also try to test the boundaries with me.  He played a game in which he would kick or hit me and then I'd send him out of my room.  I told him that he could come back in and try to behave at any point, but instead he sat outside my room and cried that I'd kicked him out.  He finally got bored of this act and the rest of the night was fine.  Kids. 

The big event yesterday was my German class.  As I mentioned before, I rode the bus with Elisa who lives really close to me and is also in class with me.  She's here as an exchange student and is a lot of fun.  Before class she and I met up with the boy from Mexico and chilled out in a pub.  It was a nice way to start the evening.  In class we had the really nice teacher again who takes time to talk to each of us and writes every word we don't know on the board so we can look it up.  She also makes us play games that force us to talk to each other.  It's intimidating, but it's the most I've spoken in German so far.  Class goes by pretty fast because people make lots of jokes.  Turns out I'm actually having fun in there and I've got a new friend.  Yay!
The learning bit is still coming slowly, but I know quite a few words and phrases now, which is progress.
Today looks pretty slow but tomorrow should be interesting because we're going to Catrin's family reunion.  So far I've had great weekends, so hopefully this will be another.  Hope all is well back home.  Feel free to send me emails or post comments on here, I love to hear from you guys!  Bis Spater!!  (See you later)