The weather has been lovely this weekend. A German ice cream truck scared me half to death. I was walking along the sidewalk with Katherine and I kept hearing this scraping, buzzing sound. I thought the the vehicle behind us was falling apart and scraping along the road, but in reality it was just the sound of the ice cream man's bell/buzzer. I figured it out when I looked up and saw the word "EIS" painted along the top of the vehicle (along with a picture of an ice cream cone). [View Full Entry]

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Germany recycles everything. Most things can be put into the gelber sack (a special yellow trash bag), but glass and paper products have their own place. I just found out this week that there are special bags for the paper waste… GIGANTIC PAPER BAGS! They’re the biggest paper bags I’ve ever seen! I was eager to get some, because there are a lot of hills here and in the past I’ve had to walk down sidewalks and up and down steps holding onto awkwardly-sized boxes and cardboard scraps (in addition to holding my toddler) to get to the recycling dumpsters. These [View Full Entry]

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March 23rd Katherine used to identify people as girls, boys, or babies; but now she knows a new word, “man.” Today she was looking through a magazine with pictures of celebrities, and I wrote down how she labeled them, because I thought it was funny. Will Smith- man Angelina Jolie- girl Julia Roberts- man Russell Crowe- man Adam Sandler- boy Andie McDowell- Heather Cedric the Entertainer- girl Mira Sorvino- girl Whoopi Goldberg- girl Kevin Bacon- girl Michael Keaton- man Cate Blanchett- girl Lil’ Bow Wow- girl Wynona Ryder- girl [View Full Entry]

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Katherine and I are finally recovering from colds we had this week. Katherine's been catching all of the colds/illnesses Germany has to offer! It was nice of her to share this last one with me. Today Katherine and I went into town early and visited the bakery. Along the way we saw lots of cute window boxes decorated for Easter, full of flowers, eggs and bunnies. There was a little street market out this morning. Mostly people selling clothes, but some people were selling flowers, which were fun for Katherine to look at. There were lots of people out and about, [View Full Entry]

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Katherine's knows a lot of words now. Her favorite word is "hug." She uses that word whenever she needs a cuddle. She hasn't formed many sentences yet, but sentence #4 was a gem! Sentence #1 "It's my pig." Sentence #2 "Call Papa." Sentences #3 "Papa work." Sentence #4 (yelled excitedly) "I'm nuts!" [View Full Entry]

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I got my German driver’s license. Well, it’s not really a German license. (That would cost a fortune.) It’s more like an German-American license that says I have a U.S. license and I’ve taken a class on driving in Germany and I passed a test on European road signs and another test on German driving laws. Taking the class was entertaining. The instructor was German and I thought he was quite funny. The whole time I was thinking, “This system makes sense. I understand it. I’m ready to get out there and explore…” But now that I actually hav [View Full Entry]

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Right now I don’t have a German driver’s license, so I’m busy studying for the test. David has a life-long British license, and that’s good here in the European Union, so he’s been doing all the driving when we’ve gotten rental cars. I don’t think it will be hard to drive on the Autobahn, it’s just like the interstate. What does make me nervous is city driving, because a lot of the roads here are old, twisted, and narrow. There are a lot of roundabouts, and many of the streets are one-way. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, though. [View Full Entry]

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(This story is continues from Feb. 21st) David left a tip even though he wasn’t allowed to change Katherine there. They didn’t have a baby changing station, so the attendant told David to change the baby downstairs. I was back at the table reading the sample train schedules David had printed for me earlier. I knew that David and Katherine had returned, but unfortunately I wasn’t paying much attention to them. If I had realized what David was doing, I would have stopped him. When I looked up it was too late… He was changing the baby’s diaper in the restaur [View Full Entry]

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On President's Day, we decided to go shopping. Our first stop was Idar-Oberstein. We parked our rental car in a lot close to the train station, because David wanted to show me the machine that prints train schedules and personal itineraries in English (and other languages). Very helpful. After the train station, we walked across the street to a shopping area. Katherine loved looking at the pigeons. A friendly German lady came out of her pretzel stand to talk to us. I didn't understand a word she was saying, but David's been studying German and he thinks she was trying to [View Full Entry]

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Flying to Frankfurt- Let me start by saying this computer is weird, so please excuse typing mistakes. Katherine and I left Memphis on the afternoon of February 17th. Grammy and Grandma Bea saw us off at the airport. I appreciated having help with my luggage. Our first flight to Charlotte was very short. Our next flight, Charlotte to Frankfurt, was very long. Katherine and I were seated in the very middle of our row. There was a very quiet men sitting on my left, a really mean/nasty lady sitting infront of me, and a beautiful baby girl (Katherine) on my right. [View Full Entry]

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