In Hamburg Havin' Sun!

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Guten Morgen,

It’s around 3:45pm here in Hamburg and we’re taking off for Oktoberfest later this evening. Everything has been great to date! Grant has been very busy with the boat show here. He's working hard and was even given an assignment yesterday-- it's an assignment that came from one of the big guys! I was able to meet with the International School yesterday. The Jr. Director, Nick Ronai, was very nice and I think I’m going to be assisting in different classrooms (pre-school to grade 5), he said I’ll be with the 3- year-olds first and then will perhaps move around some (Grant thought it was funny that I’ll be finger painting for the next couple of months!). I was taken around the school and introduced to the various classrooms and teachers. The 3-year-olds were making fire trucks out of shoe boxes because they’re having a fire truck visit them next week. I’m excited about helping out there!

Last night Grant and I went to dinner with some of the CAT dealers. We went to a cool Asian Bistro and there were about 13 of us. It was nice—From Spain to Holland, they were from all over. Getting the German names pronounced correctly is currently my biggest challenge and I’m blaming the wine for calling a guy named Simon, Ben. In my defense, he answered to Ben all evening. We stayed out fairly late and had a great time getting to know other people from all over the globe.

It’s nice that a lot of people speak English here. We’re trying to pick up the general language- yah, nein, danka, bitteh, etc. and of course pointing goes a long way—if you attempt to speak German and the person speaks English they answer you in English. It’s pretty funny, but we’re a little lazy to learn their language because of this.

The weather here has been great, a little brisk but sunny. I’ve been able to run everyday and there’s a beautiful lake to run around. People here smoke. They're not runners—so they all look at you funny.

I’m going to sign off, we have a long couple of days and I’m looking forward to going over to England on Monday after the Oktoberfest weekend. Grant begins his rotation on Tuesday so he's going to be drained! We'll hopefully be getting some rest soon.

xoxo,

Ali & Grant

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