Almost a whole week

It's been almost a whole week since I last wrote. What's happened? Not much and yet a lot. We're beginning to have normal weeks with school, work, errands, but also fun.

For starters, it's still cold. And snowy. Here's the view from our balcony on Monday.

It's not that much snow, but if you have to walk everywhere, well, then the cold really does seep into you. And it's so overcast that the castle has been obscured behind heavy clouds.

On Monday we headed into the city after Kindergarten, because Alex has been complaining about the lack of a scarf. According to him, everybody has a scarf except for him and we needed to rectify the situation. After a lot of searching and choosing, he ended up with a rainbow scarf.

We rushed home on the bus and made it just in time to watch the inauguration festivities in Washington. Here's Alex and President Obama:

Here they are again. This time, Alex is trying on his new sleep sack. In Germany, kids are in sleep sacks much longer than in the US and so we got him and warm and big one. It should last him a while and he seems to love it.

Alex continues to have a lot of fun at school. Here's what he was doing on Tuesday when I picked him up. He was sitting with his teacher Achim and finishing a very neat kaleidoscope puzzle.

It took Alex a while to get the puzzle done and so I sat down at the table with them and chatted with the teacher a while. There's a great relaxed atmosphere at the school which was underscored to me (for some reason) by the fact that the teacher was drinking a cup of coffee and eating what looked like a chocolate croissant while watching over the kids. In fact, Alex is getting so comfortable at school that one of his teachers remarked to me this morning that he is quite stubborn. "When he has decided to do something it is hard to change his mind." Some of you (especially the New Pathways folks) will recognize that streak in him!

This week we also visited the public library again to exchange Alex's books. Even though we brought a few of his favorite books from home, he is increasingly interested in having me read to him exclusively in German and he is beginning to say a lot more things in German on his own. In the past, it has been clear that he's understood everything and he's always said certain phrases in German, but he's beginning to put sentences together and mimicking phrases heard at school from teachers and other kids. I'm thrilled and it happened so quickly! He's not even been going to school here for 3 weeks.

In the evening (after dinner and skyping with my parents) Alex always has his bath. Here he is enjoying the bubbles on a few different nights this week:

Finally, today, we met some other folks. It's been amazing to be able to spend time with the Föhr's and, of course, Alex has been making friends at school, but we hadn't really managed to meet new people (why is that so hard? or is it just me?). Well, the Welcome Center for International Scholars at Heidelberg University had organized a kids afternoon for today and I had signed us up. It took place in a nice meeting room in the building next to our apartment building. I didn't really know what to expect and was really excited to meet 2 other American families. (I know, we should be meeting Germans, but ...) The two husbands are both physicists or astrophysicists (whew) spending sabbatical/research time here, but have brought their families along. It was fun to compare notes, share ideas about things to do etc. The organized event was also really fun. They had prepared for us to stuff some apples with marzipan, jam, cinnamon, butter etc. and then put the apples in the oven to bake while we all headed out for a long walk in the Botanical Gardens that are right next to our building. (Dana, are you reading this?) The outdoor space was a little cold and dreary this kind of year, of course, but it turns out that there is a fantastic, beautiful, and large tropical greenhouse as well. We all traipsed through it and were enchanted by the tropical flowers and plants. Wow. We'll come back here for sure.

After our time in the greenhouse, we headed back to the warm and cozy room, had delicious, hot, sweet, and oozing baked apples and coffee, tea etc. The kids watched a short movie (Oh wie schön ist Panama - a German classic!) and the adults chatted and exchanged email addresses and cell phone numbers. I hope we will get together with these folks again soon.

Tomorrow is Friday already. Time to plan fun things to do for the weekend. Stay tuned.