Last day of school

Today is finally the last day of public school. M and T have been in school since last August! M has (another) graduation on Saturday to mark leaving kindergarten and going (back) to public school next year. I wonder if she will end up in the Catholic classes just to keep us guessing? T is much relieved to be finished this school year.

T has been assigned a religion

Last week we found out that T is being sent to Lutheran classes. This is another big difference between the public schools here and in the US. In Germany religion is taught at school. When we asked about what religions were taught the teacher told us both of them, meaning Catholic or Lutheran. We didn't hear anything else about it for a while till T told us he was being sent to the Lutheran classes. I can only imagine how a Muslim or Jewish family might feel living here.

Fishing

The whole family went fishing on Sunday. We walked to the Pluss See and each of us took turns casting the pole (T and M got the hang of it after a few tries and did well). We didn't catch anything (tried an artificial spoon/rooster tail type lure, a minnow and corn bait), but it didn't really matter. We did see some fish in the water and there were claims of some bites. After a while the kids played in the water and collected mussels and found a leech! and they ran around in the woods some.

Overnight

M is off for an overnight at her Kindergarten. I'll let you know how it goes.

Head wound!

Late in the day Tuesday T showed up at work out of breath and ran to me after someone let him in the building. "M was hurt and her head bleeding!" So I dropped everything and ran home with him. V was there in the bathroom sitting on the floor holding M and there were smears of blood on the floor and holding a cloth to her head. She had washed her some in the tub to clear away the blood that was everywhere. I found out that her and T were playing with a ball in the living room. She had jumped off the couch to catch it and hit her head on the edge of the coffeetable. It cut the top of her head and bled like crazy. There was blood all in the living room too. I grabbed my first aid kit and a freshly washed and sun dried sock. M said it hurt when V wasn't pressing on it but I told her I would be as fast as possible. I cut the top part of the sock off, put neosporin on the cut, put the "sock bandage" over it, and wrapped it to her head with an ace bandage to hold everything in place. Later she added a pink night-cap to cover the bandage over her head. In the morning everything was removed and M scrubbed to get all the blood out of her hair. She seems perfectly fine now.

Happy 4th!

This is a bit late. I fell ill last weekend-Monday and have been catching up on everything since.

The fourth of July crept up on us and suddenly we realized it was imminent. I had to do something for it so M and V came to the rescue and made up a batch of "snickerdoodle" cookies. I brought a piled up plate of them to work with five little US flags toothpicks out of the top ones, put them on the shared lunch table, and sent out an email saying they were there for everyone and why. As it happens I forgot to bring my laptop to work so I asked G to send the email for me and he refused (he is English), so I asked a German coworker to send it. Once the word was out they didn't last long. A little while later I passed back by and there were only two flags and some crumbs in the plate that avoided being devoured.

At home we had ice cream for the fourth. Next year I'll try to get some fireworks.

There was a negative note on the day. T was late to school in the morning and in retaliation his teacher drew an "X" on the back of his hand in ink (what century is this?). It was really mean and obvious she had marked back and fourth several times to make the lines thick. I helped him scrub it off with soap and water as best we could. It is fading already.

Fishing and Hochwacht

Saturday I got up early and biked to a lake, the Pluss see, and tried out my new pole. I was there at 3am and fished for 3 hours. I did get a bite and reeled it in but as soon as I pulled the fish out of the water it wriggled itself off and got away. It was about the size of my hand. There were bigger fish out there, I could see them jumping from time to time, but it was not meant to be on this day.

On Sunday I biked north toward Luitjenburg and on to Hochwacht on the Baltic coast. I biked up and down the coast before heading back. The beach here was very nice. Much less crowded then Timmdorfstrand. On the way back I got pretty tired and stopped to rest on a bench. As I sat there two other bikers came up a side road looking exhausted and said hi (moin moin) as they passed and got onto the bike trail. I thought to myself that they must have been lost and continued on the nice bike trail parallel to the main road. After a few more miles I realized I didn't recognize the route and was off the map, so I angled what I tought was south. After many miles more a giant sea opened up next to me and I saw signs for roads toward Kiel. At that point I figured I was way lost and realized I missed my turnoff and I bet the point where I rested and saw the other bikers come up was it. At this point my legs were burning but I had to turn around and retrace. Finally I got back to that point and sure enough there was the turn I had missed. Then it was a long slow return home in a race before sunset (which fortunately takes a very long time this time of year). I finally got back in as V was putting the kids to bed and my legs are very sore today from the workout.