Thanksgiving

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was,

"thank you,"
that would suffice.
~Meister Eckhart

Our American holiday of Thanksgiving doesn't really fit into the German landscape, and today we are very far away from Thanksgiving-celebrating friends and family, but the attitude of thanksgiving is fully independent of cultures.

We are very grateful . . .

• for our family, here around this table and scattered around the world
• for our friends, who keep us close even while we're far away
  
• for this home, which allows us to live in shabby chic old-European comfort
  
• for this city that never sleeps and opens our eyes to a world we've never experienced
• for this amazing opportunity to dive into another life for a year
  
• for all these and many more blessings from our great God!

Danke!

Winter is here

Snow in the City!

The view from our balcony

It's mid-November and the first early snowflakes are floating by my fifth-floor window, lilting and dancing and wafting upward again as they meet the heat from the street below. Winter has definitely come to Berlin, earlier than usual but convincingly. The kids have been hoping for snow; now that it's here, Hannes is complaining about the cold: "Can't it snow and be just a little bit warmer?" Those early morning bike rides to school are brutally cold on exposed flesh.Here on the 52^nd parallel, it's already beginning to look like twilight at 3:30 in the afternoon, and by shortly after 4:30 it's deep night, pulling us in on ourselves for long evenings of Phase-10 and Rummy and Taboo games.

But while we were in Bonn last weekend to celebrate Hannah's 18^th birthday, the kids discovered a new antidote for this dark season—ice skating—that turns the biting cold into an excuse for gliding (and falling) on sparkling ice.

Kids on skates

Lara's class trip

Die Klassenfahrt
by Lara

About a month ago I went on a class trip that lasted for five days. In Germany, classes stay together for several years with the same teacher. One way that they form class togetherness is by going on class trips each year. This year we went to a camp called Werbellinsee, which was right near a large lake. The bus trip there was supposed to take an hour and a half, but the bus driver got lost so it ended up taking over four hours! [So much for those speedy German drivers and autobahns! -Ed.] When we finally got there it was really hot so we all went swimming in the ice-cold lake.

Here's the beach with the icy water

The rooms we stayed in had three bunk beds, a table, and a big wardrobe for our clothes. My roommates were Verena, Nora, Sophie, and Saskia. They’re also my best friends here. We had a lot of fun giving each other chocolate facials and eating lots of candy. [Wait a second--did you eat the facials? -Ed.] We also won the award for the neatest room!

Here I am with Sophie, Saskia, and Verena
(this was actually taken at our house after they had raided
all of Hannes's Reedsport/Blazers stuff!)

During the days we usually went down to the beach and played beach volleyball with all our other classmates. We also went on long hikes, sometimes in the rain. One day we even went on a boat trip on the lake. The only work we had to do was writing about each day in our journals. [And writing letters home! -Ed.]

Beach volleyball!

Fortunately on the trip back we had a different bus driver who knew the way so we got home exactly on time! We had a great time, and I think it would be fun to do this with our class back in Reedsport some time! [Lara will be available for professional tour guiding and class trip planning as early as next summer! -Ed.]

Anna learns a poem

Der Herbst steht auf der Leiter

We're often asked how the kids are progressing with their German. And the answer is . . . well, it depends on which day we're asked.

Hannes, who had a big head start on the girls, is becoming more and more fluent by the day. After a slower start, Lara is also increasingly beginning to try out her spoken language, and she understands much of what she hears in school. But Anna, who came to Germany speaking and understanding absolutely no German, has spent nearly two long months in school during which she's still understood . . . practically nothing!

However, last week all the children in her class were assigned a poem about fall to memorize. She worked and worked on it, and on Monday she recited it proudly for the class and for her teacher--and got an A+! Oddly, it seems to have been a breakthrough for her general language, as well: she suddenly seems to understand much more and I hear her babbling to herself and trying out new phrases with us in German, too. Success is so sweet!

If you crane your neck to the left and press on the play button below, you might be able to see and hear the maestro recite her poem in person. (She's asleep as I'm posting this, but maybe by tomorrow I'll have filmed her horizontally so you won't get a neck ache as you watch! Who knew?)