As such, they are not the best example of writing craftsmanship and can contain grammatical faults and possible misspellings that I fail to pick up on. I plan to go back through and edit later on to ensure I don't miss any glaring mistakes or autocorrects. But in the meantime, keep that in mind as you read and have mercy. ;) This is down-to-earth, "on the fly" journaling at its finest, and I'm just lucky to get my thoughts jotted down.
But anyway. Moving along.
Today I woke up. At 6 am, to be precise about it. I got out of bed, and I saw my reflection as I passed by the mirror.
In general, I have three hairstyles: straight, wavy and homeless. If I'm lucky, my hair decides to be only one of those. But alas, when I woke up today, my hairstyle was wavy and homeless. Oh well.
(fresh berries outside Knittel)
Nonetheless, Embla and I hopped in the car and set off for school. We usually have good conversations on the way to school. Today's topic involved girl drama of a sort, which I will not divulge the details of, as secrecy was implied. I explained that guys tend to be straightforward in their relationships (and in other areas too!) whereas girls are much more emotional, and take thw windy and convoluted way that is comparable to a roller coaster.
To illustrate, here is an example.
Same question:
"Want to hang out?"
Guy 1:
"Want to hang out?"
Guy 2.
"Not really."
"Ok, see ya next time."
*goes about his business*
Girl 1:
"Want to hang out?"
Girl 2:
"Oh I can't! Sorry!"
Girl 1: *mind runs wild- IS SHE ANGRY AT ME? IS SOMETHING WRONG? WHAT HAVE I DONE?"
*asks Girl 2 what is wrong*
"Yes! Of course I am your Best Friend. Heart youuuuu!"
"Oh I was just joking there. you're my *dear friend!"
"Actually, I'm not sure anymore...."
"Oh, I was only acting like that because of what happened yesterday."
Yes, I'm generalizing here, but you get the idea. Girls tend to complicate matters.
Thankfully, like yesterday, we didn't have any difficulty getting to school on time.
(taken at a stoplight after the light turned green, don't worry) ;p
I don't have much trouble driving a comparatively large minivan on streets in a country designed for small cars. Perhaps one of the reasons I am comfortable with the narrowness of the roads may be that I actually learned how to drive on a 15 passenger van. My Mother said it would come in handy one day and I'd be able to drive anything (thank you Mother!) :)
Today while driving back from school I had ducked behind a car, with my dented side facing towards traffic, and it would appear the dent got two people pulling over to the other side of the road for me so that I could get around.
Yesterday, I outlined the not so nice German road rage gestures
1. The Royal Hand (palm up, fingers forward)
2. Head Tilt (in the direction of your turn)
3. Kind Eyes (useless, unless in close proximity and no sunglasses worn)
4. The Big Smile
5. The "Bring 'Em Here." (exaggerated hand gesture in direction of traffic)
Their parents left for their trip around 4 morning, and all three of the kids did very well getting ready for school this morning. Erla got ready for preschool with surprisingly few distractions.
The only near-disastrous distraction involved a Hello Kitty suitcase and some gummi Bears, but before she ran off, as is her custom when her Way has not been Gotten, Ellert caught her and I was able to divert attention by telling her about....something, in German. I don't even remember what it was exactly, but it worked, she complied, got on her balance bike and we were all off. Ellert walked to his school with us. Erla was dropped off at Kindergarten and then Rachel got a coffee at the bakery across the street.
In our wanderings, Aunt Rachel was very thoughtful to buy them some new household items like placemats, organizing boxes and such. We purchased these and other home keeping supplies at our favorite little kitchen store down the street.
For fun, we went and checked out the seafood section of Knittel. Crazy thing is, we found out that fresh Salmon, as shown in the above picture, is only 1.99 euro here (like 2.50 USD.)
There is not a broom here to our liking, so we bought one while at Knittel. If we weren't already conspicuous weirdos to the folks in our neighborhood, we will most certainly be viewed as such now, since I walked through the streets and all around town carrying a gigantic broom.
Just call us the Witches of Gartenstraße.
Not to get sidetracked or nothin', but I have a few thoughts to share on the subject of the German Language.
It's curious to me how pronunciation of words can vary regionally.
For example, here in the south, "Strawberry" is pronounced:
Erdbeere (ert-bear, roll the "r")
Whilst up north (aaaand on my Duolingo German language program) it is pronounced:
Erdbeere (erd-beee-ruh, roll the "r")
Just look at how close I came to disaster when I misspelled this on google translate:
It's also pretty tricky with the umlauts (the ö and ü)
See what I mean? You are two dots away from saying "bowl" or being a scatterbrain.
Teenagers crack me up. Aunt Rachel and I took two chairs outside and sat in the sun near the front door, and as a group of them walked past, we heard:
mostly unintelligible lickety split German*
.....ja ja, und Gossip Girl, Teen Wolf, Hawaii Five-0"
*mostly unintelligible lickety split German*
A cute thing that people say here when you leave a store here is "Schöntag" (Good day/have a good day.)
I would hear it mumbled here and there after we'd leave a store, but didn't hear clearly enough to understand. Today the lady at Knittle said it as we left and I understood, thanks to her excellent enunciation.
Back to the narrative:
Ellert came home from school and Aunt Rachel decided we'd pick him up a pizza for lunch from the pizzeria about two minutes down the street.
I parked the car on the street next to Norma's, which is like a German mini-Walmart, except the quality is approximately 10 times better than its American comparison.
I did so well parking on the street for the first time I just "fit right in," so to speak. Well, except for the fact I was a minivan. I didn't have my phone with me to document my success with a picture, so you will just have to take my word for it.
I was waiting outside for Rachel to get the pizza she was picking up but I decided walked in to check if things were going ok. The waiter was an interesting, rather dramatic sort of fellow. When I walked in the room, he saw me and said:
*mumble of Italian/German*
".....(sie) ist Bella, sehr bella."
*puts hand over heart and mimics it beating dramatically*
Perhaps my homeless and wavy hair isn't all bad. Or perhaps he just wanted to sell more pizza and wanted us to come back. Oh yes. The latter is definitely it, sales approach a la flattery.
On our way out of the restaurant, pizza in tow, who should we see but Embla, who was on her way home from the bus stop. She gets let out early on Fridays. We sent the pizza with her to take over to Ellert at home and we made our next stop at Norma's (I found some farm fresh OG eggs!)
I picked up Erla, who was apparently let out early on Fridays like her sister, but we didn't know. They had cleaned up the whole place for the weekend and were basically waiting for someone to come pick her up! Thankfully, they were very kind and understanding ladies.
We ate lunch, then we did some household stuff: sorted, hung out and folded some more clothes.
(empty drying rack, a happy sight)
Aunt Rachel organized most of the countertop items and got attractive little bins to put things in. She made it look great!
The daycare/kindergarten next door is in session today. It's very warm and sunny, and I can look out my window and see all the kids playing happily. Their chatter has the effect of a soothing white noise to me, since the (mostly happy) chatter of little voices is what I am used to hearing back home.
The kids are just beyond cute, with their chubby cheeks, bright, smiling eyes and their happy, almost chirpy little voices.
I should add that "Nochmal!" (One more time! or Again!) is a word that is frequently repeated by little kids, which includes my little German/Icelandic baby.
Speaking of which, shortly after chore time, Erla started to get a little cranky, and and so we decided to take her on a little Joyride. Riding in the car around town is the method of choice for getting her to fall asleep.
Before we set off, a picture was taken to commemorate the occasion.
I have a decent memory for direction and as such, decided to drive to Böblingen and see what we could accomplish in the way of sleep. Sure enough, after only ten minutes or so (and in stop and start traffic, no less!) Erla decided to fall fast asleep.
Again, a picture was taken to commemorate the occasion (while in the Lidl store parking lot.)
After Aunt Rachel scouted out Lidl, a grocery store, we made our way home. As it turns out, the road we were on led past Embla's school, an area I am very familiar with, so there was no getting lost for us.
We all ate dinner, and once we were done with laundry detail, Aunt Rachel asked if I wanted to start watching a Netflix series on Revolutionary War Era Spies. Um, yes. No question there. Shortly thereafter, I got Erla down for the night and got our soccer star (mostly) ready for his game tomorrow. Still can't find his orange shin guards, maybe they will turn up before tomorrow morning. ;)
Now I'm going to try and get a little sleep myself.
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