16 July 2008

Things I haven't been blogging about...

Wow, it's been a lot. I'll probably add photos when I can find the card reader, which is buried in one of the 2 boxes of jumbled cables and wires. Here are some miscellaneous things that have happened in the past three weeks:

  • We had the closing party and open house at the children's school. We enjoyed being there, picnicking and seeing some of the parents of the other children (the few we know). We saw a CD loop of the school year and (for a very nominal fee) bought one for each grandparent as well as picking up the school photos that were available. Somehow (hey, my German is not that good) I had missed the notice for the day that they were made, but I'm glad to see the girls look presentable.

  • I met another ex-pat blogger, D, who has a son Thing2's age and I've gotten together with her several times. Thing1 just loves B and made him a picture this evening. I think she loves having another little one to boss around. And he's just 10 days younger than Thing2 so she plays well with him as well. It's so great to meet another parent: even the nicest of non-parental ex-pats can't quite understand the circumscription that having young children put's on one's activities and it's wonderful to have someone to chat with while the children play. Because, sometimes, I just don't want to play.

  • I met F for lunch in Kreuzberg, where she introduced me to her (wonderful) Pennymarkt, which is chockfull of great fruits, bio products and the dangling carrot that had brought me there: unsweetened applesauce. I bought their entire supply of 14 jars and topped it off with 2 inexpensive carton of Johannesberren(sp?) (I love red currants). We then went to lunch at Mt Everest, after she walked me past herr new Kaiesrs and Liedle, both open til midnight (oh, the envy) where the food was as wonderful as ever but the service was uncharacteristically lacking. My momo balls were served after F had finished her entire meal. I know that it takes a while to prepare those, but the acceptable method would have been to prepare both our meals to be finished at the same time, so that I didn't spend 30 minutes watching her eat so that she could then spend time watching me eat. New (and bad) server.

  • The German and I, and D and her husband C, with the children, all went together to a "International Festival" which, strangely, turned out to be just another street fest. But it also had several kiosks which were handing out information on the Wilmersdorf-Charlottenberg section which have already turned out to be useful: one was a compendium of all the spielplatz' in the area and there turns out to be one that I missed just on the other side of my block (there are 5 in my area, 1 quite large and the others varying). I also got a listing of all the Vereins (or sports/fraternal/sororal groups) and will be looking at these soon. Thing1 also got the opportunity to bungee jump again (she did it at the Embassy Opening Street fair) and she loved it. Then we all went to Nollendorf platz and took food from Habibi to the spielplatz til the kids were exhausted. A really nice day.

1 comment:

Dr. J said...

There's a great Spielplatz in the Volkspark (where Kufsteiner Str meets it) just in case you don't know about it yet.