Steep Learning Curve

O.k. day two was a little rocky!  It started with the fact that the girls went to bed at 7:30 pm and then were woken up by Hannah who by now had contracted the croup at 2:00 am.  Yea me!!  That gives us a three of a kind, Emily has bronchitis, Haley an ear and sinus infection and Hannah has the croup. Luckily my good friend Anne, who has traveled here several times with her family, told me to bring any and every kind of medicine I could get my hands on.  I also have a pediatrician who agreed and gave me several prescriptions to bring with us.  So, other than the loss of sleep, the croup was no big deal, and everyone is getting progressively better.  I wonder what is in store for Mike and I?

When Mike left for work we were stuck at the house for the majority of the day.  What to do with Three girls in a strange house and no television?  Sad I know.  The girls thought it was great.  They played so well together and had a ball. 

They have been singing and dancing all day, which gave me the time to get the house in order.  Seeing how this house is generally use by the guys at work, it needed a little bit of TLC.  That’s code for it was kind of gross.  First order of business, try and figure out how to use a washing machine in German.

 

Not only were all the controls in German, it was a front load washer, of which I have never used before.  Silly me, I started playing with the controls before I loaded it and it had to run an entire cycle (which was three hours) before I could load it.  So that was a challenge.  Next onto the dishwasher, same problem but a little easier this time.  Now the real challenge came with a 2000 sq foot house with hard wood floors.  A dust bunny haven!  The trick to this one is to let your kids play with the Dirt Devil  and pay them in little chocolate Euros for each room.  Problem solved.  Next challenge, how to cook with a European stove and oven.  Once again I felt a little lost trying to roast potatoes in Celsius.  Tell me again why we don’t have a world wide standard measurement system?  Well I managed to make it work and made a tasty dinner of steak, roasted potatoes and broccoli. 

Today the girls and I went for a little walk to get to know our neighborhood.  It’s so hard to put into words the raw beauty of this place.  The trees, the moss, the ivy, the smell,  the old world homes, it’s all so beautiful.  I would have to say that even photographs can’t show the true beauty.

 

 

Not too far behind our house is an incredible cemetery.  All of the graves were beautiful and very well taken care of by the families.  Each site has it’s very own character with lovely landscaping and flower arrangements.  Some even had little angel figurines and candles.  It was amazing to see how these people love and honor their dead.  We were only there for a few minutes and we saw several ladies coming to take care of the grave sites.  It was amazing.

After Mike got home from work, he still had some stuff to do at home, and I was a little stir crazy.  The girls and I decided to take a little drive.  My desire to see everything, kind of overrode my common sense in this case.  Once I got out on the very narrow roads with the girls I realized that I don’t have any clue about European traffic rules or even my address if I was to get lost.  Not to mention the fact that if I did get lost, I don’t speak the language to even ask directions.  AAAAAH!   Time to woman up, and really step out of my comfort zone in order to not look like a total coward in front of my girls.  I stuck to one main road and found a local grocery store.  Yea!  Time to do some real shopping, you know, not the Wal-Mart type of shopping.  It was fun to see all of the fresh breads and yummy chocolates.  Everything is so different here, it’s so hard to not look for things that look familiar and stick with them.  The whole point is to try new things.  We’re working on that.  I tend to have a more adventurous spirit than my family.