Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Half-Time!

As our year crosses the halfway mark, we remain immensely grateful for this experience and how our family is changing and adjusting to German life.

Look at that selection of Mineralwasser!
Observations: No one finds it strange anymore to pay to use public lavatories, bus and train travel has lost its novelty factor, and we have long given up searching for bubblers. We are not surprised when waitresses neglect us until summoned or to hear “Servus” for both “Hello” and “Goodbye.”

We’ve finally adjusted to the German keyboard
and Seinfeld would get a kick of all the “close talkers.” It seems normal that we all wear Hausschuhe at home (and are even offered slippers when at someone else’s house), fashion scarves are common on men and women, everyone is home for lunch everyday, and the kids have even started asking for tea and mineral water!



Shopping – We've adjusted to produce not being refrigerated (eggs aren't either but that still freaks me out a little) and to stores closing at 8 pm and not being open at all on Sundays. Quail's eggs, Wachteleier, are an interesting find, right next to the colored eggs...which are available, colored, all year round.


Lots of wild game, ostrich, venison, and wild boar available.  You have to weigh and label your produce or incur the wrath of the cashier, who gets to sit by the way. Don't waste your time looking for bagged ice, it seems like no one minds warmer beverage temperatures.  

Although there's a tremendous cheese, yogurt and dairy product selection, milk itself certainly does not command a place on everyone's dinner table.  When we've been out (at friends' and at restaurants alike) there was surprisingly no milk to be ordered!  This is the entire milk section at Real, a largish grocery store in our town and some of this is actually rice, kefir and soy milk!  All by the liter of course!

We've also learned that the bottom of celery, the root, is more popular here that the actual stalks and is primarily used in soups, stews, etc.  We found a cereal with "honey encrusted flakes" mmmm, anything that is encrusted has to be a big seller, right? Several people have expressed concern that I serve our family raw broccoli, cauliflower and green beans.  Don't I know that it's unhealthy and unsafe to eat them raw?  No ranch dip far and wide so I'm rationing a few Hidden Valley Ranch packs that a friend sent us.  A fascinating exhibition of human nature can be observed any time an additional cash register is opened in a German supermarket.  Any semblance of manners is quickly shoved to the side, along with any pokey bystanders, in the frantic race to check out 45 seconds before the next guy.




Sales like this prevent any Black Friday-type rushes.




Although Germany, a.k.a. Servicewüste Deutschland, doesn't exactly have the reputation of catering to customers, we have been pleasantly surprised by super helpful staff and family friendly accomodations like this changing station in a DM, a Walgreens type store.

Clever way to store apples
Linguistics:  We’ve had front row seats at our children’s second language acquisition and development. With the exception of knowing when to use du vs Sie and whether haben or sein is called for with certain verbs, the girls seamlessly slipped into the German school system. They've accepted many things that I am still stuck on such as certain letters in cursive.  Here is a sample of Emma's cursive homework which isolates certain letter combos.  Any guess as to what this is?  st of course! 

We've had two rounds of conferences.  At Serena's school, the teacher will hang up a list of 6-minute slots in the morning and the kids claim a spot for their parents. Andrew has nearly 180 students but could offer only 25 slots.  Only one night of conferences! The rest had to make arrangements for a separate conference later in the week.  Two parents did so.  Emma's school was more generous and offered 10 minute slots.  Apparently, German law prevents actual grades to be given until the semester mark of second grade -- that means so far, she's received only "Toll, super Emma! Weiter so!" We're eager to see how she actually does compared to her peers.

Another milestone in 2nd grade is learning to use a Füller, or fountain pen. The children tackle various exercises and upon completion receive a Füller Führerschein, or license to use a fountain pen.  Serena has been using one all school year for all class notes and homework.  It was on her list of school supplies and when we went to buy one in September, I was reminded of the scene in Harry Potter at Ollivander's Wand Shop in which the wand chooses the wizard.  The sales associate spent nearly 20 minutes with Serena testing different Füller out and determining which one sat the best.


In Biology, the Human Growth and Development unit is approaching so I wasn't surprised when Serena brought home the Sex Ed class letter.  Interestingly, I only had to sign that I received the info regarding the unit, no permission was requested or given.

Declan has absorbed everything – including the Dialekt! (e.g. nicht = net, ein gutes Neues=a guads neis, heit = heute ) The kids, interestingly, now sprinkle German into their English sentences. The German vocabulary is simply on the tip or their tongues and when I say, “Hmm, what’s that in English?” they don’t always know! I have started teaching two sessions of English in Declan's kindergarten - wow!  If only adults could learn languages that fast!  Maybe the singing, clapping and dancing help? :)

We recently were interviewed by a local tv station and got to share all the details of our swap. They were here almost 3 hours so it is interesting to see how they edited it down to 4 minutes.  The kids feel like rock stars of course!  The footage from Milwaukee comes from the dvd we made for the Grafs explaining all the idiosyncrasies of the house. Here's the link:

http://www.neumarkt-tv.de/Aktuelles/Neumarkt-Nachrichten/Artikel/1277298/Haustausch-in-Poelling/

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