Sunday, October 30, 2011
Do I really look that young?
So yesterday I was at this picnic that Jonas's school was throwing. A couple hours into the picnic the parents got out the glühwein and one of the women started to pass it around to the various people around the fire. She walks up to me and says, "Would you like some, wait, never mind you're too young." and walks away before I could even react. Now if this had taken place in the US it wouldn't of really made much of a difference to me since I only just turned 21 at the end of May. But this is Germany! The drinking age in Germany is 16! That woman had just accused me of being 15! Let's do some basic math here, 21 minus 15 equals 6. That woman thought I was 6 years younger than I am, at the least! I didn't even want to ask her how old she thought I was cause I was afraid of the answer I'd get. :( She thought I was 15... I went up to her afterwards cause I wanted some glühwein and I told her I was 21 and she said sorry but I should take it as a compliment cause that just means that in 10 years when I'm 31 people will think I'm 25 but still, once I get back to the states I'm gonna get carded till I"m 30 at places that never card anyone else! I'm sure I'll start to appreciate it as time goes by but right now I just want to go pout in a corner. Wah! And I bet I'll look even younger then! I can't win!
Monday, October 24, 2011
Yay Birthday Parties!
I have to say that I have a this whole year will probably bring me a whole new respect for my parents and how hard it is to raise kids. One of the key points being birthday parties. Today is Sunday the 11th of September and I am tired. But before I tell you all about today we're going to go back in time to Wednesday the 7th.
So Wednesday, what did I do wednesday? Clearly I need to update this more frequently so I don't forget what happened all the time. I'm actually drawing a complete blank as to what happened that day so I'm going to skip it for now.
Thursday the 8th. This I do remember! I'm pretty sure that on Thursday I took Luke to kindergarden and then I stopped by the new house to check out my room which was painted. I've got dark hardwood floors and 2 walls a light cream color and 2 walls a light blue.
...
Wow. It's been over a month since I was updating this... The saddest thing is that I can't even remember too many details about the birthday parties. Suffice to say they were chaotic.
So since the whole day by day thing isn't working out for me I'm going to change tactics and switch over to the whole posting things that I want people to know thing.
First things first. I forgot to mention before but on my way to Aunt Tai's house I got pulled over! So when I got into the car to start the drive the first thing I did was get my navigation working before I left. Then I plugged in my iPod and I got the music working. Of course I was thinking that everything would work easily so I had already started driving. The music starts just fine but then I can't get back to the navigation. So I'm driving through the mountains trying to get my navigation working again so I'm swerving a little and driving slow but there's no one else on the road and I do make sure of that. By the point where I finally decide to give up on the navigation and just pull over on the other side of the mountain at a store I know I hadn't really looked behind me in a while. So I finally looked in the rear view mirror and shit, there's a cop right behind me. The first thought through my mind is I'm not speeding. I was probably driving about 70 km/h and the speed limit was 100 km/h. The second thought was I'm not going any faster cause I'm not used to the car and I wasn't as good with the road a month ago. So I keep going and the cop does nothing but it's not like he's going to take the next exit and leave me alone anytime soon since there are no exit's till the one that I'm going to take. I finally came up to the first roundabout and I was going to take the first exit so I turn on my turn signal before I get into the roundabout and take the first exit. Once out of the roundabout the first thing I do is check if the cop is still behind me. Of course he is! Yay me! Then a few seconds later I see that the lights above the car are now on and it reads stop pull over. Shit! So I think real quick in the US we're supposed to pull over where it's safe so I decide to keep going to where I was originally planning on going since it's right in front of me after a traffic light. The traffic light's red though so as I stop at the light the cop pulls up along side of me and rolls down his window, so I roll down my window. One of the cops in the car leans over and says hello so I say hello back though I said it back in more of a questioning tone. Then one of the cops asks me why I turned on my turn signal before entering the roundabout. I answered with I thought I was supposed to do that if I'm taking the first exit. The cop answered real nicely that I was supposed to wait until after I'd entered the roundabout before I turned on my turn signal. Then he say's just a tip for next time and that I can go. I can't even begin to tell you all how relieved I was! I mean look at it from my point of view, this is the first long drive I'm doing in Germany and I don't even get 10 km from the house before I get pulled over? Not a good sign.
I'm basically going to skip everything until now. The only thing of note we did was drive to Frankfurt and visit the Zoo but if you've seen one zoo you've seen em all.
So I'm not sure if I really know what I'm getting myself into with the weather. So it's already gotten below freezing and yesterday morning it was like 28 degrees Fahrenheit. So of course there was ice on the windshield of the car. I swear I spent like 10 minutes scraping the ice off! There's been frost on the grass for the past week too... Well, here's to hoping I don't freeze to death before you all see me again!
So Wednesday, what did I do wednesday? Clearly I need to update this more frequently so I don't forget what happened all the time. I'm actually drawing a complete blank as to what happened that day so I'm going to skip it for now.
Thursday the 8th. This I do remember! I'm pretty sure that on Thursday I took Luke to kindergarden and then I stopped by the new house to check out my room which was painted. I've got dark hardwood floors and 2 walls a light cream color and 2 walls a light blue.
This is a picture of one of the corners of my room so you can see the contrast between the white/cream the blue, and the dark floor
Obviously I took some pictures while I was there and since I decided to take my camera out I thought I might as well snap a couple pictures of the view I get to see out my window coming up in about a month and a half. So here's 2 pictures of that.
There's a road that goes across but from the angle I'm at I can't see it unless there's a car driving along it. I think it's a pretty good view!
After I checked out my room and thought about where I wanted my furniture I went shopping. Nothing super exciting there but I did manage to get some Fedderweissen and I found Brause Bonbons!!! Woot!!! Nothing in particular stands out about the rest of the day but I do remember that one of the kindergarden teachers referred to me as Lukes mom that day which I found amusing cause what must she think? There have been 3 different women who drop him off and pick him up. At least the other kindergarden teacher knows who the mom actually is.
Friday the 9th I once again dropped Luke off at kindergarden and headed over to the new house again. This time because I was doing a drink run. In regards to my drink run I picked up 11 cases to return and bought 16 cases with 8 going to the new house and 8 going to the current stable. I also did some other shopping for the things that I forgot to get the day before/couldn't find. After that I helped make grinatensplitter I probably spelled it wrong but oh well.
...
Wow. It's been over a month since I was updating this... The saddest thing is that I can't even remember too many details about the birthday parties. Suffice to say they were chaotic.
So since the whole day by day thing isn't working out for me I'm going to change tactics and switch over to the whole posting things that I want people to know thing.
First things first. I forgot to mention before but on my way to Aunt Tai's house I got pulled over! So when I got into the car to start the drive the first thing I did was get my navigation working before I left. Then I plugged in my iPod and I got the music working. Of course I was thinking that everything would work easily so I had already started driving. The music starts just fine but then I can't get back to the navigation. So I'm driving through the mountains trying to get my navigation working again so I'm swerving a little and driving slow but there's no one else on the road and I do make sure of that. By the point where I finally decide to give up on the navigation and just pull over on the other side of the mountain at a store I know I hadn't really looked behind me in a while. So I finally looked in the rear view mirror and shit, there's a cop right behind me. The first thought through my mind is I'm not speeding. I was probably driving about 70 km/h and the speed limit was 100 km/h. The second thought was I'm not going any faster cause I'm not used to the car and I wasn't as good with the road a month ago. So I keep going and the cop does nothing but it's not like he's going to take the next exit and leave me alone anytime soon since there are no exit's till the one that I'm going to take. I finally came up to the first roundabout and I was going to take the first exit so I turn on my turn signal before I get into the roundabout and take the first exit. Once out of the roundabout the first thing I do is check if the cop is still behind me. Of course he is! Yay me! Then a few seconds later I see that the lights above the car are now on and it reads stop pull over. Shit! So I think real quick in the US we're supposed to pull over where it's safe so I decide to keep going to where I was originally planning on going since it's right in front of me after a traffic light. The traffic light's red though so as I stop at the light the cop pulls up along side of me and rolls down his window, so I roll down my window. One of the cops in the car leans over and says hello so I say hello back though I said it back in more of a questioning tone. Then one of the cops asks me why I turned on my turn signal before entering the roundabout. I answered with I thought I was supposed to do that if I'm taking the first exit. The cop answered real nicely that I was supposed to wait until after I'd entered the roundabout before I turned on my turn signal. Then he say's just a tip for next time and that I can go. I can't even begin to tell you all how relieved I was! I mean look at it from my point of view, this is the first long drive I'm doing in Germany and I don't even get 10 km from the house before I get pulled over? Not a good sign.
I'm basically going to skip everything until now. The only thing of note we did was drive to Frankfurt and visit the Zoo but if you've seen one zoo you've seen em all.
So I'm not sure if I really know what I'm getting myself into with the weather. So it's already gotten below freezing and yesterday morning it was like 28 degrees Fahrenheit. So of course there was ice on the windshield of the car. I swear I spent like 10 minutes scraping the ice off! There's been frost on the grass for the past week too... Well, here's to hoping I don't freeze to death before you all see me again!
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
And the Fun Continues!
So I've decided to just assign everyone arbitrary names because in the post today I'm introducing 3 new cousins so everyone needs names!
So on Thursday the 1st after the younger boy, lets call him Luke, so after Luke came back from kindergarden we took him and the older boy, Jonas, and his friend John to the new house to play. I was told a couple stories about how badly John behaves and how Jonas behaves much worse when John's around but John was actually very well behaved. Everything was going good until Jonas didn't listen when the former au pair whose staying here, Lauren, told him not to hug the neighbors dog. Jonas frightened the dog, and it was a big german shepherd and he got bit on his left arm. Of course he's screaming bloody murder and Lauren is freaking out. She brings him inside to clean the bite a little but almost as soon as she looks at it she decides that its going to need stitches and that we need to go to the hospital. It turns out she was overreacting and the bite wasn't that bad but it was still good to go since they could clean it so much better at the hospital. What I found most amusing though was just how shocked I was by the distance to the hospital. See, I've lived within a mile or so of a hospital since about my 6th birthday and actually if I needed to go to the hospital in recent years I would just walk because it's about a block from my house in the US. But I'm living out in the country now and they don't have a hospital in every town. We had to drive all the way to Würzburg which took us about 20 minutes to a half hour. The whole ride there I was thinking how much farther? And my favorite, are we there yet?
Friday the 2nd we stayed mostly around the house I think. I know that Luke went to kindergarden that day and I went to drop him off. I also know that Jonas had to have his bite checked at some point that day. I'm pretty sure that Jonas went to a organized play thing that day. So that means that I was playing with Luke and I'm pretty sure that that's the day me and Lauren went on a chocolate run. Mmm... chocolate!
Saturday the 3rd Jonas, Luke, John, John's mom Susan, John's neighbor Mary, Lauren and Me went to Schloss Thurn which is an amusement park. It's really different from something like Great America though because the whole park is covered in trees and it's very family oriented so they only had one actual roller coaster but it was safe for any age so we even took Luke on it and he's 3. I had fun though and Luke and Jonas were sooo much better behaved then when we were at Playmobile land! That evening I promised my mom I'd Skype with her so I went on Skype around 8/9 my time which is like 11/12 noon California time. As I was talking to my mom though my cousin Natalie came online. So we chatted 3 way for over an hour but in the end I basically decided that I was gonna call Natalies mom the next day and ask if I could come over and stay there for a night.
Sunday the 4th started out well, I slept in a little and relaxed in the morning. I called my Aunt Tai around 10 and got the go ahead to come over. So I hopped in the car and started driving. I got to Aunt Tai's house about 1 in the after noon. I hung out some with her while I was waiting for my cousins to get there. Once Uncle Fred had brought them back he hung around for a while trying to set up my cousin Nate's iPhone. After he left Aunt Tai, Nate, Felix, Natalie and me went out for ice cream. Oh how I love gelato! After that we played a bunch of board games, ate dinner, and played some more games. I was planning on going on Skype but I totally forgot what with all the fun I was having with my cousins.
Monday the 5th my cousins went all out for breakfast. It was cute really! I was told not to leave the room I was staying in and they would come in occasionally asking me what I preferred food wise or how much of something I wanted. They had the table all set and everything, so cute! Though I'm sure they don't like that descriptions considering that they're 11 and 14... We hung out all day playing more games and talking. We played Settlers of Catan and they were all fighting with each other and they didn't even notice that I had 9 points! Lol, then my uncle came over again to take Felix and Natalie to the orthodontist and we had to pause the game and that's when they finally noticed. Lol the look on Felix's face! I left Aunt Tai's house about 8pm and started driving back. By the time I got back it was about 11:30pm so I went to bed.
Tuesday the 6th. Well, not much has happened today. I went shopping bought some stuff, mostly food, but other than that I've been at the house with Jonas while he played with his friend Laci. What I find totally cute though is that when he says he's gonna go play with her he says that he's gonna go play with his girlfriend Laci. He doesn't realize that in english we don't use gender in conjunction with friend unless its romantic. Every time he says it I giggle a little to myself.
Thats all for now so till next time!
Anna
So on Thursday the 1st after the younger boy, lets call him Luke, so after Luke came back from kindergarden we took him and the older boy, Jonas, and his friend John to the new house to play. I was told a couple stories about how badly John behaves and how Jonas behaves much worse when John's around but John was actually very well behaved. Everything was going good until Jonas didn't listen when the former au pair whose staying here, Lauren, told him not to hug the neighbors dog. Jonas frightened the dog, and it was a big german shepherd and he got bit on his left arm. Of course he's screaming bloody murder and Lauren is freaking out. She brings him inside to clean the bite a little but almost as soon as she looks at it she decides that its going to need stitches and that we need to go to the hospital. It turns out she was overreacting and the bite wasn't that bad but it was still good to go since they could clean it so much better at the hospital. What I found most amusing though was just how shocked I was by the distance to the hospital. See, I've lived within a mile or so of a hospital since about my 6th birthday and actually if I needed to go to the hospital in recent years I would just walk because it's about a block from my house in the US. But I'm living out in the country now and they don't have a hospital in every town. We had to drive all the way to Würzburg which took us about 20 minutes to a half hour. The whole ride there I was thinking how much farther? And my favorite, are we there yet?
Friday the 2nd we stayed mostly around the house I think. I know that Luke went to kindergarden that day and I went to drop him off. I also know that Jonas had to have his bite checked at some point that day. I'm pretty sure that Jonas went to a organized play thing that day. So that means that I was playing with Luke and I'm pretty sure that that's the day me and Lauren went on a chocolate run. Mmm... chocolate!
Saturday the 3rd Jonas, Luke, John, John's mom Susan, John's neighbor Mary, Lauren and Me went to Schloss Thurn which is an amusement park. It's really different from something like Great America though because the whole park is covered in trees and it's very family oriented so they only had one actual roller coaster but it was safe for any age so we even took Luke on it and he's 3. I had fun though and Luke and Jonas were sooo much better behaved then when we were at Playmobile land! That evening I promised my mom I'd Skype with her so I went on Skype around 8/9 my time which is like 11/12 noon California time. As I was talking to my mom though my cousin Natalie came online. So we chatted 3 way for over an hour but in the end I basically decided that I was gonna call Natalies mom the next day and ask if I could come over and stay there for a night.
Sunday the 4th started out well, I slept in a little and relaxed in the morning. I called my Aunt Tai around 10 and got the go ahead to come over. So I hopped in the car and started driving. I got to Aunt Tai's house about 1 in the after noon. I hung out some with her while I was waiting for my cousins to get there. Once Uncle Fred had brought them back he hung around for a while trying to set up my cousin Nate's iPhone. After he left Aunt Tai, Nate, Felix, Natalie and me went out for ice cream. Oh how I love gelato! After that we played a bunch of board games, ate dinner, and played some more games. I was planning on going on Skype but I totally forgot what with all the fun I was having with my cousins.
Monday the 5th my cousins went all out for breakfast. It was cute really! I was told not to leave the room I was staying in and they would come in occasionally asking me what I preferred food wise or how much of something I wanted. They had the table all set and everything, so cute! Though I'm sure they don't like that descriptions considering that they're 11 and 14... We hung out all day playing more games and talking. We played Settlers of Catan and they were all fighting with each other and they didn't even notice that I had 9 points! Lol, then my uncle came over again to take Felix and Natalie to the orthodontist and we had to pause the game and that's when they finally noticed. Lol the look on Felix's face! I left Aunt Tai's house about 8pm and started driving back. By the time I got back it was about 11:30pm so I went to bed.
Tuesday the 6th. Well, not much has happened today. I went shopping bought some stuff, mostly food, but other than that I've been at the house with Jonas while he played with his friend Laci. What I find totally cute though is that when he says he's gonna go play with her he says that he's gonna go play with his girlfriend Laci. He doesn't realize that in english we don't use gender in conjunction with friend unless its romantic. Every time he says it I giggle a little to myself.
Thats all for now so till next time!
Anna
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Settling In
Okay, so I haven't posted in a while. Sorry! First I was traveling and then I was settling in. It kind of feels like I'm living with an Aunt who has young kids. Mostly cause since school hasn't started yet I've mostly just been hanging out with the kids and helping out with basic chores which I would be doing while with family. Once I start driving the younger boy to kindergarden and really helping clean house then it'll probably feel different but at this point I still feel kind of like a guest. Since it's been so long since I posted anything I'll go through everything I've missed chronologically.
So first Tuesday the 23rd. Oh gosh I can't even remember what I did Tuesday anymore. Oh wait! Now I remember! We went to Saltaire where we checked out the Salt Mill. By we I mean my Uncle, the female cousin I've spent most of that week with and her next oldest brother whose just 10 months younger than I am. I've got some pictures that I'll add to this post later but I don't have my camera on me right now. We finished up earlyish and then headed back to my uncles place. We sat around for a bit then walked my cousins back to their moms place. After that I spent most of the evening trying to repack everything so that my suitcases wouldn't be over weight.
The next morning Wednesday the 24th I took the 7:28am train to London Kings Cross. Now the entertaining part here is that we only really woke up at 7 so it was rush rush rush and we had to run with my suitcases which I can tell you is really hard! Especially since there were stairs! Once on the train I didn't really have anything to do til I got to London. No transfers or anything which was nice. Of course I got to London Kings Cross around 11 and it didn't take me super long to transfer to Heathrow so I was at the airport around 12 with my bags all checked in and everything but they don't tell you what gate to go to till like 40 minutes before the flight leaves so once it's on the boards you have to rush to your gate and get on the plane almost right away which was annoying since I was just sitting around for so long but I managed. The flight got a bit delayed in the air though because the weather over Frankfurt was bad, but it was the kind of bad where there's heavy raining for like 20 minutes or so where you can't land. All in all my flight was delayed maybe an hour at most but I didn't really notice cause I was pretty much asleep then. I was picked up at the airport by the family. We drove first to the new house that they're moving to and then to the house they live in now. Luckily the house they're moving to was on the way.
Thursday the 25th we went to a close by lake with a bunch of kids. There were the 2 from my family, 2 neighbors, and 2 kids of the moms best friend. So the mom of my family, the old au pair whose going to be living there and going to school in Wurzburg and me are in charge of 6 kids. The good thing is that the 2 kids from my family are the youngest. The 2 neighbor kids are something like 7 and 10 with the 2 kids of the best friend being about the same ages, 7 and 11. The best part about bringing all of the other kids though is that the two older ones will watch the youngest for us so we don't have to always keep an eye on him. Since he's 3 he needs someone to watch him at all times, especially at a lake!
Friday the 26th we hung around the house most of the day with the younger one. The older one was playing with a friend. Sometime in the afternoon though the mom needed to head over to the new house to make sure everything was going okay and to meet up with a potential boarder. What I didn't realize before is that their new house is attached to a huge stable so we're going to be living right by where the mom works running the stable. The potential boarder is a horse by the way. Oh! And there's a small guest suite so it is possible to have people actually come and visit me and stay for a few days!
Saturday the 27th me and the other au pair went on a drink run. Now this doesn't sound all that exciting but considering that we were getting the drinks for 2 stables (the mom is moving her work from the old stable to the new one by her house). We ended up buying 23 cases of drinks! Thats a lot of drinks! We had to put the seats down in the back of the mini van (I know some of you are laughing at me right now!). We could fit 4 across and 3 deep and 2 high. Of course the guy who helped us load them wouldn't wait for us to tell him where to put them so when we got to the first stable we had to search for what drinks we wanted to pull out to leave there. I almost died then too! My shoe twisted sideways on me while I was carrying one of the cases into the barn and I started to fall forwards, one step, two steps, three steps. And then the other au pair managed to catch my arm so I didn't crash fully on the edge of the case. I still got a nasty bruise on my right leg though. But no drinks were broken which was awesome! After we got to the new stable we made some of the workers there put the drinks away. We went back home for lunch then in the afternoon we headed to a place called Kinderland in Wurzburg. We stopped for ice cream on the way and oh how I've missed gelato! Anyway, Kinderland is basically an indoor playground but they have some cool stuff like bounce houses, giant trampolines, little motorized cars, and a small rock wall. We stayed there for like 3 hours then went home.
Sunday the 28th we went to Playmobile Land! Mom, Dad, I have a whole new appreciation for how hard it must have been to take me and my brothers anywhere! It was actually pretty cool, since the park was geared towards little kids there wasn't a single roller coaster in the park, instead it was all things that kids could climb on or slide down or whatever. The good news about having 2 kids and 2 adults is that we could split up so one of us was following one of the kids at all times which was good because they could enter in one spot and come out in like 10 different areas. The bad news was that I still don't have a cell phone which means that we couldn't split up completely so we were still waiting on each other and having to find each other the old fashioned way. All in all, an exhausting day!
Monday the 29th the younger one was supposed to go in to his new kindergarden to have a play date or sorts with the other kids while his mom hung out with him. Because of this I just had the older kid at home and he spent the whole time just playing with the younger of the neighbor kids. Nothing exciting really happened at all though.
Tuesday the 30th we hung out at home most of the day but we did go out for gelato and then for a walk through a vineyard. Oh how I love gelato! The best part though is that not only was it good gelato but cheap too! 50 cents a scoop! I was sooooo tempted to get some massive portion but since I was with the kids who got 1 scoop each I decided to limit myself to 3 scoops. Mmmm hazelnut!
Wednesday the 31st I had off. Woot! I basically spent the whole day lazing about on the computer and doing things I'd meant to do earlier but hadn't gotten around to. I worked some on my post but it's kind of a long one so I didn't quite finish it.
Thursday the 1st. Well the days not over yet but so far I've slept in and finished my blog post. I'll try to post more often again since it's starting to calm down now. The little one has his first day of kindergarden today so he won't be around in the mornings now and even though I've still got the older one around for a while it's not a bad since he doesn't have his brother to fight with. Is that free time I see coming my way?
Love you all lots!
Anna
So first Tuesday the 23rd. Oh gosh I can't even remember what I did Tuesday anymore. Oh wait! Now I remember! We went to Saltaire where we checked out the Salt Mill. By we I mean my Uncle, the female cousin I've spent most of that week with and her next oldest brother whose just 10 months younger than I am. I've got some pictures that I'll add to this post later but I don't have my camera on me right now. We finished up earlyish and then headed back to my uncles place. We sat around for a bit then walked my cousins back to their moms place. After that I spent most of the evening trying to repack everything so that my suitcases wouldn't be over weight.
The next morning Wednesday the 24th I took the 7:28am train to London Kings Cross. Now the entertaining part here is that we only really woke up at 7 so it was rush rush rush and we had to run with my suitcases which I can tell you is really hard! Especially since there were stairs! Once on the train I didn't really have anything to do til I got to London. No transfers or anything which was nice. Of course I got to London Kings Cross around 11 and it didn't take me super long to transfer to Heathrow so I was at the airport around 12 with my bags all checked in and everything but they don't tell you what gate to go to till like 40 minutes before the flight leaves so once it's on the boards you have to rush to your gate and get on the plane almost right away which was annoying since I was just sitting around for so long but I managed. The flight got a bit delayed in the air though because the weather over Frankfurt was bad, but it was the kind of bad where there's heavy raining for like 20 minutes or so where you can't land. All in all my flight was delayed maybe an hour at most but I didn't really notice cause I was pretty much asleep then. I was picked up at the airport by the family. We drove first to the new house that they're moving to and then to the house they live in now. Luckily the house they're moving to was on the way.
Thursday the 25th we went to a close by lake with a bunch of kids. There were the 2 from my family, 2 neighbors, and 2 kids of the moms best friend. So the mom of my family, the old au pair whose going to be living there and going to school in Wurzburg and me are in charge of 6 kids. The good thing is that the 2 kids from my family are the youngest. The 2 neighbor kids are something like 7 and 10 with the 2 kids of the best friend being about the same ages, 7 and 11. The best part about bringing all of the other kids though is that the two older ones will watch the youngest for us so we don't have to always keep an eye on him. Since he's 3 he needs someone to watch him at all times, especially at a lake!
Friday the 26th we hung around the house most of the day with the younger one. The older one was playing with a friend. Sometime in the afternoon though the mom needed to head over to the new house to make sure everything was going okay and to meet up with a potential boarder. What I didn't realize before is that their new house is attached to a huge stable so we're going to be living right by where the mom works running the stable. The potential boarder is a horse by the way. Oh! And there's a small guest suite so it is possible to have people actually come and visit me and stay for a few days!
Saturday the 27th me and the other au pair went on a drink run. Now this doesn't sound all that exciting but considering that we were getting the drinks for 2 stables (the mom is moving her work from the old stable to the new one by her house). We ended up buying 23 cases of drinks! Thats a lot of drinks! We had to put the seats down in the back of the mini van (I know some of you are laughing at me right now!). We could fit 4 across and 3 deep and 2 high. Of course the guy who helped us load them wouldn't wait for us to tell him where to put them so when we got to the first stable we had to search for what drinks we wanted to pull out to leave there. I almost died then too! My shoe twisted sideways on me while I was carrying one of the cases into the barn and I started to fall forwards, one step, two steps, three steps. And then the other au pair managed to catch my arm so I didn't crash fully on the edge of the case. I still got a nasty bruise on my right leg though. But no drinks were broken which was awesome! After we got to the new stable we made some of the workers there put the drinks away. We went back home for lunch then in the afternoon we headed to a place called Kinderland in Wurzburg. We stopped for ice cream on the way and oh how I've missed gelato! Anyway, Kinderland is basically an indoor playground but they have some cool stuff like bounce houses, giant trampolines, little motorized cars, and a small rock wall. We stayed there for like 3 hours then went home.
Sunday the 28th we went to Playmobile Land! Mom, Dad, I have a whole new appreciation for how hard it must have been to take me and my brothers anywhere! It was actually pretty cool, since the park was geared towards little kids there wasn't a single roller coaster in the park, instead it was all things that kids could climb on or slide down or whatever. The good news about having 2 kids and 2 adults is that we could split up so one of us was following one of the kids at all times which was good because they could enter in one spot and come out in like 10 different areas. The bad news was that I still don't have a cell phone which means that we couldn't split up completely so we were still waiting on each other and having to find each other the old fashioned way. All in all, an exhausting day!
Monday the 29th the younger one was supposed to go in to his new kindergarden to have a play date or sorts with the other kids while his mom hung out with him. Because of this I just had the older kid at home and he spent the whole time just playing with the younger of the neighbor kids. Nothing exciting really happened at all though.
Tuesday the 30th we hung out at home most of the day but we did go out for gelato and then for a walk through a vineyard. Oh how I love gelato! The best part though is that not only was it good gelato but cheap too! 50 cents a scoop! I was sooooo tempted to get some massive portion but since I was with the kids who got 1 scoop each I decided to limit myself to 3 scoops. Mmmm hazelnut!
Wednesday the 31st I had off. Woot! I basically spent the whole day lazing about on the computer and doing things I'd meant to do earlier but hadn't gotten around to. I worked some on my post but it's kind of a long one so I didn't quite finish it.
Thursday the 1st. Well the days not over yet but so far I've slept in and finished my blog post. I'll try to post more often again since it's starting to calm down now. The little one has his first day of kindergarden today so he won't be around in the mornings now and even though I've still got the older one around for a while it's not a bad since he doesn't have his brother to fight with. Is that free time I see coming my way?
Love you all lots!
Anna
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Just Chillin
So yesterday was a much needed break from the craziness that is tourism. I mostly sat around all day. Me and my cousin went and got some random snack food from the corner market which is soo much more exciting than you would think it is! They have so many weird types of chips! After that 2 more cousins came over and we had an awesome dinner. We had 3 different types of delivery! We had pizza, chinese, and indian. Not a ton happened, just general family bonding type stuff.
Till next time!
Ciao
Till next time!
Ciao
Monday, August 22, 2011
Uncles are EVIL!!! or England Part 3
So this is another one of those posts that I meant to post earlier but I didn't get back to my uncles house until about 1am last night so I went straight to bed. This first part was written about 6pm after the first part of the day.
Oh Gosh I'm so tired right now I can't even think straight! (Note that I was so out of it I used gosh). So me and my Uncle headed towards Haworth today to score some major grandma points. (Love you Grandma!) We hiked all the way out to Top Withers to take pictures of it. For those of you who have never heard of the place, that's where they think Wuthering Heights was about. It's this little farm house in the middle of nowhere, literally!
From Haworth its a 3.5 mile hike out to Top Withers and on the way there it was all up and down difficult hiking. Of course 200 yards before Top Withers our path combines with a much easier path that's basically the same length. It took us about 2 hours to hike out there and only 1.25 to 1.5 hours to get back. Either way a 7 mile hike was way too much!
The real kicker is that there was a place we passed on the way back where we could have parked so that our hike would have only been 3 miles roundtrip. Plus we didn't have a good path to follow on the way back so I'm pretty sure that we went farther than 7 miles. This is why Uncles are EVIL!
After that traumatic experience we went to the pub in Haworth where Bronwell Bronte drank himself to death. Again if you're unfamiliar with Wuthering Heights it was written by Emily Bronte who is the sister of Bronwell. Apparently all the Bronte sisters died young, like around 30 or so, and after all his sisters died Bronwell just basically decided to drink himself to death. I might have even sat in the same spot he died! Morbid but kind of cool.
Once we had recuperated from our hike set off to go pick up my cousin and her friend from VFest. One long car ride later and I'm back home around 1am and totally exhausted.
We've been taking it easy so far today but we'll see what happens later. Two things to leave you with. If you want to see more of my pictures I'm posting all of them on Facebook but of course under my real name so if you're a total stranger you're out of luck. The other is that you can post comments on what I write. Ask questions or whatever and I'll answer.
Until next time!
Ciao
Oh Gosh I'm so tired right now I can't even think straight! (Note that I was so out of it I used gosh). So me and my Uncle headed towards Haworth today to score some major grandma points. (Love you Grandma!) We hiked all the way out to Top Withers to take pictures of it. For those of you who have never heard of the place, that's where they think Wuthering Heights was about. It's this little farm house in the middle of nowhere, literally!
From Haworth its a 3.5 mile hike out to Top Withers and on the way there it was all up and down difficult hiking. Of course 200 yards before Top Withers our path combines with a much easier path that's basically the same length. It took us about 2 hours to hike out there and only 1.25 to 1.5 hours to get back. Either way a 7 mile hike was way too much!
The real kicker is that there was a place we passed on the way back where we could have parked so that our hike would have only been 3 miles roundtrip. Plus we didn't have a good path to follow on the way back so I'm pretty sure that we went farther than 7 miles. This is why Uncles are EVIL!
After that traumatic experience we went to the pub in Haworth where Bronwell Bronte drank himself to death. Again if you're unfamiliar with Wuthering Heights it was written by Emily Bronte who is the sister of Bronwell. Apparently all the Bronte sisters died young, like around 30 or so, and after all his sisters died Bronwell just basically decided to drink himself to death. I might have even sat in the same spot he died! Morbid but kind of cool.
Once we had recuperated from our hike set off to go pick up my cousin and her friend from VFest. One long car ride later and I'm back home around 1am and totally exhausted.
We've been taking it easy so far today but we'll see what happens later. Two things to leave you with. If you want to see more of my pictures I'm posting all of them on Facebook but of course under my real name so if you're a total stranger you're out of luck. The other is that you can post comments on what I write. Ask questions or whatever and I'll answer.
Until next time!
Ciao
Saturday, August 20, 2011
England Part 2
So today we stayed pretty close to my Uncle's house today. We started off the day with a trip to the supermarket. Now that sounds pretty boring but its so different that every aisle we went down has something strange in it. I'm pretty sure we spent more than an hour there and we didn't even buy much. We put our groceries away and afterwards we headed out for some sightseeing.
The first place we went was Ripley Castle where we had ice cream. Supposedly its world famous but I didn't think it was all that amazing. It was good sure but I've had better. While we were eating our ice cream we went for a stroll to check out the area around the castle. Here's a couple pictures of the castle.
After that we went up to Ripon Cathedral. One of the things that was cool about it was that you could see where they changed their minds as to how to build it half way through.
The way to tell is that the front main arch is rounded while the back arch is pointed. On top of that on the front rounded arch the two columns are different heights.
Afterwards we went to check out Knaresborough where we also saw the ruins of another castle. Plus the city was very picturous in general so here's a couple pictures of that too.
The first place we went was Ripley Castle where we had ice cream. Supposedly its world famous but I didn't think it was all that amazing. It was good sure but I've had better. While we were eating our ice cream we went for a stroll to check out the area around the castle. Here's a couple pictures of the castle.
After that we went up to Ripon Cathedral. One of the things that was cool about it was that you could see where they changed their minds as to how to build it half way through.
The way to tell is that the front main arch is rounded while the back arch is pointed. On top of that on the front rounded arch the two columns are different heights.
Afterwards we went to check out Knaresborough where we also saw the ruins of another castle. Plus the city was very picturous in general so here's a couple pictures of that too.
This is a river that flows below the Knaresborough castle ruins.
A picture of the city overlooking the river
A picture of the train tracks that goes across the river and into Knaresborough
Some of the Knaresborough Castle ruins
A train crossing the bridge.
I love the picture windows!
Doesn't everyone just need to stop in the middle of a set of train tracks and take a picture or two?
How does one go about redeeming time?
I found a thatched roof!
So that's about it for today. Nothing super exciting but here's to keeping you all updated!
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