Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

Today is Zweiten Weihnachtstag-- the second day of Christmas. I keep hearing from my Catholic German friend that since we are in northern Germany with the Lutherans we don’t have nearly the holidays that the south has, but we still sense the importance of not only the first day of Christmas, the 25th, but also the second day, the 26th. In the south, Drei Heligekonigstag will be a holiday--January 6th--but here we will be back to school and the 12 days of Christmas will be over. Nevertheless, we managed to find the one place that is open today, on Sunday, December 26th, and we went to the zoo. They have Winter Zoo set up with sledding and ice skating, but all in all it was very cold (below freezing). The kids finally ended up eating their lunch inside the monkey exhibit. Sometime it doesn’t matter how it smells. We could’ve eaten in a restaurant, but we were too cheap for that today. We spent our first Christmas in Germany this year. Christmas Eve, Heiligabend, found us on...

(I don't have pictures to fit this topic, so these will have to do for now!) Today is Tuesday. John’s alarm rang at 5:20 or so, and he pushed snooze as usual. When it rang the second time, we heard another sound after he turned it off--Henry crying for us. He has been having a hard time getting to sleep lately, and wakes up easily in the morning. We’ve tried a towel at the bottom of the door to hide the light, and even stuffed the keyhole with tissue paper. He still manages to hear something. John turned on Henry’s cd again and tucked him in and told him he could get up when the CD ended, which would be about an hour. I slept for a few more minutes, then got up to start the day. I have not adjusted to coffee here yet. For a while we had a good Starbucks stash, and there is a Starbucks by the main train station in Hannover, but it is so expensive. I thought I should try out some different kinds here. A new friend of mine who is German and lived in California for 20 years...