Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

I’m marveling over our budding bilingual boy. It’s true that he is not bilingual yet, but I am fascinated by the changes going on in our household. This happens all the time, I know, but it is a different feeling to experience it first hand. I guess I feel like the parent of a newborn who exclaims, “She pursed her lips and cooed! It was so amazing!” I have known several bilingual children over the years--friends who grew up in Mexico and whose children have always been speaking Spanish and English, friends who moved from the Netherlands to the U.S. when their oldest was two are among those was around more. I remember when he didn’t know any English, but then gradually he knew more and more, but I didn’t get to watch it so close up. In these two examples the parents were already fluent in English, so it only seemed natural that their kids would become fluent in English. They told me they didn’t speak English at home, but I don’t think I really believed them. As late as 2 week...

On New Year’s Eve we were invited to the home of a family from Henry’s kindergarten. While I was a bit nervous about attending our first German social gathering, it turned out to be quite relaxed and comfortable. We had two kinds of soup for dinner, plenty of champagne, fire crackers at 6 PM for the kids, and then a couple hours of conversation while we waited for midnight. I had told this friend how we had bailed early on a New Year’s Eve party a few years ago, and that was the last one we had been to, but I promised to make a good effort to stay until midnight this year. We put the kids to bed upstairs, so they made it quite easy to stay late. We enjoyed comparing stories of how we met our spouses, differences in Kindergarten vs. preschool vs. keeping kids at home, politics and potty training. The time flew by and soon the t.v. was on, showing us the concert at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. At midnight our new friends called out, “Frohes Neues!” which means “Happy New!” short...

It was time for Christmas trees to be collected this week. I had heard that there was a day that they would be collected and assumed I would need to drag it out to the street, like we do in the U.S. A week or so after Christmas near church I saw piles of trees, but I thought, “Well, that’s in the city. The people that live in apartments need to bring theirs here.” I saw several piles around the city that day, and one on the way home from our tram to our house. That evening I asked my friend B what day we needed to take our trees out. She explained that from the 13th to the 20th or so, trees would be collected . . .from the pile I had seen walking home. So rather than dragging it to the street we would need to drag it oh, a half mile. Now, true, we could’ve put it in our car. But what do you picture when you see a month old Christmas tree in your car? A mess. So, after seeing the pile of trees grow and grow, and even seeing some trees being dragged down the street, the kids and I tried ...

Henry was coloring with the markers in the new pencil case he got for Christmas from our landlady. Something about the picture didn’t please him, and in a fit of anger and frustration he cried out, “I’m not going to color this any more! I’m going to throw it away.” He ran over to the trash can in the kitchen and cried out, in the same urgent tone, “Which trash can does it go in?” In the first picture, from left to right: paper and card board, "Gelber Sack" or "Yellow sack" for plastic and metal, "Restmüll"--everything else, except for the compost which I will spare you. I am always impressed that when our Restmüll is picked up once a week, it is rarely full, and see how cute it is? The container with the blue lid is for paper. The container on the right is for Restmüll.

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...

Sunday, November 28th, 2010 Please don’t think that my first impressions of Germany or my experiences here are indicative of life in Germany in general. I have found more surprise than I expected from locals who are amazed that I travel so much on public transportation, and I have met many women who drive as often as or more often than they go by other mode of transportation (bike or public). Just today I spoke with a woman whose daughter is in Henry’s kindergarten and she said she has taken the tram only once. But she also offered to drive me to Real sometime (pronounced Reh All) to do some grocery shopping. Things I describe may seem strange to you as well as to those I’m living around! But then again, I never felt quite like I belonged in The Woodlands either. We just returned from the Familiegottesdienst --Family worship--at the Lutheran church. This is a day in which the kindergarten takes a big role in the worship service. A little background which may be repetition:...