Consolidated Update

Ok, ya’ll. Sorry for not posting the last – what is it now, three days? My only excuse is that Saturday was exhausting and Sunday I finished the second chapter of The Bell Tower instead of blogging, and Monday distracted by Jane Austen’s Persuasion and never got around to writing. So here it is, Tuesday evening, and I have quite a bit to catch up on.

Saturday was pretty uneventful, just tiring. Anna and I took the bitties out for a long, long walk to tire them out in the afternoon, and we stopped at the most American place I’ve seen since Newark: a shopping mall. Like, an honest-to-goodness, they-even-had-a-Claire’s shopping mall. They did not, unfortunately, have a Hot Topic, which is where I buy all my geek supplies, but there were several stores I’d love to go back to. If I had friends around here, we’d totally spend all our free time hanging out at the mall and the train station. :D The station is like Grand Central meets the CofO cafeteria meets Branson Landing, only with more people and fewer places to sit. But I would love to just sit and people watch for a few hours. Maybe take a sketchbook.

Anyway, other than a few hours at the playground, that was Saturday.

Sunday, because I was exhausted and had a headache the size of the Louisiana Purchase, I stayed in bed until nearly 9:30 and didn’t go to church. Bad girl, shame on me, but I felt so much better when I finally got up. Anna took the kids out somewhere (it’s my day off, so she didn’t say where – the zoo, maybe?) and I spent the morning baking more pizza-pocket-pies. No gouda or corned beef this time – I used this cheese that tastes mainly like fresh parmesan (sharp, dry, a little tangy) and a jar of Italian tomato sauce I got at Aldi. Unfortunately, as I pulled the last tray out of the oven I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to add the salt to my pie dough! So they’re a bit bland. But a step up from the first batch. I’ll just keep improving, and by the time I move home I’ll have pizza-pocket-pies worth a blue ribbon. :D

Sunday afternoon saw me finishing up the end of The Whispering Gallery, chapter two (which you can read here) and trying to catch up on some emails and things. Mostly failing, but – whatevs. :D

Monday was interesting. It’s my second day off (I get two) but when I got out of class I couldn’t go home because at 3:45 I had an appointment at a registration office to officially say that I’m a resident here. So though my class gets out at noon, I didn’t quite have enough time to go home and come back – but it only took me about 20 minutes to get from the school to the office. So I walked another couple of blocks and hung out for a few hours in the library. I can’t get a card yet, but I had my Kindle with me and I began to read Jane Austen’s Persuasion. I’ve seen the movie, but never read the book (actually, I’ve read a grand total of one Jane Austen book before this. I’m a failure as a female English major). So far, I’m very much enjoying it, though – a word to the wise – the Gutenberg epub is riddled with some sort of weird error in the text that adds in a gibberish word every few paragraphs. Ah, that’s what you get when a book’s in the public domain. No quality control anymore. LOL

So I got registered, and the fellow was very nice – he mostly talked to Anna, but when he directly addressed me he spoke very clearly and slowly and I understood him well. When we left, he gave me a book of coupons for Frankfurt, including a few buy-one-get-one discounts for museum admissions, some touristy things, and a 10% off my next language school course, which will come in handy.

Today was a bit different than the normal routine, because Daniel’s come down with some sort of cold and had to be sent home from the crèche. So I came straight here after class got out and took over for Anna so she could go back to work. The poor kid woke up from his nap in a terrified rage because mom wasn’t there. He wandered from room to room looking for her and wailing in this way that was more just a shout of rage interspersed with tears than actual crying. I got him a bottle though, and he calmed down again until she came home. Apparently the kid likes Needtobreathe – I put on “Rivers in the Wasteland” thinking the white noise would help keep him calm, and he ended up dancing all over the room because he liked it so much. Except he’s still so little that his dance is more like this shuffling bounce thing – seriously adorable.

I think I’ll sign off this for tonight and save my more introspective material for another day – sorry for the itinerary post. Have a great day/afternoon/evening, everyone!

~Mags