Stromausfall

Even though the daylight time is getting shorter, our activity calendar seems to be getting longer. 

In Kindergarten, I came home with new notes everyday about upcoming activities and items needed for their Christmas socials. This will be fun baking with the children and learning traditions here.

I met this week with Adeline's teacher for teacher conferences. The meeting went well as Frau Kühner also invited another teacher to sit-in during our discussion to help translate when needed. Adeline is a sweet student who is doing well in class. She is reaching out to others and the others are responding to make connections and relationships which makes her teacher very happy. The children cheered for Adeline this past week when she spoke completely in German during their sharing time of what they did over the weekend. Adeline is also doing great in math as her teacher showed me her math tests taken during school. 

On Wednesday evening, Eric and I had our "Night Out" events. Melanie and I attended a soup cooking class put on through the local education. We arrived to the small group of 9 women and 1 man (we noticed we were the youngest), learned of the various recipes to be made, and then chose our cooking station. We chopped, sautéed, and got our first soup cooking on the stove when the electricity went out. The teacher initially thought it was a circuit breaker, so she checked the switches and this was not the cause. They popped open the bottles of champagne and wine, and sliced the baguette while we waited for the power to return. Somehow the baguette bag also caught on fire from the tea light candle to add to our evening excitement. We eventually learned the entire street was out and it was due to the workers digging and hitting a line. Stromausfall is a rare occasion here, but happened to occur on Melanie's first girls night out and it happened later in the evening, so we could not even go shopping as the stores were already closed. After cleaning up, we were bummed as the finger foods from the soup ingredients did not fill our stomachs, but we laughed looking back at the events throughout the night and had fun just being together. 

In Sweden, Eric went on a team outing with his coworkers.  He has been elected to plan these events and this was their third one since he's been there.  Previously, he set up going to some local amateur drag races and a bowling night.  They always precede their events with a nice dinner and this time they went out to a local wine cellar, St. Michel.  Afterward, they went indoor rock climbing.  This was Eric's first time rock climbing. He did alright, making it up 2.5 of the 3 walls they tackled, all around 30' high and including an inclined wall.  His long arms and legs helped him.

The European Central Bank is next door to Eric's office in Frankfurt. On Friday morning from their office window, they watched all the dignitaries coming to bail-out Ireland being escorted in and out with a battery of police and security. He said it was somewhat interesting seeing it happen.

Friday afternoon, we had happy hour with Eric at his office. It was a nice gathering with his colleagues and their families. It was neat to see the city all lit up from their office windows. They even had one conference table set-up for the kids with numerous Christmas sweets and activities.