Missed Connections

There is nothing worse than just barely missing your bus or train or the connecting bus/train or accidentally going to the wrong stop.  So so frustrating.  Saturday morning was full of all of these things and it was so incredibly frustrating.
Josie had to be at swim practice by 9AM.  This was the first time to this particular pool so Benjamin and I went with her to help her find it.  It was also the morning after the first night that Marty had been gone and I slept worse than normal.  Speaking of Marty being gone, his trip back to Seattle was interesting.  We are both very independent people and I have never really been that bothered by him being gone in the past and granted, neither of us travel or are away from home much without the other but this time felt different for both of us.  Since arriving in Berlin we have had to rely on each other like never before.  We also have spent a lot more time together than ever before.  We have met a few new friends here and there but really our family of 4 and certainly for Marty and I - we are each others whole social network.  So to have him be gone shook me up a bit.  I remember we both felt the same way at the end of our honeymoon.  We had spent 2 wonderful weeks together in Madrid, San Sebastian, Bilbao and Barcelona.  At the end of the two weeks Marty flew home to Seattle and I stayed for another 2 weeks in Spain to travel and take a language course.  I had traveled solo plenty times in my past and didn't think twice about it until the morning when he flew to Seattle and I flew to Sevilla.  We were both in tears.  In hindsight it was a very good trip for me and after the first day or two I had a great time and am thankful for it as it was my last solo trip before Josie arrived about a year later.  But.. I have to say the first day or so of Marty being gone from Berlin felt nearly the same way.  Like a piece of me was missing.
Yet with a foggy head from lack of sleep and a bit unsure of how I was going to manage for a week here without him and without someone to translate everything for me, the kids and I ended up having a good
breakfast and a decent morning and then we were out the door by 8:15.  We somehow missed the first bus. But it should have been fine because I usually give us a 10-15 minute cushion.  The bus finally comes and we get off at the correct stop and here is where my second major error occurred.  From my map it looked like we were to cross the street, twice.  We make it and the bus comes but then I realize it was going in the wrong direction.
There are about 2 or 3 buses and stops that I know really well and could get anywhere taking them.  Heck, I even know their time schedules.  There are probably 2 s-bahn trains/stations that I know really well and also 2 or 3 U-bahn trains/stations that I know.  But on Saturday we were taking a new bus in a new direction and I went to the wrong stop. So in the time it took to cross the street incorrectly and then back over to the correct side (it is a huge 4-way lighted intersection) we missed the connecting bus to the pool.
Meanwhile Josie is freaking out because A) She doesn't want to be late to practice and B) she doesn't want to swim in her first swim meet the next day.
In her defense, they haven't told her much about the rules or what to expect.  I'm sure it will all become second nature after the first meet but she is afraid of the unknown,  as we all are.
We both have a bit of a melt down.  We all regroup. We get on the correct bus and arrive at the pool 15 minutes late.  The pool, by the way, is beautiful.  It is a 50 meter pool and I decide then and there that this will be "my pool"
Benjamin and I tell Josie goodbye and she heads into practice and Benjamin and I head to a nearby park.  Not 2 minutes after arriving he runs over and says with a panicked voice "I have to go poop"  Well, isn't that just the capper for the morning.  There aren't really any public bathrooms anywhere near the park, or anywhere in Berlin for that matter, so we head back to the pool.  Then we hang out in front for the rest of the practice.  Thankfully it was a beautifully sunny day.  Sun makes everything better.
She has a good practice.  They practice diving off the starting blocks a lot and when practice is over she feels much better about the meet the following day.
We only have to wait about 10 minutes for the bus to take us home and the sunshine really does make everything better.  The kids collect chestnuts and Marty has woken up in Seattle in the middle of the night there due to jet lag but we text with him a bit and then head home.  The way home is much calmer and peaceful than the way there.  And now I know another bus line and the correct stop to wait at which I didn't know before.  Seriously, every single day there is something new to be learned even if it is just a new bus line and new bus stop. Live and learn and try to do better every day.

Eleven

Josie turned 11 on Friday the 29th.  I know we say it every year but Marty and I cannot believe our little girl is growing up so fast. She is kind, intelligent, inclusive and joyful.  I could not be more proud of her.  I feel so very fortunate to be her mother and to get a front row seat to watch her grow and develop.  She is and always has been a pretty amazing kid.  She is wise beyond her years and has a heart of gold. Even though she is starting to show signs of puberty and has a shorter than normal temper with us and with her brother she is still a very kind soul who would never intentionally hurt someone or their feelings.
Unfortunately, Marty had to fly home to Seattle early in the morning on her birthday.  He said a quick goodbye and happy birthday before he left at 4AM but he was definitely missed on this day!!

A month or so ago when we found out that Marty had to fly home on Josie's birthday she was VERY very upset about it.  We celebrated with her before he left at the Tropical Island and dinner and ice cream.  So when the time came for him to go she was pretty good with it.  Benjamin who is a life in the moment kind of kid didn't really realize he was leaving until the night before when he cried and screamed and begged for Marty not to go.  I do think that since being here Marty has been so SO much more present with the kids and they have formed an even stronger bond.  Particularly with Benjamin since Marty picks him up from school and eats lunch with him every day at the school cafeteria.  All that to say Benjamin was not thrilled to go to bed the night before Marty left nor to wake up the next morning and not remember Marty saying goodbye to him at 4am. 

The birthday girl, however, woke up in good spirits and walked to school with her good friend, Aurora.  She carried along with her zucchini/chocolate chip muffins that I had made so she could share and celebrate with her class.  Sharing treats on your birthday is still a thing here which was fun for her since I don't think she has shared treats with a class since Kindergarten.
After school Benjamin and I met her and her friends at the bus stop and we all headed down our favorite ice cream shop together.  Julie and her dog, Frida, joined us. 

It was a gorgeous, 70 degree day which was perfect to sit outside and enjoy the ice cream and time with her friends.  The girls were all very kind and everyone had fun eating and playing with Frida.

Benjamin opted for an ice cream cone
because the concoctions are way too big
for one person but he was able to clean up
the left overs. 

A couple of her friends had to leave early but two of them were able to come back to our house for dinner. 

I'm sure riding in the front seat of the double decker buses
will eventually get old... but not yet!

They laughed and played and ran around the house playing hide and seek. 

Thankfully they were kind enough to include Benjamin, who had a ball with all the girls.  Around 8PM their parents came to pick them up and then we were able to sneak in a quick skype call with Marty as he had just landed in Seattle.. tired but in good spirits.
Josie's best birthday gift came that night when we got word that her best friend and her family are coming to visit us over the Christmas holiday.
We love you SO much, Josie Marie!!!  Hoping your 11th year is as good as the past 10. 

Mail and Friends

Josie's birthday is coming up and her friends and family have been showering her with mail and gifts all week.  THANK YOU!!!  From gifts and books sent to our house to money to buy her own gift (as she gets older the list of things she wants to by "on her own" grows longer)
It was so fun for her to come home each day and see what came in the day's mail.  Heck, it was fun for Marty and I to open the mail box and see personal mail. 

Benjamin continues to make friends and enjoy school for the most part. He still complains about going in the mornings, as he often did in Seattle, but once there he walks into the school building confidently and happily.  We have fallen into a pretty comfortable rhythm of Marty picking him up at 1PM and the boys eat lunch together in the school cafeteria.  Because grades K-1 are dismissed at 1PM they don't have an actual lunch period but two small snack periods during the school day.  Benjamin would only be allowed to eat at the cafeteria if he were doing one of the two after school programs.  (Late Birds is a pay as you go program and you can drop in as many or as few days as you want.  He says he may want to do this at some point as some of his good friends go there every day after school.  Then there is Hort which from what I can gather is a state funded program for after school care for working parents.  This is free and a lot of kids go here after school as well.)

So since Benjamin isn't in either of these program his school day ends at 1 and could only eat while supervised by an adult and since he would love to eat like the big kids Marty meets him and this has developed into a very special time for the two of them.  Benjamin has discovered that if he doesn't ride his bike to school and Marty rides his bike to pick him up then he can ride on the back rack all the way home.  I'm pretty certain it is the best part of his - maybe both, of their days!!

Marty always comes home chuckling and saying that nearly every kid in the cafeteria comes over and says hello to Benjamin. And not just a casual wave but a big hearty hello and says his name.  Benjamin claims he "knows them but doesn't know their name"  How do so many kids know Benjamin's name?  He isn't the most social kid and so I was a bit suspicious of Marty's take on what actually happens at lunch. 
On Wednesday I had to go to school for something and then met the boys in the lunch room.  It was actually almost comical how many kids came up and said hello to him.  And Marty was right, they all know his name.  I can only attribute this to the fact that the school does a looping system where kids stay with their same class for usually 2 years except in K-2 where they stay together for 3.  So the majority of his class has been with the same kids for 3 years.  Not only was Benjamin new to the school but also new to this already existing cohort.  Thankfully kids at this age are quite inclusive. 
Benjamin says he still digs in the sand with his same friend, Clayton, so I got a little giggle when he came home from school with this note and his friends email address written above.

And the class gave out a student directory with photos of each kid and their home telephone number.  That very night he got a phone call from one of his classmates. First personal phone call we have gotten on the land line.

Mosquitos

OK, the mosquitoes here are INSANE.  It isn't even tropical and yet we feel like we should be sleeping with a mosquito net.  We are well into Fall with fall like weather and still the mosquitoes seem to be alive and well and bothersome.  I honestly have never seen this many mosquitoes since staying on an island in the middle of Lake Victoria (Ssese Island) in the middle of hot and humid summer.  I had mosquito bites all over my body after just a few days and had scars on my forehead for years afterward. 

Benjamin tries his Kung Fu moves,
unsuccessfully, on the mosquitoes

Thankfully, the mosquitoes don't seem to be biting much anymore but every time you enter a room one is buzzing by your head or you spy 3 on the wall.  And the WORST is every night when you turn out the light one or two or three come zooming right by your ear with that high pitched, whining, motor like sound. nnnneeeeeeeee!!!
Every night Marty and Benjamin go on a mosquito hunt to try to get as many as possible.  They get about half but with the high ceilings the mosquitoes have outsmarted the boys and fly up high and out of reach.  The mosquito hunts are so frequent that anytime any one of us claps our hands the rest of us shout from the other room "did you get him?"  I'm assuming once it gets colder they will go away for good? 

Photography Playground

Small update first.  It has been nearly 10 days since my last post.  We are doing great we have just been super duper busy.  I am going to try to catch up over the next few days and will be dating the post the days they happened rather than the day I'm writing.  The biggest reason I decided to write a blog was so that at the end of our adventure here we would have a diary of sorts that I could print out.  Did you know you can print out a blog?  I've done it in the past and they turn out pretty well.  Blog2print is the company I have used. 

OK... onto the post and catching up:

Sunday was the day of the Berlin marathon. Apparently, on this course, more world records have been set by both men and women than any other course.  It has to be because Berlin is so flat.  Olympus Photography Playground.  I had several friends who had gone in weeks past and we finally got around to going.  It was, unfortunately, the very last day of the tour in Berlin and unlike other days the lines were insane to get in. 

We aren't typically line standers
but we did this for 90 minutes. 

Entrance was free... if you were willing to spend 90 minutes in line. 
Josie was super excited about it and kept us motivated to stick it out.  I have to say we have never stood in a line this long to do anything before.  But it was a Sunday in Berlin and as all other line standers told us, "what else was there to do?"  So we stood.  The kids for 95% of the time did great and we all found ways to entertain ourselves.  Once inside we were each handed a new, state of the art, Olympus camera to take photos with as we roamed the exhibit.  They loaded each camera with a memory card and as we exited we handed back the cameras and they handed us the memory card.  The entire thing from start to finish was SO Berlin.  Artsy, organized, cool and logical. 

Josie really took off and had a mission.  She wore the camera like a pro and was directing us to be in certain photos or to stay out of certain photos. 

The rest of us meandered through the cool exhibits

which was spread over three floors of a darkened warehouse.  Soft light was on each exhibit and there were lines inside to get a photo at a few of the exhibits but for the most part we just walked around and snapped photos.

Cool graffiti outside the exhibit

After the exhibit we were starving - must've been that 90 minutes standing in line.  So we headed to a new Indian restaurant and Josie, who currently HATES Indian food, mostly because Benjamin LOVES Indian food said, "OK, it wasn't the worst thing in the world" So all in all successful and fun and artsy Sunday. 



Some of the photos taken during our time in the playgroun

d.

Lacrosse and Dining Al Fresco

Benjamin has met several new friends and one of them happens to be on the Lacrosse team.  As I've mentioned before soccer here is quite intense.  Whenever we walk Benjamin to school in the morning there is a group of 1st and 2nd graders (older kids are not allowed on this particular side of the building in the morning) playing on the "field" which is just a black top type area covered with a fine dusting of sand... which makes it perfect for slipping when making quick turns. You know, the kind of quick turning required for soccer.
The other day as we were walking in we saw one kid (granted he is quite an

amazing soccer player.  You can't miss him because he is the quickest and most savvy 2nd grade soccer player I have ever seen) kick the ball so hard into the goal and nail the goalie in the stomach or the crotch or the hand as he was covering his crotch SO hard. 

The poor kid was doubled over screaming in pain.  There were no less than a dozen parents in this area.  Not ONE went over to help this kid or see if he was OK.  Marty and I were a bit further on but we stopped and looked back and wondered if we should help but NO ONE was paying one bit of attention to him.  So, when in Rome, I suppose.  I guess kids here just learn to dust it off and keep playing.  I know I over exaggerate but that kid was hit really hard. You heard the hit.  Even Marty was a little stunned by how hard and how directly that kid was hit.  So, in the end I'm happy he is trying a different sport.... although Lacrosse is kind of like American football with sticks so not sure we are better off.  But the school team has a long waiting list that rarely if ever moves so we didn't have much of a choice.

Anyway... Benjamin tried out lacrosse for the first time and loved it!!

After practice and after Marty's show we decide to bike down to our new favorite Italian restaurant for dinner. The kids were really quite amazing with their physical exercise. 

First they each had PE class, then the fun run where they each ran over 2 miles, Josie had her soccer elective during class, Benjamin had lacrosse practice.  They both biked home from school and then we biked over a mile each way to dinner.

Our outside eating days are slowly coming to an end
I fear but we will continue to eat outside as long
as they allow us. Josie has a book report due and
was deep inside her book all weekend. 

Benjamin is trying to get an mosquito.  The mosquitos
here are NUTS.  They deserve an entire post devoted
entirely to them.  It will be coming shortly. 

JFK Fun Run

On Friday the kids had their big school fundraiser called the JFK Fun Run.  This seemed very similar to all of their past "movathons" at their previous schools.  They were sent home weeks in advance with a pledge card and were asked to find friends, family, neighbors to pledge a certain amount per lap or a donate a flat fee.  Thankfully both sets of grandparents contributed to both kids a flat fee.  Then Marty decided to be both generous and motivating by pledging €10 per lap per kid!  Hey, we figure we are saving money every single day but not sending either child to a private school.  And we knew if the kids knew it would cost us €10 per lap it would motivate them.

I finally find something that I can volunteer for so I sign up to help with the entire day.  After school drop off in the morning I head back to the field.  There is something so different about being on a campus with middle and high school students.  Everything is bigger and more of a production.  There are over 1,700 students between grades K-12.  Roughly half are in the primary school.

I run into a few cool, swimming moms.  It is fun to start knowing a few people when I'm at school.  It was one of the strangest things for me here- to show up at a school event and quite literally know and be known by not one person.  It was cool in the beginning as I've don't remember a time where I didn't know another soul but it was starting to get old as I'm, by nature, a very social person.  Thankfully, I'm starting to meet very cool parents and friends.

I head over to my assigned table and meet two very cool women that I'd spend most of the morning with.  We tallied runs on the runners arms and checked off their laps on their pledge sheet.  We laughed and talked and had a great morning. The sun was even out and it was such a beautiful day.

Our new fun friends.  Yay!

After a couple of hours Benjamin's class shows up to run.  They are all warming up and stretching before their big run.  Each grade gets 30 minutes to run as many laps as possible.  Benjamin ended with 9 laps (2 miles and a quarter)  and each time he passed Marty and I he would shout "that's €40 dad! that's €60 dad! that's €90 DAD!!"  Marty was right.  By him thinking he was punishing us, he was motivated to run more.  Way to go, Benjamin!!

I moved from my fun moms table over to a different table to help with Josie's class.  I was happily surprised to find more fun parents at that table too!! Josie came out with her class and all of her gaggle of friends.

She was raring to go and was equally as motivated by knowing Marty pledged €10 per lap.  Plus, she found out her brother just ran 9.  She was not going to be outdone.  She also finished off the run with 9 strong laps. 

We are nearly the same height! Ack!

In the end the kids ran their hearts (and legs) out.  They both ran over 2 miles in 30 minutes and collectively raised €240 for their new school.