Busy Days and Class President

I think I might be doing a little too much to fill up our days while Josie is at school.  On Friday Benjamin slept in past 9AM and was dead to the world until I woke him up.  It is going to be a rough awakening come Tuesday when he has to start getting up around 7 to go to school.
Josie has gotten used to riding her bike home and entertaining herself in the house while Marty is upstairs doing his radio show and Benjamin and I are somewhere out in the big city.  She seems to LOVE the freedom and Benjamin loves riding the trains and buses and I love not having to get in "screen time" fights every 5 minutes.  I know I'm not alone in the wanting to be out of the house if only to avoid this constant fight!
On Thursday we met up with a new(er) friend from the states, Hollis and her son, Quinn and went to the Game Science Center.
Not really knowing what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised.

The games were all unique and controlled by your body motion, or your eyes or your hands.  They weren't your typical video games.  Kind of like the Wasser Museum, a lot of it was intuitive.  Benjamin LOVED it.  And Quinn who is 13 but has two younger brothers really took Benjamin under his wing.  He had a much better time having a buddy to play with I'm sure.  There was this one game where there were balls in a platform type thing with part of the ball exposed.  The boys kicked or punched the balls to make the men on the screen move.  Talk about a good workout.

Benjamin was pure sweat after less than 30 minutes.  It is funny because one of the only things I remembered from the website was that it said "we have no A.C. in the center. Sorry for the inconvenience."  And I thought, how many days do they actually even need A. C.  Well, on Thursday it was one of the warmest and muggiest days we have had here.  It is interesting how not familiar we are with humidity coming from Seattle.  We have "wet" weather but do not have much humidity.  So, Benjamin was a sweat ball but was having so much fun.  After several hours we decide to start heading back to Zehlendorf.

This one was a virtual haircut
that sounded SO real!

 But on our way out the employee stops us and asks if we want to watch a Virtual Reality movie.   Then he clarifies that it is just a short 3 minute movie.  So the boys put on the devices and it was hilarious to watch as they appeared to be on drugs as they looked around expectantly and reached for nonexistent things.  So funny.

It takes longer to get home, as always with public transportation.  I'm thinking through what I can make quickly for dinner but when I get home Josie and Marty decide we should go out to eat at one of our new favorite Vietnamese restaurants, named Bao.  I'm so thankful that my entire family is now loving Vietnamese food the way I do.  WIN!! We sit outside because the outside seating is never reserved and the tiny restaurant is packed inside.  We nearly always prefer outside so it suites us well but I'm not sure what we will do in the winter as we are so NOT reservation people.  I notice that the people eating out are so relaxed.  It is a Thursday evening around 7 and people just seem chill.  I do think that they have the work/life balance figured out here.  They work hard but when they are done with work they are done.  There doesn't seem to be a constant checking in on email or work.  Their work day stops when they leave.  And then they chill. I can get behind that type of lifestyle. 

Friday is Benjamin's official last day of summer vacation - not counting the upcoming THREE day weekend 😉 so he decides he wants to go back to the zoo.  

Seriously, this will be our FIFTH time in nine days.  I'm pretty much over the zoo but whatever.  The way there and back are adventure enough I suppose. And what else are we going to do and being out of the house avoids huge fights over how much screen time he can have.  This time I tell Benjamin I will only go with him if he can guide us there.  No help from me.  And he was up for the challenge.  A couple of wrong turns off of the train that he eventually was able to right himself and in no time we were at the zoo... AGAIN!

He finds his favorite goat, who he has named "human lips" because he really does look like he has human lips.  We've visited so often, we know all of the petting zoo animals now.  They are like our pets.  

 We see the hippos "being fed" but they never were actually fed they all just took turns opening their HUGE mouths awaiting food.

When we get home from the zoo Josie tells us that she was voted "class president"  What?? Didn't even know she was running. Turns out it is more like class representative but whatever.  So INCREDIBLY proud of that girl!!  She has NOT ONCE given any indication that she is not liking it here or that the transition has been difficult for her.  I said it before but she really went into this move and starting a new school with a quiet confidence and grace.  And it has carried her through.  I know we will have ups and downs but the fact that she has left all of her really good friends and a school where she felt solidly grounded in order to move halfway around the world and to a new house, a new country and a new school with very little fanfare is amazing.  She has embraced all that is good about living over here and does not at all focus on the negatives.  

She gets up every morning for school with a smile on her face and an enthusiastic attitude.  I know she loves the freedom that living over here gives to kids at such a much younger age than in Seattle. She really has shown us that she is (and probably has been for awhile) capable of much more than we give her credit for.  We were talking to a couple today and they said that they feel like (or at least hope) that having this kind of freedom helps alleviate some of the rebellious teenage angst when kids are wanting to separate and have their own freedom.  We equate it a bit to the US's attitude toward alcohol and how it is not allowed until you are 21 and there are strict liquor laws everywhere.  Here,as in most of Europe, they are much much more free with regard to drinking alcohol. They grow up drinking beer, or in Italy wine, as part of their family meals.  It isn't treated as this sacred and prohibited thing so kids don't go hog wild when they are "finally" legal to drink it.  Even if our kids get a little bit of that teenage angst out of the way because of us living here it will be worth it.

Friday after dinner we decide to go for a bike ride through a local park.  We spent a lot of time trying to figure out why my bike lights don't work.  Bike lights are mandatory here and for good reason.   After a thorough inspection from my IT, electrical engineer, fix it guy,

Marty finally discovers that the wires were disconnected.  Most bikes here have these cool pedal powered lights that as you pedal you produce the energy you need to light up your front and bike lights.  This could very well be standard in Seattle too but since I'm not much of a biker I'd never seen these lights before and am quite impressed. When we left our house it was dusk and by the time we returned it was dark.  Our bike lights all worked for the return trip when we needed them.  I would have taken a photo but it was dark and we were biking but it would have been a pretty cool looking shot to see us blazing down our street, all 4 of us on our bikes with our lights.  It's the small things.
Oh, Marty found a couple of photos that he took as we were heading into the park: