Micaelas Geburtstag

We officially have a teenager in the family.

Micaela will have a party in a few weeks, but there are still presents from the family to open today.

The Twilight DVD was at the top of Micaela's wish list, but the DVD isn't being released in Germany until the middle of June, three months after the U.S. release date. This copy was imported from the U.K.

Guinness gave her Coca-Cola socks

Micaela recently remarked that she's proud that she can understand quite a bit of the articles in German teen magazines.

The big gift

Micaela took guitar lessons last year and is planning on taking more at school this year. I think we also need to get headphones for her.

James is moved by his Dad's guitar playing

Em has her own guitar

What could be more fun than an empty box?

We know just what to get Rebecca for her birthday next month: empty boxes.

School bags

Spring is the time to buy school supplies in Germany. That's why we had so much trouble finding supplies when we first moved here in August. Germans are efficient, logical people, but the timing on this issue has me stumped. Come August, when most German kids go back to school, you will have to hunt around for the items you need. Those big back-to-school displays will be long gone.

German backpacks for kids around Emilie's age look like this one. They have a rigid structure and are brightly colored. Emilie would love one, but they are very expensive (about $100-$150) and her 2-year old L.L.Bean backpack is still going strong.

The backpack usually come with a few extras, such as the matching pencil case, school calendar, sports bag and wallet. But something is missing.

Last summer, we bought James a cool lunchbox that matched his L.L.Bean backpack. We even had it embroidered with a soccer player and his initials so that the chances of it going missing would be minimized.

It went missing the second week of school. Hasn't been seen since.

So, James has been using his old lunchbox, but felt that it was too babyish for him and it was starting to fall apart. Today I went to the mall to get him something a little more "mature."

I checked around in two department stores and could find no lunchboxes among all the backpacks, sports bags and pencil cases. I finally asked a sales clerk where I could find lunchboxes and she asked, "For a child in Kindergarten (preschool)?" I answered that it was for an older child. She appeared puzzled and asked, "For lunch?" She just didn't seem to understand what I was looking for. She approached her two colleagues who proceeded to ask me the same set of questions: For a Kindergartener? For lunch? They seemed equally perplexed.

And then it hit me. The stores don't carry lunchboxes. They don't have lunchboxes because German kids go home for lunch. And then they stay home. No need for lunchboxes. Kindergarteners, whose school day is usually longer than older kids, will bring a morning snack and possibly a lunch with them, so there were lunchboxes for preschoolers. None for an older child.

All-day classes are starting to catch on in Germany, as are school lunches. As Germany's economy changes, the all-day school day allows more parents to work while the kids are in class, but it still is not the norm. The school day ends for most German kids around 1:00.

Fußball Match

James had a home game today, which was nice as I haven't been to a game in a while. He usually plays goalie. I don't know why. Seems like a thankless job to me. Not to mention it makes for stressful viewing for the parents of the goalie. But he likes it.

Tipping a ball over the goal

No soccer game would be complete without several players getting injured, or, more likely, pretending to get injured. Here James actually took a ball to the face.

No permanent damage

Stopping a ball. Unfortunately, more balls got past James than got past the opposing goalie.

Our team did not show the best sportsmanship during the after game handshake. They just collapsed onto the field.

Getting a talking to

James heading up to get changed. Off the soccer pitches and track is the school playground. There is a line of trees that separates the sports field from the playground.

Our first year here, James played soccer every afternoon in the clothes he wore to school. All his teammates would change into soccer clothes. I never understood what the issue was until one day I saw that the boys change their clothes under the trees, not in a locker room. That means all the kids on the playground can see them in their skivvies.

I had one uncomfortable moment last fall when two boys changed into their track pants not 8 feet from me. What made me uncomfortable was that they were about 17 years old and I'm.....I'm......I'm American.

Today, however, James changed clothes with his teammates and even chatted with a female classmate as he did so.

Newts

In our backyard are three barrels that had goldfish in them when we moved in. It was time to clean out some of the sludge that had settled to the bottom of the barrels, add little fountains to oxygenate the water for the fish, and replace the lining in the one leaky barrel.

Suddenly, a creature swam to the top of the water. It was a newt! And then there was another! This was big news in the Nylund house.

Just 2 months before we learned we would be moving to Germany, Micaela asked for a newt for her birthday. All we needed to do was make the 5-minute trip to our local Petsmart to buy all the supplies, and, eventually, the newt.

The only problem was water temperature. Newts like cool water and newt people in the U.S. usually keep their tanks in their basements. We didn't have a basement and Micaela's room tended to be warmer than the rest of the house.

David loves a challenge.

He came up with the idea himself of using an actual water cooler to get the right temperature. Micaela got her newt which disappeared just a few days later. Newts are known for being escape artists. Then, we found out we were moving, so we told Micaela she could get a newt in Germany.

David did a little research and learned what we found was probably an Alpine newt which was living temporarily in our barrel for mating purposes.

Unfortunately, it is illegal to take newts out of the wild. And we have yet to find a newt at a pet store here and haven't come across a way to order one. So this would need to be the extent of our newt keeping for the moment.

We all gawked at the newts and then had to put them back into the barrel, where they seemed unhappy that David had cleaned out most of the sludge.

It would be great if we could find lots of baby newts in one of our barrels soon.

Spring Festival

German love to have Fests: Autumn festivals, Oktoberfest, Winter festivals, Fasching and now Spring festivals. Our little town of Liederbach had a festival today at the soccer complex, a pleasant 10-minute stroll from our house.

There was music, face painting, food and drink. David and I enjoyed the traditional Hessen beverage, Apfelwein, which is served two ways. David likes the sour apple wine, Sauergespritzer, where the fermented apple cider is mixed with sparkling mineral water. I prefer the sweet apple wine, Süssgespritzer, which is the apple cider mixed with Sprite, but ends up not being that sweet.

Some innkeepers and locals refuse to serve Süssgespritzter. If a Süssgespritzter is ordered at one of these locals, the customer will be given the Apfelwein and Sprite separately, which allows the customer to mix the two without forcing this distasteful task upon the staff of the establishment. This even happened to our very well-respected neighbor one evening when he ordered a sweet applewine for his wife at a restaurant.

Apfelwein, the state beverage of Hessen, is always served in serrated-cut glasses called Geripptes. The cut of the glasses refracts light and helps the cloudy drink look clearer. And more importantly, in former times one often ate without cutlery—and smooth glasses slide from greasy hands rather more easily than serrated ones.

If you want more than one glass of Apfelwein, it will probably be brought to you in a Bembel, a specific gray Apfelwein jug with blue detailing.

The kids played with the hoses and brushes that the soccer players use to clean their cleats after a game.

Emilie chose a sea motif for her face paint.

Becca is our little Schmetterling.

Signs of Encouragement

The kids' school offers high school students the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program. The IB program is taught in 1,976 schools in 134 countries, including the U.S., and its primary aim is to provide an internationally accepted education for entry into higher education. Students take six subjects, and must also complete 3 extra requirements: the Theory of Knowledge course, a 4000-word Extended Essay, and at least 150 hours in CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) areas. If students pass a foreign language component, they can receive a Bilingual Diploma.

The IB exams are coming up and are a big deal. Families have put up signs at the entrance to the school to wish their kids good luck.

This sign caught my eye. I blurred the names to protect the innocent (or not-so-innocent, as the case may be).

School Uniforms

Since Christmas, rumors have been flying around the international school that uniforms were to be implemented the following year. One minute we would hear that it was true, then we would hear that it was only to be optional, then that it wasn't true at all.

I would have gladly voted for uniforms when we lived in the U.S. I had previously taught in a private school that switched from a dress code to uniforms. The kids just shrugged over it and complied. In fact, a month into the school year, a 16-year old girl admitted to me, "It makes getting dressed every morning so much easier!"

Besides making the morning routine less stressful, uniforms also leveled the playing field. At most schools, even the private ones, there is a wide range of family incomes and uniforms does help make that range a bit less apparent. I have heard that in the higher grades at our current school, certain girls wear Gucci, Prada, etc. There has been talk that it is getting out of hand.

And as far as uniforms stifling kids' individuality? Sorry, but I never saw a sign of that while I was teaching. Kids will always find creative ways to express their individuality.

My only hesitation would be cost. Those uniforms my students wore cost a small fortune and many families needed financial aid to help cover the extra expense. I would only agree to it if the uniforms were affordable.

But all of that was not at the forefront of the debate among other parents. Recently, a mother from the Netherlands asked my opinion about uniforms. I was ambivalent. I like the idea of uniforms, but not if they were very expensive, and, in the end, we should be moving home anyway after next year. It didn't matter much to me.

The other mother continued, "Well, I and many other parents are not happy about this at all! Uniforms in Germany, especially among children, is too reminiscent of Nazism and the Hitler Youth. And it's not just non-Germans who are against it. The German families don't like how this will make the school and their children appear."

When I asked if other schools in Germany have uniforms, she replied, "I have never heard of a school in Germany having uniforms for the exact reason I gave you. (I have checked and there are only isolated cases of German schools having uniforms.) And we feel it is just an attempt by our school to stand out, to make it seem better than other schools. It needs to distinguish itself somehow and the administration thinks uniforms will help do that. Why do we need to stand out that way? My kids would be so uncomfortable if they had to appear in public in their school uniforms."

Finally last month, we received the final word from the head honchos and there seems to be a compromise. There will be uniforms -- mandatory for physical education (some girls were dressing too scantily for gym class), but the daily uniform would be optional.

Land's End is the uniform supplier and the company put up a display in the school's lobby. I had to admit to Micaela that I found the uniform choice unnecessarily boring. The only pattern on any of the clothes was found on the tie.

Emilie wants to get the cute little white dress. The thought that immediately sprung to mind was, "Not in a million years. That dress would be stained after one day. What are they thinking?"

The cost of the clothes, while still more than I would pay for similar regular clothes in the U.S., is not unreasonable. We are required to buy the uniforms for gym class, but my guess is we won't buy any other pieces from this collection.

It will be interesting to see how many students wear the optional uniform next year.