The Aeroplane Game

We've had a new game played here in the last two days. According to the Aviator its called The Aeroplane Game.

It involves moving all the cushions on the couch in certain ways (the exact arrangement of which escapes me) so that the kids can sit behind them, in their "aeroplane seats'. They use bits of material draped over their heads as headphones, and they watch the "tv-v-v" or read books. They also act as cabin crew and go and get food and drinks for other passengers such as me. The fact that I was sewing with a sewing needle on the plane was overlooked, mainly because the cabin crew were unaware of the rules regarding sharp implements! Food and drinks available seem to consist of the wish list of favourite foods: fish and chips, pizza, turkish bread, french bread, chocolate, pasta, plus chocolate milk, strawberry milk, vanilla milk, apple juice, orange juice and hot chocolate.

There apparently was no toilet on the plane, so hopefully all the passengers went before the plane left, or were able to hold on. : D

It was a great game and the kids played really well together. It was a hive of activity, getting down from the couch to get food from the galley (the entry hall) or to take empty food trays back.

It's funny what new experiences can do for imaginative play.

Mummy! I saw a cat!

Squirrels are a lot smaller than I thought they were. Or "Squee-awls" as the youngest member of the family says, after I pointed out that it wasn't a cat she was watching...

Sewing supplies

For Christmas the kids gave me a craft book I picked out - Tildas Weihnachten (Tilda's Christmas - published as Crafting Christmas Gifts in English) by Tone Finnanger - my copy is in German of course though, so I've spent some time with Google Translator translating essential information that I can't pick up from the pictures... so I've got some things to make now, and although I have some calico that I have been dyeing with tea and coffee for making things with, I need to go and get some other material today in other colours. I've found a couple of shops that sell some materials in my travels around Freiburg, but last night I did some digging on the net and found a blog where the writer has done most of the legwork for me and has listed a whole lot of fabric shops in Freiburg! Yay! I'm making an elf at the moment. It's very cute.

Plus, the shops finally open again after Christmas today, so I can get some white embroidery thread to keep working on my little house that I showed you a glimpse of on Christmas Day. Its inspired by the buildings in the old town here in Freiburg, and I want to make it into a small three dimensional model. Unless I buy a small amount of stuffing here though probably I won't finish it off until we get back home to Sydney. Which is going to be really annoying because it will be sitting here unfinished even though I want to finish it off!

A day out in Schauinsland

We'd been told that a trip to Schauinsland while we were in Freiburg was a must. There's a cable car that takes you high up into the mountains, in the midst of the Black Forest. We'd also been told that the weather up there can be quite different to the weather down here, so we checked the webcam picture of Schauinsland before we left - it showed that it was a clear day up there. We'd also been told that the wind chill factor could make it very cold up there, so we rugged up, though we weren't expecting snow, because there is none down here...

It was beautifully still and sunny, and in the end we felt warmer up there in the sun than down here in the frosty valley. The perfect day to visit Schauinsland.

I hope you've all had a great Christmas, celebrating the birth of Jesus.

We've opened presents, spoken to members of the family on Skype, watched The Upsidedown Show (yes, again...), had pancakes for breakfast, walked and caught the tram to church, sang a song in a Nigerian language in church, walked back to the tram via a bakery (actually open!) whilst marvelling at the complete lack of sermon in the service (!), ate pretzels for lunch while we waited for the tram (a suitably German Christmas Day lunch), my husband removed the trojan horse from the computer which appeared this morning, the kids played with Christmas presents, I did a load of washing (no rest for the wicked), I sewed some embroidery I'm working on (see above), we ate chocolate birthday cake for Jesus... and we haven't gotten any further than that.

Tonight we are having a European chicken red curry for dinner. European chicken is code in our family for turkey. We never have turkey at home and I had never cooked with it before. I bought some the other week, thinking it was just a larger portion of the chicken breast next to it in the supermarket fridge... and then realised when I was about to chop it up that the reason it looked like it was on steroids was because it was actually turkey. And so just in case the kids "decide" they don't like turkey we're calling it European chicken...

Tomorrow is my sister-in-law's birthday, and her baby is also due. She's managed to get through Christmas Day without giving birth, so we're hoping she can hold on until after Boxing Day so she doesn't have to share her birthday as well! (Not that that's unheard of...) Happy Birthday R! Keep those legs crossed! Plus my sister and her family are going overseas tomorrow to live and work in an African country for three months. Have a great adventure Y!

A wee bit tired

The Aviator was playing with the Lego today and made the comment "I have a lot of yawns inside me which keep coming up to the top".

: )

What do we do all day?

My husband was at lunch with some of his Uni mates the other day. One of them asked "What does Prue do all day while you are at Uni?" His answer of "Lego" was greeted with uproarious laughter.

But it was an astute question. The homeowners have borrowed a whole lot of Lego for the kids to play with. Two days ago I made a very elaborate house (two storey), yesterday I furnished it, and also made a whole lot of cars, including one which resembled a duck (I'm very talented). As well as Lego, we draw, play Uno and Around the World Snap (a wonderful game for our geographically interested son), we play in the snow (when there is some), we watch our Upsidedown Show DVD (it's starting to wear a bit on me now - and we've still got at least 3 weeks left of watching it every. single. day.), and we sometimes go to the park if the weather permits. Plus I do the washing up, do the washing, keep the wintergarten free of condensation (a little glassed conservatory where we eat breakfast, but because of the weather outside and the people inside it tends to get a bit condensed up), and we have to go to the shops every few days to do the shopping as we don't have a car, so we have to carry it all home, like pack horses.

I thought we would have time to go on excursions to places like the local swimming centre but we haven't yet managed that, and I thought we would do a whole lot of cooking of biscuits and pikelets and cakes but the Germans don't tend to use self-raising flour and because most of the recipes I brought require that we haven't done any cooking (apart from dinner, of course).

But we did buy a chocolate cake mix packet the other day, so we are going to make a cake today, which will be Jesus' birthday cake, ready for tomorrow - though I imagine not all of it will make it to tomorrow!

Anyway, I want to wish you all a very happy Christmas for tomorrow. I hope that you have a great day with family or friends, remembering the birth of Jesus!

German television

Watching tv in Germany is interesting. Last time we were here there seemed to be dozens of channels with non-stop interactive game shows. We have seen hardly any of those this time around. Not complaining though! Considering we have about 10 free-to-air channels in Sydney, we are spoilt for choice in number here in Germany, but not necessarily in quality. Here where we are staying we have access to roughly 50, but its still a bit of a challenge to find something worth watching. I've been settling for dubbed versions of American shows we get in Australia: just about every variety of CSI and Law and Order, NCIS, House etc. I get hardly any of the plot, apart from vague guesses as to what is going on. Most of the characters aren't dubbed with appropriate voices - many of the women are much more breathless dubbed in German than in real life. Voices they have got vaguely right are Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Tony DiNozzo and Horatio Crane. Gregory House, Abby Sciutto and Calleigh Duquesne are completely wrong. House's voice is too deep, Abby sounds too pretty and Calleigh has none of her southern twang.

I was watching Criminal Intent the other night, and because I had no idea what was going on I found myself thinking that there were similarities in appearance between Vincent D'onofrio and Vince Vaughn. What do you think?

Oh, and it can't possibly be Christmas. We haven't seen hide nor hair of the Griswolds on the telly.

Update: Oh, oh, no. I take it back - I have now seen an ad for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It IS Christmas!

Copenhagen

Over here, I'm feeling very disconnected from current affairs, mainly because I rarely get to see the news in English. Occasionally I catch the English news bulletin of Deutsche Welle, but its not my normal news service and it doesn't cover everything I want to know about. I check the Australian Google news most days, but don't have the time to trawl through all the news articles there.

I am aware that the climate summit in Copenhagen is over and I am wondering what the outcome is. Can anyone give me a rundown? Did it just turn out to be a committee meeting with no concrete outcome, where they all agreed that doing something about it was a good idea, but didn't actually do anything about it? This is the impression I am getting...

How breadmaking has helped with culture shock

It occurred to me the other day that my breadmaking over the last few years has actually helped the kids cope with life over here in Germany. Strange but true! The bread we usually buy in the supermarket in Australia - a rectangular prism type loaf, sliced - is not common here. It is more common to get different shaped loaves - round, oval shaped etc - which you have to slice yourself, as well as pretzels and the like, made of different flour mixes including a lot of rye. Because I've made lots of different shaped loaves, with lots of different flavours, the kids haven't batted an eyelid when we've come home with something other than the supermarket labelled "American sandwich" bread. I purposely made pretzels quite frequently over the last year, though mine are nothing like the real German variety, in the hope that it would help the kids feel at home over here. It never occurred to me that all the other types of bread we've made would also help.

Little things. Even bread. : )

Bitterly cold...

So we found out why the youngest member of the family wasn't coping in the cold yesterday... it was minus 12 degrees Celsius... I've never been in temperatures that cold before!