Sunday in April

Well, let's take stock of the day. Overall, I feel pretty good about it.

The sun was shining again this morning, so I went out to drink my coffee on the little stoop I have. In my pajamas, naturally. And who walks by? One of the boys from my 7th grade class. Just walking down the street like a 13 year old does, singing to himself and whacking a twip into everything in arm's reach. He noticed me just as he walked behind my neighbor's hedge, stopped, walked backwards, looked to make sure it was me, I waved, he waved embarrassed back, went back behind the hedge, and took one last peek before he walked away. Oh, small towns.

Marlies invited me over for lunch, and we got to eat out on the porch again, where I first had coffee with them 7 months ago, and where we havn't been able to sit since october. That was fine, Marvin her grandson has a "real" bike now, only he hasn't figured out brakes. So he didn't want to sit at the table during lunch, because he wanted to carreen across the yard into the bushes or the carport, yelling, of course. We wanted to take him for a short bike ride, but he had to go. Marlies and I decided to go on a short one hour bike ride together. We turned back after Philadelphia to ride across the salt meadow fields, and my bike stopped working. the back wheel was completely turned, and the chain was off the gears. So we had to push it back. That is when we realized that neither of us brought our cell phone with us, or any money to put in the pay phone (not to mention no bike tools. But a tire pump and an umbrella we did have). So we couldn't call someone to pick us up when we got back to the road (because we were on a muddy path in a field), we had to walk all the way home. We left my bike in the bike stand at the grocery store.

When we got back, we had coffee and cake, and it took Klaus like, 5 minutes to fix my bike. Naturally. After coffee we went to Lars's lot to dig up crocuses and plant them in my part of the yard. Only it started to rain when we were there, and we went inside the little garden house, and Marlies and I had a completely new plan of how to set it up, with exposed beams and a sleeping loft. Once the rain was over we walked back and planted the crocuses, and now I am here on the computer writing to you all about it. I am sort of tired after pushing a bike a few kilometers with a back wheel that didn't turn, but overall, I think it was a good day. Hope to hear from you soon.

Yay for the weekend

SO, not much new has happened in the last week, except that I have been spending most of the past couple of days in the sunlight reading in bed, just because I can. I did have another shopping experience today, which I figured I would relate, even if it is not as exciting as it might have been at the beginning. Still, after being here for almost 7 months now, the grocery store is a jungle of german-english deception. OK it's not that bad. Here we go. I have a cook book here that is all in English. Which is good for me when cooking. What is not so great is going shopping for the stuff in the recipes. For example, broccoli rabe. I don't know what that is, but if I went to a grocery store in America, I might find someone who did. Here, I definently won't. They might know the german word for it, but I don't. And I can't even describe it. Today the search was for cumin, coriander, and turmeric. I have a new recipe to try, and I had already ordered the ground beef at the meat counter (which here is called Hackepeter or "hacked peter" and people eat raw on slices of bread. with raw onions on top.) I found coriander (koriander) and even turmeric (kurkuma). I was pretty sure that I remembered cumin being kummel, and there was no other bottle that looked like it could be cumin, so I picked up kummel. Well, I got it home, opened it to smell and see if it was the right one, and it smelled like a rye bagel. And as far as I could remember, rye bagels didn't have cumin seeds in them. But I couldn't remember the word "carraway" and so I started to wonder, maybe there are cumin seeds in a rye bagel, and i just forgot what cumin smells like. I decided to go check here at Rayk's house to be sure, and explained my problem to him. And he said "cumin?" (the english word) I have that in my cabinet. And sure enough. Kreuzkummel. Smelled just like I remembered. The good news is, I can make my recipe now. The bad news is, I have a baggie of ground carraway in my cabinet, and don't know what to do with it.

Otherwise, things here are fine, weather has stayed mild and rainy, and as long as it doesn't flood, it should be a nice spring. Hope you all are well, and I would love to hear from you.