rekindled spirit

sunday walk, fresh picked wild rasberries

we have spent the last week saying good- bye to friends for the summer. it’s been non-stop activity here and it’s nice to have a little down time because this month will be just as busy only with added adventure. august is vacation month in germany. school is out, companies literally close down for the month, everyone is off and on their way somewhere for vacation.

at the german-austrian border, the way to montafon

my sweet husband will play dad and mom for a week and i will fly to stockholm and we will  also have our first family vacation together. we will drive (about an hour) to montafon, a valley very high up in the austrian alps. last year, my husband attempted this trip with our girl and it was a huge disaster. since our son was a newborn and unpredictable, we decided to take two separate vacations. i stayed home with our baby to do little daily field trips. it was a wonderful idea because the area in which we live is a top rated vacation spot in europe and there is more to see and do here than in a life time. 

mommy and me vacation, 2006

so the first day they called to announce that they arrived safely and they were excited to say the least (me too! they were so cute leaving with their luggage on vacation)  as soon as i hung up, our son and i headed out the door to meersburg on our first field trip adventure.  

little hiker, 2006

that night they called to wish us a good night and reported that they enjoyed their first hiking trip in the afternoon, and had a fine five course dinner together where they, father and daughter, were the center of attention as the toasted and celebrated their very own vacation. although i wished we were all together, i was elated that they were having such a good time.

oxygen treatment at the hotel. perhaps altitude sickness?

the next morning my husband called to say that the she had vomitted all night long and that he thought it was altitude sickness. i parked myself by the phone for hourly updates and she was not getting any better. they were home a few hours later and she still did not recover so we immediately drove her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a stomach virus and admitted for a week. soon after my poor husband who stayed with her in the hospital also came down with the virus.  24 hours later, i got it and 7 hours after that our son got it.  it was really hard and terrible to spend our vacation in the hospital but we got through the week.

petting zoo this morning

we are very excited and looking forward to our upcoming trip. our babies are now old enough to enjoy being away from home for long periods of time and we will stay at child/family friendly resort with lots of alternative activities (including for bad weather days) so it should be good fun. nothing can compare to last year’s vacation so i am postively sure that whatever happens, it will be a great time.

traffic jam on the way into town this morning

after three weeks of winter like conditions and constant rain, the sun finally made an appearance today! we finally have beautiful weather here and it feels like summer again. it’s fantastic. everyone is outside having coffee, working in their garden, biking, playing, swimming, strolling, relaxing with a good book, or grilling. some of which we will do this weekend because the forecast looks very good.

a very happy weekend to you and hope you have the pleasure of enjoying some sunshine too!

perhaps inspired by the vw van?

absolutely love the color

i saw this beauty for the second time yesterday in the next village. many forgein cars here have familiar names but have totally different body styles. but this threw me for a loop. i couldn’t stop staring at it, i have never seen such ford.

she sat across from me in class and it truly was my pleasure to get to know her during our two 15 minute breaks that we had everyday. she had joined late in the last quarter of the course becuase her german is advanced level. at a young age she left her homeland, ireland because she wanted to see the world. she said that there was nothing she wanted to do more than to explore, experience, learn, and grow. several countries and years later, she landed a once in a life time opportunity to serve an entity of the united nations during which she met the man of her dreams (he is delightful and charming as she). i admire her ambition, curiosity, and love for life. she loves world cultures, music, science, religion, history, art, and especially languages. she speaks french, norwegian (her husband’s native language), german, and very proudly gaelic. she told me that she finds learning languages fun and exciting. it took me a few days to process and appreciate that perspective. she does more than learn to get by. she loves to understand and make sense of the grammar-her brain is like a sponge. she inspires me to improve my german and even has me thinking about learning another language. Rose is a beautiful woman, very chic, highly intelligent, and carries her self in action and speech with grace. if you were to meet her, like me, you would forever think of her every time you saw a rose. 

a rose named Rose

i have come to the conclusion that yes, as it’s been said before, german is harsh to the ears but it is definitely music for the heart. it is an extremely expressive language, which owns four cases of complicated grammar. last week, much to my delight, i successfully completed my intensive (5 days a week, 5 hours a day) deutsch sprache und integrations kurs with an A  :).  i never in my wildest dreams thought i would be a german speaker, or any other language for that matter. as many people do, i always assumed that i did not need more than english- i even thought i was ahead of many as it is my second language (tigrinya is my first). after i signed up for the course last september, i told everyone  i was learning german for my children that i could communicate with them.  just like i was learning to bake so that i could bake for them or to sew so that i could make their costumes for plays and halloween. i joked that i had to make sure i understood what they were saying to each other in case they were plotting to flood the living room with the garden hose or to burn the house down. the truth was, i needed to learn german in order to communicate with the baker, the electrician, the postman, my immigration officer, the pharmacist, my in-laws, neighbors, other adults on the playground, the outside world! the anticipation of attending this course was killing me. yeah, i fell in love with a german man, had his babies, and moved to his country, but i found it a burden to learn his language. it just seemed so hard and it was. it was a surprise that it became a pleasant experience. i met people from every continent, made new friends, the teachers were fantastic (we had 3), and aside from a few humiliating moments, learning german was close to painless. slowly, loaded with grammatical errors, i started to hold conversations, tell stories, and express my opinions. people understood me. the more i did it, the more i enjoyed it and the more i enjoyed it, the more i did it.  i never thought i would say this but it was exciting. it was like solving a mystery over and over again. all of sudden everything and everyone made sense. i have learned that learning a new language is an exercise for the mind more than it is for the tongue and that the challenge is not easy but it sure is rewarding. during this experience, my discovery was reinforced by an irish rose named Rose. a lovely woman who sat across from me in class.