Family Blog

It is more and more business as usual. We get the news from America by email or read them in Philip's or Manuel's blog. Two weeks ago Manuel sent us a a mail about You know you are German when.... And as he told us (nearly) everything is true, or? ;-)

At school Manuel presented how he feels as an exchange student. As we heard from his host parents he is a good debater.
Philip´s 1st trimester comes to its end and this week he writes the first final tests and has to finish the program of his roboter. At the end of this week he will visit together with his family Florida and Disney Land. Enjoy it, Philip.

One of the biggest events last month was Halloween. It looks for us like carneval - everybody was dressed up and this took the whole week.

Don't be frightened - it is not Pumuckl, it is only Philip at Halloween! Read his Halloween blog if you want to know how he spent this day.
Or read Manuel's blog entry for halloween.

This weekend the summertime ended here in Germany. But in America there is still summertime and I don't know if the time difference is now one hour less or one hour more. So it switched the timezone on my computer to see it - Chicage is now 6 hours behind us (instead of 7 hours).

This weekend I got the order to buy a bunch of flowers for Cordula's birthday. And to hire Carmen as flower consultant. So I did.

Philip was this week on the grandparent's yacht - a 20m motor yacht. The biggest boat we were (except a ferry boat) was an 11m sailing yacht. It was during my time at the university and we were 10 students on board.

Today a postcard from Manuel was in our mailbox. It is dated from 18th of October.

Yesterday we were invited from friends. He works at a company who builds boiler for beerbrewer companies and he told us something about Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the land of "beer and bratwürste" and it has a German history - many people have German ancestors (ok, not all are called "Muffler" as on the picture from Thursday).

It gets cold here in Germany and the first snow has fallen (not here but in higher regions). But we heard that in Wisconsin it can be much colder than here in Gerlingen. We will see what Manuel will tell us in the next months...

You can find this photo on Manuel's gallery. It seems that grandfather Muffler or one of his ancesters was already there ;-)

Manuel wrote on his blog that he saw him. I don't know who Barrack Obama is, but I guess he is one of the candidates for the next presidential election. (ob)

Manuel writes that he will bake bread with his Dad. I hope you will be succesful. If not call it Halloween bread. Good luck!

This week the first Halloween post card reached us from Manuel. Halloween is a big event in the USA and there are special shops where you can buy everything for this event. Manuel wrote that he perhaps will go as a garden gnome at Halloween (how creepy).

Manuel has now started also an own blog under manuel-b.blogspot.com. As you can read in his blog he begins to like American football and gets more and more used to the school system.


Homecoming is also over now. He wrote that the dancing style is different from the European one but it seems that he nevertheless had a lot of fun at this event.

Two months ago Manuel and Philip left Germany. I think both boys have settled down in their new environment. Both are welcome at their new homes and have a lot of help from their new parents and siblings. In the meantime they wrote their emails in English and they get more and more used to speak it. Yesterday we phoned with them and we spoke German but some of the replies were English.

The life here at home is more quiet since two months and we watch our "little boys" from far away. We see that both are getting more and more independant now. Philip has created his own blog at philip-boehm.blogspot.com without any help from our side. Both have to survive at school and I have the feeling it is a little bit stressful for them but they have although much fun in America.

Yesterday was here in Germany "Tag der deutschen Einheit", a holiday where the Germans celebrate the reunion of West-Germany with East-Germany.

Yesterday, at Manuel's school in Whitefish Bay, there was "Retro Day" and Manuel was dressed as a hippie - not a big difference to that time when I went to school ;-)

At the moment I'm really busy!...The whole week there was something to do and the homework has also be done!

On Sunday there was window painting for homecoming...

On Friday there's a football game against shorewood and so we painted cheerings on the windows....the afs-club made: "afs ships you home..." =) The whole city was painted with cheerings for the football-team =) It was really funny and everyone painted at the others... So at the end all the clothes were painted too! Too bad that I have no pictures but I will try to get some from the others!

This week it's the homecoming-week. Today it's pyjama day and I'm in jogging-pants, "badelatschen", and a wide sweatshirt =) I feel a little bit funny but many wear pyjamas, so it's funny...

The whole week there will be special days and games of football, soccer, but we have no powderpuff...too bad! =)

I feel really good here and slowly I learn more and more knowing... In the study hall I'm still known, because I always ask, when I don't understand math =)

I think, I got really used to the new time-rythm here. The getting up is still really hard and I'm always tired, but I'm happy here! On sunday I watched parts of the women-final in soccer before I went to church. We won! =)

Ok, it was only a race at Stanford but there were thousands of people to find out the best runner of California. Read more at Philip's blog or see the results... (ob)

As you can read in Philip's blog about the AFS meeting it can snow in California. It seems that he had an eventful week with

• powder puff,
• homecoming and
• AFS meeting

(ob)

Philip was on the powderpuff game! And it rained. Read his blog.
Here in Germany we will have Indian summer at the weekend ;-)