An Early Thanksgiving Celebration

A Few Thanksgiving Photos

Henry was hungry!!
A picture of the crowd
Another picture of the crowd

This week was pretty quiet for us in Germany. By quiet, I mean no big outings. We are resting up for our Thanksgiving (and anniversary) trip to Paris. But, even through we did not do any major sight seeing, we did manage to stay busy.

Henry had his first appointment with his German pediatrician this week. Like my physician's appointment last week, his was very different from what we are used to. Her office is located in her home, so we rang her doorbell when we arrived, after she answered, she escorted us to her exam room. The room was very large, it included an exam table, a play area for children and her desk/office. She also had all of the necessary modern health care equipment as well. Henry was very well behaved and cooperative, not at all scared. After telling my mom about the appointment we decided the calm, less stimulating atmosphere must have made a huge difference. Anyway, her exam was very thorough, she even tested his hearing after learning he had an ear infection a couple of years ago. He was a little confused when she asked him to play "football" and kept kicking him a soccer ball. I finally said, "Play soccer Henry" and he kicked the ball back. She giggled after realizing we were having a small communication problem. Amazingly, Henry was sad to leave her office.

Henry and I are enjoying are daily outings to the gym. As I mentioned in earlier postings, the gyms here (or at least in Schwetzingen) are very nice. They have a nice play area for children and Henry cannot wait to go (he also hates to leave). Last week, I overheard some women there speaking English, I mean really good English, so I figured they were American. After introducing myself, one of the girls said she had seen me there the previous day and knew I was American because my gym clothes were not head to toe Lycra. After meeting them, I learned two were actually Canadian and one was American. They too were in Germany as a result of their husband's employment, only their husbands played hockey for the Mannheim Adler Eagles, a professional hockey team. All were very friendly and have young children. We exchanged emails and plan to get together soon. When I picked Henry up in the daycare after my workout that day, he was playing with one of their sons - cute how they latched on to each other.

John had the opportunity to visit the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France this week. He said it was very impressive. There was 27 members of the European Union represented speaking approximately 24 different languages. There were 785 people present representing 7 different political parties. Can you imagine?

On Friday night we had our Thanksgiving celebration with the other JD ex-pats. It was held in a quaint restaurant in the nearby town Schwetzingen. Dinner was very traditional: turkey, corn, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy and a couple of different meats I did not recognize or try. There was not, however, any stuffing. I think that may have been a little over the top for the the German chef. Although I missed having it at the time, it is probably a good thing there was none - I would have compared it to my Mom's (which is great) and became more homesick. Henry had a great time, ate a lot and played with the other children until he practically fell asleep running!!

On Saturday morning we woke up to a thin blanket of snow covering the ground and trees. It was very pretty, so we decided to take a drive. I voted for a drive to Zweibrucken, where the nice outlet mall is, and Henry agreed with Mommy, so we were off. The hills and mountains covered with snowy pine trees along the way reminded me of a movie seen. In addition, there were darling little villages (towns) nestled in the valleys with smoke rolling out of their chimneys that really made us feel like we were in another land. Henry enjoyed the trip as well as there were many windmills along the way.

We are looking forward to the next week. Henry will start school on Monday, we leave for Paris on Thursday to enjoy the weekend and when we return our good friends and previous neighbors will be in town for a couple of days.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!! Happy Birthday to John's Dad on Monday.