Stories Without Pictures

As I take a break from packing, I'm going to jot down some Germany happenings that we want to remember, but don't have pictures to document.

The first one happened the first week we were here.  Retelling it still makes us laugh so hard.  We were in downtown Ingolstadt where most of traffic is walking.  Matt and Isaac are coming to a side street.  Coming toward them are two people on a little moped.  The lady in back sticks out her arm to signal a left turn.  Isaac sees her and steps forward, hesitates, comes back, then suddenly darts out, gives her a high five and runs back to Matt.  Matt almost falls over laughing so hard.  Isaac had never seen anyone use hand signals before.  I don't know what that lady must have thought!

While visiting in Ramstein, we had a few girls in the back seat.  Somehow they started discussing birthdays.  Jess said, "My birthday is January 1."  Pause.  "But I'm just a normal kid.  You don't have to treat me special."  Pause.  Awkward.  Matt jumps in a changes the subject.

There is a British family that lives below us.  We can often hear the young kids playing outside when the windows are open.  On such a day Jess runs to the window to look out and says, "Aw.  I thought it was Charlie.  It always sounds like Charlie.  You know, Charlie bit my finger."

Incidentally, Makenna is the best at imitating the British accents we hear.

While Matt and Jess were driving to grab a couple of pizzas Jess says, "Do you think we'll get in a crash?  What if it's only a little crash?  Then can I wear the vest?  What if everyone is in the car, can I still wear it or does Makenna get it?"  She covets the bright yellow vest in our rental car.  It's required to have in the car in case of an accident and she is not so secretly hoping for a fender bender.

One more Jess quote.  She wrote something rather toon-toon for school one day and the other two were laughing about it.  She retorted, "Well, mom got it, after I told her what it meant."

And yet one more.  I am adding this after it's been originally posted.  The closing song at church today was "A Poor Wayfaring Man", all 7 verses, in German of course.  Jess leaned over during #6 and said, "If we had to sing this in one breath, everyone would be dead."

That's the end of funny stuff, for now.  Just a few other notes.  More for remembrance sake.  We went on the highly recommended Audi tour, no cameras or cell phones allowed.  It was a full two hours and so interesting.  It felt rather sci-fi.  If machines ever take over the world, it might just start there.  First we saw the press shop--where huge presses cut and mold the metal sheets.  Then the pieces get fitted and welded together by robots.  The big robotic arms were amazingly fast and accurate.  Everything is in constant motion.  There are pieces moving down the lines, up and over or down and over, with vertical carousels constantly bringing more parts.  2500 cars a day come out of there.  We easily believe that--we see most of them go by our kitchen window on trains MANY times a day.  For the interior bits and wiring, they still use people.  The cars continue to slowly move down their route as teams move a few meteres along with them, performing their specific task.  They have 88 seconds to do it, then do it again.  And again.  And again.  Every 88 seconds.  Every day.  There are 3 shifts working around the clock, except 6am Sat-6am Mon.  It's a steady job with benefits, but my goodness!  It was a very real life lesson for the kids about the importance of working hard in school.  

I gave a talk a couple weeks ago.  I could pick any topic I wanted.  It was my first experience with a translator.  Matt didn't need one when he took his turn when we first came.  He just spoke German.  There have been 40-55 people there each week, not many kids.

Part of living in a boarding house comes with having a maid twice a week.  It's good really; we hardly wanted to buy cleaning supplies for just a couple of months, not to mention all the towels and bedding for Matt and I.  (We took care of the kids' beds since we squeezed them in unofficially.)  We often borrow the vacuum out of the basement. especially the night before she comes.  It's funny, but we always tidy and wipe counters and rinse sinks before she comes.  I still can't handle the idea of "maid".  I still feel like I need to clean before company shows up, even though I know she'll be cleaning.  I haven't mopped since being here, but I sweep with the dustpan daily.

And one more fun detail to remember.  When Matt bought the Garmin GPS, he purchased a couple of voices to entertain the kids, and us.  First we had Yoda and Darth Vadar.  He recently got Dora and a few random free ones like Yeti (all it does is moan, growl and jabber when you need to do something, so you better look at the map) and Squirrly which is high pitched and rather annoying.  Here is a taste of our favorite commands.

Garmin voices:  Darth Vadar:  Don't fail me again.  Continue on your current trajectory.  Stay in formation.

Yoda:  In half a mile, left you must turn.  Well you have done.  In one mile, enter the round about you must.   Around and around Yoda goes.

Dora:  I like going on car adventures with you.

And the completely vague directions from the built in GPS in the VW with a Brittish accent:  Keep straight on this road for a long time.  Prepare to turn soon.