Back Online

So it seems here in Germany there is always a "problem of the day." Only this last problem was the problem of several days. Well, for any of you who have tried to call or contact me online since Saturday the answer is my phone and internet service were shut off. (and maybe nobody other than my mom even noticed this??) Anyhow, it seems that we didn't pay our phone bill so in turn they shut off our service. This seems reasonable except for the fact that we didn't hook our phone serivce up, it was done for us. And it seems that whoever hooked it up chose to have us pay our bill online which means we never got a statment in the mail so we had no idea that we were to pay it online. Anyhow, after several phone calls we got it straighted out and they hooked it back up today. No harm done I suppose.

So we found out last week that this thursday is a holiday here. Joe took the friday and monday after off also so we have a 5 day weekend. We are headed to Paris to go to Euro disney for a few days and then staying in Paris (directly across from the eiffel tower) until Monday. We are really excited, Maggie will be so much fun to watch at Disney. I think she will really like seeing all the characters, hopefully she won't be scared. We told her where we are going and she got so excited naming all the characters she would see. I asked her later that day who she wanted to see at Disney and she thought for a minute and said, "Maya." This is a friend of hers from Illinois who just went to Disneyworld a few weeks ago and Maggie has seen pictures of her with all the Dinsy characters. (Yes Nicole, she has been checking out your blog with me! She loves all the pictures of Maya) I thought it was so funny, I hope she isn't dissapointed when Maya isn't there.

I got the kids pictures back today from their photo session and they turned out pretty cute. The backgrounds are goofy so I didn't like that part but the kids looked really cute in them. I didn't order any extras so don't be looking in the mail for them but I will try to figure out how to get them posted online.

I had my German lesson tonight and it was pretty fun. We went on a "field trip" to the grocery store and she helped me figure things out that I had questions about. I really like my teacher, she is my age and super nice. She has begun eating dinner with us on the nights she's here and I am guessing she likes my cooking since she always says yes when I ask her if she wants some. Tonight she stayed about an hour or so after we were done and talked to Joe and I. She is getting a lot more comfortable around us so I asked her about what Germans think of Americans. She has been to the states once and we had been talking about how she thought our food was awful. She said she had an awful time finding anything she liked while she was there. I found this amusing since I say the same thing about Germany. Anyhow, she asked me if I really wanted to know what Germans think of American and I said of course. She laughed and said it's sort of a joke that Americans lives are always "perfect". She said we envision americans as having their HUGE cars with air conditioners, HUGE homes with air conditioners, big yards and everyone is always having barbeques. She said they think we are very superficial and somwhat arrogant. (Don't figure I will ever bring up the fact that I think America is superior to all other lands! :) She always said they are astounded by the amounts of food we eat. (portions) The funniest thing was they think we are TOO friendly. How is that possible?? Anyhow, we thought it was funny and she really likes us so it wasn't like she was being mean. So I guess to them we are as weird as they are to us. Before she left we offered her one of our portable DVD players and some DVD's to take with her on a trip she's going on this weekend. She was so excited and said nobody has those here because they are really expensive in Europe. We joked with her and said, see....isn't it great being superficial!