Back to work....

Now that Easter is over, life in Bremen is starting to get back to its normal routine.

Here are a few of the happenings from this week:

• After having 2 and a half weeks off for "Easter vacation," my German class has reconvened. It was really good to see the other students again. We've started to form some friendships, and it was really interesting to hear what other people did over the break. We heard stories of trips to Paris, various cities in Italy, the Ukraine, and Spain. One woman is still in China visiting family. Today we were given a new assignment: preparing and presenting a report to the class. This is something Karen has had to do several times in her German classes, but I haven't yet had the pleasure (I hope you hear my sarcasm there) of this experience. Thankfully we can work in groups, and our topic is "old folks homes." The German word refers only to assisted-living homes and not to nursing homes, and we have to share and support our opinions and describe what elderly people in our home countries do when they can no longer live alone. It should be an interesting project, to say the least.
• I haven't worked in Jim's library in a couple of weeks because of vacation, but I have received a new task from Mimi. She's asked me to try to repair some of the children's books from the church building. As the children's classrooms were being organized for the pending move, tattered books were set aside, and if they can't be fixed, they'll be thrown away. Enter Alicia, the Protector and Keeper of Books. Just another example of how my library skills are being put to good use in Germany.
• Tomorrow is a big work day in the new church building. They plan to do more painting and want to try to remove some tile from the walls. I think I'll leave the tile removal to someone who is strong enough to swing a sledgehammer, but I can paint with the best of them. Whatever job I'm assigned, I plan to take my camera along and take some pictures of the progress being made.
• This evening I babysat for Mimi and Rüdi, and Rebecca once again surprised me. Tonight she was brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed when she suddenly picked up a toy fish that was in the bathroom and wanted to play "baptism." She said I should ask the fish if he believed in Jesus so that he could be baptized. When Mimi and Rüdi came home I asked them about this and they said it's something new she started recently. I don't know if Jasmin's baptism last Friday had anything to do with it, but I thought it was a little odd for a 3-year old to be creating a game like that.
• Something I can never get over is the near-hysteria produced by soccer games here. Yesterday Bremen played the team from Alkmaar (in the Netherlands), and even though the game didn't begin until 8:00 in the evening, police were out in full-force complete with riot gear before 2:00. Due to soccer-related violence elsewhere in Germany and in Italy over the past couple months, the police don't want to take any chances. Since I live about a 10-minute walk from the stadium, I've learned that it's best to just stay home when there's a game. Especially on days like yesterday when there are 35,000 people trying to get to the stadium at the same time. Here are a couple pictures I took back in February when Bremen played Amsterdam. You should be able to click on them to enlarge them. The only real difference yesterday was the Dutch fans wore red shirts instead of navy blue. And by the way, these pictures were taken a good 30 minutes from the stadium.
  

• The weather in Bremen has been beautiful for the past few days, and it's supposed to get even better. The high temperature for tomorrow is 77 (Fahrenheit). Yes, that's right. In the 70s...in April...in Bremen, which happens to be at approximately the same latitude as Calgary, Canada. I'm not sure why we're getting lots of sunshine when the U.S. is dealing with snow and colder than average temperatures right now, but I think I should just enjoy the sun while it's here.
  
• Along with the warmer weather has come longer days. In mid-December we had about 7.5 hours of daylight each day (sunrise at 8:30 AM, sunset at about 4:00 PM). Now we have closer to 14 hours of daylight each day, and it's not even summer yet. From what I remember from the campaign 4 years ago, in June the sun came up around 4 AM and set around 10 PM. That's a long day. Though I guess there are places in Finland and Alaska where the sun never actually sets during the summer.
  

I leave you with a recent sunset in Bremen. I took the picture from my living room window. The big shadow in the middle is the Lutheran church across the street.


Have a good weekend, and may you also enjoy beautiful springtime weather!