Ketteler Hof

ETHAN:
About three days ago my familly and me went to a fun park. I'm not calling it an amusement park because there's no real rides it's more climbing stuff and stuff you do with your body. It's called Ketteler Hof. It's a huge park with climbing towers, a peting zoo, big tree houses in the woods, and much much much much more. We did not even finish the whole park in one whole day! We probably won't even get through the whole park the next time we go. My favorite thing at Ketteler Hof was this


















it's a air trampoline. There like big bubbles you can jump on. Thats all for me but here's my mom to tell more about Ketteler Hof.

Jennifer:
http://www.kettelerhof.de/flash.html -the site is in German, but under "Spielanlagen" the "Diashow" has some good pictures.

This place really was so fun - probably the coolest kids place we've ever been! Most of it probably wouldn't be allowed in the States because of liability issues, but we escaped without injury :-)


The air trampoline with two other attractions in the background.



Climb up, slide down.



E & G in a massive tree fort.







Climb through the crazy limbs to slide down. Scott, E & G inside.



A huge tilting merry-go-round.

Two Weeks Already

The boys and I arrived two weeks ago, which I can hardly believe. We continue to get our house together; I continue to try and keep food in the house for two growing boys; and we're busy figuring out our after-school activities - not so different from Michigan living! Except that Griffin started Kindergarten (Prep) in a foreign country and now sings "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" in German. Pictures from the first day of school:



One of the easiest things so far in this country is finding yummy snacks, especially breads and chocolates! Here are Ethan and Griffin's new go-to treats. Apfelschorle is a carbonated apple juice (they think they're getting away with something because it's almost like soda) and Geback-Stangen are crunchy, flaky breadstick-like snacks.



The boys are adjusting really well to their new school, and they've been cute because they'll ask me how I'm doing while they're at school - did I get around OK? did I meet any new friends? They understand that it's as big of a change for Scott & I as it is for them. Scott of course was thrown right into work and doing fine, and I've been so happy with how friendly and helpful the moms have been at the school, especially the ones that have been here for some time. There's a great "pay it forward" attitude, because everyone was helped when they first got here, and then they turn around and help the next batch of newbies. I've never had navigation in a vehicle before, but I don't know what I'd do without it here. I was happy, though, that last week I could get to the boys' school and two local grocery stores without it!


Playing at the Rhein River, which is about one mile from our house.

Ethan's view of school: Part Two

At my school we have P.E, art, computers, and music more than once a week. I also have German every day. These are five German words I"ve learned from my German class 1. Fleigen which means flying 2. Leigen which means laying 3. Frosch which means frog 4. runnen which means running and number 5. essen which means eating. At my school when you buy lunch you get real silverware so you get a real knife not a butter knife a sharp knife and a real fork plus a real plate. At the school I'm going to right now we have to change for P.E but at my old school we did not have to. In my class people are from different countries these are some of the countries they are from Germany, USA, Mexico, Spain, South Korea, Japan, China, India, England, France, and Italy. I think thats all for now so like Italians would say "ciao".

Our First Days Here

OK, so the boys and I were not feeling particularly brave the first two days here (we've since become very brave ;-)), so we stuck to familiar things - which included lunches at Subway and McDonalds. We sought these places out because they're not common. They were almost the same as in the States, except McDonalds doesn't accept credit or debit cards (I know!) so Scott had to run and find an ATM. They were advertising Snapple at Subway as an exotic American drink! Here's our receipt from McDonalds, which shows a bit of how so much of what we're encountering is quite familiar, yet different and requiring extra effort. Also, please ignore any spelling errors - our blog program is spell checking in German so it's showing every word is wrong and giving German word suggestions - maybe I'll figure out how to adjust it!

Ethan's View of school

I love my new school. There's nice teachers and a great staff. My teacher's name is
Mrs. Lavoie. And in the four days I've been in her class I've already figured out she's nice and very intelligent. The play ground is great at my new school. There's humongous play structures and they have soccer fields that are long, wide, and huge. There's also basketball hoops and a bunch of other things outside. My school is known as ISD which stands for:

International School of Dusseldorf.

I'm trying out for the basketball and soccer leagues. I'm also in a german speaking class so tschuss/bye.

Ethan's First Post

Hi this is Ethan. We are finally in Germany. It's really nice out here in Germany. There's so much trees and plants. Its real green out here in Germany. Germans are real big on there recycling. We have huge bins for plastic, paper, and Bio recycling which containes grass clippings, egg shells, vegtable pealings, and fruit waste. Right outside our backyard there are horses, heres a veiw from my room.

Isn't that cool! Our house is also real cool too. There's four floors in our house my room is on the third floor. My room has an outstanding view and lots of space in it. There's a bike trail right by our house that I've been on several times now. It's a bike trail that leads right to a huge field that's a really relaxing place. I think thats all for now. I'll tell you more about Germany later. Bye.

We Made It!

We left Detroit this past Saturday night and arrived in Germany Sunday afternoon.

Somehow we were upgraded to first class for the flight from Detroit to Amsterdam and it was the perfect way to start our journey. The seats reclined almost fully out, so it was nearly like laying on a bed; the food was really good and served on china with real silverware; and the boys were taken on a tour of the cockpit to meet the pilots. The boys were really geeked, but we made sure that they knew that this did not typically happen.

We all LOVE the house (all 4 floors of living space) and we've gotten both of our US shipments now - and we don't think anything was lost or broken. I'd say we're about 60-70% done getting the house together, which is pretty good for 2 days! I'll post pictures when rooms get completed.

So far, we're adjusting pretty nicely. It helped enormously that Scott was here for 3 weeks ahead of us to figure things out and get things set up for us. It isn't easy, though, every thing we do outside of our home takes extra concentration and energy to accomplish (trying to figure out labels at the grocery store about made my head explode), but we're up to the task.

The picture is hard to read, but this is my washer - fully in German. I tried diligently with my German dictionary to figure it out, but I don't know to conjugate verbs yet so I couldn't find the core verb words to look up. We've guessed so far and haven't ruined any clothes, but this is just one little challenge out of our day.

One last fun fact for now - BBQ sauce is in the International Foods aisle at the grocery store.