Wonderful Birthday

Many of you know I celebrated a birthday at the end of January... and it was fantastic, mostly thanks to Greg. He started off the celebrations a week early with the iPod touch I'd been hinting at not very discreetly. After that, every morning I found a little wrapped present waiting for me in the guest room. We've never been big into giving presents because we hardly need anything, but Greg put a lot of thought into each one. It was very sweet.

I also had a wonderful lunch with my friends and aunt on Thursday; brunch at Cafe Beethoven with a piano player and cross-country skiing last Saturday in beautiful Oberammergau. Thanks for all the cards, pressies (as my British/Irish/Aussie/NZ friends call them), calls and e-mails! It was an absolutely amazing birthday week!

I'd like to share two interesting observations about birthdays here before I sign off. First, at work, everyone came to wish me "everything good on my birthday" or the rough translation of that, and shook my hand. It felt very formal. I did get two hugs from the 20 or so people I work with, but the rest were handshakes. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because I smelled funny because I've seen them do it to others before. Thankfully, there was no singing of the birthday song at work.

Secondly, it appears that some Germans (not sure if this is how everyone does it) will take their friends for a meal and pay for it all. The waiter at the place where we had lunch on my birthday told us one time they had a group of 30 in there and the birthday girl ended up spending 7000 Euros ($9,500+) on her dinner. That's 233.33 Euros per person (yes, I did get the calculator out for that one ;-)! Can you believe it?!?

And with that, I'll leave you with a photo of the flower coming off of our spider plant.

What finally happened with the birthday ceramics?

This post is looooonnnnng overdue - here are the pictures of the completed dishes we painted in July for my cousin, Shay Li's birthday, in September. She just had her second birthday since we've been here so it's definitely time to share the success of our ceramics.

Greg's cup to the left with a bug inside (created for maximum surprise effect) and my hypnotic cereal bowl

 

 Greg's cup with pyramid and butterfly close-ups

Shay Li's plate with hidden gecko - can you find it?!

Painting Pottery for Shai-Li's Belated Birthday

Greg and Shai-Li hard at work - or wait, did Greg even start yet? He definitely was the most meticulous of the group.

For my cousin Shai-Li's birthday (um, last September), we promised to take her for a day out without her brothers and parents. At first we thought a movie, but there were no good ones. My aunt suggested pottery painting and it was tons of fun! We had lunch before, which was good because it took us hours to paint.

I had taken a pottery course in college where you did everything from mixing the clay to creating the piece to painting it to firing it and then cleaning yourself and everything that was on you for days because clay gets everywhere. I'm glad to say that this was much easier! The hardest part was picking a piece and thinking of a design, but they had stencils and inspiring photos to help.

Greg and I were pretty excited.

Shai-Li picked a small plate, Greg a cup and I picked a bowl (because I had broken one just the week before). Now we just have to wait a week for them to fire the pieces and then they're ready to use! I'll try to post after pictures for you all.

Birthday Week Successfully Completed

I'm a big fan of my birthday because it's the one day in the whole year that everyone has to be nice to you. It feels like even strangers know not to mess with your birthday. So I've commandeered it and stretched it out into an entire week of fun. That explains the long absence of blog posts... sorry!

Here are some highlights in pictures from the week:

Left to right: hanging out our buddies at our place; blowing out the candles at our tapas-game night; and me with my schnecke and candles care of Treas and the hausfrauen.

And here are a random one I just got of my aunt and I (back when she was here in November):

Lastly, a picture our friend took of another teacher friend while he was biking to school

Weekend Fun

We had a great weekend last weekend with my little cousin's birthday party on a beautiful Sunday. Here's a photo of the birthday boy:And here are some more random pictures since I haven't put any up in a while. Notice the swollen eye on me--Greg thinks it was stress-induced, but I disagree, just don't have any good theories yet. This was a walk around a garden in town after surviving the American consulate.

We went in and felt like it definitely wasn't the welcoming, hospitable place it perhaps once was. They're even pissing off the locals with refusing to hold visitors' laptops at their security spot and instead directing people to store their stuff in a local museum. The museum lady had a thing or two to say about that, ending with "just typical of the Americans to behave such a way. If any of those bags have bombs in them, it wouldn't matter to them if a museum is blown up." She wasn't mad at us, mind you--just the consulate security guy who in fact was German. Point for the lady in the museum, zero for American consulate.

Beautiful church on Leopoldstrasse before a street fair started. Thankfully, the clouds parted and we had nice weather that afternoon.

A picture of my lovely bike, which the salesman politely referred to as "the one that probably won't get stolen." It's kickin' it old school and I love it! Now let's just hope it makes it for 2 years!

Circus Krone is a local concert hall. The outside is so funky with its old sign and lamp posts. I wouldn't be surprised if a clown jumped out at me from behind a poster or something. It'd be nice to go there at night sometime when they have a show to see what it looks like all lit up.

I've been like a little squirrel lately, picking up these nuts off the ground. My Irish friend calls them conkers, but I highly doubt that's the proper term. They fall off the tree in this crazy spiked fruit and have such a simple, beautiful wood grain and finish to them, I can't resist. I'd love it if any craftsters out there have an idea of what to make with them. I'll keep looking, but please send ideas my way!!