Things That Go Bump in the Night

Wow, where do we begin?  We have had an exciting couple of days, and no time to write about it!  Let’s see … yesterday we had two nice visits, one in the morning, which consisted of a short trip to a water park, (closed for the winter of course but nice to see anyway) then back for the usual laps around the baby house with Melanie’s groupa.  At lunch time we came home where I slept off a migraine headache.  David got adventurous and went shopping for a few groceries by himself.  At 3 Aida picked us up and we went shopping for some gifts: chocolates and tea for the secretaries of the court.  It was very interesting: we went first to a wholesale grocery office, where we made our selections and were given a receipt.  Then we set out to find the warehouse to pick up our order.  Aida wasn’t sure where the warehouse was, and we made a few wrong turns on some dirt roads before we found it.  You would never have known it was there, it was quite camouflaged in a neighborhood of houses.

 

In the afternoon, we stayed inside the baby house and played with the children.  They were in rare form!  One little boy has really attached himself to David; he cries whenever it’s time for us to leave.  The Spanish couple was there, too, and one of the caregivers commented how nice it was to have TWO families there, that she could relax while we took care of the children!

 

After our visit we went to the Hessen Pub for the big “presentation” of the new beer that the German brewmaster had been preparing for two weeks.  It was quite an occasion … there was a small combo playing jazz music, and Herr Brewmaster made a speech.  He was speaking German, with a lady next to him translating into Russian, and Aida was then translating it for us into English.  We again had a delicious dinner, and sampled the beer (the first round was on the house!)  We were with our new friends Cory and Christy, the other American family.  There was also a group of American Peace Corps volunteers, and we had a nice time chatting with them and hearing about their lives here.  They all seemed a bit jaded by their experiences, not quite the idealist, optimistic “save the world” type people I would have expected.  Oh well, it was nice to visit with them anyway.

 

We got home very late, and just wanted to fall into bed, so the weblog didn’t get updated, sorry!  We were snoozing away at 5 a.m., when suddenly an enormous CRASH!  BUMP! woke us up.  We lay there for a minute, wondering if we had dreamed it and saying “What the heck was THAT?”  David got up to investigate, and found that someone had hurled an enormous rock (about the size of a brick) through the front window of our apartment!  The kitchen window was completely smashed in (and it is a double-paned window) and the rock had gone all the way through the kitchen and into the hall.  I was, needless to say, scared out of my wits, and said, “Call Aida!!  Call Aida!”  Poor Aida was over in a flash, and we cleaned up the mess, covered the window with cardboard and duct tape (don’t leave home without it!)  She reassured us that it was probably just a drunk with nothing better to do, and that we weren’t being targeted for being Americans!  I wondered if we should call the police, but she said they would probably just blow it off.  Yep, we’re not in the US any more!  Aida went home, and I was able to get back to sleep for a while, but I think David was in defense mode, and didn’t sleep.

 

For our visit this morning we took Melanie and Cory & Christy’s baby boy, Sam, to the park.  It was nice to just stroll around and chat.  Apparently today is a national holiday, “Health Day” and there was a festival of sorts going on in the town square.  All the girls were dressed up in their national costumes, and there was a demonstration of martial arts.  Very interesting!

 

Now we are home for lunch and a man is fixing the window.  Fast service, eh?  In the states, they would probably say, “We’ll be there on Monday, between 12 and 4 .. we may or may not show up” … So, that is all for now; don’t know if we’ll update again tonight, unless something else monumental happens.  Let’s see, flat tire … rock through the window.  Who knows what will happen next?