Pumpkin Soup and Quiz Night

I am amazed at how quickly the time is going by here. This coming Thursday I will have been here for 3 weeks already. I still feel a little clueless when someone starts speaking to me in German, but I am getting a little bit more confident. Tonight is my first night of my German language course. I got tested into the 2nd level but there were not enough people enrolled so the class got cancelled. There is a class that starts today that is from the very beginning. I am going tonight to see if the class is too easy for me. I guess I'll find out when I get there.

I'll start out by going back over my previous week. Last week was kind of a pain because Carlotta the middle child came home early from school on Wednesday and stayed home all day on Thursday. Tuesday night after I had left for the Alt Stadt the kids were running around the house chasing after one another. Susanne closed the door to the kitchen (every room has a door) and when Carlotta ran towards the kitchen she ran right into the door. She did not have a concusion and there was not much you could do for her. She said she had a headache the next to days and still felt woozy. This meant that she was unable to attend any of her sports so I got the stay home with her. For a child who feels woozy and has a splitting headache she seemed perfectly fine to me, but who am I to say? I'm sure a big part of it was the extra attention she was getting from her mother.

So Wednesday and Thursday were fairly uneventful. I had to watch the kids a little bit on my own one night so that Susanne could go shopping, but it was not a big deal.

Halloween was on Friday. It was so strange being in Germany on Halloween. This is one of my favorite holidays and it is by far one of Germany's least favorite holiday. The children did not really know what it was about. For lunch Susanne made pumpkin soup. I thought that the soup was really good. She made this because of the holiday which I thought was very nice of her.

After lunch I was asked to make a cake with the girls. Susanne was going to take Maximilian to his hockey practice and stay in town.

The recipe that I was going to use was all in German. Susanne helped me translate it before she left. I made sure to measure everything out before hand and put it in bowls so that I would not have to do that while I was alone with the girls. I figured this would save time and would help keep the children from getting bored (like in the great pumpkin carving fiasco).

Instead of flour the cake called for crushed Zwiebacken which are hard little pieces of toast, I think maybe like Melba toast? I'm not exactly sure. I decided that giving each of the girls some toast, a big bowl, and a cup to smash the Zwiebacken with would be a good idea. They both thought that this was fun even though they weren't very good at it. They each attempted to grate carrots too, but that didn't work out so well. The making of the cake went surprisingly well. It's amazing how well behaved kids can be when you can bribe them with frosting covered spoons.

At about 5 Susanne and Maximilian returned and the cake was just being frosted by the girls and I. I was given the rest of the night off so that I could go out with my friends. I appreciated that because I had to go and get ready. I was going to be an angel for Halloween. There was a little store in one of the train stations that sold angel wings. I bought a pair and some christmas garland for a halo. I figured this would work well for a costume back home, so it should work just fine here right?

My friend Katie had decided on being Waldo from the "Where's Waldo?" picture books. Neither of us realized that Waldo not only has different names in other countrys he also doesn't appear in the same red and white striped shirt. It was difficult trying to explain who Katie was dressed up as.

While I was walking to the train station near my host family's house I thought that it was so strange not to see or hear any little kids running around trick-or-treating. People don't do that here.

Apparently in America we also celebrate Halloween incorrectly. If you do not have blood on your costume and all of your limbs are intact then you are not dressed properly. I had gone to the Irish pub Macloughlin's for Halloween. Katie, Eugenia, and I were not dressed scary, but everyone else there was. I didn't really mind however. I atleast wouldn't have to spend an hour and a half washing stage make-up and fake blood off of my face when I got home at night. It was really interesting to see other people's costumes though. Most people were some version of a dead body. We met a girl who was dressed as a dead person who was in a lake. I have a picture of it below. I thought it was interesting.

Saturday was a very uneventful day. Susanne did however take me on a tour by car of Dusseldorf. It raining very hard so we decided to stay in the car. It was nice to get an idea of what the city was like. I didn't do much else during the day. I had found the English library so I had a bunch of books to read. At 7 I had to start work again. I would be babysitting the children while Dirk and Susanne went out. They ended up not leaving until about a quarter to 8 and the children had to be in bed by 8:30. I didn't have to spend too much time actually babysitting. This was nice because I have noticed that kids on weekends are crazy. They know that they don't have to go to school the next day so they will push and push to stay up later.

Sunday was my day off. I didn't really have a whole lot to do during the day. The stores where open however due to them being closed on Saturday for All Souls (saints?) Day. I went to the Alt Stadt a little before 1 so that I could be there when all of the stores first opened up. I had bought a pair of boots on Friday and the zipper was broken on one so I had to exchange it. The exchanging process went much smoother than I had thought. I think due to the fact that the store was already packed wall to wall with people and it had only been open for 10 minutes might have helped. I showed the man at the counter that my boot was broken and gave him the receipt. He went into the back, brought me a new boot, and I was on my way.

I went straight back to my host family's house after my exchange. The weather was nice and all of Dusseldorf had decided to venture into the Alt Stadt for the day. There were so many people it was ridiculous. After I got home I got a call from Katie asking me if I wanted to meet her back in the Alt Stadt in 30 minutes. I had nothing better to do so I figured 'why not?'.

We went and ate a traditional German restuarant/brewery and then went to Starbucks to meet Eugenia. After sitting in Starbucks for awhile we decided to go to Maclaughlin's. They have a Quiz night every Sunday and so far it has been pretty fun.

Once we arrived at Maclaughlin's the guys that work there/live there reminded Katie that she had said she was going to mark the quizzes and collect the money. She didn't really want to so I offered to help out. My job was to collect money from everyone participating in the quiz. After I got their money I would give them a ticket. Simple enough right? It would have been easy if I had known European money better. All of the coins look the same to me and the money wallet I had did not have enough change in it. I managed to get everyone's money though.

After the money collecting I had to go and sit by one of the bar tenders at the front of the bar. It was his job to ask the questions to the quiz in English and in German. My job would be to score the quizzes after each round. There were 8 rounds. I actually thought it was kind of fun. It was nice to know the answers to the questions before everyone else did too. It was also a good chance to practice my German reading, not to mention I got free drinks for helping out. The only down side to scoring the quiz was that after the halfway point after the scores ahd been announced people would start coming up and telling me I scored their card wrong. I just said that I was sorry, but I knew how to count. Maybe they had been mistaken. I was told not to take any crap from people and that they try that every week.