Last Day in Berlin...Tuesday August 2, 2011

Tuesday August 2, 2011 will be our last day in Berlin. We head home Wednesday morning early. We should arrive in the Twin Cities around 3:30 pm (it will be 10:30 pm in Berlin). It's going to be a long day on the plane with two kids but both are excited to see family and friends. Especially Grandma Marilyn, Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Pete.

Three years have gone by quickly.

Tom gets star treatment from our friend Madlen. She'll be catering to his every whim while Chris vacations in Minnesota for two weeks. He'll get on a plane later this month and I'll pick him up from the airport ready to introduce him to his new home. I'm worried as always about my littlest guy and I'm hoping and praying he'll have a safe journey back.

Please pray for us that our travels home to Minnesota are safe and painless :-)

Thanks Berlin for a great few years. We'll miss you but we'll be back for plenty of visits and who knows maybe one day we'll be happy to call you home again.

Tschuss Berlin

Logan, Connor, Tom (the kitty) and I are headed back to St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota this summer. We leave on August 3rd which is Connor's 4th birthday.

Chris will stay in Berlin (he's the one with the steady income) until I can find work in the Twin Cities. Let's hope that I find a job quickly :-)

We are all sad to be leaving Berlin. It's such a wonderful city. Most importantly we've made many many wonderful friends. This is going to be difficult. Thank goodness for Skype!

The other day I was headed to St. Hedwig for Church (in Mitte...middle of city). I stopped in the middle of Gendarmenmarkt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmenmarkt) to soak up the scene. WOW! It's just crazy that I live here. I continued on my way to St. Hedwig's and again stopped and looked around Bebelplatz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebelplatz). I try to imagine what it was like here before the war, during and after. Just amazing!

Even after 3 years I'm still in awe of this city. The culture, the people, the architecture, and the history. I'm going to miss it.

Now that I'm leaving I have been taking the time to stop, look around and take it in. I always praise God for his graces and gifts. Truly it's been a gift to live in such a wondrous place.

We've been trying to do a few things around town that we've put off for one reason or another over the past few years. We made it to the beach one Sunday afternoon but didn't stay long. It was a scouting trip but we had wished we had worn/brought our swimsuits. Boo! Check out the website at http://www.strandbadwannsee.de/Strandbad.htm ... if you click on Geschichtliches via the navigation to the left you'll see pictures of the beach over the years. Pretty cool. We really liked this beach a lot and plan to go back before we leave Berlin. Maybe even this weekend. Yippee!

We'd also like to go to the Friedrichstadt Palast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrichstadt_Palast). We've never been and every time we come to Berlin we always say we'll go and never do. Here we are again on our way back to MN and still haven't made it to the show. BLAH! Not sure if we'll have time to go or the funds, but Logan and I might try to get tickets to a matinee.

I did manage to make it to the Pergamon Museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Museum). It's pretty impressive. I've also been to a number of other galleries and museums with Logan and his class from school over the past few years. I'm grateful for being able to go to so many.

I usually use my bike for transportation. I whiz by everyone and everything on my way to my destination, but lately I've been trying to get out more often to just have a look around. Chris, the kids and I often take long rides on the weekends to new places in Berlin that we haven't been. We've found lots of interesting and fun neighborhoods, parks, restaurants, cafes, etc. FYI: Berlin is one of the more bike friendly cities in Europe. There are tons of bike trails and paths all over the city. It's really awesome. I love riding my bike and the freedom that comes with it.

We also made it to Grunewald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunewald) a couple of times. Not sure if I mentioned this story before, but the last time we were there we packed a lunch. We found a nice bench to sit on with the kids and took out our sandwiches, chips, grapes, drinks, etc. We watched as people and their dogs walked past on the trail and said hello. One dog got past our defenses and ate up Logan's sandwich along with Connor's. He also got a few grapes and managed to lick the others. Yuck! Connor was crying, Logan laughing (he didn't want to eat his sandwich anyway...ha ha), me screaming and Chris yelling. The owners of the dog didn't do anything and then their second dog came in for lunch too. More yelling, screaming, crying and laughing. Logan thought the whole thing was hilarious. Poor Connor was so upset that a dog at his sandwich. Chris and I laughed too. What fun. I threw out the rest of the grapes later. More yuck! After our botched picnic we continued to ride into the woods. It was so lovely. We all slept good that night :-)

Boy, I could go on and on, but I've got to pick up Connor from kita (nursery school) soon. Connor slept over night last night with all his friends and teachers from kita. We didn't get a call so it must have been all OK! Hopefully Viola and Carmen (this teachers) survived. I'll find out soon. What fun! ha ha

More later.

Multimedia Stations of the Cross for Children - Loyola Press

Multimedia Stations of the Cross for Children - Loyola Press

The Seven Last Words - Loyola Press

The Seven Last Words - Loyola Press

More for Lent!

I will mediate on these for 7 days. I began today.

Very nice!

Praise be our Lord Jesus Christ who has saved us from our sins.

Forgiveness and Lent - Loyola Press

Forgiveness and Lent - Loyola Press

Awesome message not only for Lent but for everyday.

Happy New Year!

Hi.

Happy New Year!

Thought I better get that out there. I'm a very bad blogger sorry. Life is crazy busy as usual with all my boys.

Chris will eventually get all our new pictures off the camera and on to is website soon. http://www.macgowan.com. He still has our advert for renting our house on his site. **Sigh**

Chris is busy working lots of hours at his job with Mister Spex. He's not sure how he feels about it but working 10 hour days is no fun.

I've been working on web projects at home and also searching for a job. I had an interview at Mister Spex's a few weeks ago and will go back for a "work day" next week.

I am taking a few online courses over at sitepoint.com. They're pretty good. I've taken two CSS courses, a Javascript course and a PHP course. I'm also trying to learn jQuery on my own. We'll see how I do.

Logan is busy finishing up his 1st semester at JFK. He'll have a week off early February and then the new semester begins. He's doing pretty well in his classes. His teachers this year are really great. Logan is really motivated and Chris and I are so proud of our tweener. Yes Logan will be 11 years old next month. Two more years until we have a teenager. We're already feeling the pinch :-) ha ha

Connor is becoming a master at speaking both German and English. It's tough learning two languages at once and we are super happy that he's doing so well. Seems like every few weeks or so more words come out and together in sentences. I don't always understand what he's saying when he's speaking German and have to ask him to speak English. He says OK and tells me what he wants me to know. Pretty cool.

Speaking of languages; I've met this great woman named Madlen from the Facebook Tandem Language website. We get together once a week for a couple of hours to speak both German and English. It's just great and Madlen is very nice and patient with me. I'm learning lots of new words and learning how to string them altogether. Yippee!

Berlin received a lot of snow this past December but in the last couple of weeks we've had some pretty nice temps that have melted it all away. All that's left is the sand and rocks which some folks here have been so kind as to sweep away. It's really sort of a mess on the streets and sidewalks. Lots of dog poops too. I hate the fact that there isn't a law forcing the German's to pick up their dog's poop. Some of the poops are as big as human poops. It's really disgusting.

Not sure how long this warm weather will last and if more snow is in our future. The florist and markets are selling spring flowers already and it's lovely to see. I can't imagine this will last until March or April but one can always hope.

I'm not spell checking this entry. It's late here and I'm off to bed. Please forgive any errors :-)