Saturday

Today was Simon's birthday party at last!  I got up, ate breakfast, got dressed, and Merinda took me to the bus stop.  The whole way, I was giddy with excitement!  He had said in the invitation that we were going "summer sledding".  I had heard of these bobsled-like things that go down a small track but I had never been on one and did not know how fast and how safe they were.  When I got to the school, I waited for everyone else to come and last of all, Simon and his dad drove up.  But it was only Simon, Mark, Lukas, and me because Resul, Denis and Yasin could not make it.  Too bad, they really missed out!

When we got to Simon's house, we did gifts first and faster than you can say "Jack Robinson", we were driving to the summer sledding.  When we got there, we bought tickets and got in the bobsled.  There was a big stick between our legs on each bobsled, this was the brake when pulled back and the accelerator when pushed forward.  We went countless times down and then getting pulled up two-hundred meters (one thousand feet) by a chain.  We even found a camera hidden just off the track taking photos of us going down and started waving at it, making funny faces at it, and even just sticking our tongues out at it!  We all had a lot of fun and hardly wanted to pause to eat we were so excited to go again, but it was too good to last.

When we got home, Simon got out a pack of strange looking cards.  These were apparently cards to a game called Werewolf.  After several rounds of Werewolf, we decided to go outside and play with the water guns Simon had given us.  I was on a team with Lukas and we ran off as fast as we could to find a good hiding place while Simon and Mark counted.  It was fun to run around without shirts squirting each other when they least expected it.  I am glad I went and we all had tons and tons of fun that will stick in our memories forever!

Friday

Today I did not get up with Kyra to go to school again.  Jörg was planning to take me to see the office, this time with copies of my parents passports so we could apply.  But then, he got called into a meeting before he could take me so Merinda dropped me off at the bus stop to go to school.  If we had known Jörg's work would call before he could take me to the office, I might have caught the first bus with Kyra!  But I am not complaining because I got to sleep in and not to mention read a few chapters of my book!

After school, Duncan came over and Liam automatically suggested that we play with his cars.  But a little later, he wanted to practice karate with Kyra and me.  So we all went outside and stayed long after Kyra went inside again.  We found our wands and set out on an amazing journey trying to keep evil wizards away from the Fire Staff.  We also picked up a lot of friends along our quest, facing betrayal and gaining information;  false and true.  It was a ton of fun and I reluctantly let him go when his mom came but it sounds like we hopefully will get together. 

Thursday

Today when Kyra's alarm clock went off, I got up and started to get dressed.  But she stopped me and said that I would miss the first part of school to go to the office again.  So I got back into bed to wait for Jörg to wake me up to go.  A few hours later, Merinda came in to wake me up and gave me a list of things to do including:  eat breakfast, brush teeth, do a page of math, and change my bed sheets.  By the time I had done all that, we were about ready to go.

When we got there, I was so nervous but I did not know why, these people could not hurt me.  Jörg talked to them for a while saying some things.  I recognized things like "Das ist schade!"  (that is a shame or what a pity).  I was giddy when we got out of there.  If Jörg was saying "What a pity", that probably did not mean good news.  I was right.  We could not even register because we did not have a copy of my mom's and dad's passport.  No wonder Jörg was saying that.

I finally got to the last two hours of school.  I got off the bus just as one of my school friends Resule got on!  And when I stepped on the pavement, I came face to face with two other girls from my class!  What was going on, were they ditching class?  Then they told me that the last two hours had been canceled because Mr. Horn was making a big test for SL and the homework hour had been canceled too (for some odd reason).  So much for catching the last of school!

Wednesday

Today, Kyra and I did not have school but Synja did, so while we slept in, Synja got ready for school and Merinda got ready for work.  Eventually, Joerg got me up so I could eat breakfast and get ready to go talk to some people to see if I could stay three weeks longer than the 90 day limit.  We quickly got in the car to go to the office but realized half way there that they would be closed when we got there.  Oh well, we will just have to try again Friday after school of course.

When Synja got home from school, we all went outside to ride bikes.  At first, I could not find my helmut so I could not do a lot except chase them around.  When I finally found it, I was ashamed at how obvious it was:  It was on top of one of the scooters in plain sight!!!!  After that, I had a lot more fun because I could now ride my bike.  When we decided to go into the garden, I memorized where I put my helmut and cleaned up the bikes.

When we wandered into the garden, we found our sticks we used as wands and immediately started saving people from the bad witches.  And after saving all the people from one witch, we would put them to sleep for seven minutes and then they woke up to find themselves good witches instead of bad.  Then, they would help put the next evil person to sleep so they would wake up and be good guys with us.  Liam seemed to like this game as much as the rest of us and to make it fair, he gave the bad guys the same power as us so now we were constantly being turned from bad to good and back again.  I think we all enjoyed most of it and I did not want to come in for dinner at first!

Tuesday June 11

Today in PP, the dentist came in.  After explaining a few things she started calling us up one at a time while the rest of us did a worksheet she gave out.  When she called us up, she smeared this stuff on our teeth and it would highlight the unwanted bacteria on our teeth.  I had just eaten a bite of apple before school started because Merinda had put two kinds of apples in and I wanted to taste the difference.  So I had what I called an embarrassing amount of gunk on my teeth compared to how much I had after I had brushed my teeth.  It was a relief when it was time to go.  I will need to keep track of when the dentist comes in the future!

A few days ago, my friend Simon invited me to his birthday next Saturday.  So after school, Kyra took me to go get him a gift card for ten Euros (the Euro is German money).  I thought we were done and were going to wait at the bus station until the bus came again but then Kyra took me by surprise and bought me an ice-cream!  We sat at the park to eat them and when we were done, we still had enough time to visit the Abby that had closed about a year ago.  Kyra and I just took a quick peak at the gardens and then left.  We still had plenty of time to kill and so she gave me a short tour of a small part of Siegburg and the most indirect way to the train station to catch our bus there.  I thought that was really nice of Kyra to show me a little bit of Siegburg, not to mention the ice-cream.

When we got on the bus and talked a little about the Abby and Siegburg, I guess the guy in front of us heard us talking in English because he turned around in his seat and said in a flat tone:  "Hi, velcome to Germany.  Ve are on a German bus going to ze bus station."  And then he asked, "kannst Du Deutsch sprechen"  Kyra said "Ja, ich kann" (yes I can), so he explained in German he was a comedian but then said "it was a joke" in English.  He continued making funnier and funnier jokes through the bus ride, some about the bus driver's driving, some about his English, and even just saying that we were in Germany on a German bus, and surrounded by German people!  It seemed like two seconds until the bus ride was over and I almost (if not almost, then I really was) reluctant to get off!

Monday June 10

Today we had a grammar test in English.  It was about the two forms of verbs in the past tense.  For example, "see" is the verb, "I saw" is one version and "I have seen" is the other.  This test, I am sure I did good in because we learned this in first and second grade, but you have to give these kids credit.  They started English in third grade and that was just a little vocabulary and already, they are so far!  If a German exchange student came, even at age twelve, they would be able to talk to us in English and we most likely would not know more than a word of German.  Lucky them!!!

A few hours later in Art, most of us finished our mazes.  However, some of the students had missed Art 1st week, so they still had a little while until they finished.  When most of us had finished, our Art teacher hung an example of a colored maze on the wall.  It had been done by a student and our Art teacher explained that we needed to color our mazes, but not just any way we wanted, we had to choose three different shades of the same color and she gave an example of how to slightly overlap them so the maze would slowly get lighter and then fade slowly dark over and over.  It had a cool effect when done correctly and it made me think of a maze of tunnels with an occasional torch here and there along the secret passage way.  But the bell rang before we got to try to do it ourselves, so I will have to wait until next week.

When I got home, Merinda let Synja, Liam and I go outside.  We found sticks to use as wands and started protecting the baby crocodiles from the bad guys.  We yelled nonsense words and waved our wands around.  This caused the bad guys to fall into a deep sleep and when we woke them up, they were nice guys again.  This game continued for a while until Merinda called us in.  It was fun and Liam enjoyed it too.  Usually, he wants to run from the bad adult crocodiles which is fun too but I am glad Liam agreed to do something different.

Sunday June 9

Today was the neighborhood flea market.  There were a lot of booths just around the house to look at but I did not go more than a few feet off the property line.  We had a small booth with a few items.  I did not see if anyone bought anything because I mostly stayed in the garden reading.  Synja came and joined me and we both just sat and read and read and sat.  It was very pleasant to lay in the sun, not really doing anything.

But then the wind started to pick up and the temperature began to drop.  Soon, it got to cold for me and I went inside to read.  The flea market ended then and everyone else came in.  Kyra turned on High School Musical for us.  I liked it more than I thought I would and I did not complain when Kyra turned on the second one.

I am surprised at how much I want to go to school tomorrow.  I cannot wait to see my friends again even though it has only been two days since I saw them last.  I just feel so comfortable at school now.  But sometimes, I wonder if I were a German citizen going to the same school and knowing German, would my friends be the same friends I have now?  Would I even be in the same class?  I guess I will never know the answer to that question.