Bunter Teller, Buntes Auge, Buntes Haar

This week we're feeling tired and down.
On Monday, our friend Heidi died after battling cancer for a year and a half. It was her birthday. She leaves behind her husband Kurt (whom Rob baptized), her son Sven, and her daughters Jasmine (above) and AnnLuise. We are missing her quick Berlinish wit, her great cooking, and the fuss that she made over all of us.

Anni came with us and spent the morning with us. She helped to pick out an advent wreath for our family and stayed at our house until friends and family were around to be with her.

Monday night all of our students came over for the last FHE of Study Abroad. Rob made Bunte Tellers (colorful plates), which are arranged plates of Christmas goodies and explained what advent was all about with the wreath Anni had picked out for us. He explained the symbolism in the wreath with the evergreen, the circular shape, the candles that are lit sequentially, and the way that it combines both the pagan and the Christian traditions.

And we made them turn in 150 pages apiece. Just in case you don't have a calculator on hand, that would be 3600 pages to read in three days so that we could turn them back and not have to carry them home with us.

On Tuesday we got a call from school that Will had fallen and cut his eye. Rob ran down and took him to the emergency room. He got four stitches, an orange Fanta, a bravery certificate from the clinic, and a Playmobil knight.

He was worried at bedtime that it would hurt to get the stitches taken out, so we called Uncle Jeff in Boston to ask him about his experience running into the railing at the Stake Center.

The doctor saw him the next day and said that the only thing that could have gone better would be if he hadn't fallen at all (um, yeah. even we knew that much). No concussion, no infection.

On Wednesday no one had died or gotten stitches, so we let Maddie dye her hair Cassis purple with Matt Reed (Sarah's husband). It is really quite a stunning shade. I wonder what they'll think of it in the Christmas play in two weeks?
On Thursday Will's eye had turned pretty colors.
And on Thursday, we had our last meeting with the students. They take off for all sorts of places from here: California, Philadelphia, Stuttgart, London, Prague, and Istanbul to name a few. We gave them back their work (and yes, we did read them -- with some help from our friends) and they gave us tickets to Aida in two weeks. We may be ready to do something by then.

In the meantime, Aunt Kiecoo sent us a package that arrived today. It contains the Carsdamoofie DVD. I think that is just our speed.