Diana Elle Blog

(This post was supposed to go live Friday, but it didn't.) I'm going to share a little bit of what they do to say goodbye to the students that will be leaving kita (daycare). Or at least, what they did at ours. At 9 am they had a big breakfast set up for the whole class. This was only for the kids, so I don't have any pictures of that.  Avi tells me they set up a really really long table and there was a lot of food, she ate cheese on bread with butter, and grapes. They asked us to arrive at 1 to pick them up. we were waiting outside and once all the parents were there they started. They named the child, announced what grade they are going to, said they were going to miss him/her,  and then "kicked them out" of the day care. Afterwards, we took pictures of the kids with the teachers. They all got a goodbye gift and the ones going to first grade get a Schultüte, which they take with them on their first day of first grade. We stayed a ...

Today's travel tuesday prompt is: – Festivals and Celebrations – The first festival we ever encountered in Germany was the Laternenumzug/laternenlauf in Nov. 2012, if I remember correctly, it happened to be Avi's 3rd birthday and since we were new to the city we decided to attend. After all, it ended with fireworks!  I had been seeing the signs all over the city that it would be "open for business Sunday" (Verkausoffener Sonntag) and that the big Harburg lantern parade would take place after the stores closed.  Everyone who wanted to participate would meet at the Harburg Rathaus and from there we would take off.  There was a various number of marching bands from different starting points, I video taped quite a few of them since they reminded me of a high school marching band (my sister had just joined one back in the states)..  and we marched around Harburg and finished at the Schwarzenberg, in front of the unive...

The 25th marked one month of living in this city and it's been weird trying to adapt. I saw this post on kiki 's blog and thought it was a great idea to help keep up with what we did during the month, here's what we've accomplished in our first month in Kaiserslautern. FIVE big suitcases filled with our stuff, some that we had left in Hamburg and some we brought back from Mexico. SIX days spent at the universities guest house before we got the key to our apartment. MANY trips to furniture stores. ONE hour spent ice skating. The ice skating rink at KL on ICE was smaller than I expected, but that was okay, It was only Avi and me, she was really excited about this but was sad she wasn't automatically able to skate/good. This was her second time ice skating but just as difficult as the first. NO kindergarten, yet. We still don't have a Kita, and it's even harder for us since Avi is 5, she should be in vorschule (preschool) already! I...

I am anxious for it to be June already, my little sister will be coming for a visit! I miss everyone so much and well, while we have seen familiar faces since we got here I'm excited that she'll be here for a whole month, it's also cool that she'll be bringing me a lot of stuff, hehe.