The Business of Everyday

We're settling in a little more a getting a sort of rhythm to our days. I've figured out the washing of the clothes and the mailing of the post (it costs 1 euro to send a postcard to the USA) and the recycling of the recyclables.

Here's our morning crew for German lessons, sans me because I'm taking the picture and sans Ben because he hates German and refuses to go. Our teacher Sandra is in the middle.

Here is the elevator next to our high-falutin' grocery store in the mall. The kids insist on riding it of course. It is just weird to go to the mall to grocery shop, but it is by far the nicest place.

Here is a path by a nice creek that we sometimes walk when we're out and about. One thing that really bothers me about this city is the amount of graffiti. Believe me, I understand the need to express one's self and this is a nice stretch of it done by some talented artists, but everywhere you can find ugly writing and pictures, even on centuries-old houses. It is against the law, but it is not enforced. Yesterday when we were walking along this path we noticed that all the piles of dog poop (and there are many of them) had been spray painted hot pink. Joslin and I weren't sure if it was the city workers marking where the piles were or someone's protest against all the poop left by the poochies of Jena.

This is the cart outside of the mall where I buy my bread. I have been told it is the best one around and I would have to agree. They always have at least 2 very yummy choices of foccacia and the sun-dried tomato/cheese "brot" continues to be my favorite.

These lovely little gems are donuts with caramel inside that I use to bribe the kids for errand-running. I finally tried a bite the other day and let's just say my kids have superb taste and I'll be staying away from these, thank you very much.

Here's "meine mann" chopping green onions for gumbo in our "charming" loft kitchen. To use the only counter space available you have to bend your head to the right, which leaves a little bit of a crick in the neck. Needless to say, we're not producing many extravagant dinners, which is just fine with me. I did try my hand at baking some banana bread and found out that I have a convection oven, which cooks things about twice as fast as home. Luckily I checked it before it burned and we were able to enjoy it.

One of my great pleasures here has been seeing new birds. I was ecstatic to see this green woodpecker; the picture does not do justice to the green\yellow color of the feathers on its back. It was so bright I thought it was a parrot at first. Jonathon has loaned me his "Birds of Europe" book and I've been making a list of what I've seen so far. We were perusing the internet yesterday in search of our own copy and were delighted to discover that Amazon has a center here with a listing of English books, so we can order without the extravagant shipping and customs charges. Oh happy day!