Today was really windy. I had Amelie out for a walk this afternoon when it really started getting windy. We were walking along a ditch that's lined on one side by trees when a huge gust of wind came up from behind us. It lifted all of the leaves up off of the ground and they went flying past us, and you could hear them rustling. It was really cool and really beautiful. I felt like Pocahontas. And Amelie looks so beautiful in her new harness.

I got a phone call from Multikultur, the au pair agency here in Germany. They check in every once in a while just to make sure everything's ok. They ask about how the family is treating me, how much work I have to do, if I like my room, and things like that. The conversations are always in German, so I have to really concentrate when I'm on the phone with the agancy. Oh, and I always say something stupid. For example, today she asked me, "Hast du eine Sprachkurs gefunden?" (Have you found a language course?) My response: "Yes." Brilliant. Answer a question, asked in German, about whether or not you're learning German, with an English response. Yeah, I'm a moron.

After I picked up the kids this afternoon Jorg came over and brought his kids with him. Jorg is a neighbor who lives like one street behind us, and his oldest son Fabio is Gustav's best friend. His other son, David, goes to the same Tagesmutter as Pauline. So I've meet the kids, Jorg, and his wife Barbara before. Anyway, Jorg brought the kids over to play, and they ended up staying for dinner. We had pasta and a simple tomato sauce that Esther cooked up. Those little boys are so precious. Fabio looks just like his mother, and David is the most peaceful, mild mannered baby ever. He just kinda roams around, looking at everything, and not worrying about anything. I don't think I've ever heard him cry or even fuss.

After dinner I gave Gustav and Pauline the puzzle books that my mom sent for them. They were both really excited about it. Gustav's is a book about tool kits and what different tools are used for, and Pauline's is about pretending to be a princess, and has little cutouts of a tiara and cupcakes and things like that. I sat down with Gustav in his room and he picked up each of the tool cutouts and asked me what each one was used for. He's definitely understanding me a lot better, because he pretended to use each of the tools after I explained it to him, and for some of them he asked why you would want to use it. It's really exciting to see how quickly they're starting to pick up on English.

Once the kids were bed Esther and I sat down to watch the news and the first half of the soccer game. At halftime I went to bed and Esther took Amelie for a walk, and Germany was beating the Ivory Coast 1:0 at that time. While the national anthems were being played before the start of the game, all of the players from the Ivory Coast team were wearing shirts that said In Memory of Robert Enke with a picture of him printed on them. It was really cool not only that they were so respectful of what the German team is going through right now, but also that they demonstrated how much his death impacted the global soccer community. In the USA it's a little hard to comprehend how important the sport really is.