Now that I finally (sort of) have time to do this, I'm going to just spew as much as I can about the past few days in as little time as possible.

I'll start with Monday, since it was an interesting day. To start things off, I dropped the kids off in the morning because Esther had a busy day. Before we even left the house, Gustav started crying because he was taking his toy ambulance to Kindergarten but the doctor wasn't in it. I went back inside to try to find it while the kids sat in the car, and on the way to the door I slipped on the wooden walkway and fell ( I hate being clumsy) and landed on the same knee I landed on when I screwed up my back at work 3 months ago. Luckily my back hasn't started hurting yet, so hopefully a bruised knee is all I get from that one. Anyway, we didn't find the doctor, so I had to try to calm Gustav down and convince him to pretend that the construction worker that was sitting in the ambulance was a doctor for the day. Then some woman on a horse yelled at me while I was in the woods with Amelie. She said something about not playing with other dogs, and when she was done she asked "Do you understand me?" Nope. I sure don't. So I walked away and don't really give a crap what she said; her dog was the one that wasn't on a leash, not mine. Then, when I got home from picking up the kids, the awkward smell that had been developing in the kitchen over the previous couple of days had gotten to the point where it was almost unbearable. I finally figured out that it was coming from a drainage bucket in the back of the fridge that was filled with this thick, pink, almost gelatinous fluid. The technical support people for the company that made the fridge were worthless (what else is new) and we couldn't remove the bucket without disassembling the entire fridge, so Esther and I had to drain it using paper towels. We later realized that the source of the fluid was the duck that had been defrosting in the fridge on Friday and Saturday; it was fatty raw duck juice. We had to use tons of vinegar to get rid of the smell, but at least it doesn't smell like Amelie shat behind the fridge anymore.

Yesterday was not too bad, at least not until the afternoon. I went to my class in the morning, then came home and vacuumed and did a few things before Jorg came over to visit and ask Esther a financial question. While he was here Esther had him take a look at my throat to see what was going on. The good news is that the swelling is going down and my throat is getting better. The bad news is I have pink eye. It started out just in the right eye, which started getting sore and then within no time at all was gooey and gross, and by the time I woke up this morning it was in both eyes. I swear, I get pink eye way too much. When I went to pick up the kids I took Amelie with me again to walk in the woods, which almost didn't happen. Gustav had an icepack on his head when I got to the Kindergarten because while they were playing on the slide Florian accidentally hit Gustav in the head. It was kinda funny because he got hit in the back of the head, but the icepack was on his forehead. Anyway, he was actually hurt, and he was still kinda crying and wanted to go home, which meant no walk for Amelie. I told him that we had to at least let her out long enough to go to the bathroom and Gustav agreed, if he was allowed to stay in the car. He was sound asleep by the time we even got to the woods, so Pauline and I were able to take Amelie on a decent walk and Gustav never knew the difference.

Today was actually kinda fun. Esther and I planned the day so that all I had to do was walk Amelie in the morning, and then I was free until 8 tonight when she and Olaf were going to go to dinner with Florian's parents. We did this so that I could spend the day in Cologne, checking out the Weihnachtsmarkts. It's kind of hard to explain what a Weihnachtsmarkt is, but it's basically like a Christmas-themed vendor faire. They're a big deal in Germany, and people fly in from other countries to visit them. There are 7 of these markets in Cologne, and I visited 3 of them today. It was a lot of fun because everywhere you look there are lights and Christmas trees and cute little fairy tale buildings. You can buy all sorts of things in these little shops that they set up just for the season, and I was able to get all of my Christmas shopping done today. The only thing that sucked is that my eyes are still pink and tired, and my throat started hurting as the day went on, and it was cold and raining so my knees got really stiff and achey. I went to order a drink from one of the vendors just before I left to head back home, and for the life of me I could not focus well enough to speak German. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, "I'm sorry, but do you speak English?" I couldn't even ask him in German! He spoke perfect English and he was really sweet, but I still feel like an ass.