Back to School Night

Today was the first day of my new language course. I was really nervous about it (again) because I was concerned about how difficult it was going to be to skip the one class and jump into this one. I'm not worried anymore, though, because it shouldn't be a problem. It will be a little more challenging than last time, which is good because I'll definitely get more out of it, but it's not going to be too bad.

I also met an American today, for the first time since I got here. He's actually in my language course, too. He's from Garden Grove and he's living here to finish his last year of high school as part of an exchange program. Even though he's attending a German school he's taking this course to help improve his grammar. It's kind of nice because his vocabulary is better than mine and my grammar is better than his, so we can definitely help each other out. Plus, he likes to go places and do stuff, so now I have someone in town that I can hang out with that wants to meet and hang out with other Germans, which is really cool. I already feel better about this course than I did about the last one.

This morning was an interesting start to the week. The car wouldn't start because the battery was dead and we had to have one of the neighbors come and jump it so that I could take Esther and the kids. Luckily the battery in the BMW is in the back, because otherwise it would've been a bitch trying to jump the car while it was in the garage. Then, since I had to drive the car around to make sure that the battery was charged up enough to start this afternoon, I got to drive on the Autobahn today. I didn't go very fast because it was snowing, but it was cool because I was on the Autobahn. Then I had to hurry back home because Emma was coming at 10 and I had to be there to let her in. I didn't get to take Amelie in the woods this morning because of it, and she was a little sad, but we had a nice long walk this afternoon to make up for it.

Just after Emma left I got a phone call from Olaf asking me to look for a very important paper that he needed for a meeting today but had left at home. It had to do with finances of some sort and he was supposed to bring it with him to Basel this morning but forgot it. I had to run it over to Esther's office so that she could scan it and email it to him. It's a good thing that I was here and able to do that for him, because that would've sucked.

After I walked Amelie in the field this afternoon I was going to go pick up the kids at around 3:30 and take them sledding on this hill at the retirement home right behind Gustav's Kindergarten. We all went over there yesterday, and it's a pretty nice little place for the kids to play. Right before I left to pick up the kids, though, it started raining. Esther and I had agreed that if the weather was crappy it wouldn't be a good idea, so I waited until later to pick them up and then grabbed Esther at her office at 4:30. It was crazy, though, because it started out with little tiny drops of rain, and then almost instantaneously the temperature dropped like 3 degrees and there were big snowflakes floating around all over the place. It was really cool. I'm going to miss the snow when it's gone.