I will never own a female animal that is not spayed, unless she's allowed to have babies. Amelie is in heat right now, and she is the most pathetic creature on the planet. First of all, she has to wear this stupid little doggie diaper while she's in the house, which makes her really uncomfortable, and she gets itchy because she has it on all the time. Then, when I take her outside for a walk, the females all want to attack her, and the males won't leave her alone. Except for Buddy. He's neutered, so even though he seems to realize that there's something different about Amelie, he doesn't know what to do about it. But the thing that makes it so sad is that Amelie gets confused. She knows what she's supposed to do, and she knows what she's allowed to do, and they're completely opposite things. Plus, right now I can't let her off the leash hardly at all when we go for a walk because if she senses that there's a male dog within 500 meters, she takes off like a speeding bullet in his direction. She's so desperate to find a mate that she literally follows me around the house and then stands at the door whining because she wants me to let her out. She even got herself stuck in the foyer a couple of nights ago (she knows she can push the glass door with her nose to get to the front door, but hasn't figured out yet that she can simply push in the other direction to get back into the house) because she wanted out so badly, and we were woken up by the sound of her scratching at the glass door. And she looks so sad, with her big dark eyes and a miserable expression in her eyebrows. Poor little thing.

On another note, I had a hell of a week this past week. Monday and Wednesday I had class, as usual, and Wednesday was the last day for this course. Monday evening I got to play soccer in the snow, too, which was awesome. Tuesday morning I had to get up early because Olaf and I needed to drive to Bergheim to finish the paperwork for my visa. They were only able to extend it until the end of March because that's when my next language course ends, but we can extend it again as I enroll on more courses. When we got home we had breakfast with Esther and the kids, and then I had to go with Esther to take the kids to the doctor in Köln. Gustav had an annual physical and Pauline needed to get a flu shot, and Esther needed me to go with her because apparently the doctor told her that Pauline should not be present during Gustav's physical. I don't get why, but whatever. It had snowed so much the night before, though, that there was snow lying in the street even in the middle of the city, which basically has never happened ever. It's not really supposed to snow here anyway (or so I'm told) and when it does it never lasts very long in the city because it's too warm. Anyway, once we were done at the doctor's office we drove to Ikea for lunch, and so Esther could pick up a few things she needed for her office. We ended up not getting back home until about 4 in the afternoon, so it was definitely a long day. Plus, after dinner I had to stay up and bake cookies and some pumpkin pie to take with me to my language course Wednesday morning. It was after 10 by the time I was finished, and then I had to go outside with Amelie once more because I thought she needed to go to the bathroom. Turns out she just wanted out of the house. Poor thing.
Wednesday was another long day. After I got done with class I had to walk back home to drop off my stuff and then walk to the Kindergarten. This year the Christmas party at the Kindergarten took the form of Advents coffee with Grandma and Grandpa. Each kid was supposed to invite one grandparent to go to the Kindergarten in the afternoon for coffee and cookies and to spend some time playing with their grandchild. Günter and Tante Karin were supposed to drive down from Münster on Tuesday so that one of them could go to Gustav's group on Wednesday and the other one could go to Pauline's on Thursday. Because of the snow, however, they weren't able to make the drive. So I got to go. It turns out that Gustav had actually originally said he wanted me to go anyway, so he was happy that I was his guest Wednesday afternoon. Esther was actually there, too, as Domenic's guest. When Claudia told Domenic that his grandparents were not going to be able to come because they live too far away, Domenic's response was, "Ja, dann die Esther kommt mit." So cute. So Claudia asked Esther if she would be able to go as Domenic's guest, which she of course was happy to do.
Thursday I had to go back to the Kindergarten for the Advents coffee in Pauline's group. While I was there Frau Pfeiffer introduced me to a girl from the Ukraine who is the au pair from a little girl named Lucy in Pauline's group. This poor girl had only been in Germany for 2 days, and doesn't speak a word of German. She only speaks Ukrainian, Russian, and English. To make things worse, her host family only speaks German and French. Don't ask me how she's supposed to communicate with the family, because I know she can't communicate at all with Lucy. That must be really hard, and I feel bad for her. The next time that I see her I'm going to give her Elena's phone number so that she has someone here she can talk to and doesn't have to feel alone. When Pauline and I got home Thursday afternoon we took Amelie and the sled and went out into the field. Pauline wasn't happy about it at first, because the kids always hate when they have to come along to take Amelie for a walk, but she had a lot of fun with the sled so it wasn't too bad. At 6 pm I put Pauline in the car to go pick up Gustav at Florian's and then grab Esther at her office, and from there I jumped on the train and headed into Köln. There was no soccer practice because of the snow, so the trainer arranged instead for the girls to meet at the Weihnachtsmarkt in Neumarkt to drink Glühwein and hang out. It was freezing cold, but the Glühwein helped, and it was snowing, so it really felt Christmasy and festive. It was a lot of fun, really.
Not a whole lot happened during the day on Friday, but in the evening I went into Köln to meet up with Elena and her friend Yana. We didn't really know where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do, so we just hung out at this place called Extrablatt in Altstadt. We had planned to go to Flanagans, the Irish Pub next door, but at 11 we decided we were just too tired and went home instead. Last night I went to the market at Stadtgarten, one of the 2 markets I wasn't able to find last year, to check it out. It was really small, but cozy and nice. Then I met Elena and Yana again at the train station and we headed to Flanagans. Laetitia, who I hadn't seen in a long time, met us there to hang out with us and have a drink, and we also ran into a mutual friend named Johan (also from France) and his friends. We stayed at Flanagans until it closed and then we all went our separate ways. Since it was like 4 in the morning I stayed at a friends apartment in Köln and then came home this afternoon to hang out with the family. It has been snowing like crazy, too. By the time I got home from the train station I looked like a snowman. I love this weather.