Children, classes and cocktails... but not all together

This week has been quite a long one, despite the days speeding by at their usual quick pace.  Lots of people have got colds, and as the first wave of illness sweeps around lower school, everyone is feeling a bit glum.  Some good things happened this week though.  There is a child in year 6 who has a brother in year 9, who Matt teaches.  Both kids had gone home and told their parents how much they like us, and worked out that we were married.  The year 9 mentioned it to Matt, and said how much his brother likes me.  I was ridiculously pleased that i'd been mentioned at home, and it put a smile on my face all day.  Pretty much all of the year 3-6's know my name now, and say hello to me as we pass in the corridor.  I'm really getting to know the TEP kids that I read with three times a week too.  They are are all very shy children, but their personalities are starting to come out more now.

We were both rather unenthusiastic about going to German lessons this week, since we've both been quite bored by the slow pace of things.  Thursday, the lesson started off really badly.  We learnt words for mother, father, brother, aunt, grandparents etc, and then had to draw our full family trees.  But the family trees only had names on, not mother, father etc.  We spent nearly an hour on them, and we were getting frustrated because we know who our families are, and their names, and it wasn't teaching us any German at all!  Matt almost fell asleep, and the teacher finally cottoned on that we weren't very stimulated.  She asked Matt if he was bored, and he was honest.  I think Matt is probably the best in the class at the moment, and I am at a far more average level, so the teacher asked me too if things were a bit slow.  I said yes, and I think she was using me as a yard stick for the rest of the class, because things really picked up after that, and we learnt LOADS in the last 45 minutes.  I think it is good that the teacher found out, and now hopefully we will get more out of the lessons.

On Friday night we went to a pub near school with some friends, and last night, we went out for one of the Primary girls birthdays.  She wanted us to get dressed up like we do for nights out in the UK, so we all wore dresses and heels.  In Germany, jeans and t-shirts are more the dress code for nights out.  We went to a couple of different cocktail bars, and we had a really good night.  We have such a lovely group of friends here; we've very lucky.  

Today, we are off to meet Uncle Chris in Duisburg for dinner.  He is over from Switzerland on business in the area, and is popping by for a fleeting visit.  I'm really looking forward to our first visitor since we've moved to Germany - a whole month ago now -