Catch up, part 2

Well, somehow what I was writing didn't seem to be saved. So I will try quickly to recap.

Barbara is doing well. She teaches every day until noon, comes home and cooks because Nico and Johannes and Tabea and Friedrich all take the biggest meal of the day in the middle of the day. But I've been trying to do some of the cooking to help out. Yesterday I made a giant batch of the DeBoer chicken salad and they loved it. We have stuff to eat for days now of course.

I think we will see Tobias this weekend briefly when he heads up to Kritzeberg (the farmhouse the family owns in the Bavarian forest that I went to the last time I was here). He is still living in Constanz and we will visit him later in our time here on our way to France.

Tabea is overworked I think. She has "seminary" two weeks every few months here in Nurnberg, that's what she is doing now and why we are here. She has a car now, which is good, because she is traveling back and forth quite a distance. She comes home at lunch often to eat with me. This weekend we will go to REgensburg because she must take care of her congregation. I think she is wearing herself out because she is always willing to help and she takes on too much. I think she will learn to moderate with time. I hope.

Tabea and Barbara and I went to the forest yesterday and picked wild raspberries and blueberries. It was nice. Not yet enough for a pie, but close. It was hot outside for them-- 80s-- and so we didn't stay too long.

Although I am learning German, it just doesn't feel like work because it belongs to communication. So I am content here. It is nice to relax after the whirlwind trip through England. I am quite enjoying the slower pace here. We eat outside every meal, except breakfast, and the sun pretty much shines all the time. There is very little humidity and very little wind. So the garden is as much a part of the house as the rest. Barbara has an ongoing feud with the flies but they don't have screens on the windows-- houses built in the 18th century didn't of course--and they leave all the doors open. Barbara has pinned netting onto some of the windows so that the bugs are kept to a minimum, but it is still just much more open. And the very thick stone walls keep the house remarkably cool even in the middle of the day.

That is mostly what is going on here. I will try to catch up on Bath and London and Canterbury and Dover later.
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