Oma is for grandma

This little boy has found the answer to every question … believe it or not.

Little m (so not to be confused with our eldest daughter M … hmm, I’ll have to work out some consistent system of naming our children while at the same time protecting their privacy, so until I figure out something really good I might just copy what I’ve seen some other people do and just call them girl5, girl3 and boy2).

So anyway boy2 has found the answer to the ultimate question of life.

He’s playing the ‘why’-game with us at the moment. Common conversations with him look something like that:

Michael: “Daddy is going to buy some bread.”

boy2: “Why?”

“because we’re out of bread”

“Why?”

“because we ate it all up”

“Why?”

“because we were hungry”

“Why?”

“because we used up energy”

… you can see where this is going?

I bet you can’t because whenever we run out of answers for our curious little boy he provides them himself: “Cause the tiger eats it!”

Now there you’ve got it, the tiger ate it up. Whatever you want to know about or whatever you’re looking for, you can stop worrying because the tiger ate it!!!

… we have at the dinner table.

Michael said to E: “Please eat up your dessert … ahhmm I mean salad.”

E in response combined with big giggles: “Daddy said “dessert” to my salad.”

M getting involved: “Why did you say “dessert” to her salad?”

Michael: “No, I called her salad “dessert” and said it to E …(under his breath) I’m not talking to a salad.”

M again: “Why did you call her “Sally”?”

This might be a sure sign for you that we’re slowly loosing it, I guess all this moving around does take it’s toll

Recently, I was contacted by an organisation called International Medical Corps (also known as IMC) asking me to support a project of theirs. At first I was very sceptical with so much fraudulent emails around and people promising the unachievable. But after a bit of research on my part (like most people would these days I went to Wikipedia and read about IMC there) I think I can support their plea and post about their project in the hope that more people find out about it.

And this is what it’s all about, IMC has got a project called “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children” and this is some information from their press release:

Hunger and malnutrition kill more people in the world than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. As food prices rise, this funding is even more critical. More people are being driven deeper into poverty trying to afford basic staples. Many have nothing to eat at all.

For severely malnourished children, we offer a step-by-step treatment program that gives them what they need to recover, including nutrient-dense food supplements like the peanut-based product, Plumpy’Nut. Our comprehensive monitoring system saves more than 90 percent of children being treated in our feeding centers.

And this is where we come in, American Express has donated $1.5Million dollars to be given to an Aid Organisation. So if IMC wins the vote of the American Express card holders, they’ll receive this money. So if you’ve got an American Express credit card then you can decide where you’d like your financial institution to invest their money.

We’ve been here for three weeks now and things are still pretty crazy, but everyday is different and so we’ve got days where things are just too much and other days where we’re coping pretty well.

For the first time since getting here little M has not needed any attention during the night and has woken up at his normal time of 7am (rather than 5.45am, which is what he’s been doing so far) … so today is a pretty good day and I’m coping really well.

We’re starting to find our way around this big city although sometimes I’m still contemplating putting on a fake accent and speaking with really poor German … people might just be a little more understanding. Somehow there’s just no category for people like me and I must seem incredibly weird to everybody around. I just feel plain stupid half of the time. I look German, I speak perfect (or nearly perfect) German, I am German but somehow I just don’t know how any of this works.

• I don’t know which way to look when crossing the road, and that wasn’t exactly helped by the fact that in our little shopping street people drive all sides of the road anyway.
• I’ve got way too many children for the average German.
• When looking for money in my wallet I just never know what the different coins look like (the Euro was introduced after I left Germany) and I take ages completing a simple procedure like paying someone in cash.

But I’ve also learned a lot about things I’ve never had to do, not in Germany or Australia:

• I know how to choose and join the right health insurer.
• I learned how to find a good home and contents insurance and complete the form
• I now know how to apply for child assistance money
• We found a good phone and internet deal.
• I learned about the differences between energy providers and how to choose the right one for us
• and we learned what to look out for in a rental contract and how to go about finding the right unit for us.

So, all things considered we’ve been doing amazingly well although in amongst all of this the children have also learned that negative attention is more desirable than no attention at all.

But with Michael in his second week of work I’m finding my own rhythm and things are certainly slowing down to some degree so realistically life can only improve. And people have been telling us that the children are beautifully behaved so things mustn’t be all that grim after all (given that everybody is being honest here).

Hold that thought … I’m considering changing my mind. Little M has just been woke AGAIN by the flush of the toilet in the unit above. The toilets are so loud that every time someone needs to go he wakes up (doesn’t exactly make for a happy life and easy settling in) even the girls for the first few days after getting here would evacuate the toilet in a great panic when we needed to flush.

Now wasn’t there a slogan in the depression to help people safe water: “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down”. In our case it wouldn’t just safe water but also my sanity.

I would have never thought that we get this far.

The last year has most certainly been the most stressful, adventurous, eventful and exciting time of my life. Right now I’m feeling exhausted but also thrilled to my finger tips.

In the first half of 2007 Michael took part in a professional development program and had to create quite an enormous portfolio of his work as a teacher, he also started a new job (alongside his existing one) and we had our third child born (with the first not even 3.5 years old). That has certainly been a push getting through but we managed and then just as things were calming down and little M started sleeping through the night, Michael got a job offer in Germany and we started to pack up.

From the day Michael got the offer to when we left our house in the Blue Mountains it was only 7 weeks and then we had another 7 weeks living in Sydney with Michael’s parents (thank you L&D for taking us in, looking after us and making all this possible for us!!). And now over 800 ticked to-do items and 36 hours of airports and planes later we’re here.

So let me tell you about the herculean effort of flying with three children under 5 from Australia to Germany as well.

Leaving Sydney our plane had a 3.5 hour delay, which meant the kids were tired and hungry getting onto the plane already. But they enjoyed their first meal on the plane and actually slept a little afterwards. Though big M felt motion sick with the changing air pressure, middle E couldn’t quite get comfortable with her head flopping forward all the time and little M cried and slept intermittently.

We arrived at Singapore feeling hopeful. Here we had to totally empty the plane for another security check, which meant that we had to wake little M, who’d only just managed to get back to sleep during landing, take the girls, our five pieces of hand luggage and the two car seats, that the children were sitting on of the plane and make our way through the customs check. Luckily a very nice Singaporean officer spotted us and helped us carry our stuff and got us to the top of the line (we had to learn to accept help very quickly on this trip). An hour-and-a-half later we were back on the plane but little M was desperately hungry and tired by now. I had to strap him into his chair for lift-off only to have him scream like I have not heard him before. Sitting right next to him that was too much to bear and so the two of us had a good cry together. In the end we defied all safety regulations and I breastfed the little guy during lift-off for the mental and emotional safety of myself and the other passengers on board.

Luckily I took my GP’s advise and had a mild sedative just for this sort of scenario so I gave the little boy a dose of that and he managed to sleep a few hours peacefully. The rest of the flight to London went pretty well all things considered. The girls made good use of the in-flight entertainment and little M was happy to coo at other passengers, when they weren’t sleeping.

By the time we arrived in London we had missed our connecting flight from London to Berlin and had no idea where to go. We had to change terminals by bus all the while carrying the five suitcases of hand luggage, the two car seats and little M with just our four hands. Not having a hand free to hold E’s hand she was a little like a sheep who had us running around the back of her pushing her in the right direction and us rounding her up like a sheep dog.

Having made it to the right terminal Michael found us a few seats to sit, while he went to find out where we should go for a connecting flight. Not knowing where he was off to or how long he’d be I tried to make the most of waiting around with the children while Michael had to wait in a cue for 45 minutes only to be told that he can make a run for the next plane but they certainly would not be waiting for us. After that we were just like two totally ridiculous looking chooks without heads. Michael raced ahead to try and stop the plane pulling, pushing, carrying four of the hand luggages stopping every ten metres to change hands. And I followed having little M in a sling and carrying one car seat in each hand the girls straddling behind me, big M pulling her trolley and E dreaming and singing away. We had to run like this for over a kilometre through Heathrow Airport with not a single baggage trolley in sight. But we did make it to our gate just as they were boarding the plane.

We felt so indescribably relieved to be sitting on this plane, the last one we were to catch for a while, only to realise that our luggage probably won’t have made it onto this plane. It was to take us another couple of days before all of us would have their clothes. But we’ve been managing really well. We were welcomed by my family ready to help out in any way they possibly could. And so we were driven to our furnished unit (which is to be our home for the next 4 weeks) and fed with a hot meal.

Currently we are counting day 3 of our German adventure and we have been incredibly busy and productive already. We have registered with the local authorities, applied for a new ID-card, did an emergency shopping trip to IKEA, signed Michael’s work contract, made an appointment with the aliens office, went exploring the nearby Schlosspark and did multiple trips to any of the various supermarkets in walking distance of our unit. The other morning Michael (and little M) were seen like this dashing out quickly to get some cereal for breakfast … it’s quite nice to be living right in the city. Though I might still change my mind about that one so stay posted for more about our German adventure.