Hello everyone out there!

I’m doing well. Sitting and surfing the net like never before….

So Jesse and I had some unusual encounters with the Berlin wildlife last night. Well, at first you must know that we live in a basement, and the two windows of our room are pretty high up and open into a pretty lush garden. Basically right up to the window are tons of vines and plants, etcetc. So….the bed is pressed under one of the windows and last night I heard some rustling above our heads….and I told Jess “ahh! Something’s coming in!” so we jumped up and Jesse closed the window right as a hedgehob was creeping into our room. Gah, it was kinda scary! It stayed near the window for maybe an hour …. And eventually left. But we decided to keep the windows closed for the night … and maybe forever. Its rather unfortunate, though, since having fresh air is nice.

The second run in was more unfortunate. I guess a bee had entered our room pre-hedgehog incident ...so at around 3 or 4 am Jesse got stung on his eye-lid….while he was sleeping! =( He says he was dreaming about a bug flying around him…and we figured it landed on his eye … so he smacked it and that led to the sting. It hurt a lot last night, but its almost all better now.

To say the least, we were shook up. Its not that big of a deal, but I just researched hedgehogs and found that they are slightly endangered (?) and that their favorite habitats are edges of forests, gardens and parks…exactly the situation where we are. Also, we might be getting some hoglets … hehe. It’s actually sort of cool that they are there … there is just nothing keeping them out of our room, so it makes the situation cumbersome. But if there were a fence or a thick screen….oh what heaven that would be! (sorry for the histrionics, its just a really nice garden that seems to be sleeping out of my life)

Ok…what else …. I have officially moved houses, 100 percent. Jess and I went to my old place and got the rest of my things. We thought they would not be there, but they all were, Mom, Dad, kid (with newly died red hair) and mother-in-law. My host dad is Turkish, so his Mom was visiting from Turkey. She can’t speak German or English so I heard her words translated through her son. I think she motioned that I should cover her my head …and was perhaps indecent because I was exposed .. and then she was had me kiss her hand and give her some cheek pecks. It was all really awkward, to tell you the truth, because I had no idea what she was saying as she lunged her face towards mine. We did, however, get to eat some fresh home made borek … which is sort of like bread made of many layers of dough. The one we had had sheep’s cheese and spinach inside. Sehr lecker!

Hmmm…that’s about it. I have a sneaking feeling that I will be around the Stanford Center often in the next few weeks, so I’m sure more blogs will be coming.

Alrighty, hasta entonces,
Deb