German Rats Prefer Wonder Bread

We're finally settling down in our new house in Neuenhaus (-redundantly a town name which actually means "New House"). We've had plenty of excitement in the past few weeks that has kept us busy and since my boys have told everyone they meet, I may as well tell you. We've had an unwanted house guest or guests--a rat. I woke up one morning a day or so after we moved in and walked into the kitchen to see our new loaf of bread from the army grocery store ripped and scattered across my kitchen counter. While wondering which of my darling children was to blame I noticed nibbled holes in the bag. I have to give a disclaimer--I never buy Wonder Bread. I'm no health nut, but I grew up on wheat bread and Wonder Bread just turns into a sticky gluey substance on the roof of my mouth that I can't swallow down. I only bought Wonder Bread because they were out of the American wheat bread at the store and my children seem to lack the mature taste buds required to appreciate real bread--German bread! Anyway, there was my Wonderbread all over the counter and a perfectly delicious loaf of German bread, untouched sitting right next to it. I am forced to draw the conclusion that German rats are gluttons for refined flours and gluey substances on the top of their mouths. A few mornings later we woke up to Mason yelling from the hallway. He said he saw the rat run down the hall and go into a hole under our built in cupboards. In the picture he is demonstrating just how long the rat's tail is. We placed traps with chocolate, peanut butter and cheese, but other than the Wonder bread, which we did, unfortunately, buy and leave out again, the traps remained empty. We finally bought rat poison and I think that did the trick as we have had no further attacks. However, every time I look at our cupboards I think we must have a rat, rotting away under it. To my embarrassment, everytime the kids meet someone the first thing they say is,"We have a rat in our house." As I am unable to produce a corpse, I can't convince them that it is dead and if it's not dead, to shut-up about it anyway!

I talked to our landlord and she said because we live so near to the forest, we'll get alot of woodland creatures around. On the bright side, look at these pictures that are literally out our backdoor. The picture below that looks like a super-duper cool fort is actually what the hunters use to hang out in when they hunt (and you can see them around all the fields and through all the forests). When I asked what they hunt in this forest I was told wild boars and deer. The fort, the boars, it all sounds a little too much like themovie "The Village".

I know that you're all dying to hear how the boys are doing in school. Well, it's really hard--shocking, I know. We are now accepting prayers on their behalf as they try to learn German! I'm going in on Wednesdays and Fridays to help in their VKL class, it's basically an ESL class, but for learning German. They have kids from Turkey, Romania, Vietnam, England and a few other Eastern European countries in their class. They go to VKL for German and then they go to their regular classes for Math, Sport (P.E.), Swimming and Art. They put Sam and Jacob back in third grade because Germans are further in math than we are. For example, they learn their times tables in second grade! I love their math homework (no, they don't really love any homework at all), it's really good at preparing them for Algebra and really makes them think. The boys also use fountain pens in school. Try that out--it's not as easy as it looks in Harry Potter movies. On Monday and Thursday they have class until 5 p.m., on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday until noon. Sam and Jacob got invited to a German boy's birthday party last weekend and all my boys love to play with Andreas, a good friend from church who also goes to their school. You skeptics out there may wonder about their adjustment, but if you'll see in the picture below, they are making a fort in the forest behind our house in a gulley with an old gate they found out there and a bunch of dead logs they dragged from everywhere. Making a fort in the forest is definitely a sign of well adjusted, normal boys. I am so proud of my boys for working so hard in German school. We're trying this out and working through this as a family and this feels right for us, right now. All our family and friends who agree with us are free to comment on our blog--the rest need not apply! Tschus!