15 Mai - More rain

It has rained every day since we've been here.  Nothing too bad... a slight drizzle during the day and some harder rain with thunder in the evenings.  It does make for a wet bicycle seat though. 

So today, we shut off Skylar's watch alarm and fell asleep again.  This time we managed to get out by 9:30am though.  First we went to Diana's office to call the headmaster at the nearby state school for Skylar.  Turns out we are actually just outside the border for that school and he suggested the state school for our area.  We called that headmistress and are meeting her at 8am on Monday morning at which time, she will make a decision about Skylar and he can start right away.  It will be good because all of the children will live close to us.  The only thing is that they suggest he starts in 3rd grade so he can continue at the same school in September.  In Germany between 4th and 5th grade, the children are sent to different schools based on their academics.  So if Skylar went to 4th grade for the end of this year, I would have to change his school in September and that would be more difficult to arrange.  I'll talk more about it to the headmistress on Monday.

Then we went back to the international office to prepare more paperwork.   She needs my insurance information before she can go forward with much of anything and my insurance is being slow at processing the request to send me my coverage information.  So, we went to the local Alliance office and got our welcome packet which included gifts from the town of Heilbronn, such as a semester ticket for the bus and train, a bunch of 25 euro gift certificates for local stores and I think some other stuff, but the man kept switching back to German and of course I couldn't understand.  Once my insurance is figured out and I get my student card from the University, I have to return and bring him a copy.

We had to get german passport pictures for our immigration forms and apparently you are not supposed to smile.  Anyone that knows me, knows this is somewhat difficult for me, so even though the photographer took a half dozen of them, my lips were pursed together forcing myself not to smile... it made for a silly looking picture.  The photographer was not pleased and insisted that the picture did me no justice, but I said it didn't matter as long as they worked.  A friend tried to convince me to model one time and I had the same problem.  The model photographer said models look silly when they smile, and I said I look silly when I don't, so that was that.

Is there such a thing as cheddar cheese in Germany?  A hundred different kinds of cheese at the supermarket, but none of them looked like cheddar.  We just got Graten Kase, which I think just means grated cheese and doesn't even specify the type.  Nora said it is the kind that melts on stuff.

After a few more errands, we rode back to the flat and just relaxed a while.   Then it started pouring, so it is a good thing we were not still out and about.  By the time it stopped, I was going stir crazy, so at about 19:30, Skylar and I got on our wet bikes and rode to town.  We thought about going to a movie, so I asked if American movies were dubbed in German and of course they were, so we scratched that idea.  We found an ice cream shop and got yummy sundaes instead.  I think I am just going to eat the entire time I am here... the chocolate, the pastries, the ice cream... everything is all so good.  It was raining again when we left and became increasingly harder as we rode.  By the time we got home we were good and soaked.

Skylar brought some movies from home, so we watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua.  Yes, it is as cheesy as it looks.  Unfortunately there are sites like Pandora and Fox that only work inside the United States, so I can't listen to my usual music or watch anything from there.

All in all a very low key day and evening.