Weekly updates

One of my friends here has a "blog" she posts on Facebook. She created a private group to update her friends and family about what they have been up to during their time in Poland. Each week She posts a little blurb, sometimes with a photo or two, just giving a brief run down of their goings on. It has made me realize that I'm missing out on sharing with you all more regularly the daily life here, and the cool things we get to do because we live in such a unique environment.

So, here's a promise to do that more often and not stay so bogged down in updating all that I've missed sharing the last few months. Better to move forward, huh? 

So, here was last week's fun! 

On Saturday the 23rd, our national general (we have just one here, it is actually not common for a non-framework nation to have a general in a NATO unit, but we added one this summer) and his wife hosted a New Year's reception at their home for all the US personnel. The New Year's Reception is an Army tradition, where commanders will hold a reception in their home around the first of the year. All the receptions we have attended in the past we dress blues attire, adults only events. This means Charles puts on his "fancy" uniform and I put on a nice church dress and we go at our assigned time (yes, there are usually assigned times to arrive and depart, the smaller groups give the commander better interaction with you and keeps the house from being too full at any one time). Charles calls events like this mandatory fun, but they can be fun, and it's a nice tradition, and I really like traditions. Anyways, even though he is not in a command position BG T. and his wife wanted to host a reception, which was lovely of them. Since there are only 19 personnel here, we had no assigned times and no dress blues, although coat and tie is still more formal than we usually get around here! We confirmed a baby-sitter, put on our Sunday best, and headed over for a nice couple of hours, and a lot of champagne. The servers kept coming around and refilling glasses! Fortunately, a friend drove. 

Saturday was also my mom's birthday, so we had a long Skype session with my parents when we got home. Emmy and Matthew had made mom a sign. Happy birthday, SuSu! 

Saturday night was movie night with "tapas" for supper. 
Emmy thinks eating in the living room is the best thing ever. Matthew was excited to eat olives.

Sunday, we met our Danish-American friends for ice skating. There is a little area about 15 minutes from us where there is a little ski slope, a skating rink (there are actually two other skating rinks between our house and this one!), and a sledding hill.  Emmy has been taking skating lessons at school, so we'd bought her a pair of skates (adjustable so they will last a couple of years, fabulous!). She falls down a lot, but she has fun. Our friends had other friends from Denmark in town, so all three families met and the girls (their daughter Freja is Emmy's age, and the other family has a daughter their age as well) and the dads skated. It was fun, and not too cold. We'd had a good bit of snow for this area and super cold weather the weeks leading up to it, so there was plenty of real snow to help out the artificial snow. Charles wants to go back and try out the ski slope, which is basically a bunny slope, so a great place for a newer skiier like Charles and Emmy to practice. Anyways, after skating the kids played on the hill in the snow for awhile, then we went to lunch at a traditional Polish place nearby. We'd never been, but the food was good and it's quite close to our house, so we'll have to go again.

Random photo: Matthew has discovered he loves the playground at Emmy's school. 

Monday, I started Polish lessons. Right now the instructor comes to our house and my friend Sarah and I are having lessons together.  Cross your fingers for me! I've got a long way to go, and I don't expect I'll be super conversational, but at least be able to pronounce things better and communicate a bit better when we're out and about.

Tuesday the Family Care Center hosted a "Disco" party for the kiddos, sort of a pre-Carnival (Mardi Gras) party. Emmy's age group party was right after school for about an hour and a half. Of course Matthew went to, and he had a great time dancing and watching the big kids. Plus there were balloons everywhere, the boy LOVES balloons. It is definitely a word in his vocabulary, though it sounds like "booon!"  

The friends I've mentioned over and over in this post have three daughters, and baby H is just four months old. She is frequently at our house in the mornings when her mom comes over for Polish lessons or just to hang out, and Matthew loves her. He likes to give her hugs and the other day, while she was laying on the floor, he kept bringing her toys. Yes, sometimes he dropped them on her, but his intentions were good! 

Friday night, Charles and I went to Poker Night at the home of our British friends.  I'd never played poker, but I did ok. I at least earned back what I'd put in the pot, so enough to pay for the cab ride home! Besides my photo of my cheat sheet, which I was worried they would take away from me eventually, I did not take any photos, but suffice to say we had a lovely time. I had a lot of wine and Charles had a lot of whatever he was drinking. Yay for great cab service! 

Saturday the Allied Ladies Club hosted Fastelavn, a Carnival Party, in the Danish tradition (the three framework  nations for MNC-NE are Denmark, Germany, and Poland, so the largest populations of families come from these three countries) for the kids. On Friday, I helped Danish Sarah (she is actually American but married to a Dane, hence I call them our Danish-American friends) make the traditional pastries for the party, Fastelavnsbolle, which basically means Lenten or Shrovetide buns. We made the dough, and then rolled them into balls which we stuffed with either marzipan or jam, and baked them. Then that night she piped pastry cream into them and topped them with chocolate or another frosting, depending on the filling. 

For the party, the kids dressed in costumes (Carnival is very big in lots of other countries, where in the US is it mainly Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and people dress in costumes for Carnival), Emmy wanted to be a ballerina and wear her fancy tights Santa brought her (that are not ballet tights, but whatever) and I just put Matthew in his bee costume from Halloween.  Well, Matthew won top prize in his age group for the boys and his pal Claire won as the girl in their age group! So fun!

This is the best picture I could get of the garden gnome and bumble bee winners.

Matthew taking his turn at hitting the "barrel"

There was a clown making balloon animals, giant bubbles (the kind where the kids stand in the middle and they make a bubble around them), dancing, lots of sweets and snacks in addition to the Fastelavnsbolle, and the big activity: slå katten af tønden, which directly translated means 'hit the cat out of the barrel. So apparently they used to put a cat into a wooden barrel and beat it with wooden sticks to get rid of the evil spirits. Yikes! Now they put candy in the barrels and beat them with small wooden bats. It's basically like a less safe pinata.  The littlest kids had a cardboard box to hit. They had three barrels, plus the cardboard box for the tiny ones. The child who made the candy fall out first was crowned queen and the child who knocked down the last piece of the barrel was crowned king. It was quite chilly, so we did not stay outside to see who won these honors. Emmy was too shy to participate, but we did get Matthew up for a turn, but he was not too interested in hitting the box, either. But it was interesting to watch for a bit! Plus, candy! 

Older age groups hitting their barrels. 

Claire takes a whack at it.

Emmy had a sleepover at Freja's house after the Fastelavn party, so we had quieter night at home, in preparation for Charles' birthday celebrations!  More to come on that next week.