The Honeymoon Continues

Time travel can be difficult. You can see in Flo's eyes that the time difference is beginning to catch up with him. By mid-evening, he has circles under his eyes, and you can see he's tired. However, he keeps up with us, never complaining, and always wanting to be a part of the experience. We're trying to be sensitive to the time difference, but also trying to get in the last "hurrah" for all the kids before they go back to school. Flo never complains. He seems to be enjoying all the experiences. I told Florenz that it can take your body up to one week to adjust for every hour of time difference. He raised his eyebrows and muttered, "Six weeks. Hmmm.." We try to get to bed no later than 10pm in the summer, but with the traveling we can sometimes do to the cottage and back, it's unavoidable to stay up late some days. Our kids just sleep in the car, and Flo caught onto that pretty quickly.

On Saturday night on our way back from the cottage, we experienced the beginning of the rain from the leftover Hurricane Irene. Once the hurricane made landfall & moved into cooler waters, it was downgraded to a tropical storm with gusts up to 65 mph. Rob and I had to laugh since we know we get more vicious gusts here during other storms throughout the year. Difference with this storm was that the winds could be sustained. Around 11:30 am Sunday morning, we lost power. We ended up being 1 of 3 people on our street to lose power, and it stayed off for close to 36 hours. It all came down to what power company you were with and what grid you were on. We ended up packing up within the hour and heading to our ski house in Mittersill where there was power. I thought at one point that this was one heck of an introduction - no one meets you at the gate when you get off the plane, your luggage doesn't arrive with you, and now... a weak hurricane is moving in! Rob had made plans & left early once we were up there, so the kids and I stayed at Mittersill through dinner, but since we didn't plan well, we ended up going out to eat at a Thai restaurant in Lincoln. It struck me here how odd this could be perceived in Flo's eyes - he's German, in America, eating Thai food. I think that was my own odd perception. I questioned whether any country could only eat its native cuisine. Not likely, was my conclusion, but I don't know. Still, it struck me as an odd experience. My kids really like Thai iced tea, which is iced tea topped with sweetened condensed milk. Again, Flo was willing to try something he'd never had. When asked if he liked it, he squinched up his face and said, "It's OK. It's not my favorite, but, it's OK." He ordered red chicken curry and I ordered spicy Korean beef, both of which had lots of chili powder in them. We both liked our meals, but kept having to blow the heat out. We looked pretty funny doing this in the restaurant; thankfully, no one was there but us. Seems not many people were willing to brave heavy rain.

Our food preferences in the Wilson family are wide and varied. We're known to have meals that have bizarre combinations, have meals that are are painfully simple, and others that are extremely complex. It all depends on our mood and time. One thing we're not very good at - and we certainly need to get better at it - is the nice-ities that go with dinner. Since Rob works on Las Vegas time, he often is late to the table, and needs to leave the table to take a call. The kids and I carry on ourselves. We don't say grace unless it's a special occasion. We sit and "dig in." In truth, it shows some pretty bad manners. Flo quickly helped us slow down just a little. He looked at us rather oddly the 1st time he ate with us and we all just started eating. When he sits, he looks at us all and says, "Have a good meal." He explained it's not like a grace, but a nice way to begin the meal, and it's his custom in Germany. And one we are more than happy to adopt. We're all catching on and it's a pleasant way to begin eating that shows some nice manners. We'll take it! "Guten Appetit!"

While we were at Mittersill, Flo showed us how to play the German card game Dopplekoph. My father, McKenna, and I desperately tried to follow what he was explaining, but it's a card game that requires you know the value of each card in the deck in order to play well. We played our 1st round with our cards face up, and we sort of started to pick up how the game was played. It's definitely a game which will take many rounds to play well. It's almost like a combination of rummey, poker, and counting cards! I can see why it would be an addictive game, but certainly we will need to keep a "cheat sheet" of the card values for a while! Flo was very excited to show us this game, which he plays quite often at home, but explaining it to us definitely tested some of his English skills.

While we were up at Mittersill, Florenz opened his backpack and gave each of us a gift. To me, 2 cookbooks - 1 on modern German cooking and 1 on modern German baking - to Reed, a Republic of Germany soccer outfit with his name on the back; to Rob a beautiful book on his hometown; and to McKenna, a lovely Pandora necklace; and to all of us, lots of wonderful, delicious German chocolate. As my father and all of us noted, this was incredibly thoughtful, since he only was allowed such a limited amount of luggage when he traveled here, and his backpack was chocked full of gifts. Not only was this incredibly thoughtful, but it showed how much he clearly read the emails we exchanged before he arrived. One of Flo's initial emails was asking about what our family was like; at the time, he only knew we had two children. He clearly understood more about our family through reading these emails, and his gesture of gifts for us hosting him was a wonderful surprise!

As noted before, my father is living with us currently, and when Flo pulled out the presents, he commented in a funny manner, "Well, it's about time." I immediately verbally jumped at my father, rebutting, "NICE!" I apologized to Flo, and my father said, "He knows I'm just kidding." But did he? Does Flo understand the nuances of American humor and sarcasm? I think he does, and he did chuckle, but I was embarrassed because never would I have expected presents for being a host family, and my father's comment could have been easily misunderstood. I said to Flo, "If you haven't noticed, we can be a sarcastic family." My father said it's not sarcasm (well, we can be), but it's more like we "cheeky." Once we clarified the meaning of cheeky, Flo chuckled, and said he totally understood, and indeed, we were a 'cheeky' family. But, he fits right into that mix, in a positive way. He is a funny young man, who has a healthy sense of sarcasm, honesty, and humility. His influence has been quite nice so far.