Brief Observations

Things have quited down a bit here, though we're still in major planning mode for the students. We also arranged to have our carpets cleaned, the washing machine repaired, and a couple of loose outlets around the apartment fixed. Heidi, the program coordinator, thinks I'm a computer whiz because I hooked up a computer, repaired the internet connection to another, and added "student" users to our "computer lab" computers with limited rights to modify important parts of the computers' systems. We'll see if her marveling at my mad skillz continues or not.

We haven't been out at the right times to take photos; it's been kind of rainy or overcast, so even on our evening walks, the photos would be blah. More to come soon, we promise. On Saturday we're planning a trip to Freiburg, a university town about 90 minutes away in Germany, so we'll have some photos of that trip after the weekend.

Sophie's still having a lot of fun, and she's getting more eloquent and observant. For instance, she's a master of facial expressions to go along with verbal ones. My favorite recently is the wide-eyed, head-shaking gesture to go with "of course." One of her main observations relates to dog poop, and there's a good deal of it on the streets here (though nothing like in Paris). Last Saturday Sophie and I walked to a grocery store only to discover the streets between our place and the store to be completely clean. She was pretty disappointed: "Where's the poop, Daddy?"

Sophie also rode on the carousel at the Place Gutenberg again, this time in a little car. We didn't have the camera along though.