This week has been really fun. Maddyn and I are getting into the habit of riding home from our English-speaking play group, we've done a great deal of baking, and I've met some new people who are becoming friendly. We've even had three social dinners this week: two with the neighbours across from us, who have a son Jill's age and a daughter a little younger than Maddyn, and then another neighbourhood barbecue tonight. Maddyn also has a routine of play dates with the girl whose mother recommended the kita (kindy) that he'll be starting at next month, and the two kids have been having a lovely time getting to know each other before starting there. Tonight's barbecue was an impromptu gathering, in honour of what will apparently be a very good soccer game, though we put the kids to bed rather than going across the way to watch it, but we had Jill's little boyfriend with us and it was all very lovely.
We actually had Boyfriend all day, which is always a delight. He's a great kid, and both kids just adore him. Unfortunately for him we had our first dud outing. We trundled out to Museum für Naturkunde, the natural history museum here. I'm afraid our expectations of museums are quite high--we've always liked the Queensland Museum, with its interactive displays, craft projects, and the dinosaur garden where you can picnic and where the kids can play on the dinosaur models--and this one didn't really make the grade. The dinosaur room is pretty cool: it's home to the world's largest mounted dinosaur skeleton, which is both enormous and brilliant. They've got a somewhat interactive display there, with on-screen dinosaur musculature, skin overlays, and videos of what the dinosaurs might have been like. Maddyn would have been happy to play with that for an hour, but the bigger kids were keen to explore so we trundled off into room after room of preserved specimens and a huge section on the preservation process. There are only so many stuffed rhinos, hippos, and deer that a three year-old can stand, and I'm afraid the 276000 vials of specimens in ethanol lost its appeal quicker than you could say, 'Hey, this could be the Potions store room.' Boyfriend was bored out of his mind, Maddyn tried to run away 2389723497 times, and every time any of us spoke it echoed through the eerily silent rooms, so we made our escape with a quarter of the building unexplored. Some of it was nifty, of course, but things like a mounted red fox on a blank exhibit with a caption describing an intention of invoking mental images of an abstract landscape or a snowy field really didn't hit its mark with any of the three kids. I really wouldn't recommend this museum for children.
I think the highlight of our trip was the ice cream shop at the Friedrichstraße s+u-bahn station. The ice cream there is amazing! I don't generally care all that much for ice cream, and I feel odd raving about it, but it was so good I'm tempted to take the kids there again just for the ice cream. Nom.
Friends and family will also be happy to find out that I've met a Brisbane guy here who doesn't work Wednesdays and who has access to the State of Origin. I don't know him well, so I don't think there'll be wine and cheese, but I'm much happier to know I won't miss out on the other games. Hooray!
I think that probably sums up all of our recent news. I ought to make a post some time about the dangers of moving heavy furniture without a spotter (or, indeed, any adults within shouting distance), but for the moment I'm settling for nursing my incredibly bruised thigh and the swollen knee. I did install a coat rack, finally, which was very exciting. I've also been soliciting invitations to neighbours' houses to check out how everybody else has arranged their furniture, and I've been copying shamelessly. The small room is partially cleared now in preparation to install Jill and her key (it has a lockable door, to keep a certain small person from crashing her Sims games and/or breaking her DS when she's at school). I'm also hoping to paint the apartment at some point in the not too distant future to rid ourselves of the awkward orange ceilings, but haven't yet figured out how to do so with the furniture in the house nor what colours I really want. Decisions decisions.
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