Interesting conversation

Ok, so its Sunday. And on Sunday, we get up and go to mass here at the Katterbach Post Chapel. Afterwords I wait around with Ben and Abigail for an hour while Thomas attends religious education classes. He has been doing this now for about three weeks and really enjoys that. However, for me, its just enough time to maybe go to the commisarry and do some shopping and get back to get him. But today, I was engrossed in a conversation with a lady who leads the choir. She is swiss-born, but speaks with an english accent and we were discussing the strange things we miss or found interesting when we left our countries of origion. She was raised here in Europe, when she went to America, she couldn't believe that our shower heads didn't detach. It was strange to her that unless you bought those from a special bathroom store than you were stuck with a stationary one like the ones in that "Psycho" movie. She missed fresh brotchen in the morning (bread). I told her I missed the wider streets and my 24 open hour stores. (Just because at 3:00 am, I just might want to go shopping). The only thing that is open that late in Germany are the pubs.
I also found out that in Germany, it is illegal to name your baby with your maiden name. If you are married, the last name of the child MUST be the last name of the husband. And you can't even hyphonate it. (OK, I think I spelled hyphonate wrong, if I did I will fix it later). Same goes for marriage, if you get married here, you can't keep your maiden name. She had to get a special letter of dispensation and give it to the rathaus to put in her records because she wanted her maiden name still. Its due to some fuedal law that dates back to the fifteen century! Crazy huh!
So interesting things to talk about while your kid is in CCD class.
Anyway, this week coming up is a pretty busy one for us. Thomas has one last week of school before the system here has its Spring break (which works well because it falls into Holy Week for us Catholics). KC has his 30th birthday on April 6th. Ironically enough he gets his birthday off. The military has mandatory training weekends here in Germany. They allow the soldiers one four day weekend (friday-saturday-sunday-monday) per month off to go and travel. Its nice, because if there isn't a fedral holiday (labor, memorial, fourth of July) than the Army just decides to make one for the soldiers sake.
So that is the weekend of KCs birthday. I was hoping we would be going to Salzburg that weekend, but we are still going to have to see. I did manage to get Abby's passport sent off for (which we are very proud off because we have been trying to get that done forever!)
Thomas starts T-ball this week, something I have been looking forward to and dreading since he was born. (I despise going to sporting events, I never did it even in high school. I found it boring, but when someone asked us to go to their kids games, I always went. I was bored out of my mind, but when you see what it does for the kid you came to support, it makes it worth while).
I will try to keep up with the blog better as the week goes by, pictures and all. As my good friend Camille likes to say about her blog..."it calls to me in the middle of the night!" That's what my blog has been doing and up til now I have been ignoring it!