Out in the sun


Childhood memories... flooding back...

Before I was born, my slightly crazy grandfather build a lake at the edge of our town:


Seriously, the man dug a huge hole and filled it with water and whatnot.
It's pretty awesome. We used to go swimming there all the time when I was a kid. Or rather, the other kids went swimming while fraidy cat Lisa sat on the edge catching tadpoles.

Today was another holiday in Germany (do these people work? like, ever?) so we went to chillax at the lake. Lovely! Really, I can't believe how lovely Frohnhausen is on a spring day.

Here we are eating Oma's chocolate cake in the sun:


Counterclockwise from the right: c'est moi, then Oma, then crazy Onkel Heinz, then my lovably freak-ay cousin Lukas, who is 13 but looks and sounds like he's 10, and is allowed to do pretty much whatever he wants all the time. He runs around in camouflage clothes all the time and catches snakes with his bare hands, and yet is afraid of dogs. I landed the sweetest "tutoring" job ever, though - Luke the Evangelist and I listen to english Chronicles of Narnia books on tape together, I translate and explain, and for every hour of that I get 20 Euro towards my India trip. My grandmother, who pretends that she wants me to drop all this and get married (she doesn't really - my other cousins have married and divorced so much that she's stopped asking) already gave me 200 Euro, which I understand is like $5,000 Canadian, or thereabouts.

Here we are on the raft:


Damn I'm lazy.


Oma and I got to talking later that day, about the war and such, and at some point she asked me what kind of dowry I'm packing - you know, how much stuff do I have that one might bring into a marriage.

Me: "Umm...I have some Ikea furniture and a set of wine glasses. And a TV and a cat."
Oma: "I meant like towels and bed sheets that you don't use and are saving."
Me: "Ummm...well.... I own towels and stuff. But I ....use that stuff."
Oma: "So, no."
Me: "Ehhh...yeah."
Oma: "You know, it just wasn't like that for us."
Me: "Umm...yeah."
Oma: "And now you want to go to India!"
Me: "Yep."
Oma: "Well, maybe I can find a bit more money for you somewhere."

heh.

Posted: Fri - May 6, 2005 at 12:18 AM        

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