No Pizzas Were Harmed in the Making of this Blog

Finally, a whole week without pizza!  We've been exploring, you see, and that means crazy things like spring rolls and bus rides and German sugar snaps.  Some photos from our adventures:

Micah at the Altes Museum

Berliner Dom

Reichstagskuppel

Micah's getting better-- us at the Reichstag

Happy girl.  Less happy Daddy

 We've also done some regular things.  Like finally open that German bank account:

Just 2 girls at the bank

That was pretty awesome, 'cuz our bank looked like this:

Seriously, a lounge.  With wine.  And pastries.  And a CHILDRENS' PLAY AREA.  With a zookeeper.  I mean caregiver.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first 45 minutes away from my children in 3 weeks.  I see many trips to the bank in our future.  Everyone was happy!

We visited the Ritter Sport museum and created our own chocolate bars.  Here they are:

Beth: rice crisps, dried strawberries and cocoa nibs
Dafna: marshmallows, carmelized coconut and vanilla wafers
Mark: cocoa nibs, carmelized coconut and carmelized almonds
Micah: Vanilla wafers, marshmallows and mini Smarties (what a good Canadian he is!)

The children are planning on taking any and all visitors here, so be warned (and start thinking about your chocolate bar!).

Dafna, the extrovert of the family, is starting to feel a little lonely and has pushed herself to try to play with other kids at the playground.  I encourage her to speak German with them, even giving her a script (which usually leads to children thinking I want to play with them, since I keep repeating "Can I play" in German), but more often than not, they either speak English ("We're from AUSTRALIA!") or Hebrew (yesterday she and a toddler pointed out "aynayim, ahf, peh" on one of the playground animals) or are willing to play in that kid way-- without shared language, but with understanding.  Even Micah is excited to meet Mark's colleague's son tonight.  Both Micah and D jumped right back into their regularly scheduled programs when Skyping with best friends from Madison this week, complete with bad jokes, eyeball references and quotes from "Big Nate".

Tomorrow we head to school for orientation.  I'm a little nervous...