Easter Sunday

Easter 2010 came and went too fast! In Germany, everything is closed Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday. So tomorrow Dan goes back to work, but Gianna still has off for spring break.






















We decided to go with the Áo dài's for Easter Sunday. Our church is diverse, with many people wearing traditional dress even on regular Sundays. Gianna was very proud of her dress...and Easter basket. The first thing she ate was the black sheep.


The weather was cold and blustery outside, so the Easter Bunny kindly hid the eggs inside this year. Bruno was a willing participant; the hard boiled eggs drove him nuts!


Donnell, Gianna's godfather, joined us for lunch and Easter festivities. He brought Gianna a chocolate rabbit that we tore into sometime after the egg hunt. It was a fun and delicious Easter.

Jordan: Amman

The picture above shows different views of the city at dawn, midday, and afternoon as the dust rolled in. It was quite windy and dusty, but we still got in plenty of sightseeing and eating!














The first stop on our eating tour of Amman was this hole in the wall serving breakfast on pieces of paper. The falafel, pitas, ful, houmous, and tea were delicious to say the least.






















Next stop was Amman's citadel, the place where Bathsheba's husband was killed by order of King David. The museum also houses some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Later in the day, we toured the clinic where Cara works, has some schawarma take-out for lunch, and napped at their house in the afternoon. In the evening we went to Safeway where I oohed and ahhed over all the American foods they can get in Amman as compared to Frankfurt.











We had dinner at a traditional Arabic restaurant, then a little street shopping and street food dessert: Kanafeh (if I remember correctly). It is fried sweet cheese topped with a type of phyllo dough, pistachios, and syrup. The next morning, we packed up and left for the airport. Thank you Cara and Matt for showing us around your beautiful country!

Jordan: Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum reminded me of Sedona, AZ with more sand dunes and less cottonwoods. We took a Jeep tour into the desert with a Bedouin guide. Gianna slept in the back seat with Cara for most of the tour, as Dan, Matt, and I sat in the back getting sandblasted.











The Jeep tour was actually a Mitsubishi modified with seats in the back (left). Dan and Matt climb a sand dune (right).





















Gianna poses with some cliff drawings (left). Camels get out of the way, beep beep! (right) I'm really glad we did not choose that form of transportation through the desert.












"Grandma" Schmidt posing at Lawrence of Arabia's house (left). The wind was really kicking up sand, and the scarf was helping. Gianna said I looked like a monster. Driving back up the desert highway to Amman, road signs point the way to Iraq and Saudi Arabia (right).

Jordan: Aqaba

After seeing Joe Biden in Petra, we continued south on the desert highway to Aqaba. Aqaba is a resort town on the Red Sea close to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel. We stayed in a really nice condo at Tala Bay, with great views of the Red Sea from roof top and balcony.
View of the marina at night from our roof top. Wow, there were some nice yachts parked here!







Breakfast on the balcony and a view from the balcony to the Red Sea.











Matt, Cara, and I went snorkeling and saw some pretty nice tropical fish and coral. The lion fish (left) were hanging out around a pier, along with eels and large schools of silversides. On our second night in Aqaba, we hit the Safeway and picked up some meats and vegetables for grilling. It was delicious. Matt is a grill master and can also make his hand disappear (right).




















Since Jordan is a Muslim country, it is inappropriate to wear skimpy bikinis. My surf gear (left) was quite comfortable, even in the desert heat, and it protected me from sunburn. Here, Gianna the aspiring beach bar tender is filling up a water bottle for making pretend drinks. On our way out of Aqaba, Cara stopped at a nut shop to stock up on cheap nuts (right). I don't know why she had to stock up, we already had a car full of cheap nuts! Hahaha.

Jordan: Petra and Joe Biden

For the past 5 days we were in Jordan visiting Dan's cousin Cara and her husband Matt, who both work for NGO's in Amman. It was an awesome trip. Not only did we get to spend some time with expat family, we got a lot of behind the scenes views of Jordan and also got to meet the Vice President of the US, Joe Biden! Here are the highlights from the first part of the trip.

PETRA

(L-R) Our intrepid leaders, Matt and Cara; Gianna stays hydrated (and looks like a giant!); the family in front of the Treasury. Gianna did a lot of hiking on her own, even in the desert heat and up steep rocks. I was proud of her and also proud of Dan for carrying her when she got tired.

JOE BIDEN

Matt and Cara had been tipped off that Biden was going to visit Petra, so we had high hopes to catch a glimpse of the US Vice President. There was a catering table set up, reporters with cameras, and as we were hiking out, a motorcade came roaring past us, kicking up dust. Joe Biden saw Dan's Phillies shirt and hat and waved to us from his suburban. After Biden was out of his SUV, we noticed secret service was not really keeping people far away, so we crept closer for better pictures. I was snapping away like the paparazzi when I realized Joe was looking right at me. I gave a large "come on over!" wave and he started walking our way. As he approached, I shook his hand and said "It is so nice to meet you! We are from Bucks County, PA", then Joe said "Oh really? So is my wife". He shook Dan's hand and asked all of us if we had been down to see the ruins yet and what we thought of Petra. Soon others were crowding around, extending their hands for a chance to touch the VP. I practically skipped all the way back to the car, grinning from ear to ear, shaking with excitement.

Car shopping

Car shopping in Germany is much, much more enjoyable than any of my high-pressure sleazy salesman car shopping experiences in the US. There is a street in Frankfurt Ost that has pretty much every car dealership you can imagine. We hit Volvo, Mercedes, BMW, Honda, and Audi, and window shopped at Porsche ;-) I found the family car of my dreams, the Mercedes B180! It was just right in every size proportion, lots of nice options, great gas mileage, and affordably priced. Of course it's not sold in the US!
>:-( That made me very grumpy.











The B180 family car of my dreams...and the slightly less dreamy Honda CRV











The BMW X3, a nice SUV similar in size to the CRV, and the Audi A3 wagon, my second choice for family car.











We didn't make it to the VW dealership, but cased our neighbor's Tiguan on the way home (left). This Mercedes (right) might not fit a car seat in the back.

Failing relationships

It's a dark, cold, and rainy morning in Frankfurt. My cousin and I were having an interesting email conversation about failing relationships. Becoming an expat really separates the wheat from the chaff, but some relationships were failing long before we moved to Germany. I made the statement that people can fall into a pattern of "doing things" to avoid having a real relationship. They insist on spending time together, but not quality time, which constitutes a waste of time in my book. My cousin mentioned a school of thought (credited to a book by Dr. Gary Chapman) that there are basically 5 ways people express love:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch

Corny, but interesting. So, apparently I really like Quality Time and Acts of Service. Sit down with me, call me on Skype, or email and lets talk about our common interests and shared experiences. Offer to load the dishwasher for me and I will be feeling loved for the rest of the day!! Words of Affirmation are nice, but in the end, they are just words unless actions follow suit. Receiving gifts is alright if it is coming from someone that truly loves me with no strings attached. And Physical Touch? I like my personal space, thank you! I make a huge exception for Gianna, I really like her gentle little hugs that don't dislocate my shoulder and I love to kiss her little cheeks. The point is, this book (which I only read summaries and excerpts from) has encouraged me to try some of these other languages of love on other people, because maybe that's the language they've been speaking all along. Why don't you try some of them too?

US trip part 2: new nephews

The main purpose of this US trip was to meet my two new nephews, Hunter (11 weeks) and Ryan (3 weeks) and see the rest of the family in the process. We visited Ống Landis at work to watch him fix cars. After that, Gianna was pretending to fix toys for the rest of the trip. Since she also has a fascination with being a doctor, my brother Jeff let her use his stethoscope. Now she is begging to have one of her own. As an added bonus we had lunch with my cousin Dave and his family and stayed with some grad school friends, Greg, Alejandra, and Marcela in Richmond. All of these families have kids, so Gianna was never lacking for playmates. I expected she may be intensely jealous of the new babies, but there were only one or two occasions towards the end of the trip that she got upset that Bố was holding the baby instead of her. We never made it to the beach, but there were plenty of pools to swim in. Gianna went from a timid barnacle to a sea dog in the matter of a week. Check out pics of her swimming with her Hello Kitty swimmies.

Two things really hit me on this trip. As I was having dinner with my brother Jim and his family, Hunter was crying as Jim tried to burp him, Nathan was playing his Nintendo, and Gianna was crawling under the table. It was wonderful chaos. My little brother Jim is a father and our kids were playing together. Priceless. Same thing in Virginia watching Jeff and Nancy take care of Ryan. The look of exhaustion on their faces, the spit-up on Dan's shirt, this is the true meaning of family. We have reached the next stage in life and alles gut. The second thing that hit me is how the internet makes it feel like we see these people all the time even though we live on different continents. When we were leaving, we told Gianna that this just good-bye for now, say "see you on Skype". She was sad to go, wanted to see everyone one more time, but the trip was over. We coaxed her onto the plane with the expectation of seeing Bruno and her neighbor friend Niall. Before the wheels were up in the air, she was asleep. She woke up after we had landed and asked "America?" Sorry, it will be a long time before we return to America again. Now it's back to regular life in Frankfurt, the land of "hotdogs and big hotdogs" according to Gianna. Thanks for all your hospitality America!

US trip part 1: Vietnam picnic

We had a great trip to the US this past week. One of the highlights was a picnic with the kids from Gianna's orphanage. This is the first time she saw Morgan Chau outside of Vietnam. It took the kids a bit to warm up to each other. Gianna shared her love of shrimp chips and rock collecting to break the ice. Eventually, they were all running around, having a great time. Gianna looks like the tallest one even though she is one of the youngest. There were two more boys adopted from the same orphanage that couldn't be there, one due to illness and the other resides in Utah. It will be at least another 9 months until we see them again. Here are a few of the highlights and you can see the whole album by clicking here. Now that we are back in Germany, Gianna really misses everyone. This morning she wanted to watch "more Chau" videos and got a pretend phone call on her cell from Thuy during which she said "missing you really much" followed by a Vietnamese song and dance routine. Breaks my heart.






This video was taken when Ryan arrived with his family. Watch Gianna's reaction when Chau tries to hold Dan's hand ;-) That's my Bố, here you can have a shrimp chip instead.

Blog holiday

A lot of the mom and pop shops around here are already on holiday for most of the month. This is Gianna's last week of summer camp and we are getting packed for our trip to the States this weekend. This will probably be the last blog post until after the trip...unless something phenomenal happens that I simply must share with my blogger friends! Thanks to the loyal readers, esp the ones that tell me "I read your blog". Even if nobody read it, I would still blog just to chronicle our life in Frankfurt.

Here are some pictures of Gianna eating her favorite Smurf blue ice cream cone. She actually stays pretty clean for a toddler, but I have to keep reminding her to lick, lick, lick. Sometimes I need to take one for the team and actually lick this blue bubblegum flavored cone myself to prevent it from running down her arm. She learned the "I suck the ice cream from the bottom" technique from her godfather.