1 Year as an American

Get out Old Glory, Gianna became a US citizen on October 31, 2008! One year out of a Vietnamese Re-Education and Labor Center, and her orphanage buzz cut has grown in enough to sport some pig tails.

Pumpkin is carved!

Jack Skellington

Pumpkin gutting

A few touch ups

The finished product

Ich bin ein Berliner (I wish)

Berlin is a great city, thoroughly destroyed by WWII, separated by a huge wall, and now more progressive than Frankfurt in almost every way. For instance, speaking on the train, speaking English, being non-white: nicht verboten! The Berlin Zoo and Aquarium did not disappoint. We waited outside the gate at opening time and made a dash for Knut and Gianna, two famous polar bears. About a dozen people were already there trying to get pictures of the bear antics. Gianna (the person) really liked all the animals at the zoo and the aquarium. She got to pet fish and see some animals she had only seen in picture books, like the panda.

Using the efficient U/S Bahn system, we were able to take in a lot of other sites in West and East Berlin including the Brandenburg Gate, Jewish Holocaust Memorial, Homosexual Holocaust Memorial, Tiergarten, Checkpoint Charlie, and a bunch of other museums and old buildings. We took a boat tour of the city on Sunday (while it was raining) and drank copious amounts of Dunkin Donuts coffee the entire weekend. No, they did not have pumpkin spice. I was disappointed, but settled for my year-round flavor, caramel. It felt great to slam down a few Boston Creams and Munchkins.


Take a look at the photos here, but one word of warning, the Jewish Holocaust Memorial was loads of fun. I don't think anyone meant disrespect to the millions of Jews that lost their lives, but the undulating concrete slabs form an irresistible hedge maze to run up and down and ample platforms to pose for photos. The one security guy had his hands full chasing people off the slabs.

Celebrate!

One year ago, I held my baby girl in my arms for the first time. Sure, she didn't like me very much back then, but she eventually came around :-) Last night after dinner, I unveiled my surprise DVD project called Gotcha Day 2009. It was touching; there were tears, smiles, laughs, group hugs, with Gianna saying "I wuv you guys". The festivities continue with our weekend trip to Berlin to see the polar bear Knut and his Italian girlfriend Gianna.

Halloween cupcakes

My cake decorating order finally arrived from the UK this weekend. That means it's open season for festive cupcakes and cookies. For Halloween, the package contained cupcake liners, two types of sprinkles, bat/spider candy toppers, and food coloring dye for the icing. I still have to work on my icing recipe for Gianna's birthday, but thankfully that's another month away and I now have plenty of supplies. Gianna had a great time spreading (and eating) the icing and making a mess with sprinkles.

On this date in 2008

October 18, 2008 we flew from JFK to Hanoi to adopt our precious daughter Gianna. I can't believe it has been one year already! Take a look at my old blog if you want to reminisce, but be aware, the photos have been hastily moved to picasa. We have lots of festivities planned to celebrate Gotcha Day, which is officially October 23, so stay tuned.

In other Oeder Weg news, the bakery down the street is getting people into the spirit of Halloween with bat or ghost quark pastries. Yum! I love these sugar coated treats. Gianna bites off all the chocolate and leaves most of the body and raisin eyes for me to eat. We make a great team :-)
If you like dahlias, take a look at this photo album. The Palmengarten is having a mediocre chrysanthemum show, so come for the chrysanthemums, stay for the dahlias. Unfortunately recent frosts have damaged a lot of them, but there was still much beauty to behold.

Therapy for homesickness

Today I crossed two things off my list from the previous post with a trip to Starbucks and a homemade apple pie. While the closest Dunkin is in Berlin, there are Starbucks in Frankfurt, and they sell pumpkin lattes, at least they do in the States. So I marched into the Starbucks on the Zeil, convinced the barista to speak to me in English and tried to negotiate a pumpkin latte. She claimed to not know what I was talking about. I walked out with a peppermint latte instead. Close enough. Next stop was the farmers market for a couple kilos of apples. I made a crust from scratch and followed the same recipe my mom uses. The photo does not do it justice, it smelled and tasted delicious if I do say so myself. We ate it hot with milk for dinner like we used to do when I was a kid. Tomorrow I think I will eat lunch at KFC ;-)