Our friends brought their car over on Sunday and we dropped our car off at the car place then also. Peter drove Veronika und Flora in our friends' car to the summer camp at the GCV&M. Flora is doing a cooking class and Veronika is a helper in a different class. He then drove on to do the grocery shopping. I stayed home trying to take care of the books Miriam will need next semester. I checked all the cheap websites to find the best prices and am almost done ordering them. Charlotte did some baking and visited Miriam during her lunch break on campus. This evening we returned our friends' car and picked up our own, which had been repaired in the meantime. Now the brakes don't sound like a steam engine anymore.
I have also been working on some genealogy research for two ladies, who have contacted me to help them. And then I did some proofreading for an article Peter is writing for a book on Jeremias Gotthelf. The article is in German. I also got out my sewing machine to do some mending and shortening of a dress Veronika found at a consignment store. And tonight I had to mend the apron that goes with Flora's costume. It had two large holes.
We are watching the German movie Kleider machen Leute right now and Miriam and I are still reading And Never Said a Word in the German original.
Our picture book today was a very sweet book called The Old Woman Who Named Things.
Unsere Freunde haben uns am Sonntag ihr Auto vorbeigebracht und wir haben unser Auto bei der Werkstatt geparkt. Peter hat dann heute Veronika und Flora zum Freilichtmuseum gefahren, wo sie eine Woche Ferienlager machen. Flora macht wieder einen Kochkurs und Veronika ist Helferin für einen anderen Kurs. Nachdem er die Mädchen "abgegeben" hatte, ging es für ihn weiter nach Chili zum Lebensmitteleinkauf. Ich bin zu Hause geblieben, um die Bücher, die Miriam nächstes Semester braucht, zu bestellen. Das ist immer sehr zeitaufwendig, weil ich versuche, das billigste Angebot für jedes Buch zu finden. Charlotte hat gebacken und Miriam während ihrer Mittagspause auf dem Campus besucht. Heute abend haben wir dann das Auto unserer Freunde wieder zurückgebracht und unser eigenes abgeholt, was in der Zwischenzeit repariert worden ist und nicht mehr wie eine Dampflok beim Bremsen klingt.
Ich betreibe im Moment auch genealogische Forschungen für zwei Damen, die mich um Hilfe gebeten haben. Dann habe ich einen Artikel Korrektur gelesen, den Peter für ein Handbuch über Jeremias Gotthelf auf Deutsch geschrieben hat. Meine Nähmaschine ist zum Einsatz gekommen, weil ich Kleider flicken mußte und ein Kleid, das Veronika in einem Secondhandladen gefunden hatte, gekürzt werden mußte. Und heute abend habe ich dann noch Floras Schürze, die zu ihrem Kostüm gehört, geflickt, weil sie zwei große Löcher hatte.
Wir schauen im Moment auch Kleider machen Leute und lesen immer noch Und sagte kein einziges Wort.
You are a whizz with finding and ordering college material, where will Miriam be studying? is it far from home?
ReplyDeleteThis time, it is a bit more complicated with the book ordering process because there has been some mix-up with ISBN-numbers. And since she is going to a great-books place, she has millions of books we have to get! She is going to Magdalen College in New Hampshire, where she flew in the spring from London for a scholarship weekend. With federal financial aid and a Catholic leadership scholarship she received on that weekend, she will be able to go. It is the farthest college so far for us.
DeleteSo sorry to read that things are not straightforward. I will have to look up the college and I guess you are relieved she earned the scholarship. Over here it is a nightmare for youngsters going to university - they come out with a degree and a whole heap of crippling student debt 🫤
ReplyDeleteIt is a small Catholic liberal arts college. The scholarship only covers a small amount of the costs. Students here also end up with a lot of debt and so will our children, although they all got scholarships or the equivalent. "Financial aid" means loans from the government that do not involve interest, but do need to be paid back. But without a college degree, there isn't much hope to get a somewhat decent paying job in this country. There are no real trade schools or other great alternatives.
DeleteDid Peter go grocery shopping specifically to buy items to make chili? Or is Chili the town or the name of the supermarket? I love how different the German and English thought patterns are.
ReplyDeleteSuch a lovely photo of Flora and Veronika! You and Greg both enjoy genealogical research :) That's nice that Peter is contributing to a book about Jeremias Gotthelf.
So good your car is better!
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It's interesting how we don't seem to have good trade schools anymore. We're having to replace a window out at the house and there's only one window company! I was hoping first that we could do it ourselves, but my nephews (who are so handy) researched it and decided that it would be too complicated. So often with these house repairs I think how good it is if one knows plumbing etc . . it's a good business if you can apprentice with someone, or learn on your own.
Ha, ha! No, no ingredients. The town is called Chili and has a Wegmans and Target. Germans would not know what chili as a dish was.
DeleteI kind of stumbled into the research thing: Whenever people have documents in the old German script nobody uses anymore, I get asked to transcribe it. And the other lady lives in Florida, but has ancestors from our county and needed help. She suggested I should write a book on the first people in the county because I knew so much . . . The car seems to be running now. We need it to drive to the Midwest on Sunday!
I never understood why windows are so complicated in this country. I wonder if it has something to do with glass in general. Good mirrors are also expensive. Windows are too complicated to do yourself, especially in old houses.
I wish there were more good trade opportunities here. Then the quality of work by plumbers, bricklayers, carpenters, etc. would improve.
Okay . . I thought it must be! Yes, it would be good . . I think it must come back.
DeleteIt's interesting that you are asked to read the old script, and how good that you can :)
I read about a new college in Ohio, offering trade programs to young men. Maybe that is a start! My mother showed me the old script. She still learned it in school and then I liked it so much that I practiced it on my own. Most documents in this country that were written in the 1800s are in the old script.
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