The end of the school year

There are about three weeks left in the school year, but things are definitely winding down. Oliver has gone from having two tests a week to no tests and units on bike safety that involve riding around ping pong tables on the school playground. At leat he is finally learning how to read the German traffic signs that have remained a bit of a puzzle to us since we arrived! Nora's work load has been much more manageable all year, thank goodness. The German school system is very good, but also very demanding of individual students and their parents, especially beginning in third grade. Basically if you have dedicated and well-educated parents who know the system, you will more or less succeed. Most families here have one parent home everyday afterschool to help their child navigate through and manage the school work, and we have all learned the German math curriculum, backwards and forwards. The good news is that Oliver did really, really well. He earned super grades and a strong recommendation to attend "Gymnasium," which is the college-preparatory school option here. Next year he will attend a very good school that caters to students from 5th-12 grade. It seems early to be making these kinds of decisions, but he is looking forward to the new school year. We will be able to stay through mid-January before heading back to Middletown.

Other than school, the kids have been enjoying their extra-curricular activities. Nora has been taking weekly group violin lessons, and has learned how to play all four strings and the first two fingers! She really enjoys it, and Katherine has fun practicing with her, well, at least most of the time. Her group will give an end-of-the-year concert on Friday.












Oliver's soccer team really came together this spring, and they are now in first place in their league with only one game remaining. Oliver scored his first goal in a "point game" last week, and has grown into a strong individual and team player. He has a wonderful coach from Afghanistan, and nice teammates.

Mike gave a talk to a history colloquium this past week, and will give a shorter version of his paper at a conference on the Jewish Enlightenment in Frankfurt in a few weeks. Here is a picture of the spiffy dad on the eve of father's day.

Katherine has been scaring up images for an article that will be published next year, and is deep into another  one. She is enjoying the concentrated time to research and write without interruption. The other development is that she started running again after a ten year break! It is amazing what a good pair of running shoes will make. On July 6th (the last day of school) she, Oliver, and Nora will all participate in a run held downtown, the Altstadtlauf. She and Oliver will run a 5 km course, and Nora has signed up for the 1800 meter run, and as of today has some serious running shoes that should help her along.

Otherwise, life here is calm and enjoyable. We like hearing the birds in the forest at night, and lead a rather simple existence. 

It stopped raining!

Although we had a very wet fall, the spring here has actually been quite lovely. Indeed, there probably hasn't been enough rain from the point of view of farmers nearby. But this has meant that we have had a chance to explore bike trails and canoe down rivers nearby. Recently we visited the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, which is a palace and parkland built in the late 18th century just outside of Kassel. The palace sits on an enormous parkland peppered with fake ruins and fantastical constructions.

This is the palace, which now houses Kassel's small, but impressive collection of antique and old master art that comprised Germany's first public art museum.

This is the view uphill from the palace, which culminates in a stone cascade, topped by an octagonal building, which is itself topped by a pyramid on which stands a huge Hercules sculpture. It is a silly idea, but what the heck.

The whole park comes alive once a day in a spectacular water show. All of a sudden, water gushes out at the top of a pyramid-shaped cascade and runs downhill through man-made gulleys, down waterfalls,

under bridges, and  and across an aquaduct before being shot up in the sky as a fifty meter water jet. The whole show lasts about an hour! We visited the park on a very hot day, and the appearance of water out of nowhere was quite magical and a real relief to all of us.

We finished the day by walking to the Löwenberg, a castle ruin that was built around 1800 when such things were thought Romantic. This was one of the settings that Goethe had in mind when he composed Faust.