a very nice weekend :)

on friday (09-15-06) it rained all day so that i stood at home the whole morning. after picking up toby and simone i got them ready for the synagogue and walked them to "imagine", naomis daycare. there we met naomi and ilene who introduced me to the caretakers. in the u.s. daycare startes at the age of 3 month. that is very early but a opportunity for the parent who both work all day. and the daycare goes to 6:00 pm or longer. thereafter we met david and had a big family-pizza before we went to the synagogue. on this sabbat they sang all their prays. (there are special themes in the synagogue every friday) i enjoyed it very much! unbelievable that i was not bored at any time ;) but i think the synagogue is not that fancy like our european churches. is was not a church at all! just a smaller room with a little community...

oh what must be mentioned is that naomi uses the toilet regularly since that day and wears underwear instead of her diaper. potty training can be very hard and you need a lot of patience... just think about accidents...

on saturday morning, september 16th, i had my first shopping succes ;)i was at fulton mall, an area of colored people, 6 blocks away. it is a very nice place for cheap clothes-shopping if you are calm enough for the annoying people who want to sell you everything and make you stupid compliments... but if you are in good mood and have the strenght it is a very nice place. so i got 3 t-shirts and a sweater for less than 20 $ :) after my short shopping trip i took care of the children. afterwards i met marcello in downtown manhattan and we took the free ferry to staten island. the skyline at night again - but this time seen from the ferry. it was really nice!

brooklyn view from wall street

brooklyn at sunset

manhattan skyline view from ferry

broolyn bridge view from ferry

we missed the next ferry back to manhattan so we spent an hour in staten island. that was time enough to buy something what was supposed to be baileys but tasted very different... but it was not that bad ;) and the shop assistant did not want to see my ID ;) it is so weird that you are not allowed to drink alcohol in public. the only way to carry it outside is to hide the bottles. so when you buy alcohol you always get a paperbag. and you can not buy alcohol in the supermarket. you need to go to special liqueur-shops...

times square again

on sunday was davids birthday and i spent a lot of time with the family. at first we visited ilene's grandpa at the nursing hospital. the children were a little scared of him because he layed in the bed all the time. that was a sad moment. after our visit we went to an american diner in bethel (connecticut). it was one of the old original fashioned diners. and everything was so greasy!! i had a double cheese tomato burger (i have no idea what was supposed to be cheese) and the only thing i thougt about my first bite was "gosh, how greasy!" but after that we had a very healthy afternoon at the apple-picking-farm. it was so nice to walk along the beautyful landscape with the family and eat so many apples until my stomach hurted... and the weather turned so hot again! unbelivable - i think we had more than 70 degrees. in bethel was also a famous icecream factory where i had a small cup (damn it was so big!) of chocolate icecream. that made me nearly throw up after all that apples. the rest of the day i ate nothing...
in the evening i met marcello and sylvia (a very nice german aupair from brooklyn) and we had some nonalcoholic drinks in manhattan.