Last day of school

Today was the last day of school before winter break, and Elias bid farewell to his 3rd grade classmates and teacher. The class made a very sweet memory book for him, for which everyone contributed a separate page decorated with pictures, text, photos, etc. Frau F., his teacher, has a son a little older than Elias, and she and I have shaken hands on the idea of a trans-Atlantic child exchange in five years or so.

Largely thanks to being surrounded by kids his age, and fueled by a flourishing soccer card trade amongst his peers, Elias's main accomplishments this fall have been assimilating culturally and learning to speak German. In addition to knowing who the most valuable Fussball players are, he now has a broader German vocabulary than I do and, to Stefan's dismay, is up to date on all the latest playground slang.

For recreational reading this fall, Elias stuck primarily to Asterix und Obelix books in German and to Harry Potter books, Lego catalogs, and The Economist in English. He recently discovered a new source of literary entertainment on our apartment bookshelves: Gymnasium (German college-track high school) English textbooks. The stories are dramatic, short, and bilingual, and the pictures are good.