Friday Night's Party

We don't really know what is SJ's favorite food, but she does seem to have a particularly fondness for spaghetti. So, that's what we had for SJ's birthday dinner.



After dinner, we opened presents, which of course was a lot of fun. SJ got some fun puzzles, new clothes for her baby doll, knee high socks (which she seemed to enjoy much more than I expected), a new winter coat, a VW bug toy car, a BMW toy car, and a xylophone.

The xylophone was a real big hit - literally. Within a few minutes of unwrapping we were not 100% sure it was the best gift for our eardrums, but you can tell from SJ's face that she really loved it.

While the Cold Dog (see earlier post) would have been tempting for dessert, I picked up a variety of slices of cake from the cake shop across the street from our apartment on the way home from work.

Unfortunately, the woman working there didn't understand a word of English, nor did she even seem to understand English words that are almost exactly the same as their German equivalent.

I seem to run into the same problem quite frequently in Germany. For example, if I want to order 3 ice cream cones with different flavors, they always seem to think I want one ice cream cone with 3 scoops.

On this particular evening, I wanted 5 slices of cake, but I wanted a variety of different kinds. The woman seemed to think that I wanted 5 slices of cake stacked on top of each other and crammed into a one slice-size cake box. Why anyone would want such a thing, I have no idea.

After a few minutes of struggling, she went and fetched the person in the shop who "spoke" English. While no one would ever hire her as a linguist at the U.N., she was at least able to understand what I wanted.

Of course, after all that, SJ ignored the 5 different types of cake I brought home and just ate ice cream. Oh well, it's her birthday.