Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Wuppertal Zoo

It was an Easter Friday. Kate(Mom) and Yvonne(sister) planned to bring Jamie (my nephew) and I to the Wuppertal Zoo. I invited Tommy(Malaysian exchange student) along for the trip. The weather was nice for a visit to the Zoo.

The exhibits in the Zoo are really awesome especially for the Lions.  The Zoo authorities prepared a large space for the Lion to move around. It was situated on a highland.  I also saw penguins that lived in warmer climates. We saw pigs with pinched ears. They look really special and adorable. I have never seen donkeys as huge as they own in the Zoo. The donkeys here looked really clean. I was really curious when Tommy told Jamie he saw sheeps in one of the exhibits. It was actually white wolves. We got a good laugh. Tommy told me that he was offered by his previous host family really ripe apples.  It was brown and soft. I was lucky that my family members are not to that extent of eating those kind of food.

It was really nice to have a friend from Malaysia to spend time together. At least we share some similarities with each other. I got some kind of relief seeing him a little plumed. He gained weight too, to be exact 3 kilograms. If you think that's really bad news, it's normal. The returnees told me that they return to their normal weight after they returned to their home country. I spoke Rojak language with him for almost the whole day. I got a few strikes of hits from him for laughing at his hairstyle. I'll show you peeps how he gelled up his relatively long hair. He wanted to get rid of his 'mushroom' hairstyle, obviously it worked in some aspect. We discussed on how 'economical' the families here are. They eat leftovers that are kept in the refrigerators for weeks or the extremely riped fruits, for example apple.


Kate planned to have a picnic together in the Zoo. However we were hungry before we could even look for a nice scenic spot to have an ideal picnic.  We sat on the steps next to an exhibit of the Alps deer. It was a shady spot but honestly Germany is a relatively windy country.  I got a tasty sandwich with an additional blend of flavor from the smell of the animals. We prepared fresh snacks such as carrots, cherry tomato and Bell peppers. Most Germans eat raw vegetables except for Broccoli. The vegetables that we will always eat are bell peppers, potato(sweet or normal), Ruccola (salad), lettuce, Broccoli, Carrot and tomato. Tommy got sick of eating bell peppers. For a few times, He brought a whole packet of three bell peppers for the whole day in school. Have you ever thought of the best way to eat a cherry tomato? I never thought of that question before because I was so used to put it into my mouth directly. Tommy was used to eating those normal tomatoes. So he actually got spurts from the cherry tomato on his white Tees and pants.

My nephew, Jamie in my opinion is really noisy. I was getting tired of entertaining him as he seems to always receive insufficient attention from the adults. The worst part is he likes to act cute. My mom and sister were really patient with him. He is a little stubborn, but they educate him patiently. Not much of yelling or physical punishments. Well, I can't really stand him, his existence seems to be training my limits of patience. Then I realize the hardships and the amount of energy consumption of parents to raise a child, especially those similar to him. To raise a well educated child is not as easy as ABC. Adults have to think among the best ways to correct their child's mistakes,  be careful of what they say and how they themselves behave. Their way their children behave reflects a lot on their parents.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Chocolate Eggs and the Easter Bunny

 The melodious chirps by the birds seems to be telling me that they saw the Easter Bunny hiding the colorful eggs. The sun was really creating a wonderful weather for the children and adults to search the eggs together. The old apple tree in the garden was filled with flowers. Bees and butterflies were restless, collecting sweet nectar from variant colored flowers.  I had really fine pancakes with butter and Maple syrup toppings for breakfast.

It's was also Kate's birthday. We had fun searching for the hidden Easter eggs we colored a day before and chocolate goodies. The Easter eggs are actually hard boiled eggs. Obviously, Kate was the Easter bunny. She hid the goodies for us (Jamie, Claudia, Yvonne and I) to look for it in the garden. There was a little twist in the process of searching when our Easter eggs had Slugs attached to it. It was both disgusting and funny. Mila was also out of the house with us.

We had our lunch in the garden. I helped Yvy and Claudia with the cooking. We had wrapped cheese in pork slices with garlic sauce as a starter. Then we had lamb with beans and sweet potato puree. For dessert we had lemon delight and cake. It was comfortable outside with a light breeze of wind. Peter, our neighbour came by too for a dish or two. After that, I helped out with drying the cooking utensils. They are actually fine the remaining bubbles on the cooking utensils. It doesn't really matter.

People are always to be seen on the Sundays here in the Woods. Most of the people in the neighbourhood are quite friendly.While I was riding, a family stopped at a side. I was on breaks because I was curious. The children were actually around a baby snake. They are not afraid of it? It seems to me that they find it interesting. Then I realised that Kate and Jamie went to see the snake too. Maybe it is a dead snake, I don't know. Snakes are not my thing, so I passed on with bike riding.  I watched Madagascar 2 in German in the evenings. It was really funny although I didn't understand some of the contents. We had egg salad with bread for Supper. We used the Easter eggs with mayonnaise and mustard.