Day 333 - Tying up loose ends.

I finally got the last of my TESOL unit done and submitted it.  I started on unit 15 as I have six weeks to complete the last six units.  My plan is to do one unit per week until the course is completed.  This unit is a video watching a teacher teach.  There were two lessons to watch.  The first one was absolutely painful to watch.  The second one was a hundred times better!  I started working on unit 15 right after I got unit 14 submitted.  It's about 60% done and I'll finish it up on Monday or Tuesday and get it submitted then.

Ted wanted me to check on the weather forecast for the weekend.  The plan is to go for a long drive to one of the Romantic Road cities if the weather is going to be nice.  If it's not, we are planning to go to Metzingen to the shopping outlets.  After checking on the weather, it appears we are going to Metzingen because it's supposed to be cold and snowy.

I did a few loads of laundry today and since we're going to dinner at Mama Maria's, I'm not doing anything in the kitchen, thank goodness!

Ted came home with the week's mail.  Hooray!  My sewing patterns have arrived.  As soon as I hear from my daughter what the gender is of the new baby due to arrive in August, I will start sewing some things that I thought would be nice to have.  I also need to start on the baby's afghan before the weather gets too warm and I cannot stand to have hot yarn laying on me!

We took the garbage out on the way over to Mama Maria's.  It's snowing prety heavily on  our way over there with big, white fluffy flakes of snow.  Who knows how much snow will accumulate by tomorrow!

I brought some American (Italian) sausage over to Michele and Anna because they were so gracious as to allow us to bring our own sausage so I could have my favorite pizza:  Sausage and mushrooms.  Ted decided to have the same sausage and mushroom pizza.  It was terrific. 

Our upstairs neighbor came in and sat at the bar and had dinner.  We talked about the chimney sweep coming to the apartment on Tuesday.  (We don't have fireplaces but I guess the chnimney sweep also checks the exhaust from the furnace.)  There was another guy sitting at the bar and he was listening to our conversation.  I could tell that he understood English because he seemed quite interested in our conversation.  I said as much to my husband when he left to go to the restroom. 

Somehow or another, we got to talking to him about the U.S. and it turns out he has a condo in Florida!  His condo on an island off of Sarasota!  What a small world!!  And it turns out, he's in Stuttgart on business and comes here four to five months out of the year.  He lives in Northern Germany near Cologne (The Germans call it Koeln).  His name is Sasha and I think he has Russian ancesters because the name sounds Russian. 

He speaks English very well.   He plans to visit the west coast of the U.S. (California and Las Vegas) and wants us to help him plan his trip while he's in California.  We told him we would be happy to do so.  We talked about American politics, German politics, the war, traveling and languages.  It was a most enjoyable time. 

We also got to meet Anna's brother who lives on the other side of Stuttgart.  I sat and talked to him for a bit.  It turns out his sister-in-law lives in Texas.   She's lived there going on  20 years now.  They speak a little English but not much.  I spoke to him in Italain for the most part.  It was getting late (we'd already been there for more than four hours) and it was time for us to leave and get home. 

We watched another episode of a TV series and then went to bed.

Friday 02/19/2010