Monday May 3 — Martin’s birthday — I get a phone call from him. Apart from accepting my congratulations he tells my that my father is about to come to visit us for 3 weeks arriving Wednesday May 5. Surprise…… we knew he was planning on coming but we had not agreed on anything more concrete than summer. Well, I should have expected this, as usual nothing happens until finally it cannot happen quickly enough 🙂 That’s how it works with my dad.
We had to wait for more than an hour at the airport although the plane landed 15 minutes before schedule and about the same time before we reached the gate. We were on time. Finally he walked out and after some explanation we understood. The process at the entry into the US took a little longer due to incomplete forms and some complications filling the additional forms. We arrived quickly at the PausHaus in Arlington which got excellent critics reviews, mostly because of the nice location and the great garden….. we knew that.
On the first day after the arrival we were not able to locate a mass in time but everything was set from then on: the church of choice was Saint Eulalia [speak: julalie (German pronunciation)]. St Eulalia is located seen from the PausHaus beyond the wonderful golf course along Hutchinson Road and is part of the neighboring Winchester. Pups has quickly made contact to the priests and the parish members, which offer themselves to drive him back home after the rosary sessions. He is excited about the openness of the US American and only the fact that they speak to early at the end of the mass and that they are maybe not pious enough gets some negative mentioning. Well it looks like that he is enjoying his stay here quite a bit and he has found some nice spots to help out in the house.
For example the roof rail on the East side of our house was first cleaned by him, I did not finish the cleaning after last fall…. he also tried our very very heavy electronic lawn mower. The battery makes up a good fraction of the weight. Also very much appreciated was the sweeping action on the patio and our driveway. Raking of the backyard was on the program as well, while I was cutting large quantities of wood for our regular evening camp fires. After the summer, I hope, we will have burned all the large pieces of dead wood on our property while having excellent camp fire evenings.
Opa made friends quickly with Blake, Ivan and Markus, but with Gisele it would take a while, But finally ‘Vulcana’ also had to give in, another victim of Opa’s charms.
