joe ferrare's blog

Yesterday was Alexandra’s first day of school. Kindergarten started a couple of days after the rest of the school, because the teacher does home visits. Anyway, it was a big deal around Haus Ferrare, as you might imagine. We got the girl up, she watched a little TV and then it was time to get ready. She chose her own clothes (the night before) of course, and had her new backpack and lunch box. We stopped to take this photo on the pedestrian zone, which is right outside our house.

She’s really taking to this well (based on a single three-hour day, mind you). She decided she wanted to take the bus (insisted, really), had fun at the Kindergarten visits, seems to like the teacher and so on. The Kindergarten has 17 kids, which will soon be 18 when another family arrives in October. Alexandra knows about half the kids, as she went to pre-school with them. So it’s not that big a move up for her, not like it was for me. Back then we went right from playing in the the dirt outside the cave to the first day of Kindergarten, so it was all quite a shock. She was in hourly day care, then pre-school, and now the big K. So for her, it’s just “big kids’ school.”

Besides, she got new clothes, a new desk and chair (which she’d been after us about), the backpack, lunch box, school supplies… So it was not unlike Christmas for her.

I’m going to put up a separate page in a bit with several more photos.

Finally got around to getting that pic of snow in August here in Garmisch. Click for a bigger, and uncropped version. Actually, the bigger version is from 29 August, and the smaller one on the main page is from 30 August. Neither was the first snow of the month, as we had a couple of light snow showers on the mountain earlier in the month. July was really hot (for Garmisch), and I don’t remember if we got snow in July or not.

Saying “we” got snow is a bit misleading, of course. We get rain, and up the mountain it snows. It’s kind of like a magic trick, actually: it gets cloudy, it rains, the clouds lift and — poof! — the mountain has snow on it.

This is taken as a good sign by the skiers and snowboarders. I know a couple who ski or snow at least one day every month of the year. Not as hard as it sounds, as there’s a glacier not that far away. Well, there is for now. These things seem to be melting. Maybe they can switch to surfing. Anyway, here’s the pic.