never ending story

Hello and ho ho ho! :D

Kurz vorweg: Ich bitte alle, die mit einem englischen Blog nicht zurechtkommen, mir das im Kommentarfeld kurz mitzuteilen, damit ich mir eine Lösung überlegen kann! :) Wenn Ihr mir das nicht sagt, kann ich es auch nicht wissen, also bitte schreibt mir!! :)

I'm really far behind, my last entry is almost three weeks ago, but although I feel sorry I'm also tired of apologizing for my laziness. Mh, can I call it laziness? I was just totally busy, but I realized the longer I wait the more pictures I have to retouch and the more stories I have to tell in my next entry! :(

Well, here I am, and I have so much to tell, that's incredible!

First a big thank you to all of you who stayed loyal and checked my blog regularly. :)

As you'll have already noticed, I decided to write only in English, finally, but I really hope that everyone of you will be able to understand it. I won't use difficult words, because I'm not going to use jargon, but I wanna enable all my not-german speaking friends to read my blog. :)

Let's get started… I told you my mommy was arriving and she was here for entire sixteen days. We experienced so many things, let me structure it in every individual day:

1. day (Wednesday)

New York City! :D I showed her around the first important locations: Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center and 5th Avenue. We stopped one of the legendary yellow cabs and got a ride to Pier 78, where the Harbor Cruise started. We drove on the water around Manhattan for 90 minutes and passed the Financial District, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. It was really cold, but the weather was fantastic! :) I booked tickets for the "Christmas Spectacular" in the world famous Radio City Music Hall for the evening and we really enjoyed watching the show. :) Before we took the train home to Darien we visited the Times Square as the last stop for that day – enough!

Skyline Manhattan with Empire State Building

Mommy with Washington Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge :D

Statue of Liberty

inside Radio City Music Hall

2. day (Thursday)

New York City again! :D We woke up early to get an early train to New York City and to get good places to watch the popular Thanksgiving Parade of Macy's. Not early enough to stand in the first row, but nevertheless satisfied with places in the fourth or fifth row next to the Central Park we waited patiently for the show to begin and to end. After three hours of standing there we were totally frozen. xD We took a rest at Starbucks, visited Little Italy and Chinatown and finally started our way to New York City's only Heliport. Unfortunately it was raining, but we couldn't change it. The ten minutes flight over Manhattan were breathtaking anyway. :) Yeah, I forgot to mention that we had THANKSGIVING DAY! =) That's why I invited her after the unforgettable view over Manhattan to an amazing (and really expensive – I left almost one of my weekly pays xD) Thanksgiving Dinner at a restaurant in the 2nd Avenue before we took the train home.

big balloons of Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

the three famous American types of sport: Basketball, Baseball and Football

Santa!!!

Subway stop at Wall street :)

Statue of Liberty from above!

amazing view over the Manhattan Skyline...

Thanksgiving Dinner :)

3. day (Friday)

Our adventurous tour to Canada (Niagara Falls and Toronto) was finally starting, yeah!! But there's not much to mention about that day, except for that we started in Chinatown, which was a little bit scary so early in the morning – we left New York City at 8am – and that we drove almost fourteen hours to arrive at the Niagara Falls. We just arrived right on time to see the evening fireworks while we were still sitting in the bus! Our bus was multicultural, we were traveling with people from Belgium, Spain, China, Singapore, South Korea, Philippines, …. and our tour guide spoke English and Chinese, freaky!!

4. day (Saturday)

The most interesting day of our tour! We discovered the Niagara Falls and the Canadian town around them – you know, the Niagara Falls are located in the USA and Canada. It was damn cold and everything around the water was frozen because of the high mist, which led to fantastic looks. Around noon we had lunch at the Skylon Tower with an incredible view above the Niagara Falls! We shared the table with a really nice couple from Singapore, and we had a lot of fun. :)
Later on the day we arrived in Toronto and did a Harbor Cruise to watch the beautiful Skyline. When it started to get dark we visited the highest building in Toronto, the CN Tower. We saw Toronto from above at night and we were brave enough to walk over the floor of glass which offered an awesome sight hundreds of metres down to the ground. :D We ate Korean dinner with the really nice guys from South Korea, this was the hottest and spiciest experience for me. :D

funny town

Niagara Falls!

fantastic view at Skylon Tower and Canadian Falls

the first black squirrel I've seen in my life!!

everything was frozen, insane!

close-up of the Falls

and a rainbow :)

the American Falls from above

look at the high mist!!

Toronto Skyline :)

lying on the glass and you can look down to the ground, yeah, I was really brave!! :D

Toronto by night :)

5. day (Sunday)

We returned late to New York City after a really long ride and got home exhausted, but happy about the past days. :)

6. - 10. day (Monday to Friday)

I showed her around my area during my daily free time. :) We did a lot of shopping and my mommy said she never shopped so much her whole life, haha. :D Despite the cold air we drove several times to different beaches and also saw a beautiful sunset. :)

finally the gardeners came to clean up our lawn!

mommy watching the sunset :)

my mommy and me :)

11. day (Saturday)

New York City! What else? We went shopping around the lower Broadway, which means in Downtown, and we bought not only clothes and other stuff for us, but also christmas presents for my family at home. :) Yeah, we walked a lot and reached Ground Zero, where the Broadway starts/ends (? I don't know yet :D). We looked around, but everytime I visit Ground Zero I feel sad, so did my mommy too… Then we went to the outlet shop "Century 21" and later Macy's, but it was insane crowded so that we left immediately after we entered. :D Anyway, New York City was totally crowded on that Saturday, even my Hostmum told us so, it was crazy! We wanted to see the world famous christmas tree in front of the Rockefeller Center, but the crowd of people made it impossible to get close to it. xD

12. day (Sunday)

Mommy's last New York City day! My lovely friend Aline from Brazil joined us in the train to New York and when we arrived at Grand Central we stopped a taxi again, as we did on the first New York City day, to get to the Central Park. It was cold, as every day, but the sun was shining so brightly that we had a really nice walk around "The Lake", the second largest lake there, from the east to the west side. :) After that we visited the MoMA Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, where we could warm up. It took us longer as I expected to walk through it, and we couldn't even finish the whole sightseeing, but we saw paintings of Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse, Chagall, Salí, Kandinsky, Monet and other artists, which was the most important part. :)

On our way to the Rockefeller Center, for another chance to see the christmas tree :D, we met my nice friend Jiho from South Korea. :) Fortunately it wasn't as crowded as Saturday and we could stand underneath the tree and take pictures, but actually you can take the best pictures from another point: from the stairs which lead down to the ice rink. ^^ At the end of that worthwhile day we went to the Times Square again, which is totally exciting in the evening, because of all the lights around you!

Central Park still looks like fall at several places!

Aline and me :)

Van Gogh and me :D

Picasso and me, haha :D

the christmas tree!

13. - 16. day (Monday to Thursday)

Shopping and beaches again. ;) Metionable: The visit in the cheesecake factory!! My Mommy was really enthusiastic about the amount of choices of cheesecakes. :) And we decorated my own small christmas tree in my au pair room. :) On Thursday night she flew back to Germany. :( But we had an unforgettable time, mommy, thank you for everything. :)

our pond

walking through our forest, we don't have snow yet, but we have already frozen water...

mommy relaxing on the beach

Haha, I didn't tell you everything about all the American food we ate: pizza, ice cream, spareribs, cheesecake, hot dogs in New York City, … ;)

Well, four other days, especially another weekend passed by since she left. What else did I? You should know sorting all my pictures took a lot of time. xD

On Saturday I went to New York City again to meet the mommy and daddy of the family I did babysitting for in Germany. :) Mr. and Mrs. Klingeberg, thank you again for the tasty cookies and nice greetings to the kids! :)

On Sunday I had the next au pair meeting at our area director's house. We were supposed to bake cookies, but I was the only one without cookies, which was a little bit embarrassing. =/ When I got home I started feeling really sick and during the evening I got all the symptoms of a food poisoning! =( That wasn't nice at all, but today I felt better, so that I had time to write this text. :)

I'm done now, I can't believe it!! =) Christmas time is coming and my handsome, cute, affectionate, smart, humorous, imaginative, just my beloved Joschka will be here in eight days!!! I can't wait to see him again! :)

Thanks for reading, I would love to get some comments, but if not I'll talk to you again anyway, soon, I promise! :)