Fun Saturday

OK, so I will post my Valentine pictures eventually, but I wanted to blog about our Saturday activities first. The only sad thing about this is, I put my camera in the car so that I could post pictures with this blog, but we ended up taking the other car. HaHa!

So, on Saturday our neighbors invited us to go to the Christening of their 4 month old son. I thought it was so nice of them to think of us, and was excited to go. We went to their church and watched the ceremony, and it was very interesting. And although it was not a ceremony that I believe needed to be done, I think it is nice for all children to have some kind of ceremony that involves God. The poor baby cried almost the whole 45 minutes, and the Mom was quite frustrated. There was a lot of singing (in German) and some candle lighting, and then some blessing type of things. During one part of the ceremony they gave 5 of the children that were there, a candle to hold, including Steven and Nathan. Then, they just let the kids hold them until the kid eventually did something wrong and the candles got blown out one by one. There has to be many times that the preachers robe or someones hair has caught on fire. We were all standing by the little tub where the baby was getting christened in very close proximity with all these young children swinging their candles around. No disasters for us though.

So, that was very nice, and it was good for me to experience. Then after leaving the church they invited us out to dinner with them. Our neighbors consist of a German women, and an Irish man, and their three children. They are fluent in German and English, and both of their parents were here as well. The German parents speaking very little English, and the Irish parents speaking NO German.

Our neighbors own an Irish Pub in Frankfurt which is where they chose to go to dinner. They have told us to eat there so many times, but we never have, so we decided now would be a good time to see their Pub. The food was very good, and the kids had a great time acting like wild animals. Then when we were done eating, we stayed a little while longer to listen to our neighbor (Noelle) sing some Irish folksongs, and boy are we glad we did. It was so cool to hear him sing these songs, and I thought about the Buchanans although I am sure the Scottish are a bit different. His friend that was playing with him started out playing a mandolin, and after a couple of songs switched to the banjo. Noelle was playing the guitar. I personally liked the sound of the banjo the best. The boys who had been pretty rowdy, just sat and listened to the music, and really enjoyed it. I was also sitting next to Noelle's Mom whom I had been talking to for a while, and I got to hear her sing along to the music with her Irish accent, and on one of the songs she started clapping her hands to the music. It was so neat to be there.

Then when Noelle was done with a few of his songs, they convinced his Dad to go up and sing a song. He had an older, richer voice, and I just loved to listen to him. He was singing a song called "Streets of London" by Ralph McTell. Much to Steve and I's surprise not only did all of the Irish people there join in with the song, but the Germans also seemed to know all the words of this song. Both Steve and I had never heard it before. It was great. We just loved being a part of this cultural experience. I was very sad not to have my camera there!