“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” The quote by Walt Disney perhaps fits for most people at this time of reflection, and there have been a few new paths for us this year.
Sabrina visited South Africa in March on a school exchange trip, attending a german international school, as well as a township school where they were playing cricket at break times with upturned crates for wickets. She saw enough hardship and poverty to “never complain again about small things” and it has held up well. She’ll be 18 by the time you get this letter and is slowly finding out what she wants to do. During the summer, her exchange partner visited Munich and the South African pupils made the best of their unaccustomed freedom, since they have to be driven by parents everywhere back home, so they were out at the lakes or in the English Garten a lot; highlight was the ‘Passenger’ concert. She loved the trip to Rome for a Model United Nations conference and represented Egypt.
Eve was confirmed in church this year, she continues with the violin and enjoyed a trip with the school choir. Like Sabrina, she is quite good at Maths, and at English of course, which helps, since these are two of the three core subjects over here, the third being German. They are at the stage where they both study independently, usually from the dining table, which does lead to some stress around meal times.
Katie is busy with her music, teaching piano to a couple of children and visits the UK quite often to see her Mum, who is easy to cheer up and laugh with. She attends a health club regularly, loving the posh showers and sauna. Phil has been in the UK every month this year, except August and October. At the start of the year, there were regular visits to transfer his Mum out of a flat in an assisted living Abbeyfields facility to her new residential home at Summerfields, near Skipton. She’s happy there and maintains her good humour with the staff, although suffering with mobility problems.
The main event this year was attending a family wedding in China (Katie’s cousin Gill’s son Daniel). We had a spectacular time exploring Beijing, even attending the World Athletics Championships and going round the various parks, temples and museums. The wedding took place in Tonghua, for which we took a train via Dalian on the coast (although this part of the holiday was the least enjoyable, the beaches crammed and the sea dirty). We loved Tonghua and went on a long walk up the river and high into the hills overlooking the town. The wedding day itself was exhausting, with Chinese and English ceremonies kicking off at 9am for guests (or 7am for the couple, bridesmaids and groomsmen) and the celebrations lasting well into the night. By that time we were relaxing at a restaurant overlooking the river and chatting with family and friends, new and old; after all the fireworks and food during the day.
Christmas 2015
yearly reviews
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