Travelog for: Polki

Today we had to leave Helgoland, but we had time to make a walk.
We played in a buoy.




In these cabins people changed their swimsuits many years ago. Can you find me on the photo?



On the way back in the Catamaran we had fun looking out of the windows. We saw ships and a nice part of Hamburg, called Blankenese. Rike told us, that the rich people live there.





It was a wonderful trip - we had a lot of fun together !

Greetings
Polki

Today Carlisle and PinkyHH left us for new adventures.





Good luck to both of you !

In the afternoon a new TV arrived, she ist called Cassandra and a very friendly girl. 

We visited a small City called Bad Oldesloe.
Rike went to school there, years ago.

It has nice houses and a beautiful river.











There is the townhall behind the fountain.

In the afternoon a new TV called Murph arrived.

He is very funny - and we talked until deep in the night. 

Hi Mum,

yesterday Miily left us, to went home to her Mum.



And today I will start to my next adventure. But I am happy, because BineHH will come with me. So we can spend more time together, and the trip to Japan will be funny.





I really liked the time here in Germany.

Bye Polki

Dear Mommy,
I was a bit confused when I came out of my envelope. I thought I'd be at the post office, but instead we were at the airport! I thought my travels were over for a little while! But my new host Jayme quickly explained that we were just there to see her grandfather off as he had been in town visiting.  I was a bit relieved that I'd get to see Okinawa. Here we are with Jayme's son looking down at the inside of the airport.

We went down the stairs then so that Jayme's children could ride on some toys, the train was lots of fun.

They also had lots of stores here in case you'd forgotten any souveniers to take home.

Finally we went outside to see some planes. It was very neat. We got to watch a few take off and Jayme's children had fun running around pretending to be airplanes.

On the way home we stopped by one of the playgrounds. We found another train!

Here is the playground, it was nice to stretch some after being in that envelope for so long.

I'm sorry it took so long to update, we've been helping Jayme a lot as she was sick, but we have another update coming soon and then hopefully we can get out (or stay in!) and do something fun!
Polki

Dear Mommy,
Its been very, very rainy. And a bit hectic as Jayme's boys keep wanting to play! Today the weather cleared up for a few minutes, so we headed to the pool for awhile! Here I am next to the pool. See that slide in the background? Jayme's 2 year old went down it and came out head first, it was really funny.

Me and the other toys rested for awhile on the towel. Next to us is Jayme's husband being silly.

And here we are by the baby pools. They're small ones for the toddlers, very nice.

Hopefully we'll go do more fun stuff soon! The weather forcast says rainy, but we're all crossing our fingers it will be wrong
Polki

Dear Mommy,
We've had no end to bad luck here! First it was rainy, rainy, rainy. The sun came out and Jayme thought it was very lucky as she and her husband had a date scheduled that day to go ziplining, but then Jayme hurt her back while she was ziplining and has been trying to lay down and give it rest since.  She's still hurting a bit, but can get up and move around much more easily now.  Then the rain started again. Agh! Would we never escape the house? We did get out to go watch Night at the Museum 2, which was a very funny movie!  Unfortunately pictures don't work well in a movie theatre And then finally we woke up one day... and we could almost see the sun through the clouds! Jayme said it was as close to a sunny day as we were going to get, and the kids needed some exercise so out we went.
We ended up at Kurashiki Dam. Here you can see it from the top.

We went on down to get a closer look. The children liked playing in the water here, its only about knee deep on an adult so they can splash and play and its not very dangerous. They also like climbing up and down the little rock waterfall. Its a very popular place in the summer to cool down. Here we are sitting on some rocks in the water.

After awhile we retreated back to the shore. Usually Jayme says they'd sit here and have a picnic, but unfortunately the clouds came back.

We're all hoping the sun comes out to play for a longer time this weekend so we can do something fun!
More updates soon,
Polki

Dear Mommy,
Jayme was feeling a bit better so off to the pool we went... when she said pool I figured we were going back to the other one we'd gone to, but this one is apparently at a resort here on Okinawa. The resorts will allow you to come in and use their facilities for a day if you buy a day pass. I wondered how nice it could really be, but then when we arrived I was surprised! Of course our first stop was the locker room.

From there off we went to the outdoor pool. It was lots of fun watching the kids splash and have fun.

Then a surprise... there's another pool?! This one was inside, and had two water slides to boot! It was very shallow at the bottom of the slides, so mostly young kids went down. It was very funny to watch their faces when they hit the water.

We went back to the outside pool and took a small break.

At this point Jayme said the kids were getting hungry and it was sadly time to leave so we started making our way toward the exit. We did get to see the beach on the way, though we didn't stop there. Maybe next time?

We also got to see some neat Shisas near the exit. Shisa's are the guardians of Okinawa and you can find them on most homes and businesses. In fact, even Jayme's apartment has some. This one was very neat since it was playing an eisa drum.

More updates soon,
Polki

Dear Mommy,
We were so excited! We woke up and finally there was some sun, so off we went to the playground near Jayme's house. All this rain has at least been good for the flowers, aren't they pretty?

We had lots of fun at the playground.


We were so worn out we got home and went to rest for awhile. We were going to go back out that afternoon, but oh no... this is what we woke up to.

Its really getting a bit ridiculous. All this rain! Jayme says she wishes we'd just have a typhoon or two and get the rain over with. We were all just sitting around wondering what to do when all of a sudden we heard some barking. We went to investigate and found this very loud little pup over on the DVD shelf near the X-Files dvds. Hm...

He was very insistent asking what the date was and how long he'd been gone and where the aliens were. Huh?! He said he'd gone to find the aliens at Roswell, NM and been abducted and wound up on some strange planet called eBay, tagless and lost. Then a few minutes ago he'd woken up and found himself here. Silly little pup, must be hallucinating.

Maybe we can have some fun around the house since there's not much to do out of it..
Polki

Dear Mommy,
This rain just won't let up! Yesh. We decided to have some fun inside the house, since we couldn't really go out. We started calmly enough reading a book

But that wasn't really energetic enough, too much energy! We need to get out soon. So we decided to go for a drive.

After we ran over the 3rd little people we gave up on that though and decided another nice calm activity would be better. So we sat in and decided to try to do a puzzle. Geez these pieces are tiny.

No luck... so we went investigating to find another example of a puzzle and found this finished one waiting to be hung up

Much more interesting than the halfway completed one we tried. I hope the rain lets up so we can do something interesting soon!
Polki

Dear Mommy,
We were very busy for a few days. First our host's husband had to prepare for some special training and we all were helping him pack. He had to pack up all his gear and put it into water tight packing, including extra clothes and what not.


First he had to do swim qualifying with all of his gear on, that's a lot to carry while swimming!  Then he had to go into a contraption that's like the inside of a helicopter and escape blindfolded. We weren't able to go and get pictures, but our host showed us this so we knew what he was up to.

Then of course he had to get out and call Jayme and tell her he was okay because she was quite worried! Since Jayme wanted a bit of a distraction we went off to the zoo for a bit. Its a very small zoo without too many animals, but it was nice to get out a bit and the weather behaved!

They had a viewer here we went to check out

Then we realized we didn't need one. They were having a dodgeball tournament at the zoo. How interesting!

We also got to check out a few statues of animals, and I was beginning to wonder if we'd get to see any animals!

Finally we got to the animals exhibits. They were very anxious, it must've been about feeding time.



We got home to a surprise, Jayme's husband was home safe and sound and just a little wetter for his training. He also had a surprise. He had stopped by the mail on the way home.. and come home with a gift he'd ordered awhile ago for Jayme. Isn't it neat? Its a e-reader made by amazon. Jayme loves reading, and now she can download books whenever she wants. We had some fun checking it out.

Finally, since it was Father's Day in the US we had a bit of a celebration. We had some cake

And the children gave their daddy a nice little poem with their handprints and footprints.

More adventures soon I'm sure,
Polki

Hi Mummy,
I arrived in Germany today. You will see more of me tomorrow.

Love
Polki

Hi Mummy,
we went to Wuppertal today. Wuppertal is one of the neighbour cities. Katja had to buy a few things at Hornbach, her favourite DIY-store. She had to make a new interior for her large rat cage.

Afterwards we went to the Botanical Garden. Wuppertal is situated, like the name already says, at the river Wupper, along a deep valley with the city centre in the valley itself, large parts on the steep slopes of the valley.

You can find the Botanical Garden on a very high point, overlooking the city centre in the valley. In 1890 it was a school garden first. Later, in 1908 a textile industrialist built his country house here, the "Eller'sche Villa". Later the Elisenturm Elisen Tower) was also built here, which is now the focal point of the garden. Since 1929 it is a municipal garden, open daily.



This is the Elisenturm.



First we entered the tower and enjoyed the fantastic overview.



Here you can see the new greenhouses, they were built in 2006.



We went to the greenhouses than. Here you can see plants from the warmer parts of the world, like palms.







We went into the garden than. I saw lots of pretty flowers and interesting trees, also the former country house.



I saw these pretty flowers, their colour fitting perfectly to my beak





This bed is showing typical plants of a moor area, also insect-eating plants.



Here we are sitting in front of a thistle.



I also saw a plant with vast leafs. I used one of the leafs as a swing, together with UrselHH.



Back home we helped to install the new things to the rat cage. I will show it to you soon.

Bye
Polki

Hi Mummy,
we have baked bread today. It was really easy. All you need is

750 g wheat flour
about 400 ml warm water
1 1/2 tablespoons of salt
1 1/2 packages dry yeast
1 tablespoon of olive oil

Baking: 35 - 40 minutes, 220°C



First we mixed flour and yeast, than we added the other ingredients and kneaded the dough for about 5 minutes.



The dough was covered than with a cloth. It had to rise for about 30 minutes.



We shaped two loafs of bread.



The loafs of bread had to rise once more for half an hour under a cloth. Than we brushed them with a mixture of water and olive oil. We put rosemary on one loaf of bread.



They were ready for the oven than. The breads had to bake for 35 minutes.
Finished!





Our selfmade bread was really delicious!

Bye
Polki