Merry Christmas! Fröhliche
Weihnachten! Alles Gute in
neuen Jahr!
DEC 7, 2019
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| Mt Etna: Sicily |
Dear family and friends:
The big news is,
we will be returning to the US in July 2020.
Sean has been told he will be going to Eisenhower Medical Center at Ft.
Gordon, Augusta GA.
For
Sean, unfortunately, 2019 has been spent mostly away from home. January – April he attended a leadership
course at Ft. Belvoir, VA. The good in
that is that we were able to visit him, plus see friends and family while in
the DC area and travel to Philadelphia and NYC. It was wonderful for Mayland in particular to catch up with Spring-Ford HS friend Amy and from Westtown (UPenn) Kent and UPenn Andrea. Mayland actually also had the opportunity to spend quality time with her nephew David in Philadelphia and a special treat of having an afternoon / evening of visiting with her half-sister Sue, her husband Mark and daughter Mollie. Looking forward to many more visits with close family. During that time we also got MJ up to Westtown for a visit and she liked it enough that
she is in the process of applying for her Jr. and Sr. years. Then we had the unexpected deployment this fall / winter. Backstory - Our very dear and beloved friend Brian was set to deploy (doing the same thing Sean had done in 2016 and 2017 in Africa); however, while playing a rousing game of soccer with his son his Achilles tendon ruptured and he was unable to go. Sean knew that a great team had been assembled so it was a difficult but right decision that he would take Brian’s place on the team. He left at the start of Sept and will return end of Jan 2020. Thus he would only be around from April - August of 2019.
Clark
got his driver’s license and it was a wonderful experience to get into the car
with a NOT new driver. It was worth
every penny to have a professional teach him.
Now he is working on Das Abitur and should finish / graduate in March
2020. He is doing the written testing in
Math, Physics and French in Jan 2020.
The oral exams, taken in March 2020, are yet to be determined. After visiting a few schools, he has decided
to stay close to “home” aka Landstuhl to attend Kaiserslautern TU; they math
department is considered the best in Germany and he plans to major in math, but
also take physics classes, because you never know. January he will also sit for the DELF exam –
this is a proficiency exam in French; after that we will know exactly just how
fluent he truly is. He also continues to play tennis 2-3 times per week and just remind me how much he has grown up and is ready to be on his own.
Russell has been working jobs in
Colorado – from pizza and sandwich delivery to a security job position. It is not easy figuring it all out, but he
has been making a good effort. We miss
having him around, so when we return to the US we plan to have him come and
hang out with us in GA, at least for awhile.
MJ spent a lot of time working on her standardized test
skills; she took the SSAT (Secondary SAT) in October, never one to do it the
easy way she even had food poisoning the night before thus up sick to her
stomach for 4 hours giving her less sleep than desired. Despite that she was in the 83rd percentile
overall: her reading is 99th and vocabulary is 95th –
that is very impressive for someone who has been learning exclusively in German for
the past 9 years. Ironically, her
vocabulary deficits were more apparent in Math.
Upon her exit of the testing she asked me “What is an integer?” Oh, boy, never thought to review the math
vocab. Given her passion is art (see that amazing drawing?); I am
not as concerned about her getting top scores in math but didn’t expect the
stumbling block to be essentially the basic vocabulary. She also continues to play tennis at least once a week.
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| the deployed look |
Mayland continued to volunteer full time at LRMC up until the start of November. It became just too much Sean being deployed, Clark visiting schools, MJ applying to Westtown, the upcoming move – plus, Landstuhl had hired some new people whom
Mayland could train and provide a smooth transition for the residents and
medical students it just made sense to transition the work to those new people. After more than 6500 volunteer hours the
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| Patty & Craig - Munich |
219 was more travels than visitors – Mayland did join Sean in the states in February for two weeks, while Clark and MJ made it for one week. That is when we got to see family and friends. Mayland returned to the states to visit with Sean in March and attend David Spawn's 50th birthday party in NYC. Spring Break we were all together and visited the Island of Sicily in April. In May we made a long weekend trip to CERN to see the super collider a must do for every person who is thinking seriously about physics. Clark took his class trip to Rome and MJ spent some her summer in the states visiting friends. Thank you to the Post and Mazer-Stanley families for hosting her. Sean and I also had the opportunity to go to NYC in July to help Tod celebrate his 50th birthday. It was the 2nd time that year that I was able to visit with his mother Joyce and we were also able to spend time visiting with Sean's family Jean and Bob Birdsall along with seeing his best friend Eric. August was our big trip with friends Sven and Mindy - the Baltic cruise which included a full day tour of St. Petersburg (photos). Upon the return there was only a week before Sean flew to Sigonella to join his team heading to Africa. It was a lovely break in October to have Mayland's cousin, Craig and his partner Patty come and visit for two weeks. Traveling with them along the Moselle and Rhine rivers and then to Munich was very special. We love you all and wish more could have come
to visit during our 9 years of living in Deutschland. Select Photos from 2019 Clark will be here, so you will still have
time …
Love,
Peace and Happiness,
Sean, Mayland, Russell, Clark and MJ
