LOL Sonja!
You won't believe what happened yesterday. I barely believe it myself. We had a BBQ with 18 people altogether. Friends with their kids plus our Americans plus friends of Hannah. The teenagers were by far in the majority!
Anyway, we were sitting in my yard and all of a sudden heard a very loud noise. We all knew immediately that something big had crashed down. It was one of those situations where you just
knew it. We all jumped up and rounded the corner to my garden - and saw nothing but a big cloud of dust, still fanning out.
I was totally shocked, fearing a part of our house had crashed down. After the dust had settled, we saw that it was part of our neighbour's barn. Part of it crashed into one of our small outbuildings (we call it our witchhouse), part directly behind the swing set.
The pictures don't even look as dramatic as it is, because everything is totally overgrown and you see only a part of the bricks, the rest is in the gap between our witchhouse and the barn.
The building to the left of the swing set is the witchhouse, the one behind is the neighbour's barn. Imagine if the kids had been on the swing set at that moment.
I went over to the neighbours, asking them to come and look, but they refused. They said they had heard it too and they would take care of it. They'll call a company to shore up the wall until the barn can either be restored or torn down.
For now, this corner of the garden and the swing set is off limits to everybody.
So long, so bad. But the night got worse. Three of Hanna's friends and her slept downstairs in the living room. They wanted to watch a horror movie and do their teenagers' stuff without us. So Jens and I dutyfully went to bed at one point, only to have Hannah knocking at our door around two am.
One of the boys was feeling very, very sick, he was in real bad pain. Stomach pain, gut cramps, coming and going. He had been sick for the whole week, but not like that. So I decided to bring him to the hospital and we called his parents. Now comes the part I barely can believe myself: his parents refused to come and meet us at the hospital. They said the drive is too far in the middle of the night. It's 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the route.
So all four German teenagers (the Americans were in bed at that point) and I drove to the hospital and sat it out in the waiting room. The doctors couldn't tell on the sport what's up, but his vitals were okay and so they kept him for more physicals (? correct expression?), which will be done today. They gave him painkillers and put him to bed last night.
That's when I decided we all go home. The poor boy wanted his parents to come and his GF called his parents
again, asking them to come. But again they refused.
I can't tell you how shocked I am! At least the GF's mom came and took her daughter home. The girl was so distraught, she wanted her mom, and the mom came directly after one call. Like it should be.
My daughter, her friend and I came home by 3.30 this morning. And I had so much caffeine and adrenaline in my system that I still was awake by 4:30. Heard the birds wake up at 3:45, watched the sky grow a tiny bit brighter at four and dawn coming up about a quater past four.
Now Jens went back to bed for a nap, the teenagers hang out in my living room, which looks like a summer camp, with all the cushions gone from the couch and lying around, sleeping bags everywhere and stale air.
In two hours, they will all be gone for Hannah's Handball tournament (except my two younger kids) and then I will go back to bed, too.
Now that was a long story. I tell you, I feel as if someone had transported me into a parallel universe. I barely can belive what happened in the last 17 or so hours.