grab the chips and popcorn, it's a long one

wow, so a lot has happened since i last updated. a quick overview would go something like this:
-i had my birthday
-the german placement test that i had to take placed me in a higher level of german that i thought i was at. however, the class meeting times didn't work out for me to take the higher level so i'm now getting a very solid understanding of some very basic things that will make my german infinitely better.
-i realized that i feel 20 and i actually am 20 (i finally feel my age!)
-i've been bitten, kicked, hit (pretty hard), pinched, had blood drawn (from very shallow wounds that will leave nice scars), and had my hair pulled by the oldest kid (raphael).
-we made a family contract with more strict consequences
-i was in the main salzburg newspaper
-i finally met someone my own age who lives near me and goes to my church (a wonderful pentecostal church with a not so wonderful service length of 2 hours! but it's all good since they have coffee and really good cake afterwards.)
-i started school
-i went to school with raphael for an english hour with his class and the teacher asked me if i can come back in november and december (if i am willing and have time)
-guys in my class started hitting on me
-guys at the "college age" group that meets on fridays started hitting on me
-i bought an AMAZINGLY awesome watch on e-bay austria (it's very feminine but incredibly cool at the same time!)
-raphael chipped his tooth on the bathtub during one of his totally out of control, 2-year-old fits
-i met an uzbekistani guy in my class (whose name is bekmurdo but goes by "beki" for short)
-i found out there is still a place where you can buy horse meat here in salzburg
-raphael and i are having more moments of getting along
-i started an aerobics class that is a lot of fun. but it takes two days for your body to understand what happened and finally become sore.
-i was basically (not officially) asked out by a turkish guy in my class.

whew! that was pretty much a chronological list of events since my last entry. i'm not going to explicate and expound on everything on this list because some of it is pretty self-explanatory. i will go into more detail about the issues with raphael, school starting, and the guy stuff (because i think it's pretty funny).

so, i was alone with the kids (i don't really remember why) and things had really gone pretty well all night. i had fed them and then it was just time to put them to bed. and everything was fine. until i went to go check on them a little after the lights were supposed to be out and they were supposed to be asleep. i go upstairs and find raphael in top bunk with david. (side note, all the kids sleep in the same room with raphael and jakob in normal beds on the floor and david in lofted bed with a ladder up to it.) i tell raphael to come down and sleep in his own bed. and he tells me "mommy told me i could sleep here." i'm like, " there is no way she told you that and not me." and he just kept on refusing and refusing to come down. so i finally had to climb up into the bed and try to bring him down. he starts kicking and screaming (literally) and tearing at my skin with his fingernails. i was eventually able to grab his hands and feet and had to apply a good amount of pressure to prevent him from pushing me off the top bunk and to keep him from inflicting any more pain to my person. (another side note, the bed isn't in a sort of box to support it. it has a series of flexible but sturdy strips of wood, or something, bound together). the other kids, david and jakob, were involved at this point yelling at me that they think they bed is going to break and that i should leave raphael alone. i let up a little on my pressure and manage to drag raphael down by his feet. as the top half of him comes down he pretty much lunges at me and grabs my hair. thankfully he didn't get a good hold and he isn't strong enough to pull very much out. but i must say, it did not feel good. by this point we're out of the kids bedroom and we head into the bathroom, where raphael is crying hard enough he could have thrown up. i apologize to the other kids saying, "i'm sorry you had to see that" and tell them i love them and i hope they sleep well. then it's just me and raphael in the bathroom. he crying about as hard as a kid whose beloved dog has just been run over. i'm just looking at him. he yells at me, "i'm NOT saying i'm sorry!" i just nod my head and he screams, "NO! I'M NOT!" i simply continue nodding my head, not saying a word. (side note, i didn't yell or raise my voice during the whole incident. raphael was the one doing all the screaming.) i finally got him to go back to bed. the whole interaction was only about 20 minutes but it was probably the most stressful 20 minutes of my time here so far.

it is a direct result of that incident that we made a family contract where we all signed that we would follow the family rules and it was also a way of letting the kids know that there will be stricter consequences for not following the rules. it also states that i have the same amount of authority as thomas and birgit and that the kids have to obey me.

the second fairly big situation that came up was when raphael, in a fit of wildness, decided he wanted to see what the bathtub tasted like. or maybe he wanted to know which one was harder, his teeth or the bathtub. or perhaps he just wasn't aware of what he was doing. anyway, this one happened a few weeks after the one above and it was about getting ready for bed. he just didn't want to is what it boils down to. he kept saying he wanted to wait for mom to come home and get ready for bed with her but i kept telling him she would be home too late and that he had to go to bed now. this time he was only rolling around on the floor and kicking, but not kicking me. he knew better. he knew i would win. :) at any rate, i had to get david ready for bed also so i left raphael in the bathroom to get ready for bed on his own, and as a 7 year old he is quite capable of that, for 45 minutes. i figured, i'll let him be until it's time for lights out and then i MUST do something. i had tried helping him get into his PJs earlier but it was pretty impossible. so i go into the bathroom at 7:30, time for lights out, and he's still on the floor, crying and fully clothed (i.e. not in his PJs). (side note, he's wearing a jersey that might have been expensive or something. i don't really know). i start to "help" him out of his jersey and he starts screaming that i owe him 1000 euro for touching his jersey and, in an act of trying to prevent me from making further progress in the "putting on PJs" campaign, he lunges at the bathtub, mouth first. i hear a pretty terrible noise that i knew meant things were not okay. i was pretty sure there was going to be blood gushing out of his mouth and he would have a nice gap in his smile. but i looked and there wasn't any blood anywhere and it looked like all his teeth were still in his head. but he was crying out of pain now and holding his mouth. this is going to sound really terrible, but since he was now dealing with the pain in his mouth he didn't care anymore that i was putting his PJs on (i.e. making my job 154% easier). i put him to bed and he was still crying and holding his mouth. just before i left he brought his hand away from his tooth and showed some white stuff in the palm of his hand. shortly after birgit and thomas got home and i told them what happened. birgit went upstairs to see how bad things really were. a little later she calls me up and tells me that raphael wants to apologize for being so wild. and he DID! she took him to the dentist the next day but he can't do anything until the tooth is fully grown in.

the best thing about the family situation here is that thomas and birgit back me up on all these hard situations that have come up. there are some changes that need to take place on their end but they are really sweet and supportive. things really are getting better though. they aren't as hard any more but i wanted to let you guys know some of the stuff that i've had to go through since being here.

this is turning into the epic of all epics, showing me that i really need to update more often with little updates and not huge mega-entries.

i think i'll put the guy stuff with school stuff because they go pretty much together and i'm sure there will be much more on this subject to update on later.

school started and my teacher is AWESOME! he's explaining things in wonderful detail which makes the language make so much more sense. and for me a lot of this is information is telling me why is say things the way i do. i found out there are 8 different ways to make a plural in german but he gave us a few pointers on how to tell which plural form it might be. that has been most helpful so now i'm not just making up random plural forms of words. now i'm still making up plural forms but it's not as random anymore. it's a little bit more educated. he also does a great job of explaining subtle difference in the meanings of words like "billig" and "guenstig" (which mean "cheap" and "inexpensive" in english). on the surface they mean the same thing but you have to know the cultural context to know that "billig" means something is being sold at a low price because it's low quality.

the only problem with my class is that it has 75 people in it. there are people there from all kinds of countries. i've met people from iran, turkey, uzbekistan, and england but i know that there are some spaniards, indians, and americans in the class too. i've heard that usually the class ends up separating, voluntarily, into language groups. the people i've made friends with, though, are mostly of the non-english speaking sort. namely turks, an iranian lady, and an uzbekistani guy. and, interestingly, most of them are guys. they just keep coming up and introducing themselves to me. i'm definitely not going out of my way to meet the guys in my class. so, on friday one of these overly eager guys suggested that, you know, sometime it might be cool, if i had some free time, to, maybe, go to a disco or a movie or just go for a walk together. and i, being way too nice and surprised, say it's possible but i have plans for the next couple of weekends. his name is murat, i think, and he's turkish. i'm not interested at all but i'm too nice to flat out say no. i need get better at that. i think i might get myself into trouble otherwise.

there's a lot more i could tell you guys about but this already rivals the britannica encyclopedia for length so i'll save that for the next (hopefully soon in coming) entry.