In German school, we celebrated carnival, and we had to come to school dressed up. My brother went as a golfer, wearing checkered pants, and borrowing a golf club and hat from Teb, so that was an easy disguise. My sister went as Pippi Longstocking, unfortunately she was not the only Pippi. So I turned out to be the only original Dracula. I just did not brush my teeth for a week, which was no big deal since I forget it very often anyway, put on a black cloak and made fearful noises. Luckily the girls in the classroom did not bring any garlic so I could freely bite them. In Uzbekistan, over 80% of the population is Muslim and therefore, Easter is not celebrated. Our beloved chocolate eggs are nowhere to be found. But we still celebrated it, my mother baked raisin bread and prepared stuffed eggs, and we painted Easter eggs and made real works of art out of them.

We like to do creative art work of any sort. Together with Teb we built a raft with a sail to cross the swimming pool. It appeared that it would sink if one of us used it. However, it could carry our dog Tobias. Not that he really liked to sail the wild waters, but we though it was fantastic! The swimming pool is small but very nice, and it belongs to the house we have just moved into. Nine months of the year you can find us there. The pool has no pump so we have to change the water every week. This means the water does not really heat up and you have to be strong to be able to swim. That is good because up to now it has kept my mother out and that leaves more space for us.The crocodile is our favorite animal and it is much stronger than the raft: it can carry us all at once. This pool is inhabited by many sorts of animals, by the way. Another crocodile, an octopus, a dragon...

In May 2003 my little sister Anna was born, so now there is four of us, almost a crowd. Because of my mothers maternity leave we were able to have a very long holiday. So we went to the Netherlands for over two months. In the first two weeks we rented a sailing boat and sailed over the Ijsselmeer. Even though the weather was not too good, we had a lot of fun. One day we went to the castle in Muiden, which I found really interesting. 

I could imagine how those knights must have lived. They also had a falcon. There was a man telling stories about the use of this bird, and some children were allowed to hold it. I was lucky, because many children were waiting in line and I was chosen. It was quite a frightening experience, and I had to wear a special glove to protect me against its vicious claws.
We also went to Slagharen fun park. Vincent and I went into the "Free fall". of course my sister Elodie did not join us, she was too frightened, but what can you say, she is a girl. We thought it was big fun, but when I put my thumb of my right hand in the air, I grabbed the safety bar extremely firmly with my left hand. We survived. There was no queue but my mother would not allow us to go again. Here you can see us take a bath during one of our Sunday trips to the mountains. We did not bring any bathing suits but that did not matter, there was nobody around. We forgot our mother's telelens...she seems to really like to picture us in our natural costume. The very first picture of Elodie was the same. She should be careful, otherwise her site might be classified as not suitable for children.