St Martin's Day

On Friday late afternoon Jakob had his first big event at the kindergarten – the annual lantern festival marking the celebrations of StMartin’s Day. Following the tinkering of the lantern a few weeks ago the three of us made our way towards a park nearby our son’s kindergarten together with the lantern at dusk. We arrived shortly before 1630, had the candle in the lantern lit by one of Jakob’s educationists and soon after we strolled through the park altogether. The older children were singing the classical songs “Laterne, Laterne, Sonne, Mond und Sterne” and “Ich geh mit meiner Laterne” while the Rookies like our sunshine were rather just walking along and looking around what was going on there. It must have been even more funny to watch from outside than it was for us being part of the ceremony.

This is serious stuff!!

After a round in the park the oldest group of children performed a play in English language telling the story of Holy Martin who was a soldier and helped out an old homeless man with half his coat on a cold and snowy night. The children did an excellent job as it is already a challenge at that age to perform a play in generally, but even more so in English (especially as none of them is an English native speaker). The play was followed with one more song before the warm tea, croissant and open sandwiches were served. On our way home Jakob insisted on having the candle lit all the way long and thus Markus had to lighten-up the candle over and over again. That evening Jakob also could only fall asleep with the lantern, sitting on the window board, lit.


Jakob, Kerstin & Markus