BOSTON

The Annual Convention of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) took place in Boston this year. Luckily, Hanna was invited to present there. Hurray Boston!


Suresh Canagarajah, God of Language Policy.


Boston is full of beautiful architecture.



Our fancy-shmancy hotel

Our Italian restaurant


Friends and co-presenters: Gemma from Catalonia, Sachiko from Japan, Marina from Brazil. (We missed you, Sadaf from Pakistan!)




Hanna on Ivy League territory. The fascination with this elite college can't overrule the problematic role of private schools. Three cheers for public education!

John Harvard. Don't touch the shoe! Harvard students pee on it.



When looking for Quincy Market, we found the little town Quincy. Not the same but very pretty!




Skyping home. Awwww!




All in all Hanna had a great trip despite missing Samu and Marko like crazy. Oh yeah, and the presentation went very well, too.

EMAILING?

MAMAMAMAMA ...

ST. PATRICK'S DAY

St. Patrick brought the summer. And Marko brought a grill from his shopping trip. Under these circumstances it was easy to forget about work for a while and enjoy a picnic outside. Samu loved it and we've been doing it on a daily basis ever since (not the party aspects, but the sitting outside on a blanket).








The day after was beautiful too ;-)

SPRING HAS SPRUNG

This is the third post we blog with that same heading, but it has never been blogged so early in the year. In unbelievable 18°C, we enjoyed a wonderful walk around Lake Harriet. Samu had a LOT to look at, and he tested some new positions in the stroller.

Let's go!


He is walking with assistance. And he is fast!

BIRTHDAY BASH!

We finally did it! We've been wanting turn our house into a party zone since we moved here. To celebrate spring break and Hanna's birthday, we finally filled our house with fabulous people, our bellies with delicious food and our glasses with 'happy juice'. What an awesome party! Thank you, Marko!!! And thank you, friends, for making our evening (and life) rock!

Pre-party: Hanna and Michael Stipe

Sara, Gemma, Lisa

Chris and Kevin

Kaishan, Tracey, Cindy, Andie

Virgile's arm, Erica, Nelson, Auggie, Adam, Beth, Kaishan

Yichen, Andie, Beth, Kaishan (vertical)

Adam, Gemma, Sara

Leftovers (We need a leftover party!)

THANK YOU EVERYONE, those who are and those who are not in these pictures. We had a wonderful evening!


Just on time for Hanna's birthday, some great packages from Austria came. Here are some special ones: A beautiful card from a beautiful Mädi and THE textbook fresh from the press - finally!

EXCITED

Yes, Samuel is quite an excitement. He's also very often excited about stuff.
For example, about this awesome toy (thanks, Ben & Ingrid!) (Yep, he's also too fast for the camera.),

or about the runs with daddy,

about more toys,

about seeing the camera,

about seeing us (that's our favorite),

or about snow men and women.

He's not so excited about having to wait for someone to wake up and play with him.

Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!

When he's really, really excited, he screams.