This last weekend was awesome.
Really. It was great. I have this Uncle, you see. He's my greatuncle(brother of my grandfather on my father's side), and named Bill. Uncle Bill is really into geneaology and turned 70 on Saturday. He celebrated his birthday in Germany not because he or I live here, no, he lives in Alaska. Uncle Bill traced our family heritage back to 1860 when a german woman named Elisabeth Ruppel came to America and found a german man named Killian Seckinger.
This weekend I got to know her brothers great great great grandchildren. My fifth cousins, twice removed.
At Uncle Bill's birthday party on Saturday there were thirtyfive people, all of which I am somehow related to. Is that not so cool? He invited a hundred people, but some were sick or lived too far away or weren't interested. But all of the people who were there were so nice! Awesome people.
We stayed over at the house of Bill's third cousins Heinrich and Hilde Ruppel. We stayed there two nights in this tiny town Rebgeshain at the top of the highest point in Hessen in the middle of Germany. Hessen is full of these tiny villages. A beautidul area. About four hundred people live in Rebgeshain and I am related to about two hundred of them in some distant way.
My Uncle Bill can speak some german, but not quite as good as me. He gets his points across, and he speaks well, but sometimes I was so lucky enough to translate for him. Which is SUPER fun by the way, I mean it.
Rebgeshain, my ancestral home, is about two and a half hours by car away from Recklinghausen, where I live. And Uncle Bill drove me there and back and I got to hear all the stories about our heritage. Interesting stuff.
And on Sunday the Christmas package from my parents came, with filberts and sweaters and a webcam!
And to top off this incredible weekend, or maybe to balence it out, I fell flat on my face today in Eurythmie class. Actually. On my cheek, I hae a bruise. How embarassing is that?
Much love,
Emma
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4 comments:
That's so great! Do you think you'll keep in touch with any of your distant cousins?
Do you have those ridiculous copper Eurythmy balls? They're so cool, but I always dropped them on my toes when I was in school.
I hope to visit my cousins again sometime in the future when I have a free weekend, but we'll see.
I haven't yet seen any kind of copper balls. But we're doing intervals and chords, I don't yet know how to dance my name. But I think someday I'll learn.
That's awesome. I love falling into surreal situations where you meet new cooky but lovable people... Quite typical that you fell on your face by the way, I'm fairly sure you're the most accident prone person I know.
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