Going Crazy

Day number one. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! That is all I can say or think.  Maia and I got one of the 5 boxes today.  That is.... we looked over things and  split them into stack of pictures, letters, documents, irrelevants, newspapers, REALLY important, etc.  Then I picked up the thinest stack of letters that my Oma (grandmother) had already separated and labeled, and we began.  Maia is typing out the letters that were typed with a type writter and plugging them into Google Translate. (yes, yes I know this is cheating but there is just no way).  After she sends me the HORRIBLE translations, I read the German letters and re-do the translation, so that it actually makes sense.  The only reason the translator helps is because there are some words that I don't know, and it saves me the trouble of looking them up.  This is the easiest part.  Then comes the reason I am going CRAZY!!! The rest of the letters are written in old German scripts, Sütterlin.

Talk about a headache.

We've been working on these since noon and it is now 7:13 (with breaks, of course)...   I have barely made it through about 1 letter and a half (and that is simply adding the pieces of each that I can read).  I don't know what I'm gonna do.  Tomorrow we are gonna start scanning (more like Maia is gonna start scanning, and I'm gonna go nuts some more). 

Well, aside from how hard this is going to be, I want to share everything I have found… First, I found my grandmother’s notebooks from school in Berlin before they left in April of 1937. Here is a great drawing of how plants work.  Maia got a great kick out this, AND the fact that some of her, obviously really cool, friends are reading this blog.

    Maia's  new project at the end of the week will be to expand the family tree that I made and add the pictures that my grandmother had (again, very neatly labeled).   I can’t even begin to explain how shocked I am at the labels she put on some of these stacks.  They vary from:  “letters from my mom to my aunt” to “ information on such and such family.”  It is sooo crazy to think that she kept all of this labeled for someone to come and look at it.  At the same time, I have to say that it would have been nice if she hadn’t written her diaries in CODE!!!! Her own code!!!! My aunt informed me today that sometimes she wouldn’t even remember what she meant to write.  It looks just like Arabic to me, and the combination of that and the old German script, this project is starting to look scary.  Anyhow, I have got to get back to work!

                                      Here is the list of what went in each box on the boat over to Uruguay.....

Fun story of the day:  My aunt was at work all day today, and after lunch I went to wash the dishes to find no water… So, of  course, I called her and she told me to go across the hall and see if the apartment next door had water.  Since they were not there, Maia sat by the window and CREEPED on some neighbor who was cooking in his kitchen to see if when he went to wash his hands, there was water in his sink… Turns out the water came back and it was only because it had to be shut off for 10 minutes, due to some bathroom remodeling upstairs.  I have to say it was totally worth it, because watching Maia creep on the neighbor was priceless!!!!