I’m not sure when the tradition started, but it seems like Andrea and I spend every non-sectarian holiday with Bob and Kathy Summers (and sometimes their with their daughter, Megan). New Year’s, Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day have become pretty much default days with the Summers.

I met Bob back in 1988 when we both worked at Northern Telecom but it wasn’t until we moved back from California in 1995 that we started hanging out much outside of the office.

Now, for much of the last year there was an additional member to this little group. Bob and Kathy had a foreign exchange student named Fanny living with them.

Fanny hails from Dresden, Germany. She was born the year the Wall fell, so I assume she remembers little of communist Germany, but she still made us watch Good Bye Lenin! (which was actually a pretty good movie).

During her nine months in the States I always had someone to tease and I got to learn a bunch of German words that apparently they don’t teach in school.

Another thing you could count on was that in a restaurant she would always find the least appetizing meal such as Black Bean Cakes at Cuban place (I had an excellent Ropa Vieja), and the infamous ‘Eat It With a Fork” burger (a burger covered in the most unappetizing looking chili that turned her into a vegetarian for a week).

Unfortunately, ever since the “North Carolina Spitting Camel” incident from Megan’s childhood, all new additions to the Summers household are warned about me. And since Fanny was pretty sharp to begin with, I was unable to teach her any new American phrases (May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?). Despite that she was fun to have around and will be missed.

She is back in Yurrip. Just before she left we got to meet her Dad, Uwe:

He didn’t speak much English, but it didn’t take him and Fanny long to kick our butts at Sequence.

After some interesting travel issues they made it safely back to Germany. It will be weird to head over to the Summers this week and her not be there, but we do send the occasional e-mails and she does read this blog, so once again it’s the Internet to the rescue.

Now, off to realign the spiral denebuli …