We are in Los Angeles meeting the Hawaiian SoCal branch of the family and Kaleo has just come up with some new plans foe the future upon seeing the vast labyrinth of freeways: he says he wants to put all cars underneath the concrete, essentially putting all traffic underground and free up the surface for electric cars, skateboards and scooters. What a concept! Came up with this completely by himself.
Pic is Uroma Ida at age 91 active like a spring chicken & Kaleo, the muscleman.
Kaleo was at the open house of the fire brigade and got this certificate:
certificate for Kaleo
Friends Paul and his Mami Monika were also there:
my friend Paul Goriss
a burnt out subway train was to be seen. The heat was unbearable, we cooled off at Sendlinger Tor fountain….
Can you believe that we translated the above kids classic into Hawaiian? And the syllables actually mostly fit…
i wrote it down on the blackboard
Can some native Hawaiian please verify and let us know if this makes any sense?done
Today, Kaleo had his pink Ukulele at school for show&tell of Americana north AND south (well, we thought since Hawaii was taken over a while ago, the Uku would qualify and the alternative to bring in was an empty shower gel container, shaped like Spiderman). After class we stopped by Cafe Leuchtenberg at the corner for a little snack. And that’s when it happened:
I asked Kaleo if he wanted to perform a song in there, perhaps “Es Gibt Kein Bier Auf Hawaii” and he agreed. Once inside I noticed the larger than usual crowd: our friends, the old folks at the corner table, but also a bunch of new customers I had never seen. After buying a bottle of water, I thought the owners might not really approve of us making music right then and there and bringing even more disturbance than Kaleo was already creating with his frantic Spiderman stories.
So we left.
But then Kaleo said right outside the Cafe why we did not play anything. I said, we could do it and I will accompany him, but he would have to promise me, that he would sing.
So we went inside again and asked to play a tune.
Kaleo sang great, halfway through he forgot the lyrics, but made up some new stuff, that actually rhymed and sounded good. I played along on the Ukulele.
People loved it, they clapped, they wanted more, one woman gave Kaleo 1 Euro and said he should buy himself a “Bonbon”.
Outside the cafe again, Kaleo said to me that he sang all wrong and I explained to him what improvisation meant and what a great skill it was.
So here I am just adding something we recently recorded to showcase Kaleo’s improvisational abilities: La Cucaracha!
la-cuca
Just a little snow it snowed and it melted throughout the course of the day too, but for Kaleo the world had changed. For a child this white stuff that comes out of the sky is just completely fascinating. Why does it snow? What is it exactly? Well, I can eat it and eat it and….I can form little balls and throw them, if I throw them in puddles, they disintegrate…
Oma bought a whole snow outfit plus gloves, hats, scarf etc. The boots Kaleo loves too.
At the playground.
and Stadtpark.
We are all looking forward to a white christmas. Opa already bought skis for him. We have a sled, we are ready to go!!!!
He is the smart one of this family.
Kaleo entered pre-school September 13th for the first time. Oh man, were we nervous. More than him perhaps? Yes, maybe. The school is an international Montessori facility for 2.5-6 year olds, located in Laim, actually prime-Laim I should add, south of the Boulevard (=Agnes-Bernauer Street). For the uninitiated, who have neither been to Los Angeles, or Munich: Laim is the neighborhood next to Pasing, regular people, working-class traditionally, but also with a fair share of unique Villas.
montessori preschool laim
Now of course two major streets divide Laim, one of them Landsbergerstrasse, one of the busiest streets in Munich. But nonetheless Laim is still very green with lots of nice old trees, open space and public places. The great thing is, that by bike our apartment in Pasing is only 10 minutes away. With bus and Tram about 20. How good we have it. A lot of the other parents have to steer their Porsche SUV’s and black BMW sedans through dense traffic from the other side of town (the wealthier, hipper side). Then they have to stop their X5’s and silver Mercedes 500s on the sidewalk to unload their kids before they drive off to a hair/nail/DVD club appointment, a tennis lesson or a meet and greet at the husbands firm (the husband who invariably seems to work in international finance, mergers&acquisitions and/or pharmaceutical). Oh man, do I sound bitter and cynical? Why can’t I just write about Kaleo’s first day at schoool? Well, because I came back to my hometown, thrilled to leave the materialism, that is so associated with the American lifestyle, behind in favor of a more community oriented living, dominated by different values. And then we send Kaleo to a pricey private school, where of course one is confronted with the types of people, whose definition of personal success must include driving around in a large vehicle.
I should have known, cause I grew up here. Munich was always different than Berlin in this regard, it was always dominated by the international law firms located here, by the entertainment business, by the new-rich celebrities, who took over Starnberg long before Robert Probst was born.
In that sense I feel I am back in LA, where appearance matters so much more than substance.
But don’t get me wrong: the above paragraph was necessary for venting. We like it alot here.
And Kaleo likes pre-school too. After the first few weeks of asking “Why do I have to go to school?” and comments such as “I want to stay with you at home”, he continues to whine occassionally on the way to the school, but once he sees his buddies and teachers a smile takes over and his excitement is unstoppable. I like the teachers, the headmaster Gordon is a very nice guy, American married to a German woman.
What else can I say about the school? Ach ja, the harvest festival in late October was a stinker, primarily because it felt like high school reunion, with the blond dummies (who have by way of focused and lenghty gold-digging found true love (!!!!)) still treat the people with a brain/conscious/real passion and/or cause as somehow subhuman. Why do I care? Man, I don’t know….maybe because I want this school experience to be so much more, so much more, and here is the word again, community oriented. I don’t expect to find all my new best friends there, but I am also unwilling to accept that whenever I drop him or pick him up I get those looks from the cheerleader section. I am not 16 anymore and neither are they. And with their stupidity they are diminishing my experience too.
Whatever. I set out to write about Kaleo. And I vented a little. So what. It is still awesome to take the bus and drop him off, pick him up, have a little cake at the Cafe with the old folks, who love him so much, then go home, play with the kids from the ground floor Jonathan and Elena, and so on. He says nothing about what they do at school. All my questions go nowhere. totally fine. I was the same. It is fascinating how he adapted to the new situation with new people though. I was not like that as I can remember. I was way more a loner at that age. Way more shy.
He already giggles about girls, Sophie in particular. Last time i pointed at a pencil case at a store he said “girls have that”….
Daddy did that!
Halloween was of course slightly lame compared to the United States, but it was fun nonetheless, cause we took the kids from downstairs, dressed up and ran around in the dark Stadtpark a bit, making up stories of ghosts and scaring poor pedestrians….
Lots of pix soon to follow I hope, they are in development. Check back soon.
We bought this mask for Kaleo, he calls it the “Dio Fuchs” since he associates it with an album cover by Ronnie James Dio.
We went twice to the Oktoberfest this year, Kaleo’s first time ever!!! A lot of drunk, red-faced Bavarians were there too, even at 10 in the morning there were plenty, some clinging to Kaleo’s carousel and mumbling crazy stuff….
Oma and Opa went on the bumper car ride, Daddy went into a roller-coaster called “Space World” and almost threw up on it…ahhh, getting older…
movie in here from Opa soon.
Kaleo sez: ” I am too young for this crazy s*^#@!!!!”
here you can see them putting up one of the holy halls of beer consumption, holding 3000 people at a time…
mighty Bavaria statue, our Lady Liberty, also at Oktoberfest site.
actually my bday...
oh wait….that was MY birthday with a gift from daddy for daddy to use with daddy, ultimately benefiting Kaleo.
The cake we got from Laim and from Opa Kaleo got a trampolin.
we had a nice get together with kids from the house on Saturday. Sybille came too and stayed for dinner. Played in the yard in Pasing, went to Stadtpark briefly too.
…and we homemade our invites of course!!!
Thanks for your patience. Here we go: some new movies inside this entry, one featuring Kaleo’s new friend Constantin, another one a little clip about our artistic creations, and here as a teaser, a radio play with Kaleo’s voice:
doneConstantin is my friend Sybille’s son. They live 5 minutes from us in U-heim and are about the same age. He calls Kaleo “Leo”.
donedone
