Toronto, January 2, 2004
Manya and Friedrich Brunzema with Lukas, Anna and Yannik
45 Wiley Avenue
Toronto, ON
M4J 3W3
email: m_brunzema@yahoo.com or manya@dsl.ca
and brunzefb@yahoo.com (Friedrich)
Web: (new Address!!!) : http://www.wiznet.ca/~dsl_manya/
Tel. 416-406-1763
Fax: 905-761-3459
We seem to be late this year again with our yearly letter - we were simply not able to write in time for Christmas or for the New Year. We want to rectify this and would like to extend our thanks to those who sent us greetings for the holidays. We hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and could take some time to relax. Lukas is turning 7 years old this week and was hoping to receive Christmas gifts that related to fighting in one-way or another. As a compromise we settled on a knight's play-castle, complete with tower and drawbridge. Anna wanted primarily things that were both "pink" and "sparkly". Both of them are typical boy and girl in this regard. Yannik is still a bit young, so it’s hard to know his real preferences; he plays with anything that has wheels, with soccer balls as well as with Anna's high heel shoes, Barbies and necklaces. For his age (almost 2 years old) he is physically very tall and big, and is developing his vocabulary, acting like a little parrot at times. He is still a very relaxed and balanced child. For New Year's day, we had friends over that were arriving with 5 persons from Quebec; to this another family from the neighborhood with two kids joined us for part of the evening and we all had a very nice time. The New Year begins with sadness for us, because our Pastor and good friend Wolf Belzing, whom we have known for the past 12 years, passed away on January 1st after a two year fight with cancer. His passage was sudden, since he still celebrated Christmas services on the 24th and 25th.
Unfortunately in 2003 Toronto was often in the headlines of the newspapers, and we are grateful that that none of the calamites really touched us. The only real consequence of the SARS outbreak was that both our physician and dentist would send us home immediately if we had had a small fever. The great blackout in the summer of 2003 was a nuisance but we made the best of it. Since we have a gas stove, we invited another family to dinner, using up our freezer reserves in a candle-lit kitchen. The kids had a lot of fun with electric flashlights, and loved the ice cream that had to be eaten. We had a good sense of community feeling and one could even see the stars over Toronto at night! The power outage would not have been that fun had it occurred during the wintertime.
For our two big kids the biggest changes in the last year were probably related to school. Lukas is now in grade one in the French Immersion, and now attends school from 9 to 3:30 in the afternoon. Anna started Junior Kindergarten in September in the afternoons in the English language. She has very rapidly adapted to this new environment, and can already recognize and write a lot of letters in the alphabet. She finally has more than just one girlfriend; for her fourth birthday (a princess party) she invited four other little girls.
This year Lukas has a teacher whom he likes a lot, which in turn motivates him to learn. It's quite extraordinary what he is capable of in terms of French conversation. However, he seems to miss some elements of playful learning that were there in the Kindergarten; grade one is a bit more serious in terms of learning. In the beginning it was also not easy to have lunch in the school gym with hundreds of other kids; to finish lunch quickly and then move to play outside. Lukas is in school the whole day, and is now more subject to the influences of his peers. Sometimes he can’t understand why he cannot have a Sony Playstation or why he is not able to see the Lord of the Rings at a movie Theatre. Fortunately his closer friends and their families are very nice -- it's still the same core of people that fight wind and weather on the playground. As a consequence many of Lukas’ and Anna’s friends are not even in their classes. With one child in school for the full day and another for one half day I have 6 daily trips to the school. This increase in mileage is offset a bit by the fact that I am alone with Yannik in the afternoons. The school dictates a lot of the daily routine from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon. After this, the kids usually have some playtime with other kids. On some days this means looking at the watch constantly and constantly dressing and undressing the kids.
In the last year, Lukas has learned to swim, and is really enthusiastic about continuing the courses. Anna is in a church choir and is part of a Jazz dance program for little ones. Family stuff aside; I am still working at the Deutsche Rundschau, a monthly German paper for which I do the proofreading. Other than that, I did manage to write an entry for an Art-History dictionary; this dealt with the artist I researched for my doctoral thesis. Last year Friedrich was also away on business trips more than in previous years. This year, I took some courage and hired an external babysitter (who is not my mother-in law) for the first time in seven years. This 18-year-old girl is the daughter of friends from Church, which leads us to the topic of our summer vacation. This year we rented a cottage on lake Huron from the same family, and we stayed a full fantastic two weeks. The place was rustic, but quiet, and we were happy that there was no television. It was the longest family vacation we had ever had, and we hope for a repeat in 2004.
Manya has already reported the most pertinent things, but I will also write a bit. Work wise I am still at MDS SCIEX, and deal with Mass Spectrometer software. I am no longer a team-lead, but rather work on special projects. I also deal more with customers, which means that I traveled to the United States, Sweden and Germany (Berlin) in the last year. I see the work-related changes as a good thing - I am no longer directly involved in the various software projects that have tight deadlines. There were also some positive management changes at SCIEX, and we are trying to introduce new software methodologies such as Extreme Programming. 2003 was also the year of the kidney stones for me; I passed several without too much pain, but had one incident where I had to go the hospital.
This year I have restarted with my beer-brewing hobby, and have increased my brewing capacity in such a way that I can now do about 35 liters at once. I am continuing to learn a lot about the process, and the quality of the product keeps improving. I hope to be able to post some pictures about the process on our web page later this year.
At the end of November, I was invited to participate in a mini-choir consisting of 7 persons. Burkhart Möller, an organ builder now living in Missisauga gave me a call asking if I would be interested in singing a few German Christmas carols. His wife, Katharina, was also singing and is a pastor at St. Georges, our sister congregation here in Toronto. Another organ builder with some formal musical training joined in with his wife and acted as our choir director. We were able to perform in two afternoon services at St. Georges and at another German congregation in Unionville.
Other than that, I can say that the children are for the most part ;-) a joy, especially little Yannik, who always comes to me with his books because he wants me to read to him. In the evenings, Manya gets the older kids to bed, and I take care of the little guy.
We will try to keep our website a little bit more up to date; we have had some problems with our provider, who got bought out by another firm. As a consequence, our website was unavailable for months on end. These problems seem to have sorted themselves out, and now the website is back at a different URL address (see the beginning of this letter for the link).
All of us would like to wish you all the best for the year to come; may God richly bless each and every one of you.
