Today was a loooooooooooooong day so I’m going to be brief. First of all I woke up in the MORNING! Before noon Ezra and I were on the bus for the Berlin city bus tour. After the tour we went to the Pergamon museum which is one of the world’s best collections of ancient Greek and Roman art. We wandered around and took some good pictures for close to 4 hours (the place was massive). Then we went to the East Side Gallery (woop!woop! East Side!) which is a portion of the Berlin wall which has various murals painted on it by different artists from around the world. It was freezing cold at -14 C (obviously it’s outside) but worth it. I’ll be posting pix soon.
The museums were nice blah blah blah but the best moment of the day was in the evening when Katharina called us from the hospital to get us to read a hospital report which was in English. The report identifies certain problem areas for the infant but as a matter of routine also lists areas that were tested where there were no problems. Where the infant was normanl the results were noted like this: Kidneys: unremarkable; Neurology: unremarkable. Then there was a word that stood out–Genitals: male. What? Ezra and I were cracking up. We thought maybe she had meant to write “gender: male”, an innocent mistake when writing in a second language.
It turns out that for babies, in infancy there can be ambiguous genitalia or with some male babies the genitalia can be inside. For this reason it is common practice to make note of the infant’s genitalia. While she is explaining this to us both us desperately trying not to laugh, Ezra says “then why don’t they say ‘genitals: penis and balls hanging out’?” Whatever they say, just don’t say “genitalia: unremarkable”–kid’ll have a complex for life!
Wrestling with Philosophy 
Have you read \”Middlesex\” by Jeffrey Eugenides? I recommend it. Did I ever tell you that I passed Hard-Boiled Wonderland on to Jarrett and he became enamoured of Murakami and bought several of his books. I recently read Wind Up Bird. Loved it. I am now reading that Follett thing, Pillars of the Earth. You are right: interesting story, dreadful writing. We should show him how it's done, right?Anyhow, read Middlesex and see how much you laugh after that.
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