I'm slow about this, but just found out about an article at HSLDA about very good friends of ours. Oh, and I forgot that our new computer (or Vista or what? I don't know--it's just annoying...) won't believe me that I want to allow pop-ups, so I couldn't do the link, so here it is to click on or copy and paste: http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/200811070.asp .

The first family mentioned is the one that prompted me to write my last entry, in which I could say NOTHING at all. They had to be sure of getting safely out of the country first! They stayed with us for a couple of days before flying out (because they were literally and quite reasonably scared to stay at home!), which was a treat for us, although the reason was of course sad. They're doing well in the U.S., but it's quite an adjustment for them.

Then in the article about the Gorber family it mentiones another hearing on November 12th, which did happen, and yes, the parents have full custody again. The report I was given (I receive the e-mail updates from schuzh, the German equivalent of HSLDA) was quite upbeat and positive about it all, but I found it very sad: after all, the children ARE in school, which is not where the parents want them! But they are also at home outside of school hours, so that's the compromise they're living with right now. Not mentioned in the HSLDA article were two points that I found rather telling. One, the judge commented that it's impressive how well the parents have done with the children "despite the unusual background"--in other words, that "even though" they have been homeschooled until recently, they're all doing extremely well academically and socially in public school. "EVEN THOUGH"!!! I submit that that it would be more accurate to say "BECAUSE"!! The other point was that there was a decision being made about whether the court would recommend a social worker visiting the family regularly to help them with their parenting skills, and the judge said that as there is no longer any basis of trust between the parents and the social services, that wouldn't likely be effective, so no, the court didn't recommend imposing that.

To update on our family, we won't be trying to homeschool in Germany much longer: we have one-way flights booked to Cyprus in less than nine weeks. Very, very weird for me to think about: although we have spent rather a lot of time outside of Germany in the last few years (a total of 12 months out of 36, not counting short trips to Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, etc.), Germany has been my home for over 17 years. It's been the place I keep my books and photo albums and (since we got married and I stopped taking him with me everywhere I went...) my lion cub, Cubby. But my books and photo albums, and Cubby too, are all moving to Cyprus with us in two months.