Screw you, Google Adsense and Street Art, Street Art, Street Art!

Kreuzberg

Well, my ploy to make money with my blog has been stifled.  Google AdSense caught on that I was asking people to click on my ads and they said, "No more!"  I appealed and they still said no, so I don't get my $100 you all helped my make.  Oh, well.  No worse off then I was.  It's just that, damn, I've got to figure out how to have a little money coming in.  Just a little.  But this will happen.  I just have to keep doing what I'm doing.
My new living situation is awesome.  I have free rent and community! I get along very well with the kids (Younis-2, Juliet-8, Josh-12) and Sybille and Ebrahim (the parents) are really lovely people with a stellar parenting style.  My privacy and space is respected.  I often eat dinner with them.  I trade my childcare skills for a room that reminds me a little bit of this painting:
 
The tub in the bathroom is small and tiled blue, with a window and blue tile shelf to the rear of it.  I feel extremely lucky.
I am happy to have an 8 year old back in my life.  Juliet is a whirlwind of energy.  Latte-skin and dark, curly hair, her English is remarkable.  We are going to make a stop-motion film.  We start building our small set next week.
My German is much better than it was when I landed here four months ago.  It's a fun language, with words like velleicht, abscheulich, and genau.  My pronunciation is often bad, but I am beginning to write better in German and my vocabulary is slowly increasing.  Instead of taking another possibly bad Deutschkurs, I have sent out requests for more tandem speaking partners.  It looks like I will have between 3 and 5 partners with which to speak.  I will help them with their English and they will help me with my German.  Like evolution, learning a language is about slow change over time.
But enough text for now.  I have emails from even more people who are looking for tandem partners, so I'll post some photos and then spend a long time with my German-English dictionary, trying to answer the emails in German.
Lately I've been paying special attention to street art, murals, stencils and wheat-pastes.  This is not even a drop in the bucket of the public art that delights my eyes everyday.  I hope you like it.

Neukölln, Military out of Afghanistan

Neukölln

Neukölln, I am trying to find this balance, and BOY is it tough!

Neukölln, Fight German War Politics

Clowns in the window on Reuterstraße, Neukölln

Paving stones.  Some workers were repaving part of the sidewalk. 

Neukölln

Neukölln, Lieb1614 stays!  You often see this type of graffiti on buildings where the tenants are having landlord problems.  Most common is "Wir Alles Bleiban" (We all stay)  Unfortunately, the people who lived here were evicted by a new owner so he could raise the rent.

Neukölln

Neukölln

Along the canal.  See the woman's body in the tree?

Neukölln

Charlie Chaplin in Kreuzberg!