Homepage of the Walendzik family

	from the left: Julia (17) with Elias, Michael, Anke, Simon (16)

Contents

• About us

• Some of our favorite links

• Proposals, comments, links...

About us

Our family as it exists now is rather young. Anke and Michael as parents got married in March, 1997.We got to know each other in the end of 1995 in our choir of "Markus-Kantorei" in Cologne, where Michael, Anke and Julia are still singing regularily. Julia and Simon are Anke´s children from her first marriage. They still meet their father Ulrich at least once a week. On September 29, 1997 our youngster and Michael´s and Anke´s common child was born: Elias. He has Down-Syndrome As every other baby he has changed our family and has become a new center of love for all of us.

At the present moment our role model is different to that of most other families. Anke is working 70% part-time and Michael is staying at home with Elias. Additionally to the normal daily work in a family of five persons we are attending some special therapies and groups with Elias. Since more than a year we wish Elias was included in the same daycare and preschool group where his older sibs had been some years ago. Then Michael could continue his studies to be a teacher. But in this question up to now we have made the worst experiences concerning Elias´ handicap. We have already written piles of applications to different administrations but the only effect is that he is not allowed to visit that group. We think those problems don´t result from Elias´concrete abilities and disabilities but rather of the stigma he is carrying because of DS. That is making us very sad. But on the other hand we even learn a lot by struggling, and those bad experiences are outweighed by the joy Elias has given to our family.

Addition, march 99:

Hooray, Elias will be included! From august 99 he will attend the daycare and preschool group. But we are still fighting for an aide with the Cologne town administration.

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Some of our favorite links
(there are more links on the sites of our family members)

• Music in the Markus-church (in german) here you find everything about concerts, adresses and contacts

• City-Guide Cologne (mostly in german) here you find a map and culturell and actuell informations and many other things about cologne

• Free download of ICQ, a chatprogram used regularily by Anke, Julia and Michael (sometimes)

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Proposals, comments, links...

Please send us an e-mail and tell us what you think about our homepage or how we can improve it. Please help us to correct our English!!!
If you know any links to complete our favorite link-collections, please let us know. Thank you!

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