Spring Sunshine!

We have been so lucky lately with our weather. All last week was high teens/low twenties and sunshine. This weekend was the same, and so is the forecast for the coming week. At school many of the teachers were taking advantage of the nice weather. I taught science outside on Wednesday and Thursday. We went out three times to trace our shadows and see how they moved throughout the day. We also looked at how the sun moved and at a sundial. The kids loved it. I saw them checking out their shadows at other times when they were outside.

This weekend I took full advantage of the weather. Saturday morning Jennifer biked from her house in Königstein to my place. After lunch here we biked together into the city. It was a perfect bike ride. Thanks to being slightly downhill all the way it was easy, and the weather was great. We met up on the river with Laurel and spent the afternoon sitting on the grass in the sun. Very relaxing!

View from the bridge on my way home. Look at all the people on the grass on the right!

Today was another great day. Lost an hour this morning when I remembered daylight savings time started today. Then I went for a walk through some fields before lunch. After lunch I took the SBahn into the city and met Laurel again. I had my bike and we biked south of the river to her softball practice. She just joined a new team in Frankfurt and convinced me to come along. I had a great 2 hours practicing and have joined the team!!! It will make my life a bit busier, what with 2 practices a week plus games on the weekend, but totally worth it. I get to have fun, meet new people, and learn more German :) Next practice is on Thursday!

Now I need to book my tickets home for the summer, and then off to bed. One more week of school until 2 weeks off for Easter - can't wait!

Luxembourg City in 24 hours!

This past weekend Cara, Lindsay, Jennifer and I went to Luxembourg to meet up with Annie and Erin. We had a wonderful 24 hours there. Unfortunately the weather was not great, some drizzle and lots of grey. After arriving we checked into the hostel and headed straight back out again to take a walking tour of the city. It was 1000 years of history in two and a half hours. It kind of went along the lines of: it was destroyed by the French, rebuilt, destroyed by the Spanish, rebuilt, destroyed by the Germans... etc. Oh, and in the case of the fortress had to be destroyed after the treaty in London in 1867.

After the tour we went out for dinner and then out for drinks for St. Patrick's day. Sunday morning we got up and had breakfast in the hostel. The next stop was the Chocolate House. We had some hot chocolate spoons, where you stir the chunk of chocolate on the spoon into hot milk. Yum!

Before catching our bus/train back home some of us checked out the Casemates. These are tunnels/underground military defense systems in the rock underneath where the fortress once stood. Walking through them was so cool. Part was like walking through a tunnel, but then you would come along to these rooms with windows to the outside. Some of them had canons in them that would have been part of the defense. In areas there were stairs up or down to more areas of the casemates. It was exciting, especially where the lights were broken and you had to go up or down a small spiral staircase in the dark!

View from the top of the cliff.

There are basically two levels of the city - up and down. We got some exercise walking up and down. Though there is even an elevator at one point to get from the top to the bottom. 

View of the royal palace

The palace is also where the Grand Duke works. You can sort of see the one guard who was walking up and down the front. We also saw the government buildings and the windows where the prime minister works. The office is on the ground floor and there are no guards. Apparently they also don't have guards if any foreign government officials visit, unless from Israel or Palestine. 

Us, minus Erin, in front of the royal Palace

View out from the casemates

Another view out from the casemates

The view down a tunnel in the casemates

Skiing, Camp and hiking in the Taunus

Thanks to being rather busy, and also rather tired, I have not been great at updating my blog. I am now taking German lessons on Thursdays, which means I don't get home until after 6pm 4 days a week. So, I will take the opportunity of a relatively free Saturday to share some of the things I have been up to.

Skiing: 

2 Sundays ago I went to the Schwarzwald to go skiing. Will and I went just for a day trip, which meant about 6 hours of driving total. But that was worth it, because I had a great day skiing. I am starting to get better and not be so scared. Though I am still terrified of the t-bar lifts. We managed to avoid them most of the day by just staying near the one chair lift :) The chair lift also conveniently had a little food stall at the bottom with picnic tables. A good place for a rest and to have Milchreis with cherries and cinnamon sugar! 

Camp:

Last week I was away with the grade 5s and 6s at camp. In Germany most grades do a class trip, to a lodge/camp somewhere remote to hike and be outdoors. I was lucky because Kathrin asked me to join the Gymnasium students on their trip. We took a bus 3 hours to Saarland to BiberBurg Berschweiler (http://www.biberburg-berschweiler.de/). The camp was great. They had a little creek for the kids to play in, a ropes course, tree house and a football (ie. soccer) field. The food was also amazing, though the scheduled activities were mostly a bust. The highlight of the week was going to gem place Thursday afternoon. We took a bus for about an hour to the middle of no where. We were a bit worried, because we'd expected a museum and instead were dropped off in an empty field with a partially finished building. However it turned out that the afternoon was spent in the sun with hammers and pick axes digging for gem stones. I am not quite sure why this area has deposits of gems like quartz and amethyst, something about volcanoes I think (I don't understand that much German...). Some of the gems the kids found were super impressive. We were joking that the kids were not going to show up at school on Monday because they'd have sold them and retired :) 

Then Thursday evening we barbecued our dinner. We had expected giving the kids sticks and them roasting sausages. But no, instead the teachers barbecued them on a German style barbecue. This means on a hanging grate that you spin as you cook the meat. Pretty cool experience, and delicious too!

Hiking:

Last Saturday Will and I decided to go for a walk in the Taunus. We picked a route, to the summit of a small hill (about 570 m) and set off. The weather was warm (10 C) but it was foggy. Up higher it was mist turning into actual rain. It was a great walk, but turned out to be a 6 hour long hike! I was ready to collapse when we got back.

The view of the fog through the trees

Large mounds of stones

We believe that these mounds of rocks were marking where the Roman Limes (defensive walls) were. It was so cool walking around in the mist at the top. There were no defined paths at the top, so we were basically walking through the middle of the forest. We could imagine we were Romans on the edge of the empire trying to look out for Germanic tribes through the trees and mist. 

Pretty grey looking up too!

The excitement of the week was going to a tax workshop on Wednesday to do our German taxes. It was over 2 hours of wading through a stack of forms trying to make sure everyone got them filled out correctly. We were lucky to have a tax person helping us, since all the forms are in German. In the end they are done, and we went out for Thai food afterwards. So I had Thai food on Wednesday, Indian food on Thursday and again out for dinner last night with Cara and Lindsay - it's been a good week :)

More updates soon hopefully. Off to Luxembourg with Cara and Lindsay next weekend to meet up with Annie and Erin!