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.
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| The view of the fog through the trees |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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