A Day in France

 Denise Pritt and Erin Clegg, friends of mine from Echo Ranch Bible Camp in Juneau, Alaska, came to visit me from April 6-14.  They flew into Basel, Switzerland after visiting a friend in Barcelona, Spain.  The first thing I did was take them to downtown Basel to see the Rhein River.

 This vacation was a busy one...the next day we drove for about an hour and a half to Colmar, France.  This area of France is known as wine country and is very quaint.  Here Denise and Erin are in the city center.

The main thing we did was go to the Bartholdi Museum.  He is the French man who made the Statue of Liberty.  Colmar even has a "Statue of Liberty" in a traffic circle.  It was fun to see his sculptures.

 I loved this huge horse head!

These are some of the models he worked on before making the Statue of Liberty.

This is the size of the Statue of Liberty's ear.  I am whispering secrets into her ear.

Then we drove to a castle called Hoch Koenigsbourg...which was a challenging finding with my GPS.  (By the way thanks mom for the GPS...I use it often!!)  But we did find it.  It is on top of a HUGE hill or a small mountain...however you want to look at it.

Inside the castle is this cool winding staircase.  Denise and Erin enjoyed seeing the mid-evil kitchen and the furniture and apartments where people lived back in the 1600s.

Erin found this really cool window within the door.

Here are some knights standing at attention.  This is in the weapons room.  These suits of armor are actually very small.  These guys were NOT huge men...in fact they rather small in height and stature.

Here is the castle with the beautiful French countryside in the background.  I took this picture out of the tallest tower.  As Erin said quite often..."Everything the sun touches is your kingdom."  (Quote from the Lion Queen.)

Denise uses her brute strength to move this cannon.  I am not sure how her shot would be with a cannon....

Here I am with the tallest tower behind me at the end of a lovely day.

Castle in Basel

 Last Tuesday, April 6th I went to where my friend was house sitting in Basel.  Just beyond that house there was this cool castle...so CB, Stephanie and I set out to check it out.

 CB and I are loving the sunshine!!  Might as well hike up to some castle ruins.

 Isn't this a nice picture.  I was leaning between this fence to take it...and suddenly there was a shock...I though CB or Stephanie threw something at me....I actually touch the fence that was electric and I got a shock!

Who would have thought it could be so dangerous!

 All the pretty horses. They were on the horse farm on the walk to the castle...

 From the top of the castle you can see the city of Basel, Switzerland on one side.

 Stephanie is enjoying the cityscape view.

 On the other side of the castle you see this lovely farmland.  It was a very interesting perspective that I can not capture in photographs.

 Stephanie found this really cool tunnel. It was extremely short...my head almost touched the ceiling and I am 5 foot 4 inches!

 The window was lovely!  I enjoyed the view through the wall that was about a foot thick.  Below I am enjoying the beautiful view.

Stephanie is such a goofball.  CB is in the background taking beautiful pictures.

Here I am with the Rhein River in the background.  What a lovely day for a walk.

A Cameroonian Visitor

Allison Mackay is my Cameroonian friend. She teaches high school math and 8th grade Bible at the Rainforest Academy in Cameroon, Africa. She was very excited to see the rolling green hills of Germany. Here she is with the village of Kandern in the background. This is on the road that my dorm, Palmgarten, is on. It is called Feuerbacherstrasse because it is the street (strasse) that leads to the village of Feuerbach.

This is the quaint village of Feurerbach. It is just 2 kilometers from Palmgarten, but it is up over a steep hill. Allison was surprised at the workout of a simple walk in Germany.

I am enjoying the wonderful "warm" weather as I stand in front of Feuerbach. Allison assures me that "warm" is a relative term...she would classify it as cold weather...but then again she is living in Africa! I found the 60s and 70s to be a rather nice surprise.

I also took Allison to Basel, Switzerland. And for those of you who know how horrible my directional skills, I would like you to know that I found the correct parking garage in the city and then I found the Muster (biggest cathedral in the city) that is on the Rhein River. See we made it to the heart of the old city of Basel.

Allison was quite impressed with the Rhein and the Old City of Basel. It is one of my favorite places in Basel...well besides Starbucks.

On Allison's last full day in Germany, we decided to hike to the Sausenburg Castle Ruins. After 3 hours of hiking around the mountainside...we realized that we were indeed lost. Note my directional skills from above...not so good!

Well at least we had a nice hike and we found SNOW!!! Allison hasn't seen snow in over 2 years!

The scenery was beautiful...but where in the heck is the castle ruins?

We made it to Vogelbach...what that is on the mountain where the Sonne and Blauen dorms are located. I have never actually been to Vogelbach. Something is not quite right!

But it is always a good time to throw a snowball at the resident African!
We did find a sign for the castle ruins...at this point we are only 0.8 kilometers from the ruins!

This is what the original castle looked like when it was completed. Notice that it started being built in 1120...just a few years before America became a country! This is crazy old!

Allison enjoys the castle window and the snow that is falling! Yep it snowed on us!

This is the remains of the castle court yard with all of the snow!

We then climbed the windy staircase of the castle tower. It has quite a view of the local villages.

I am so proud that even though we got lost we did indeed find Sausenburg!!!!

Train & Pat King visit BFA

"Train" (Jim) and Pat King came to visit me at BFA.  Train is one of the pastors at my home church, Ebenezer Mennonite Church, and they were near Colmar, France doing some training with Youth For Christ.  So they drove over for the afternoon.  Here we are in my room.

 In the tour of Palmgarten the staff office seemed to be a big hit.  This is where we connect with the girl's parents, take phone calls, keep passports and the dorm bank.  The grocery list is usually made in this lovely room.

The downstairs kitchen is where I spend a lot of my time making yummy food for the girls.  My favorite part of the industrial kitchen is this cool tilt skillet.  It is a giant cast iron skillet that I can make my specialty...Pork Thai Wraps.  It is a favorite with the girls.

 After a tour of Palmgarten, I took them down to school to see where all of the education takes place.  It is about 1.5 kilometers away from my dorm.  Train and Pat were surprised that we are not on a compound.  But my dorm is the closest dorm.  There are 3 dorms that are about 10 kilometers from school and the other two dorms are between 3 and 4 kilometers away in local villages.

The BFA Crest.

Here Pat and I enjoy the beautiful library.

We then went to Funfshilling, one of BFA's favorite restaurants.   

 Train and I wait for our food to come.  He really liked the mounted deer head in the background.

 I had the soup of the day, which ended up being green.  It was really quite delicious with a nice garlic flavor.

 Pat ordered the Funf Salat which means five salads.  One of her salads was real German Potato Salad, which is different than American Potato Salad.  She also had shredded carrots, some shredded cabbage, a lettuce salad, a local grown root salad.

 After lunch we went into the farmers market that is attached to the restaurant and found these cute bunnies.

 In Germany you can buy your eggs pre-colored.  Also notice that they are not refrigerated.

 We drove back to Kandern and went to the local pottery shop.

The pottery is beautiful, but just a bit out of my price range.

They ended their visit with a stop at the Eis Cafe.  This is an Italian ice cream shop that is located on my walk from Palmgarten to school.  The students love to frequent this shop.

 There are quite a few storks in the area.  Here is one in it's huge nest.