Herbsmesse

At the end of October the whole BFA school goes to Basel, Switzerland for Herbsmesse. It is like a good old fashioned festival or fair. It is in fact the oldest festival in Switzerland dating back to 1471...pretty cool. Here Amanda, CB, and Anna are enjoying the festivities. The RAs enjoy the social outing!

The is the "bridge" in Basel which goes over the Rhein River. You will notice the giant Ferris wheel in the background.

Up close this Farris wheel is HUGE. It cost about 10 CHF (Swiss Franks) which is about $10 USD. I am just cheap to put out that kind of cash for a Farris wheel!

When ever us RAs have time to gather socially...we rejoice. Here Stephanie, CB, myself, and Anna are chatting it up while waiting for the kids to ride the bumper cars!

Here are the infamous bumper cars. BFA rents the whole ride for 2 hours so everyone can ride and it only cost one Swiss frank! What a bargain! I had a few crazy rides with some of my students.

Walk in Kandern

A great way for me to relax and just enjoy the beauty around me is to take a walk. All I have to do is just walk up the hill from my dorm, Palmgarten. This is the view as I turn around and looks down the hillside towards Kandern.

This is my favorite spot. It is a lovey picnic table the over looks a beautiful view.

This is the view from my favorite spot to sit and think and pray.

Rose hips.

Look at the vibrant colors of the trees up close. In the distance the colors don't look as brilliant as they truely are.

An apple tree in all of its glory. Here in Germany they tend to have small apple trees that bear a lot of fruit.

The trees are ripe with fruit.
The fruit of my walk. In Germany it is acceptable to pick and eat fruit, but not to pick and harvest fruit as you walk by an orchard. Yummm! What a yummy treat for myself.

The beautiful colors of the small apple trees that overlook Kandern.

Feuerbach Strasse and the lovely apple trees. What a beautiful fall day to walk back down the hillside into town.

Here are some Kandern cows just enjoying the sunshine as I frolick down the hillside back toward Kandern. These cow are literally just next to the golf course.

This is the golf course that surrounds the outskirts of Kandern and is in the back yard of my dorm. It apparently costs 10,000 euros to be a memeber for a year and 100 euros to play a golf game. So needless to say, it is not uncommon to see beamers and porsches zip by our dorm out of Kandern. This is a very attractive gold course and many Swiss people come here to golf because it is so much cheaper....just imagine the cost in Switzerland! Yikes!

The sign that I am entering Kandern again. It is right outside of my dorm.

The Palmgarten Dorm is the bottom two floors and Maugenhard Dorm is the top two floors.

Dorm Shopping

People gotta eat and to eat and you need food and the best place to get food is at the grocery store. Shopping in Germany is a bit different than in the States. To feed my dorm we go shopping twice a week. On Mondays the dorm parents go and on Thursdays the RAs go. Here is an average week of Lizzy and myself shopping. In Germany they do not give you shopping bags. You can buy them, but that gets expensive, so we bring our own crates to put the food inside of.

Outside of the grocery story you have to put one euro into the slot to unlock the cart. The carts also have 4 wheels that rotate independently. This makes it easy to move over in an aisle, but challenging to push it down the parking lot hill to the van without crashing!

Heibers is the fancey grocery story where we can buy American food like marshmallows.

We also shop at Penny Mart and Lidel. Both are chain stores and quite a bit cheaper. An interesting fact about German grocery stores is that they do not like to have empty shelves. All of the dorms love the "Choco Granola" cereal. There were a couple of weeks in a row last year that the dorms cleared out the shelves. So instead of buying more to meet our needs (supply and demand) they stopped stocking the "Choco Granola." So for about 6 weeks they did not have this product. Then finally they restocked. So we try not to clear them out so they don't stop carrying our favorite foods.

Here I am with one of our carts. Notice there are no bags! We fill the cart and check it out and put it back into the cart only to repack it into the crates in the van.

Then we drive to the dorm and have to unload the food. Lizzy uses the dolly move the crates of food. See all of the marshmallows on top...and American favorite.

Our dorm had a huge walk in refrigerator. Lizzy is putting all of the food away. The girls love their yogurt.

We still have a couple of crates of food to put away.

All of the food is finally put away in the pantry. The crates are in the corner waiting for the next shopping trip.

Bonnie German Birthday

On October 15th I had my second German birthday. I woke up and the girls wished me "Happy Birthday" every time they saw me. Then I got a cake in a mug at 8am! My first dessert of the day. My parents were kind enough to send me these lovely flowers in the mail! Aren't they pretty? What a great surprise.

Then my small group gathered. Jen, our leader, made some wonderful pumpkin soup and this lovely dessert. Here I am fighting off Anna, So Young, and Stephanie from blowing out my candles.

Here I am with Jen and her wonderful dessert for us! She is an amazing cook and just an awesome person!

For supper my girls decorated my place at the table! They put up pictures of Hugh Jackman and Gerald Butler, so I would have some "dinner dates". How thoughtful of them!

And as the Palmgarten tradition goes, before you get your dessert served to you you get nutella kisses. Two girls run at you and kiss you with chocolate nutella on their lips. What a sweet surprise!

Kate, a music teacher, came to help me celebrate my big day. It was a wonderful day and I am so glad that I have so many people who love me. Thank you everyone.

The Saga of HBR and Palm

The girls at Palmgarten acquired a organ...what do high school girls choose to do with an organ...paint it pink of course!! For a dorm fellowship we all got some bright pink spray paint. Here "K" and "K", who are roommates paint the organ.

Everyone in the dorm had a chance to decorate the organ. "J" and "K" are working on the details.

"L" makes sure the keyboard stays white, but the rest is pink. Then late one evening the girls took the pink organ to HBR (Haus Bad Riedlingen), a boys dorm. They left it in the senior hall playing loud organ music.

Then HBR was kind enough to invite the Palm girls over to carve some pumpkins.

The guys and girls were very creative and we even had a pumpkin contest. They looked beautiful. But we left all of the pumpkins at HBR so Stephanie, the dorm mom, and a couple of girls sneakily took 4 carved pumpkins to decorate our front door. Then just an hour or two later the HBR boys stormed the Palm front dorm and SMASHED the PUMPKINS and dumped their bio bucket (left over food) all over our front steps! We had rice that week!

Two of our seniors, "J" and "J", jumped up to help clean up the mess.

It was pretty gross! Luke the dorm dad was not too happy...but we got it cleaned up and even some of the HBR guys came back to help clean up. But still the girls were not too happy with the HBR boys.

So, in the words of the boys, they made and "epic apology!" They dressed up and sang "Stand By Me."

Then they gave us a peace offering.... chocolate cake! Yummmm..... THE END.

Palmgarten Dorm Traditions....

Cowboy Cookies are a Palm Favorite. "K" and "E", just two of our seniors have made some yummy cookies similar to monster cookies. They then dress in like crazy people and serve the girls doing their homework during study hours. Here they are ready to enter a couple of the girls rooms with some milk and cookies.

Weekend in Spain

This past weekend I was able to go to Malaga, Spain and enjoy a retreat with Avant missionaries in Spain. It was a wonderful time to bond with fellow missionaries from America, Canada, Spain, Moracco, and Equador.

This is Becky my roomate for the weekend. She is also a single missionary.

I actually made it to Spain.

This is the road to the camp. It was near here where I saw a stag (a 8 point if you are wondering Dad). It ran behind me on a walk and in to a grove of olive trees.

The camp was covered with beautiful grapes and vines. What a lovely form of shade.

This is the spring that the camp is named after: Spring of Life Camp.

Terry and myself enjoy the orange and pink sunset.

The beautiful, rugged Spanish terrian.

Olives are one of the main crops in this region. All of the hills are covered with them.

I was able to climb a small mountain with some new friends. What a beautiful view.

The Spanish terrian is very dry. The lines on the hillside are rows of olive trees.

On my last night at the Spring of Life Camp some of the ladies played "Truth or Dare and Spin the Bottle." We would "spin" the bottle and whoever it landed on had to choose a truth or a dare. It is pretty funny seeing grown women act like monkeys, singing "I'm a Little Tea Pot" or hearing really bad date stories.

Gayle and Dan Lippincott and myself all went through Gospel Missionary Union (GMU)'s C.O.P. (Canadaite Orientation Program) together in July 2001. They have been serving at Malaga Media Center for the last 4 years. Previously they served at the Santa Cruz Learning Center in Boliva. It was wonderful to connect with them. It was fun to see how we could just pick up from where we left off in 01.

Here are Phil & Slyvia, our special speakers and the pastor to the Avant missionaries who are based in Kansas City. They have also served at BFA for 5 year.