This one is for Heidi Belter! Wanna have lunch?

When I arrived at breakfast Friday morning, I was told that I would probably not like what we were having for lunch so I better eat up. Then they began to describe a dish that Heidi had described to me. “But don’t worry I am sure the menu has changed.” Heidi reassured me. I was not too worried since Dan and I had heard that the school had a cook. While we heard wrong and the school still gets its hot meals from the Old Folks Home in Gudensberg. So the meal of the day was boiled eggs in a creamy mustard sauce with of course potatoes (we eat potatoes almost everyday!) Not too appetizing. However I told myself with a little encouragement from Alexandra that I would try everything at least once. So I ate one egg with a little sauce and egg number two got rinsed off with hot water and was eaten with salt and pepper. Dan went to McDonald's.

It wasn't all about volleyball...

So this tournament is not all about volleyball. It was held in a town about 3 hours away and teams from all over Germany came to participate. Most teams were sent by different church groups and so this weekend was about getting together and worshiping God as one church. Saturday night and Sunday morning we had church services where many of the students from the Bible School were involved in some way (music, speaking, theater). I played a small role in a skit about “wearing masks”, basically being someone different depending on where you are or who you are with. It was really cool.

Volleyball tournament

So Dan and I just got back from a weekend volleyball tournament. We each played on different teams, had very different experiences but both had a lot of fun. I played on Fritzlar’s Youth team with 4 boys and another girl, Judith, from the Bible School. Judith and are were a little scared the boys were going to be a little too competitive and that we might not have that much fun but they were great to play with and we ended up having lots of fun…and we even placed 5^th out of 18 teams. Dan’s team was a little different. Almost none of the players had ever really played volleyball so you can imagine their skill level. For all of those who know Dan, you know that he has a natural ability to do well in any sport that involves making contact with a ball and that he can be competitive. Despite his teams lack of volleyball experience they were all able to improve their game by the end of the tournament and they even won their last 5 games, coming out with a trophy for the best in the losers’ bracket (13^th in all). So now that volleyball is done, every Tuesday night is soccer night at the Army Base gym as the boys get ready for the soccer tournament in March. Most of the girls tend to stick this one out as the boys get a little aggressive, so we plan to have a girls night every Tuesday. I am really looking forward to it.

Thanksgiving Weekend in Detmold

Dan and I were able to reconnect with Marianne and Dennis, friends that we met in Canada from Germany, over the Thanksgiving weekend. It was nice to be with friends for the holiday when we could not be with family. We saw the sites of Detmold including a very large standalone statue of the Hermannsdenkmal (by Ernst von Bandel, 1838-75), a huge monument commemorating the battle in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D. in which the Cheruscan chieftain Hermann (Arminius) inflicted a crushing defeat on the Roman army. The statue stood 174 feet tall. We also got to see a beautiful castle in the town center. Detmold is somewhere we will be visiting a few more times before we leave.

So Thanksgiving does not mean turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie in Germany but it does still include "lecker" food. We had cannelloni for lunch and a huge array of homemade Germany cakes for dessert accompanied by stories of the olden days told by seniors in the church. What was translated for me truly made me thankful that I got cannelloni for lunch and not rat after not eating for 5 days. That stories were amazing.

We have an address, but no phone

Hey everyone, we finally got our act together and got out address figured out. Any mail is welcome. (Marc?) We will do our best to always reply via snail mail too. We have gone out and bought 50 envelops already. Unfortunately we do not have a phone number. We will be using Skype to communicate. If you would like to chat, you can download it to your computer. We would love to chat. Keep in mind we are 8-9 hours (Alberta, B.C.) ahead of you.

Address:
Daniel and Laura Schultz
Georgengasse 9
34560 Fritzlar, Germany

Die Schokolade ist lecker!!!

Okay, so we need to make a little confession. Even though we have not been having cake everyday, we have been indulging in a little chocolate everyday. Milka and Ritter Sport are our favorites so far. Very yummy! We also had to buy some Haribo gummy bears even though we get them from K&K, a German Deli in Edmonton. I know it sounds funny, but for some reason they taste so much better here.

Das Essen schmeckt gut...most of the time.

Alright, it is time you start using the dictionary if you want to understand all of my post titles! So what about the food? The best part about the eating plan here is that all 27 students gather around a huge dining table for breakfast, lunch and supper. This is not only a a Bible school, it is truly a community. (More to come on that subject later) The second best thing is that I do not have to do grocery shopping, which means no meal planning and I do not have to do dishes all the time either. We get to come to a set table, eat and then put our dishes in the dishwasher. Here is the outline of our meal schedule.

Breakfast: 7am
Buns with cheese, cold cuts, jams, nutella, honey.
Coffee and tea.

(Coffee and tea are brought to class for during breaks)

Lunch: 1pm
This is always the biggest meal of the day which is always a hot meal.
So far it has been good with the exception of having Milch Reis (milk rice- pretty much rice pudding) with plums. I love dessert but not when you haven't eaten in 5 hours and you want some real food.

Supper: 7pm
This is always buns/bread with cheese, cold cuts and salad. We will also eat leftovers from lunch here.
Tea

Myth: You will have cake everyday! We were told we would have coffee and cake everyday around 4pm but we have yet to have that. At first I was looking for it because German cake is SO yummy but I am actually thankful that it is not still part of the meal plan at the school.

Living Arrangements

Due to high demand, here is a post on our living arrangements. We are living in the top floor of the school building itself. Which means lots of stairs for us but we can make it up without stopping already. It is a newly renovated area (still in the final stages) made for couples. There are 4 rooms, a kitchen/eating area and a bathroom. As of now, we share the area with a newlywed couple from Argentina, Melodie and Sergio, married August 5th so we almost share an anniversary date. If you do the math, we each get 2 rooms, one for our bedroom and the other for whatever we like. I would like it to be a guest room so come and visit! The bathroom is very nice and new. It is separated into to rooms, the first with two large sinks and the second with a shower and toilette. All of the other students in on the first floor of the school building or in the housing building adjacent to the school, so we have lots of privacy which is nice. The best thing about living on the top floor, besides all the lovely stairs is the amazing views that we get. You will see them in the pictures. Who knew a view of a cemetery could be so beautiful?

First Thoughts on Fritzlar

Well, we made it to Fritzlar on Friday for the celebration of the bible school’s 60^th anniversary. It was a long day especially for me Laura since it was mostly done in German. There were a few songs in English and even an English speaker, Steve Rennick, from a Church of God in Indianapolis. To wrap up the celebration there was a huge buffet with all kinds of good European food and when there is a lot of food, there are even more dishes. Since the celebration was also a bit of a fundraiser for the school, all of us students need to help clean up. There were lots of jobs that needed to be done which meant only a handful of us were left to wash the dishes. Lucky me, I was one of them. At first I was overwhelmed by the stacks and stacks of dishes and the huge buffet pans caked with baked on food but little did I know that this would be my first real opportunity to make some connections and start building some friendships. I was able to speak English to an Italian girl named Patrizia and she did a good job of responding with the best English she could even though she felt it wasn’t good enough. It is Patti’s first year here as well although she has seen the school before as her husband, Vincenzo (Enzo) is in his second year. They just got married in July.

As we walked from the celebration to the school itself, I could see why people told us that this was a quaint little town. Once you walked into the central area, the roads narrowed into historic cobblestone streets. The bible school itself is situated in the central area and it wasn’t until the next day that we got to have a better look around. It was late and we hadn’t even been able to bring out luggage into our room yet. I’ll leave that for the next entry.

Day trip to Hamburg

Today we got to see a little more of Germany as we took the train for the first time and went to Hamburg. Hamburg is much bigger than Bremen as you will see in the pictures. Dan and I hiked up 452 stairs to the top of the St. Michel's Cathedral bell tower. Those are the pictures shown above. There are many canals within the city and even an underwater tunnel called The Old Elbe Tunnel that we walked through. It was amazing to see cars drive through the narrow passage way that was originally build just wide enough for a horse and carriage.