Carnival time!!

My friend Kimberly and I have met a new friend. Her name is Mara. She's in our german class and we love her. We went today to a carnival with her and had a blast!! The german's do carnivals totally awesome. We went on almost all of the rides, had slushies and walked around until our feet hurt. I played one of the games in the boothes and totally won a glass!! I had to throw ping pong balls and try to get them in the glasses. I wasn't so good at first, but then I noticed the little 10 year old next to me. He was bouncing the ball on the counter in front of us to get it up into the glasses and that totally worked. I copied him and I won too!! Our friend Mara tried out the big hammer thingy, but it was really heavy. We had such a fun time. It was nice to get out into the community and try to practice our german...that didn't go so well, but we did get the chance!!

Holland

Kimberly, Jason and I went to Holland yesterday. It was so much fun! We got up and left at 1:30 in the morning yesterday and got back around midnight last night, so it was a full 24 hour trip. We booked it through a local travel company, so we rode a bus and had a tour guide. It was about a 5 hour bus ride, not too bad. We first stopped at a bed and breakfast farm type place. We got breakfast there which was delicious. We had tons of different cheeses and ham, yummy dutch coffee, and most people tried the milk. I wasn't really wanting milk just freshly milked from a cow, but Kimberly said it was super yummy. They (the owners of the farm) took us through thier wooden shoe making factory. The man showed us how they make them and gave us a breif history on the different kinds shoes. They have the rounded toe shoes which were for the protestants and the pointy toe shoes that were for catholics. They have wedding clogs and farm clogs. Basically, they have clogs for everything. Next they took us through the cheese making process. I've discovered I love gouda cheese! The process didn't really gross me out as it did some people. I do, however, wonder why little miss muffet ate curds and whey. The lady showed us what curds and whey look like. That's a little gross. Our next stop was Keukenhof. This is the huge (and famous) tulip garden. It was amazing! There was a working windmill there that we culd go up into and look around. We spent a couple of hours walking around and looking at the millions of flowers they have there. We didn't see everything, and we were there for three hours. Our last stop for the day was Pier Sheveningen. It's on the North Sea. This was beautiful. Holland is like Germany in the fact that it's super clean. The beach front was gorgeous. They have hotels and shops and resturaunts. We went to an aquarium, which was fun. The dutch language has a lot of english-y words in it, so it was pretty easy to understand a lot of the people. All in all, it was a wonderful trip. It was nice to get back home to Blake. He wasn't able to come with us because he had to work. I'm defentily going to plan a trip for Blake and I up there. It was beautiful!

Hexen Nacht

April does not seem like an overly Halloweeny month to me...but I guess that makes me even less German! The night of April 30th is Hexen Nacht or Witches Night. It's an old tradition that says that witches come down from the mountains as cold winds and such, and cause slight mayhem in the towns. Nowdays, moms and dads take their kids out in the early evening and toilet paper trees, bushes, cars and streetsigns. It's all innocent fun. The bigger kids come out later in the night and do some shaving cream and doorbell pranks, but nothing too bad. The most valued prize, however, is the trashcan. They look for them all over town and they steal them. The next morning, you have to go to the center square in your town and find your trashcan. We put our away in the basement so this wouldn't happen to us. My German teacher, Chrystal, was telling us of a Hexen Nacht many years ago that happened to her. She, at that point in time, worked at an orphanage as a secretary. She lived up the hill from the office she worked in and had decided to go into to finish up a little paperwork. As she was coming down the hill, she noticed there was a rather large crowd outside her building. As she got closer, she realized why. Her office, the exact way she had it inside, was now on the roof! She laughed so hard! A couple of boys came up to her and stated "Look what the witches did to you!". She, of course, new it was them. They helped her get everything back into her office and nothing had been harmed. She just laughed as she told us this. This is what Hexen Nacht is all about. Harmless pranks. I just thought I'd share this with you!