Fall is finally here and things are quite beautiful here in Wittlingen! The leaves are all turning to gorgeous reds, yellows, and oranges, and falling to the ground. According to my weather widget, today seems to be the last warm day of the season. Come Saturday, the high for the day drops to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, with a chilly low of 34! This next week is also supposed to bring a lot of rain. Fall is definitely in the air.
Our girls eat a TON of apples. I think we went through 15kg in 1 week..
I’m so sorry I have not blogged in so long. Blogging doesn’t seem to be my strong point. If you would indeed like more updates, and updates that cover more of the deeper, intense stuff that goes on here, shoot me an email and I can add you to my prayer emails that I send out about every 2 weeks. But I am going to really try to update this blog more often too.
A few of the girls and RA Amy on right at the bbq with Sonne.
Some of our seniors in the trees with boys at the bbq.
The dorm dads bbq-in away.
So much has happened in the past month or so. I’m not even sure where to begin or what all to say. We’ve had 2 get togethers with different boys dorms, Sonne and HBR, where we bbq-ed and played some games. One Sunday, there was a festival in town called Budenfest, which celebrates the town’s new wine. Even though it celebrated wine, the festival was so cute and offered such a quaint ambiance of the whole community coming out to eat bratwursts and listening to accordions and whole orchestras! The Blumenplatz was filled with vendors and people—I’ve never seen it so busy! It was such a great Sunday afternoon. Let’s see, we’ve also had plenty of movie nights with homemade carmel popcorn. I took a few girls into Lorrach a few weekends ago to go shopping. Every other Tuesday, the 5 of us staff take hot lunch into school for our girls. It’s so much fun—we park our vans in the middle of this little field by the school and set up a picnic for them with some delicious food like paninis and salad brownies. The place we set up is also right by this creek—so adorable. If I went to BFA, I think picnics by the stream every other week in the middle of school would be one of my favorite things.
I'm not sure how much they're gonna love me for putting this picture up, but this is from Friday night facials, fondue, 'n double feature.
Freshman and sophomores and 3 of us RAs in Freiburg!
One of our sophomores cleaning dishes.
For more recent details of events, this past weekend was a 3 day weekend for the girls. Monday was a German unification day; I’m not even sure what that means, but the whole town took the day off from school, work, etc. This past weekend was also the dorm parents’ weekend off; so the 3 of us RAs were in charge of 8 girls for the weekend. Why 8 girls you ask? Well, the junior and seniors were off on some amazing field trips! The juniors took a 4-day trip to Normandy and stopped off in Paris the last day, and the seniors took (are taking) a week-long trip to Italy to go to Rome, Florence, and Venice! Gosh, I wish I had gone to high school in Europe! I feel like history would have come so much more alive to me. So anyways, we had just the freshman and sophomores, and boy did we plan a fun-filled weekend. Friday night, we had a double feature of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants while painting nails and doing facemasks and eating pre-dipped fondue goodies. All the girls and I also had a sleepover downstairs in the living room that night and woke up to monkey bread and some episodes of Boy Meets World. Saturday afternoon, we took the girls into Freiburg—a most adorable town/city an hour away with cobble stone streets and the old Munster Cathedral and shops. That night also brought a load of laughter and fun from playing water spoons—the card game spoons in which the loser of each round drinks a cup of water; the first to pee loses the whole game. Haha! Pretty fun. The girls are also really into playing Dutch Blitz right now, which is basically a different version of Nertz that played so often in South Africa; so I am absolutely love playing with them. I just love games. So much great interaction goes on there. Sunday morning we went to church and then had a friend’s friends come over who were very German who made us an authentic German meal of noodles and gravy with meat chunks and mushrooms; vegetables; some kind of raddish; and potatoes! They also informed us that day was the German Thanksgiving, which I’m guessing isn’t as big of a deal as America’s; but it was still such a blessing that the family came over on their holiday to make us a meal! Sunday night we went over to Blauen, a girls’ dorm in the mountains, for dorm fellowship, where we had a big game night and campfire. Monday, the juniors came back and we had just a relax/homework day. And so that concludes this past week or so.
Freshman, RA Amy, and sophomore helping cut potatoes for Sunday's German meal.
Three sophomores helping in the kitchen with RA Emily 3rd from Left.
Game night at Blauen!
Game night at Blauen!
On my free time the past few days, I’ve gone on some walks with my fellow RAs, and we have found quite the treasure trove of pumpkins in the neighborhood! I’m pretty sure there was a largest pumpkin contest in the neighborhood. We found MASSIVE pumpkins everywhere, the biggest one totaling in at 1000kg!! Yesterday, I bought a few to decorate for my room, as well as some beautiful sunflowers. It’s amazing—here in the Black Forest area, there are random fields of flowers all over that anyone and everyone are welcome to go cut. There’s a little table in front of the fields with knives and a jar, and once you finish picking, you just place a few cents in the jar to pay! It’s a total honor system thing! It’s wonderful! Lately, they’ve had rows and rows of sunflowers, dahlias, and gladiolas—gorgeous!!
Sunflower Fields!!!
Oh, one last thing: On Monday, I started a weekly sophomore meeting where all the sophomore on my hall meet once a week to fellowship. We decided that each week can be different, and girls can even lead some. We are going to play games, share stories and testimonies, have snacks, chat, etc. This first meeting went so well and all the girls seem to be really excited about it! I’m hoping this will create a lot of unity and prevent and squash any cliques among this grade. I’m so excited!
The cute little church in Wittlingen.
The MASSIVE pumpkin. This bad boy allegedly ways 1000 kg!
More pumpkins!
Love love love me some pumpkins. :)
I know this is all very superficial and on the surface, so let me remind you: if you want to know more of the deeper details and things that God is doing in me and in the dorm, please send me an email to get on my prayer email list. As far now, this blog is for more of the pictures and fun things that are happening. J Hopefully I’ll get better at updating these more often!
