Busy, busy, busy

Hello everybody. You have to forgive us if we don't write the blog as much as we would like, but we are really busy :P. We are doing the "effort" to embrace all the german passions like beer and soccer/football. With the Eurocup underway we are "busy" watching the games :P. Go Deutschland!!!

Great day. We started out in Schleswig at Schloss Gottorf. Beautiful building with lots of interesting exhibits. I particularly like one about life in the Middle Ages from the town to the city to the monastery to the castle. Then we went to the Globushous with an enormous globe that on the outside looked like the earth as it was understood in the 1700's with the continents and oceans and then ten people could sit inside it and observe the heavens with the stars and the constellations painted on the inside of the globe. And it turned as you sat there. Fascinating. We had a great lunch at a restaurant called Luzifer - I had Labskous, a typical regional dish of potatoes with corned beef and beets, Matjes, pickles, and beets. We all had what we thought was our new favorite beer, Asgaard (paradise).

Then we came back to Bordesholm for a fascinating tour of the Klosterkirche. Who knew that Ashley was an organ virtuoso?

 As usual, we were all very angelic.

The view from above the church was amazing. We were shown the way the walls were built and then taken above where on catwalks we could see the top of the ceiling from above. Then we climbed the tower through these cramped, narrow ladders. It was the kind of tour you never expect to be given. Amazing.

My host in Bordesholm is Uwe Eybächer and he is a baker. In fact an award-winning organic baker. I had the chance to visit his bakery yesterday. It is amazing how many different types of bread they have in Germany, and all of it is delicious.

Public transportation in Germany is great and so many people ride bikes. This is the outside of the train station.

Last night we had a fabulous meal after our presentation at the Bordesholm RC. Steak!

German keyboards

A little challenge directly from germany. Find the difference between the german keyboard (see pic attached) and the american one. Particularly two letters are switched and forget about it when it comes to the right side of it. :P

3 of us have US laptops/ipads, while Arthur and I are confronted with the challenge of a scrambled keyboard :P. So forgive me if I spell "zou" instead of "you"

A token of the fun facts of being in another country :)

Bis bald!!

Sah ein knab ein roslein.....again....Sah ein knab ein roslein....again.. The Germans are loving Röslein and we keep singing it for them. We have another Rotary presentation tonight where we will perform again. I think we should sign a contract. Today I was at a vocational visit at VR Bank in Neumünster.
My vocational host took me to lunch and then to see my host parents at their work place, Media Markt (equivalent of Best Buy in America). There are so many things I have never seen therefore I have taken over 1200 pictures. Schleswig-Holstein is so beautiful and the friends and family's here have greeted us every step of the way with open arms and tried to make us feel like we are at home. So many thanks already, so much fun, and a time we will never forget....to be continued.
 

Bowling in Flensburg



Rathaus in Hamburg




Kinka, Maren, Agus and Ashley having dinner before the District Conference



Röslein performance at District Conference

Lunch break from vocational day in Neumünster

Feeling rested and ready to tackle our last few weeks. Our trip has been extraordinary, our hosts are beautiful families with much to share about culture and their way of life. My visits to local schools never cease to amaze me. Children are the same all over the world, and in the hands of these talented and caring teachers, they will succeed in all their future endeavors. How is every village more beautiful than the next?
~Myles

Amazing what a good night's sleep and a little R&R will do. Everyone looked and sounded much better today. The District Conference dinner last night was very long. The food was good and we enjoyed sitting with our new Bordesholm hosts, but the speeches were very long and needless to say, our German isn't good enough for us to understand what is being said. We had a piano player to accompany us with Röslein and I think we sang well, but the hall was so big we couldn't hear much of the audience singing with us. But we could see lots of smiling faces and DG Wolfgang Mueller-Michaelis was visibly emotional when he thanked us afterward. He said "I so wanted my American friends to be here this evening because I was so moved when I heard their presentation in Husum and their song." I guess it was worth staying. Here is the team waiting to go to dinner last night at the Conference.

And here is one of my favorite guest's at todays birthday barbecue