Our young single adult tour group from yesterday - going to a medieval fair in Angelbachtal.
This is a hand pulled Farris wheel for children - pretty quaint.
The most fun was a jousting match!
10/08/2008 Report from Germany. By the way, in Europe they write their dates - day/month/year (with all four digits on the year.) In the US we of course write our dates with month/day/year and normally our year is in two digits. So the date is August 10Th 2008.
The days are noticeably shorter here already and some leaves are coming off some of the trees and shrubs. We noticed in the winter that the days (sunlight hours that is) were a little shorter than back home and then in the summer they were a little longer. So there has to be a bit more change per day than we are used to back home.
Farmers have been harvesting crops like crazy in the last couple of weeks. The wheat is done of course and many oats have been combined. There aren't too many fields of corn here so I don't have much to report there. The few fields of corn I have seen have been pretty good looking corn but not quite as tall as most of our corn in upstate NY. And the ears look a little smaller than I would expect for this time of year back home. There are a couple of dairy farms around the area and I think the little corn is being grown for their use.
Today we rode back up to Baumholder because I was assigned to speak there. It is a bit more open country and less houses than where we are now so it was a nice drive for us. The trip was good and it was great to see a few of our old friends.
This past week has been pretty standard with the usual activities until Saturday. Few if any come to our center on Saturday so we decided to go on a USO tour and invite the Young Single Adults to join us. The "USO" is the same organization that has been around a long time taking care of the military folks with shows and having activities and a place for them. 'Remember the "Bob Hope" shows and all of that. (I never saw one while I was in Vietnam because I always ended up having to fly protection for them while they were there and performing.)
So ten of us went on a USO bus trip to a Medieval Fair. They had the vendors, the knights jousting and the whole show. There were many folks there that just go to these things a lot and have their own costumes. Folks dress up as what ever they would like to be. It looked to me like some of them really wanted to time travel back to that time period. It was kind of a people-watching type of day. The bus ride was relaxing, the weather was great, the good guys won the day at the jousting and the bratwurst was great. It is hard to get much better than that.
The only other thing to add to the weekly report is that I broke a filling off a tooth eating a carrot so I had to go see a German dentist. Because we don't have insurance coverage over here I had him just put another filling in even though he recommended a cap or crown. He was really good (as good as it can get going to a dentist). I contributed another couple of hundred bucks to the German economy. So now I have checked out the dentists in Paraguay and Germany. If any of you are headed this way or down to Paraguay and want to know where to go to find good dentists I can give some first hand advise.
We are well, happy and doing our best.
We love and miss you all very much!
Take care, check out the crops and don't break any teeth!
Love,
Elder & Sister Karn
