Hello from Germany!

Good morning all!

My internal clock is back on track (7 a.m. Germany time) and the Peterson kiddos are asleep so I'm able to finally give you a couple updates on my trip. It's been a pretty awesome week so far and they are certainly keeping me busy but I've had a great time.

The Petersons are great friends of my family. They're a military family currently stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany and will be heading back to the states in just a few short weeks. Jeannine and Dave have four kids: Colby who is 15, and the triplets, Grant, Cooper and Ida who are 11. my mom and dad are Godparents to Cooper which means that by extension I'm their God sister. I haven't seen them since my senior year of high school and I've missed them terribly so it's  been wonderful to be able to spend some time with them over the past few days.

Cooper and Leo (right), me, Ida, Colby and Grant explored the Hohenecken castle ruins yesterday after school.
 (Photo by Jeannine)

I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on Friday and hit the ground running pretty quickly. Jeannine met me at the airport and we went straight to the kid's school at the army base in Kaiserslautern. Grant and Ida got some awards for getting really awesome grades this last quarter. There was a little awards presentation from each of the classes and some classrooms did performances too. The highlight, in addition to being a proud sister, was a kindergarten class performing the song "Slippery Fish" which I sang in kindergarten, some of my other readers (shout out to Mr. Martin's fifth grade class) might remember it too, but correct me if I'm wrong.

After running some errands we came home, changed and went to a Good Friday service then came back, had some dinner and the kids went to bed.

Saturday: games and fun

The kids had baseball and softball games today so I spent a lot of time in the parks on base. They had a nice opening ceremony where all the teams were announced and walked around a track to kick off the season. It was Ida's first softball game ever so she was pretty excited about it.



There were at least 30 teams that participated in the march, and it's got to be quite an undertaking to organize it all.
Grant and Cooper got some awesome hits and Ida jumped in right away to play catcher like it was no big deal. I used to play softball so I know how scary playing that position can be, so for the first time out she did pretty well.  They'd want me to let you know that both of the teams won 18-6, they were super proud of that score.

Sunday: Easter

Sunday was Easter, and yes, the Easter Bunny did find me in Germany. Church was lovely, as was the potluck that we went to in the evening, but I think I might write up a separate post about Easter traditions in Germany later. It will take some research. I will tell you that lots of people hang eggs on their trees, I haven't found out why that is yet.

Monday: Castle trip

After school yesterday we took a trip to some castle ruins in Kaiserslautern.

Some quick history for you: The Hohenecken castle was built from the middle of the 12th century onwards and was responsible for governing the area and providing security for the area and the empire. The oldest stones in this place are from around the year 1200. The people who lived there were called administrative servants. It's been through three major battles: The Peasant's War, conquered by an earl, and completely destroyed by the French in 1688 during a war of succession, which means that people were arguing about who got the ruling power next. It's recognized as a cultural monument and is currently owned by the City of Kaiserslautern. Since that's all I really know about this place I figured I'd share some photos instead.

Just keep on scrolling down, I'm still working on finding a slide show making app somewhere for my tablet. If anyone has any suggestions about a good one let me know!

 

That's all for now! Hope that all is well wherever you may be!

 

Until Next Time,

 

Avery Cropp