Today's big activity involved spending the day dashing through the trees on a fairly elaborate ropes course. As I am secretly terrified of heights, I immediately seized on the opportunity to become the official group photographer. Your kids however took to the trees with great zeal.

On Tuesday we visted a "barefoot park" which basically turned out to be a trail through the woods and fields that one walked while barefoot. Now I'll be the first to admit that I was a tad leary about the whole thing, after all, shoes were invented for a reason but your children were opened minded about the experience and set off with great zeal not even hesitating when it was time to walk through the mud.



So what kind of things did we have to walk through? Funny you should ask. In addition to the mud we walked through all sorts of things such as water, gravel, pebbles, pinecones, dirt, sand and logs. (One of the purposes of the park was to use your senses to experience to world around you, which is a fancy way of saying that a few of the surfaces hurt! Mrs. Grafakos remains convinced that she has a splinter in the sole of her foot and it will be many weeks before my poor little toes forgive me.)

As it seems unlikely that anyone will believe this story without proof, I offer the following illustrations.

Everytime I turn around Eric is eating something, usually something large and elaborate looking. The image above is of the ice cream sundae he consumed just this afternoon, I have it on good authority that last week he ate one that was smoking.

Why Me?!

I have had a lot of fun this past weekend starting with our fourth of July party, but as the weekend went on, I started to get sick. Now I am in bed with a fever of 101. I was in bed all day on Sunday,all day today (Monday) and I am going to do the same tomorrow (Tuesday). What a way to enjoy Germany huh? I have all the symptoms of this sickness, headache, fever, stuffy nose, sore throat, ears hurt. I hope I will get better soon because we only have about one week left and I want to enjoy my time here. Everyone pray for me!

Kandelhexen

Well, after oafishly snapping my useful camera lens, I'm stuck with using my zoom lens for everything.
In Waldkirch and the surrounding area, there exists an intense, yearly festival that is roughly comparable to our Halloween, except with more meaning and very little commercialism. For several days, everyone in the town dresses up in a series of different costumes, all with traditional wooden masks. The most famous of these costumes is, of course, the Hexen (Witches). At night during the festival, the whole town dresses up and gathers to watch a dance between the devil and the witches he created. I saw a video of the dance, which just happens to be choreographed by Carlo's mother every year, and it's quite impressive in it's complexity, using spotlights and horror music to act out a story.

Today, Carlo (my exchange partner, for those who don't know) took me to a museum/studio in Waldkirch that was devoted to creating and preserving the traditional masks and costumes of the festival, specifically the Kandelhexen. As it turns out, Carlo's grandfather founded and built the studio from an old barn 33 years ago, and was responsible for a large part of the Kandelhexen's success. It's so interesting to see how intertwined the collective history of Waldkirch is, and how it effects the families we are staying with and the face of the town today. Try as I might, I can't think of anything in Newburyport that unites our town with as much passion and collective spirit as this festival seems to. Everyone participates in this tradition, regardless of age or status, and it is an integral part of Waldkirch as a whole. I only wish I could be here to see it. Forgive my musings, here are some pictures.

What goes up must come down

Going back to Waldkirch was an adventure within itself!

View from the top of the mine

The mine did open up into this room where there was an example of the silver and zinc that used to be mined there. We descended about 80 of the 1550 meters of the mine. Though the minerals harvested here were the main source of the areas wealth for hundreds of years, with no more silver or zinc to be found, it now strictly functions as a museum.

We climbed down 6 of these

You want me to what?!

yeah.. what you can't see in this picture is how wet the ladder was.. notice how you also can't see the top of the ladder.. did I mention that most of the mine is lit only with the head lamps we're wearing??

Did I mention the narrow passages?

It's amazing that these passages were chiseled by hand!

here we go..

um... oh dear..

Getting ready to enter the mine!

Safety first!

Before entering the mine we were given some safety reminders along with hard hats, gloves and head lamps.

The Silver Mine in Schauinsland

In order to get to the silver mine we had to ride to it in a cable car... beautiful views but not for those who are afraid of heights.

The real deal

Eric was being far too kind. From up close this is what my face really looked like. I'm not one for small spaces so this was a challenging excursion for me.

LOLing at G-Falcon =P

yeah the mine was cool

Ice Cream Rocks my Socks

ok so here in Germany ice cream is soooooo much better. today i got a gigantic ice cream sunday that had smoke comming out of the bowl and it was amazing! i wish i could post a picture of it but Richards father is gone on a trip for work and hes got the thingy that alows me to transfer files to his computer.








well anywayz this trip has been great so far and we have done so much. one highlight of the trip for me was a trip to France to play a game called Airsoft with my exchange partner Richard and his friends. after the game we went up to the top of the mountain
and we saw this insane view.

and castles are awesome BTW