Now that we are back from SüdTirol I am feeling a bit overwhelmed on getting everyone caught up with my adventures. Silly me. Today was my first day of school and I think it went pretty well. . not too far behind from missing the first two classes. It is about a 20min bike ride and it is M,W, and F for 3 hours. Last night I helped correct some more of the European Social Fund project that Phillip is working on. It's nice reading about regressions :) and other statistical information as well. Some parts make me want to scream though because the people make no sense at all. It's called a period people - use it! Anyways. . I go to Eichstätt on Friday for the weekend which I am SOOOOO excited about! My first adventure out on my own - kind of. Ok not really. lol.
Now that we are back from SüdTirol I am feeling a bit overwhelmed on getting everyone caught up with my adventures. Silly me. Today was my first day of school and I think it went pretty well. . not too far behind from missing the first two classes. It is about a 20min bike ride and it is M,W, and F for 3 hours. Last night I helped correct some more of the European Social Fund project that Phillip is working on. It's nice reading about regressions :) and other statistical information as well. Some parts make me want to scream though because the people make no sense at all. It's called a period people - use it! Anyways. . I go to Eichstätt on Friday for the weekend, which I am SOOOOO excited about! My first adventure out on my own - kind of. Ok not really. lol.
Here is a bit of what I wrote about the first few days in Italy, which was more like Germany since it used to be a part of Germany. .
Saturday Oct 17th– drove for 4hrs to Pöcking (just south of Munich) to Niko’s house. The kids watched The Last Unicorn on my computer for part of the ride - hehehe! Niko's lifelong friend Bob and his wife Wushy had been staying with him for the past few days so they were there and made us a great dinner. We sat and chatted and I understood almost everything . . . I was very tired and this was a good thing because in my room there was a lot of SPIDERS! AH!! So I passed out and did not feel anything crawling over me during the night. In the morning we had a nice spread of cheeses and jams for breakfast and then around noon we headed out to drive for about two hours to a friends house for lunch in Austria. I drove this leg of the journey and the weather was a bit like Oregon – rainy rainy rainy! So normal. Don’t worry, the fastest I went was just 86mph. So far the fastest that I have gone is 125mph.
We made it safe and sound to the friend’s house, which was way up on a high hill overlooking the mountains. This is a picture from the driveway. Her father and mother joined us as well. Before we began the meal the Mom pulled out a guitar and started singing a prayer. Cracked me up – thought you would appreciate that Mom. lol. We had a lovely lunch – I ate some potatoes with specks of beef still on them from the stew. Bluck. After that we had some cheese (love cheese!) and then a delicious vanilla pudding over fruit. The rain cleared and we decided to take our chance and stretch our legs a bit so we walked up to a neighbours house where they had HUGE rabbits running around outside and some hens and big fatty cows that Emily was afraid of. This particular one was licking Andrea's jacket.
We left soon after that as it started to rain again and made out way to SüdTirol, the northern region of Italy, where we got in around 8PM after we parked the car at a designated spot high up a mountain and then a “taxi” aka a 4-wheel drive car came and picked us up and took us up a very narrow and bumpy road to Gasthof Bad Dreikirchen. We unpacked and headed to our 5-course meal, which is just how they do dinner here! I didn’t sleep very well since my nose was all stuffed up. Super lame. I have my own room with a sofa and bathroom and then the kids are with their parents. The keys are these ancient huge keys. Love it. This “Hotel” has belonged to the same family for the past 200 years and it is really beautiful. For breakfast there is a nice spread of options – nutella on bread and yogurt with cereal of course - and then for dinner you choose the night before what you want to eat from two options for each course basically and it’s all delicious. Vegetarian options almost every time. It is well known I guess for its food. Delicious! On Monday we had our breakfast then headed out to hike – yippee!!! The views around here are gorgeous and the weather was crisp but the sky was clear and you were plenty warm once you started hiking up the mountain. We had no particular places we were hiking to so just enjoyed walking around for a couple hours, with many breaks to have some sweets – to entice the children to keep going. Emily and I befriended a dog, which is quite the feat since Emily is usually afraid of dogs.
Back at the Gasthof we had some cake and coffee – lunch is not included here but they do have a restaurant if you choose to buy something or of course the option of an assortment of cakes. There were only a couple of meltdowns with the kids and Oscar ended up passing out for about an hour. I played the piano a bit, went adventuring around a bit outside with Oscar (yelling really loud and listening to the echo over the hills), played some table tennis and soccer with him and then it was time for dinner. Niko arrived here just before dinner and he will be staying here till Friday with us as well.
Slept a little better last night but still woke up around 6AM. Super lame. We had breakfast around nine and then headed out to hike again! This time we kind of had a destination – about twice the distance we had hiked the day before. Emily and Andrea turned around after about 3hrs total of hiking. We thought that was pretty good for Emily. Their incentive to hike was to be allowed to watch a movie before dinner. There are no TVs here or radio or anything like that but we brought our computers with us to entertain them in the car. Oscar, Niko, Phillip and I hiked on a ways farther and the views were just so beautiful!! We hiked to around 6000ft up I believe and Bad Dreikirchen is just over 3500ft up. It took us 6hrs all together even though we only went five miles or so. Now I am hungry but must wait 2 more hours till dinner time because it is “only” 5:30. Boo.We went on a hiking adventure the next day to this old ruin and we made it up pretty far before Emily decided she really just could not go any farther so Andrea stayed back with her while I caught up with Phillip and Oscar. I didn't think we were going to find the right way to the old tower but we did and it was so cool. Dangerous rock climbing, standing on the edge of a cliff, and the thrill of climbing. Loved it. Took a couple really cool pictures - including one of this dog that was barking like mad at us but that I loved and want. We named her Kenya :) The first picture here is of the beginning of the trail to the ruin with the ruin very small in the background.
I'm having a crazy chocolate craze right now. I'm eating way too much chocolate. Ahhh! I just bought a white chocolate mango bar that Johanna had got me when she came and visited and I just ate it all. Ah!! I have a problem. I know. It could be worse though!
Yesterday I went and watched some of the Frankfurt Marathon because Meike was running in it. I saw her and she finished! Crazy!!!! We chatted at her house for a bit with the other au pair friend of hers named Tina. Meike leaves Friday for home - sad day!!!! And Tina just changed her ticket to leave on Monday because her family is horrible. So hopefully Meike's replacement will be super. She got in today and her name is Katie. Might meet her tonight - Monday night movie!!I'm sure there are a million things I am leaving out but that will have to do for now. Off to pick the kids up from school!
