Christmas parties, photos and graduation choir...

Last week I went to two christmas parties from our school. One was by the 1st graders one by the fourth graders. They were a lot of fun and the kids did a great job playing songs and doing some other little plays for their parents. 

I brought my play-station and we had the kids play "singstar" ad they had a lot of fun with it and I laughed a lot. They did a great job!

Wednesday I babysat two of my boys again and we took some pictures that turned out pretty good. Sadly some of them turned out blurry cause my battery was dying... 

Wednesday evening I attended the BC's graduation. We got to sing three songs with our choir which was so much fun! I was amazed at how fast we were able to learn the songs.

Graduation

I had to say goodbye to some of my friends, which I am used to by know. That doesn't mean that I would not miss them. I just know that I will get to see them again at some point. 

(here, there, or in the air..)

If I had stayed in Neverland...

Friday evening the BC had a theme-party at the café. The topic was "Neverland" so I had actually planed to go in a blue nightgown or dress, as Wendy wears it in the Peter Pan stories. I couldn't find one, so I just put on what I could find, painted some dirt into my face and grabbed a wooden sword. Now I was Wendy who never left Neverland. :-)

We finally made it, for the last semesters we have been trying to get the Neverland people together: Michael, John, Wendy,Peter, and for the looks our friend Rufio. Also notice Peter's shadow in the back, I am fixing him... :-)

I knew it!

Hook, he just can't leave me alone...

sunday, birthday and BK

On sunday it was Kerstin's birthday, so we went out to BK for lunch.

As you know we like to be crazy every once in a...well ok, all the time... :-)

"You distract them, and I'll get the hot brownies.."

snow, kids, classrooms and friends

Hi there.

The other day it snowed so much that I got stuck half way to school and so went home for the day. It wasn't to bad, since the school bus didn't make it either and so over half of the kids weren't there anyway. Well, it was nice to have a day off, but I do miss those kids whenever I don't get to see them. So I took my camera to school the next day and we had fun taking pictures with it. Of course everyone wanted their own picture with me. :-) Here are a few of the nicest:

First-graders

                                                

Fourth-graders

Ahhh, I love those kids so much. I have to leave them by the end of the year, because I got a now job at a bigger school. It will be a good place to work and I will have way more to do, but I will surly miss the personal contact I was able to have with the kids at the little school. Here we only have 90 students, at the new school it will be 400! 

Black Sheep

On thursday I went out to dinner with my friends Alex R., Jason, Patrick and Frank who is Alex's friend from Jersey. Alex invited me for my birthday. It was a lot of fun and I really appreciate this time I can have with my brothers in Christ. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, so there are no pics, but we had a great time and a lot of fun. :-)

Afterward I went to church and hung out with some more friends of mine. 

Ines, Matthias, Jonathan and I met Daniel at BK later on ( no, I did not eat again :-p) and guess what...the camera was there too. haha

I just love sharing these moments with you guys and love it when I can put pictures to let you join in the fun! :-)

haha, we were NOT trying to hold hands here..haha, thanks Kerstin for noticing :-) Daniel took the pic, so he's not in it...

oh, there he is! :-)

Big hug to everyone!

girls night, birthday and thanksgiving...

I haven't been able to update in a while, so let me tell you about a few things I did over the last weeks.

Some weekends ago a few of my girlfriends and I went out to a restaurant for a late dinner.

It's a place called "Cheese" and that's what they serve. :-) The owner had given one of the girls a coupon so she could bring 10 girls and get the food cheaper. We ate a lot, talked a lot.. and unfortunately had to inhale a lot of smoke, since the place is called a smokers club.. 

Well, as you can see in the pics, we had a lot of fun!

Then I had my..26th... birthday on the 25th. So I invited some of my girlfriends and my parents over to my place and we had cake and just hung out for a while.

It was a great time and I really enjoyed having them. One of the boys I babysit came with his mom and of course he was the center of attention from then on, but I didn't mind. :-)

Friday we had the big Thanksgiving dinner ( or lunch) from the BC. We had lots of good food and a lot of fun hanging out.

good food

good men 

some more great ppl

and even more :-)

they are outside taking pictures..I am inside...so is the pie!!!!! haha

Today I watched one of the many kids I take care of. I took her to the movies and we watched a children's movie which was put together from different episodes of a TV show, so I knew most of it, but she didn't so it was a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to the christmas market which isn't as good as it used to be, but she got to ride the carrousel so that was nice for her at least.

Jess, how do we do it ???

The craziest things always happen to my lovely friend Jess and I, so saturday was a lot of fun! 

But let me tell you from the beginning:

I called Jess saturday morning and asked if she wanted to go out, so we made plans to go out for Coffee with another girl from the BC.

When I got to the school the other girl (sorry, I don't remember who it was :-( ) had already gone into town for something else, so Jess and I were trying to think about what we wanted to do.

First we thought about going to Ikea for free coffee, or going into town for one, or doing something totally different. We settled on the going to town and getting coffee thing and went to ask Mike if he wanted to join us. He was going to have a relaxed day and so decided to stay behind. For a joke I told him that we might end up doing something amazing, like finding a medieval-market or something like that. (we had been to one last semester and had an amazing day there, so I knew he would like that) He stayed behind anyway...

Jess and I got into the car and all of a sudan decided that we really wanted to take a road-trip.

So I called my dad and asked if he had any ideas. He told us to go to the zoo in dortmund and that sounded like fun and so we started going in that direction.

Then Jess remembered that she had a coupon for a free Starbucks coffee, and since there is one in Dortmund, we didn't go to the zoo, but there.

We got there and saw a couple of rides on the market-place. It looked like a small fair, not to big, so we went into Starbucks after looking around for a short time.

I LOVE ICED CHAI LATTES!! 

So, after we got done with our drinks we wanted to go to H&M to look for deals, but never got there. And then the most funny thing happened... 

The first thing we saw were some people sitting on a stand looking at other people SWORD FIGHTING!!!  I couldn't believe it, we did happen to be there during the Hanse Markt..which is: A MEDIEVAL-MARKET!!!!

hahaha, we could not stop laughing!!!!

We walked around for a couple of hours and it was so much fun! They had all sorts of animals, and a group playing old music and people baking bread in and old style way, and all sorts of other medieval-things!  It was great!

Jess and I just couldn't believe that we had found this, we keep running into fun things like this, whenever we decide to just hang out. :-) I love it!

Here are some pics to share the fun :-) :

#

Later that evening I got to put my signature on two of the BC guys..don't ask, I though it was funny at the time...haha (they have my name on their wrists)

another pic

ok, ok, you still can't see how short it really is, I should post a pic from behind some time...

haircut

well, I decided that it was time to say goodbye to some of my hair today. After having it back in a pony tail for the longest time, I had a bunch cut off today. Here's what it looks like, kinda:

you might not be able to tell how short it got, but I'll post a better pic some time soon.

old friends, kids and sickness

Yesterday an old friend of mine called and asked if I could do some last minute babysitting for him and his wife. So I went to their house which is about 40 minutes away from mine and watched their 4 kids. I am not sure how old the oldest is, I think maybe 5 or 6, and the youngest and only girl is going to be 1 soon.

They put them to bed when I cam, so I didn't really have that much to do, so I sat down and read a book. At one point their 2 year old boy, who had been sick earlier already  woke up and started crying. I realized that he wasn't feeling well and later on he showed me that I was right. :-( poor thing...  Neways, I won't go into detail, but after some cleaning and changing clothes, he was back in bed and hopefully feeling a lot better! :-)

His parents came home shortly after that so I went home where I got to chat with Ines for a lil bit, which was great!

project

a few days ago I posted a pic of my new project, well here it is a few days later...I didn't work on it to much though, so it's not close to being done... :

ok, ok, you can't really see that much of it, but it's on my head...well, you get the idea I hope..HAHA

Psalm 23

Saturday we had out main children's ministry meeting, where we get together with everyone that works in the children's ministry at church, to talk about our work and to pray together.

We heard about the 23rd Psalm and were told to sit down with a piece of paper and draw or write down what comes up when we think about the psalm.

I thought about how important it is, that when we are in a "dark valley" , that we don't forget that God is still in control, and that he WILL lead os to green pastures. 

A lot of times we, or at least that's what I like to do, bathe in our down- times, we think way to much about the dark season we are in and are in danger of loosing the joy that we should have in the Lord!

Well, here is the picture I drew :

The sheep is going through a dry and dark valley, but ahead it sees the shepherd leading it to the green pastures. You might need to klick on the picture to make it bigger, to be able to see the shepherd in the sky...

Today:

I spent today with my "adoptive" family. Even though Ines isn't there.. I MISS YOU!...

I had a great time with my "mom" and "dad" and my "siblings".

We had waffles and a good time talking..and a lot of that!!! :-)

I love those times with them, it is so good to have friends to spend time with and talk about whatever is on your heart. 

On my way there I drove through this beautiful forest:

I love my bed...

Sleep has been my best friends these days. I don't know what's up, but I've been super exhausted all week long.

School started again and I have to get used to getting up early again, but I've never been this exhausted before.

Wednesday I went to bed at 8.30 pm and slept until the next morning, Thursday it was even earlier, 7pm.  Yesterday I slept 3 hours from 4 till 7 and today from 4 till 8... yay

neway... tonight I will be playing taxi for a group from the BC. I am taking them to the Hahn airport (2,5 h one way) from where they will be leaving to Ireland for outreach-week.

Pray for all the groups that are going to different places to bless other churches or share the gospel in different cities. 

more sun and hanging out...

soo...there was more sun to be enjoyed today!! yay

School started again today, after a 2 week break. It was fun to see the kids again!

Later on I went over to the BC an hung out with Sabine, Jess and Horst Henning. We all sat outside and read.

I love this fall weather, it's amazing and the colors of the leafs are so pretty!! I should try to get some more pictures of the trees here.

my new project: I hope it will turn out looking a lil bit like a beanie... :-)

Hanging out:

early morning, sad past, waiting fortress, long car rides, great friends...

After only getting 3 hours of sleap last night, I had to get up early and be at the villa at 7am.

I met up with Mick, Shawn and Cristal and we went on a 3 hour drive to a concentration-camp in Buchenwald. 

I wasn't to tired though and couldn't have slept anyways, since I had to tell Mick where to go.

We got to Buchenwald around 10 am and started our own tour with a little gadget that told us things about the different stations along the way. It was a good tour, but of course there was always the sadness in the back of our heads, that humans could do this to another human being.

Around 12 (I think) we got back into the car and went on to get some lunch, which we had at a small lunch-place, where we ate something.

We traveled on to the Wartburg, which is the fortress or castle where Luther had been hiding and translated the New Testament into german. We didn't do the big tour, since we were mostly interested in seeing Luthers room and some other minor things outside of the castle.

We had some coffee there too and had a great time hanging out.

I think it was 4.30 pm when we got back to the car and headed home.

The car ride was a lot of fun and we laughed a lot!

We had to stop on the autobahn after a couple of minutes, because the police had blocked the road, which lasted an hour. We had a lot of fun though as you can see in the pictures.

Mick at one point decided to clean our windows (oh how good it is to have windex  with you wherever you go *haha*) and the ppl in the car next to us jokingly asked him to clean theirs too. Of course Mick did not hesitate one second, and did it. We laughed soo much!

We finally got home arround 7.30 pm and had some dinner.

Here are some more pics from the trip:

pretty friends:

Later tonight some guys from the BC decided to have fun with a wrestling-match, which kinda scarred me...but what can ya say...if it's fun..:

Now I'm home..it's 2.30 am...TIME FOR BED!!!!