Basel Sunday, Hot water and the "After" photo

I didn't get a chance to post any pictures last week, so I thought I would catch up. We had a wonderful Sunday - We went to Basel Switzerland with our friends Anne and Allison (fellow teachers at RIA) to worship at their church - the Anglican Church of Basel. We really enjoyed the service there. Afterward, we walked to the pedestrian area nearby and had lunch at Cindy's Diner. So, Cindy's Diner is a Swiss version of an American 50's diner. They serve burgers, sandwiches, fries, pizza, salads but no meatloaf! Can you believe it? It was a hoot to get a curry chicken and pineapple pizza - not your normal 1950's dining fare... While at lunch, we realized that we had missed the next tram/train/bus connection back to Weil, so we decided to go to... wait for it... Starbucks! Yes, Starbucks! They have four of them in Basel and one was just down the way from Cindy's. We savored the atmosphere, the coffee, the espresso. Unfortunately, the top of the cinnamon dispenser had not been tightly attached, so I dumped about two tablespoons of cinnamon into my espresso con panna. Oy, that was a bit too much, but I drank it anyway - it would be a shame to waste...

We strolled around Basel with Anne and Allison, (that's Delynn, Anne and Allison in the the picture) enjoying the sunshine after so many days of rain and grey weather. We came home, enjoyed a nice relaxing afternoon and then went over to Diana's home (our school director) to celebrate her birthday. At RIA, we tend to make a pretty big deal of birthdays since we are so far away from families back in North America. Tomorrow evening, we are holding a "Mexican Fiesta" to celebrate our friend Josie's birthday. Delynn and I are suppose to bring cheese, but it is amost impossible to find chedder cheese in Germany - and you can't have a Mexican Fiesta without chedder cheese. We have looked high and low for it and may need to find a substitute... Maybe a nice brie?

Did I mention how hot the water gets here? Water right out of the tap can reach temperatures of up to 95 degrees centigrade. For those of you that slept through science, water boils at 100 degrees C. One can literally brew tea directly from the water coming out of the tap. We have to be really careful. It also seems like the water goes from normal warm to skin-searing hot by turning the taps about two millimeters - very tricky, especially in the shower... (Thanks, I'm healing nicely...) Speaking of showers, most German showers don't have a shower head coming out of the wall like we did back in the US but rather have a hand-held shower head with a holder stuck to the wall. It works just fine as a shower head, but it is just another curious difference.

I also wanted to share a photo of the media center as it looked at our open house on Thursday evening. Lots of people put in a huge amount of effort to get the MC ready to show our parents. We still have hundreds and hundreds of volumes to catalog and integrate into the library, but I think it looks just great (compare to the photo posted back on 4 August!). Delynn put in lots of hours sorting and shelving - she was a real trooper. We will officially open the library on September 3rd, but school opens on Monday and all of the teachers are all looking forward to a great year!

Thanks for reading - we love an miss you all. God bless you all and we thank you so much for your prayer support - it truely makes a difference in our lives every day.

We had a question from a good friend about the definition of "busker" from an earlier post. (Thanks for the question - we are happy to answer any questions we get). A "busker" is someone that plays music or sings for tips, usually at a street market or in a subway station or in a pedestrian zone where people walk by. We have heard some really outstanding music by buskers in many cities across Europe. They can be surprisingly good.