Finally posting some pictures...

Delynn and I are feeling a bit more normal - it was just in time for a day retreat with the church yesterday. We are glad to be feeling better. We had a talent show at school this week and a quick trip to Basel to look for a sweater for Delynn (alas, no joy). However, since it has been a few weeks since I have posted pictures, I thought it would be nice.

We will start with the RIA Talent Show

The Preschool enthusiastically present a
song to the gathered masses
(okay, mostly parents and staff...)

One of our international students writes in her native lanuage -
Can you guess from where she comes?

Three Cheers for the RIA Lions!!
One of our weekly clubs is cheerleading -
they are a bit more expressive than the chess club.

One of our students surprised us with his really excellent drumming skills. He has been playing for about 7 years (since he was three years old) and was truly gifted.
(Notice the hearing protection?)

During a quick trip to Basel, we wanted to stop again at the Münster for some quiet moments. The cathedral has a great sense of peace within.

The Basler Münster choir - the area behind the alter is wonderfully ornate.

Finally, our Day Away, a retreat aptly entitled "Food for the Journey", took place in a retreat center just across the border in Chrishona, Switzerland. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful setting. We sensed God's nearness in many ways. Chrishona was founded nearly two hundred years ago to teach theological principles to local craftsmen - it is now a theological school and retreat center.

For our afternoon break, we went on a walk. In Germany, a two-hour walk in the country is just the ticket on a beautiful winter's day. We took the shortcut back after just an hour... We crossed the German-Swiss border at several points.
Above is a border stone (Do you see the engraved bear?); below is the more conventional marker.

Doesn't Delynn look refreshed? Hope she has her passport...

Scoring 1,5 on the optimism scale

So, now that I have your attention, I wanted to share a couple more interesting differences between our life here and in the States. First off, hanging around kids all week has brought Michael his third cold of the fall/winter season. Now, under normal circumstances, I might get a cold or two between September and April, but I have discovered that I have a deficient immune system when it comes to being with children every day. Don’t get me wrong, we love them dearly, but they are little germ factories. I disinfect the keyboards and mice every day and have a big bottle of Purel on my desk (Thanks again Mark and Jan!), but I just can’t seem to keep up. I presume that this will moderate over time as my body continues to get used to this new environment…

One of the very noticeable differences in Europe is how they write numbers. When looking at numbers, Europeans use commas where we use periods and periods where we use commas. For example: 1,234.56 (US) becomes 1.234,56 (Germany) – crazy huh? I don’t know the origins of this variance, but there it is. We see numbers all of the time, shopping, on advertisements, etc, so transposing is not that difficult – in fact we hardly notice it at all anymore. We just have to be careful when we pay our bills online that we don't mix up the commas and decimal points or our bank account might become overdrawn!

One thing we did notice recently is how we scale things differently here than in North America. Question: what is the GPA of someone who makes all A’s at university? Answer: 4.0 – right? Well, in Europe, that would be a 1,0. One of the students interning at RIA just got a 1,5 on his teaching review which is a really good grade. I don’t know if this stems from the American ideal that bigger is better or whether the origin comes from elsewhere, but it can be confusing. They have a German company that is the equivalent of America’s Consumer Reports called Test. I was looking at a couple of different products that had been tested, one had a score of 2,2 and was rated “Gut” whereas the product that rated 1,8 was rated “Sehr Gut” – it took me several moments of thought to recognize that they are using a 1 to 5 scale with 1 being good – 5 is bad.

This is not to say that the “smaller is better” rating works universally. Hotels and restaurants (anyone see “Ratatouille”?) are rated where 5 stars is better than 4 stars – makes you go hmmmm.

So, why did I title this entry: Scoring a 1,5 on the optimism scale? Because just like the glass, I always view our sink as “half-full”. Let me explain: we have a sink at our home that measures 34 x 37 x 15 cm. This works out to approximately 13 x 14 x 6 inches. I mentioned before that our dishwashers all walk on two feet, so we are constantly washing dishes (or so it seems). Why, just a bowl, spoon and two coffee cups after breakfast makes it feel like we have to do dishes again… When we went to visit our cousins in Bohlsbach I commented on how nice and big their sink was – nothing like the big Kohler we had in our old home but much bigger than the one we have (and they have a non-human dishwasher to boot!) Not that I am complaining – we truly do love that we are here, even if we are getting dishpan hands…

Pray please for our health – I have given my cold to Delynn over the last week. We have a church retreat coming next Saturday at which I will be helping with worship team, so I need to be back to 100%.

On a sadder note, my maternal grandfather, Monty McMillan, passed at the age of 95 on January 6, 2008. He was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, worked as a miner and a rancher and most importantly, brought my mom into this world. God speed Monty.

Delynn and I returned to school this week - and it was a full week indeed. Delynn is busily working on the year end reporting along with the normal monthly items. Thankfully, we have our new secretary to help out, especially with the many necessary German telephone conversations that are required to run a school. Martina is a wonderful addtion to our RIA staff. The students jumped right back into classwork without any major hiccups. I've said this before, but I am so impressed with the vast majority of our students who actually missed school. It is wonderful to teach children who like being there - and like learning!

We enjoyed an exceptional worship today at ACB; we had a huge praise and worship group - one of the largest I have seen to date. The worship group consisted of piano, lead and accoustic guitars, bass, drums and saxophone in addition to the four vocalists. I know that back at VFFC, we would love to have that kind of accompanyment with our praise teams. However, no place is perfect. VFFC has better musical infrastructure than we have here at ACB, so we make due with a single monitor and some feedback. In the end however, it is all praise to God - and that is what really counts!

Since we are back to school, we have not really done much exciting this week outside of walking to the market almost every day. We have noticed that the days are getting longer - it is nice to be able to leave school near to 17:00 and still have some light in the sky. The weather this week was quite warm but we have turned back to more freezing temperatures starting this weekend. But the sun shines here quite more often than back in Vancouver and I find that I am rather grateful for that.

I have outlined before some of the reasons we go to the store so often: small refrigerators, little extra storage space, no mega-Costco-sized super saver quantities, fewer preservatives in general. Take bread for example. I don't know why, but the bread we buy is always sliced in odd numbers. There is either 5 or 7 or 9 slices per bag. Well, I don't know about you, but I always use two slices of bread to make a sandwich, so I always end up with this lonely piece of bread that usually ends up molding. Oh yeah and you would think that with only 9 slices of bread that we would be able to eat it before it gets moldy, but it is amazing how quickly things go over. Okay, now all bread sold in the stores has a wire closure with a date printed on it. These wire closures come in different colors and I think there may be some kind of pattern to it but I haven't taken the time to figure it out. Anyway, the date printed on the wire closure doohickey is what we call the "mold-by" date because if you have eaten the bread by that date, you have a greater than 50% chance that it will be moldy. Back in the states, the "use-by" date was always a little conservative - I had often had perfectly serviceable food even after the expiration date. Not so here - oooooh no. And even if you have an expiration date that is 10 months out, once the item is opened (applesauce for example), you better be liking applesauce until it is gone because it will mold in a week - even in the fridge. So, one of the good reasons for smaller quantities is that one doesn't get tired of said foodstuff before it is all consumed.

Another striking difference we have noticed is that while the 2008 presidential campaign season is well underway, we are not bombarded by the plethora of commercials or other forms of media of which I am sure you are already tired. We get most of our information from the web and the single CNN channel available to us on cable, so it is one of the more tolerable campaigns we have lived through. Good luck to everyone back in the states...

Where does the time go?

We are just finishing up our Christmas break and what a wonderful break it has been. Delynn was able to take a quick trip home for Christopher and Lucy's wedding and we trained up to Heidelberg for an overnighter with the Barbour family. Tomorrow we get back to school and see our students - I am rather looking forward to teaching them again. During the break, we did get a little bit of snow one day. This was about as bad as it got, so no worries here. I think everything looks pretty in snow.


Heidelberg is located about 4 hours (by "slow" train) north of Weil am Rhein. It is on the northern most border of Baden-Württemberg. Since it is in the same state as Weil, the five of us happy travellers were able to ride using a special train ticket for € 27. It is a really great deal, but the restriction is that it is only good on the regional trains. We call these the "milk-run" trains because they stop in every little town with a train stop. Heidelberg was really quaint, but as you can probably tell from the photos, it was a bit nippy. We were blessed with non-rainy and beautiful blue skies on Friday but the cold wind could take one's breath away. We walked up to the castle (yes, that's right, we walked up the hill to the castle - Michael actually ran for a few meters) to have a look around. The castle is most stunning for the views that it gives of the city. We could just stand, look down on the city and sigh thinking about how blessed we are to live here right now.

The city of Heidelberg as seen from the castle.

Layering the clothing helps... somewhat...

Our hotel, the Vier Jahreszeiten, is located directly on the Neckar river next to an old city gate and just up the street from the Heiligegeistkirche. This was a view out of our hotel window... Pretty sweet!

Travelling in the winter does have its advantages. Hotel prices are lower, which is really great for those living with the currently weak dollar. Crowds at the major attractions are minimal and folks are glad for the business. For example, when we visited the Schnitzelhaus (Home to 100 different types of schnitzel) we didn't have to wait long at all to get a table - actually, being the North Americans, we were the first ones at the door when they opened because we were cold and hungry! Our hotel proprietor regaled us with stories of the famous 1980-81 icehockey team from Garmish which had several famous players (I didn't know a single one but smiled and nodded in the approprite places). The only really crowded time was on the train back Friday night - we should have known better than to return on a Friday evening when everyone is travelling for the weekend. When we first got on the train in Karlsruhe, we had to stand for 10-15 minutes before some seats opened up a couple of stops later.

Great news! We just found out that our sisters (Deanne and Denise) will be coming for a visit in the spring - yeah! They will be joining us over the Easter holidays at our home here. Looks like we will need to get planning for some trips...

Wishing everyone the very best for the new year!

Better late than never...

We finally got our Christmas message to post successfully after many, many tries. Sorry that it is slightly late... Love to all!