Karlsruhe Schloss (castle/ palace) with Mum and Dad

My parents came today before lunch. I had just finished my last English session with Tiana and Anna about 10 minutes beforehand!

My "trusty steed" for the past 6 months!

In front of Karlsruhe Schloss

 

Up the final staircase to the very top of the tower. There were 158 steps in total!

Views overlooking Karlsruhe

Surrounding views from the top of the tower.

Showing the fan shaped formation of the city.

 

We enjoyed a nice Thai meal, as a thankyou to Anna for all she has done for me!

Anna and Anna's last meal together.

Local area

Some photos from 'round and about'...

My local supermarket. I'll miss not being able to jump on my bike and get there within a few minutes!

Hornbach- sells all and sundry that you might need or possible want for home and garden. Often selling things that you didn't know you needed until you saw it!

Erlöserkirche, the Methodist church that I've been attending for the past 6 months. 

Leonard and Elly trying to outdo each other with different ways of climbing over or sitting on the pews!

Günther-Klotz-Anlage park. When this park was created in 1976, it was one of the largest urban recreation areas in Germany.

Europahalle, where I play badminton most weeks.

This is a lovely stained glass front door that I cycle past most days. It looks very impressive at night time, when you can see the full effect of the light shining through it.

I thought I'd sneak a few pictures of Elly and I in here. During the time I've been here, Elly has enjoyed coming down to my room to spend some time with me. Sometimes she's looked at books, other times she's been colouring. In the days running up to Christmas, she helped decorate my little Advent Christmas tree. At times she has been known to take some sweets from my cupboard and then sit waiting for me to come back so she can ask if she can have them!!

Elly is a little poser and its rare to have photos of her, without her hands on her face!

Here she was leaning on my knees and finding it extremely funny to make me smell her feet!

Elly speaks German all the time, but understands English as that's the language her Mum uses with her. You may be pleased to know that I often use German with Elly, but it is nice to be able to fall back on my English when I run out of German! Elly always answers in German though. 

Feiertag/ Bank holiday

This morning I met up with Rebekka for breakfast. We were both a bit delayed though: me because I'd forgotten about the different Feiertag transport times. We met in Durlach at one of the rare cafes that decided to open on a Bank holiday. In Germany, ALL shops close on Bank holidays!

As you can see from the photo below, my breakfast was very sweet. I didn't intend it to be, but I wasn't entirely sure what I was expecting! I had ordered a ham and cheese croissant too, but they had run out of those!

Rebekka told me there was somewhere she wanted to show me, which we would drive to afterwards. She wouldn't tell me where! It took about half an hour to drive to our destination, which was Michaelsberg, Untergrombach, which gave us some amazing views. 

For some reason, looking over this landscape reminded me of being up on the Lickey Hills in England and looking over Birmingham!! Except, as I told Rebekka, there we don't look over a lovely lake and a vast expanse of forests!

The only way to get down to another path was to slide down this dirt track, or to squeeze between trees, as yours truly didn't have suitable shoes on for this unexpected walk!

It was perfect weather for this walk but also perfect conditions for my hayfever too! Bekka enjoyed picking a variety of wildflowers to take home with her.

I drove back home afterwards, which was fun! I had just been thinking the night before I would like to have another opportunity to do more driving before returning home, but hadn't thought it possible, as the car we had been using before had been returned to its owner.

Mid afternoon, I went round to Andrea's Garten, where we had lots of fun playing table tennis and later we made home made pizzas, which tasted delicious.

Making the pizzas.

Andrea's Garten

Eating the end result!

A mixture (of photos) from May!

Hallo zusammen/ all,

(Ignoring the belated gardening post that I snuck in at a later date)... I realise I've not posted any blogs for 26 days: eine ganz lange Zeit- a very long time! Aber, ich habe nicht so viel gemacht- but I've not done so very much. I finished the majority of my jobs, the week beginning the 14th May, giving myself the last 2 weeks to chill, finish sightseeing around this area and end my time here in a relaxed way. All of the families I've worked with and other people that I've got to know at church have asked whether I'm coming back to Germany again. Once I've assured them that I am bound to return, although probably not for such a long period as this time, they've said I must go and visit them again! So any of my future visits here may well have to be at least 2 weeks long to fit everyone in!!

Below are some photos of when I was at Felix' house and we were doing some archery. Beforehand we were using his catapult to try and hit a cd, but I was highly unsuccessful at that. However, give me a bow and arrow... Felix had stuck a cd on the board as a target and drawn other circles around it. I managed to get the arrow in the hole in the middle of the cd!!! The week after I hit the cd again! 

I borrowed a few English books from the library, for some of the different children I was working with. Florentina liked trying to read English and particularly enjoyed "Elmer the patchwork elephant."

Can you recognise any English words?!

Florentina and I

I went to Ettlingen Tor, the only big shopping centre around here, last week and enjoyed a long and profitable shopping spree (although not so profitable for my purse!)! I also treated myself to some different flavoured ice creams, as I've not had that much whilst being out here, considering the glorious weather we've had for about the past 2 months!! I had Bounty flavour, After Eight (my first mint icecream in 6 months as 'normal' mint icecream doesn't exist in Germany, Honeydew Melon and Nutella!! I didn't need any lunch after all that! 

At my last KJE (bible youth group) session, one of the guys cooked a meal for us and afterwards we played some games.

Jungle Speed

Great Dalmuti

On the Tuesday, I took another trip to the Blackforest, but this time to a new area: Löffingen, near Donaueschingen (where the source of the Danube River is) to visit an English friend, who I met in Germany 5 years ago. It was lovely to spend 2 days with Lizi, her husband and daughter Beatrice, who is 18 months old and very sweet! Beatrice loves picking flowers and when we went on a long, sunny walk the first afternoon, she had great fun picking flowers then passing them to me. She is also good at baby sign language, some of it "official" e.g. please and thankyou but other signs she has made up, like food, drink, hot and cold. It was really interesting watching her and I believe it's a great idea for toddlers, whilst they haven't got the ability to communicate verbally what it is they want or need.

Löffingen

It is now only 4 days until I come home. My parents will be with me tomorrow, after spending a few days at HB in the Blackforest. I'm very excited about coming home and seeing friends and family again. This excited started about 4 weeks ago, so you can imagine how much it is building up!!!! For a few nights it stopped me getting to sleep very quickly!