Christmas in Kandern

The town square and Main Street look amazing during the Christmas season.

Oh Tannenbaum, Oh Tannenbaum

Our trek to get our tree was an adventure......

Someone gave us directions to a christmas tree farm near Matthew's

school and the directions went something like this.... Near the elementary

school follow the footpath~ go by the cows ~ find a barn at the end of the footpath~

knock on the barn door ~ there you will find a man who speaks no english only

allamonish (who knows on the spelling sorry) which is the dialect of the area and is quite different than the German language (meanwhile our german skills are lacking to say the least).

Sooooo we get to the end of the path and there are 3 or 4 barns, maybe one is a home ???

You can see Matt going to knock on the door. Luckily a man came out of the woods when he heard some LOUD American family. Everyone here is quite and speaks only so the person nearby can hear. Unless of course you are at a 'fest' or its midnight on News Years Eve. Well I knew the word for tree in German, that with a lot of hand motions he pointed us to a wide path on a muddy hill. There seemed to be quite a strong aroma of 'cow' but thats what most of this area here smell like, so that was not a big deal until I until I realized the slippery hill we were heading up was not mud after all :)

Well, we picked a beautiful tree and the tree man was wonderfully kind and we slid down the hill without falling in it !!

The Trek to our Christmas Tree *

The Trek to our Christmas Tree **

The Trek to our Christmas Tree

Dorm Subs

Thursday night dorm subs! The kids love our Thursday nights at the dorm! Here is Andrew is getting some advise about classes and school before dinner.

Basketball Game

This weekend was the first home game for basketball. We mostly play Department of Defense Schools. The closest Base is 2 1/2 hours away and the farthest is 7 hours away. So they play 4 games on a Friday night and 4 games on Saturday girls jv boys jv ~ girls vars. and boys vars. The teams sleep right in the school, the boys on the floor in the Gym and the girls in the Student Center. We spent the whole weekend there (but we slept at home!). Our boys got right in the spirit quickly by painting their faces and Andrew sprayed his hair blue! The girls beat Heidelberg for the first time. Rob worked the clock just like he did many years ago at NHS. It was a long but fun weekend!

All of us in one photo!

One night a week in December the towns people go down to the center of town and celebrate Christmas. There is singing food and fire. It is very simple, but beautiful! People taking the time to enjoy each other and honor the Christmas Season the whole month.