Happy Saturday! We have been here now for a week and we are starting to get into some kind of a routine. The kids seem be adjusting to the time zone differences except for the boys having trouble falling asleep. I on the other hand must be trying to catch up sleep from 3 months ago and the jet lag has done some crazy things to me. I can’t remember the last time that I had vivid dreams that I remembered, but the past 4 nights I have had some crazy dreams and find it so hard to get out of bed in the morning, almost like I am not going into my rem cycles until early morning hours. Last night my dream swinged from me being asked to tutor a CC class on the fly and looking at the curriculum and realizing this was not the CC format and I had no idea what kind of cycle we were on to me in the hospital facility from the movie Independence Day where the alien got loose and somehow I turned into Will Smith. 

So, Matt was sweet to get up with the kids so I coud sleep in a little bit. I was sad though because Herrenberg has a market every Saturday morning in the “Market Plaze” and I really wanted to go. Oh well, next weekend! So after a late start we bought train tickets to take us to the little town of Ludwigsburg. There is a palace there that they have nicknamed “The Versailles of the Swabia” (which is the term used commonly for southern Germany). Every year there is a pumpkin festival that has a unique annual theme of giant displays and statues all made out of different types of pumpkins. An average of 450,000 pumpkins are used every year for the displays and apparently there is a great smashing after the pumpkin season. There aren’t really pumpkin patches like in the States so this was as close to “fall festival” as we could get. And as “Bubba” from Forest Gump says, there was pumpkin everything. Pumpkin in german is “kurbis” so bought some “Kurbiswein” to try at home. The theme this year was fire! There was a giant display of pumpkins made into a computer with a “firewall” on it, a firetruck, a fire eater, fire jellyfish, volcanoes, a European fire salamander (look it up, it’s real), and Charmander. 

The palace grounds were breathtaking! So many flower species and exotic birds that I have never even seen before! It was amazing how much detail God put into his creation and not to take for granted the creation that you may see everyday. There was even a little Storybook village similar to Rock City in Tennessee, but better! All the old fairy tales were displayed in little houses with Small World-like characters. The narration was in German but the stories spoke for themselves in all languages. We got to ride on a junior bahn train around the village which was unique in itself because you had to straddle the seats. Maddux was in heaven! We finished the day out with fresh nutella and banana crepes from a food truck and playing on a really unique playground. Sawyer even met some boys from Virginia! It is really funny how we perk up every time we hear  English being spoken. Being a foreigner in a country definitely puts into perspective what non English people must feel when they come to America. I have to say though, almost everyone here speaks a small amount of English and are very very kind to us, Americans trying not to butcher their unique language. Our daily German lessons will start next week when we resume our home school schedule!