I'm Back!

from Germany. It is amazing to me that this is the first time I have been back in 10 years. Where does the time go? It was just as beautiful as I remembered it...if not more so. This time was a whole different experience for me. I was on a tour. I saw nearly every touristy spot that you could imagaine. All of those gorgeous wonderful places that you have actually heard about, and are totally overrun by americans, asians, and the french. Last time I spent a year in Germany, I saw what I term as the "real" Germany whereas this time I saw it from the outside in. It was still incredible though. I am creating an online scrapbook which I will send you the link as soon as I have it put together..or mostly put together.

The weather while we were there was beautiful. One day it was even 90 degrees which is incredible for June in Germany. Most days it was in the 70's and 80's. It didn't really rain until our last night, and our tour guide said that Germany was crying because we were leaving.:) Our tour guide was amazing by the way. She grew up in East Germany, and the Berlin wall fell when she was 19. This means she was totally educated under the Communist system. It was interesting to hear her take on it, and that she actually felt very good about where she grew up, and how she grew up, and wishes she could have the same for her own daughter.

If you are on myspace, I have uploaded some of my pics there. Steve took beautiful pics of nearly everything we did.
If you didn't know already, I took 12 highschool youngsters with me too. What craziness. They were really good kids, and except for the one time when 3 of them went looking for prostitutes and got lost in the meantime, and nearly gave their grandma a heart attack...they were really well behaved. We went with two other groups who didn't look after their kids at all. They let them do whatever they wanted to. One night that let their kids going into Berlin (a 20 minute trip by public transport) by themselves at night, and while they were on the tram, a young man asked them where they were from, and they said america, and he threw a glass bottle at them. They immediately left and went back to the hotel never making it to Berlin. We didn't allow that with our kids. They could go out at night if we were with them. We went out at night at Berlin with the kids, and we had no trouble. We went out with them lots of nights, and had typical kid drama, but no real trouble. We were happy and felt blessed. The other groups said we didn't trust our kids, but come on.....kids who have barely heard of public transport much less used it? and are expected to go hang out in some of the biggest cities in the world late at night?
Anyway, I didn't want my kids to be faced with a situation that was bigger than they could handle. Some of the other kids even started hanging out with us too. Whether that was because they didn't really WANT to be alone, or whether it was because we had all the cool kids in our group, I don't know.:)
Anyway, with the lack of control of the other groups, I have a feeling that my kids got to do pretty much whatever they wanted to at night. And the truth is, I did trust them, and so I didn't go to over crazy on them at night when they were safe at the hotel.
Well, i have a lot of adventures to explain, but that is enough for right now. Let's just say I have been to hell and back, and it wasn't such a bad ride.:) (p.s.---the name of a pub we went to in Rothenberg was named hell....hahahaha...

Steve is ready to move to Germany, so when we take off in a few years don't be suprised.
have a nice rainy day....
love
the forever sweet t...