Speyer

On Sunday we took a day trip to Speyer (on the recommendation of one of the moms at the party!). There we went to the Speyer Technik Museum and climbed in airplanes, a U Boat, saw a Russian space shuttle, and went down a really tall slide! Grandma and Grandpa J got to Heidelberg Saturday evening and two little boys were pretty excited to see them at the bus stop!

 Guess who loved the display of old cameras? :)

 Sitting in the nose of a 747.

 Noah, going to space.

 After the museum, we went to the Dom St Maria und St Stephen, the oldest church in Germany that wasn't destroyed in the 30 Years War.

 

The door had depictions of different Bible stories. 

  

Noah, with the ark.

 We walked around for a bit and had gelato in the warm afternoon. This is the remnant of what was the wall around the city:

A birthday party!

Noah was invited to Kayla's birthday party this past weekend at a fun indoor playground called Jump Inn. It was chaos in the best possible way! The boys had a blast running, climbing, and playing. It was great for us to meet some of the other parents from Noah's school too.

 Yum, cupcakes!

The celebrations continue...

 We got to sing to Noah for his birthday at dinner last night. He loved the singing and the ice cream.

Benjamin is learning a lot, and his teacher is very helpful. This is his German homework this week, sorting things, body parts and fruits/vegetables and practicing his printing, as well as learning that all nouns are capitalized in German (we'll have to unlearn that when we get back to the U.S.). He is working so hard and still loves going to school. He met another boy named Benjamin in the other 2nd grade class who speaks English as well as German, which is great!

Happy 5th Birthday Noah!

Noah is the second member of the family to celebrate a birthday in Germany! He brought gummy bears to school yesterday to share with his classmates, and today he opened presents in the morning, we had lunch at McDonald's (which the birthday boy loved), gelato for dessert and lots of playing with his new toys.
 Before we left, Grandma and Grandpa J gave Noah his gift:

Thanks for the Legos, Grandma and Grandpa B!

Noah's first day of school

Noah had his first day of school at the DAI International Kindergarten on Tuesday. He got to celebrate his birthday there today, where he brought gummy bears as treats for all his classmates, they sang to him and he had a great time!

A note from Noah's teacher:

On Thursday the group went to the Schwetzingen castle. Here are our other 51 kids for the year! 

Benjamin's first day of school

A tradition in Germany before the new school year begins is for kids to receive a cone filled with fun treats. Christina (who works with Pepperdine's program here) got one for each of the boys!

Benjamin had his first day of school today, learned a new word and has Frau Schaefer for his teacher. She speaks some English and is very nice.

Noah starts school tomorrow at the DAI international kindergarten. We got to meet the director today. He is in the ABC Owl group and is happy about that.

We had a great dinner that ended in messy ice cream bars! 

We are here!

We left LAX on Wednesday, Sept. 4 at 10:45, flew to SFO and then on to Frankfurt! We made it, exhausted, at around 10am on Thursday. The kids and I had slept about 4 1/2 hours on the flight, and they did great. Then we collected luggage, boarded a bus and drove to Heidelberg (about an hour from the airport). The wonderful staff of the program had Subway sandwiches for us at the Moore Haus, and then I unpacked and we had a tour of the house. Dinner was at Burgfreiheit, the restaurant where we will have dinner every Deinstag (Tuesday). (I will get photos of our apartment in Moore Haus soon, once things are more put away!

On Friday we met the Headmistress of Benjamin's school then had a little down time. We also saw some of the Hauptstrasse, which is the main street in the town where there is a lot of shopping and restaurants.

On Saturday we slept in, walked to the Schloss Heidelberg (the castle) and did more exploring of the Hauptstrasse and a little shopping. 

 The boys loved the pretzels!

 At night, we took a boat ride down the Neckar River and saw the castle illumination (remembering the destruction of the castle) and fireworks.