There's one tiny thing I forgot to mention in my last blog: 2 weeks ago the girls in my dorm snuck out in the middle of the night and slept over at a guys dorm!!!!

My dorm is about 4 kilometers (just over 2 miles) away from HBR, the guys dorm that Brandon works at. It is an ongoing tradition for the students to conspire amongst themselves and plan a secret "dorm swap" where they sneak out in the middle of the night, walk along the road all the way to the other dorm and sleep there the rest of the night, waiting to surprise the dorm staff in the morning! The students kept it a complete secret from all of us, but they got permission from our boss, the Residence Life Supervisor.

I was assigned to breakfast the morning of the swap and what a surprise I had when I walked out into the common area and saw a bunch of bodies covered in blankets scattered all around!!! I stood for about 10 seconds with my jaw on the floor, then I finally realized what it was! I laughed out loud, which woke up a few of the guys, then my next thought was: "Oh no! How am I going to feed all of these guys!!"

But everything worked out just fine. I didn't get any pictures because I was rushing around trying to scrounge up enough food for 26 hungry guys, but below are some pictures that Greg, the dorm dad at HBR, took of the girls at his dorm.

Some girls sleeping in the guys computer room.

Girls sleeping on the couches and floors.

Greg was nicer than me and quickly fixed a nice French toast breakfast!

Soccer & Track Weekend
This past weekend the Soccer and Track teams played at "home" and so we all gathered at the nearby soccer field and track complex to support our teams. We have guys varsity and junior varsity (JV) team as well as girls varsity and JV, so it makes for a long day to watch 4 games and a track meet! There are 8 girls in my dorm who play soccer, and 3 who are involved with track--it was so much fun to watch!

Kjersti is the girl in blue in the middle--she is a great runner!

This is Jessica and although this is the first year she has been on the track team, you would never know it! She is a great athlete and finished first in all her races!

Katey is one of the goalies for the girls varsity and JV teams. It's actually her first year to play soccer, but she's done very well so far!

Krystal is the girl on the right in the white. She plays on JV and although she is little, don't let that fool you! She's tough!

And this is the other Jessica, scoring her first of three goals for this game!! She is an amazing soccer player and has been awarded a scholarship to a university in the States!

Our teams did well and all but the JV girls team won their games (the JV girls tied)! They have an "away" game this weekend and so the dorm will be much quieter with 11 of the 19 girls gone! I will miss them, but I'm not complaining about a little extra peace and quiet! :)

1 week down, 8 to go!

This past Saturday was the 2nd annual BFA's GOT TALENT show! Any student or staff member can perform and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes are awarded. There was an assortment of performances from the students: singing, dancing...the normal stuff. But we as RA's had the tough task of topping our performance from last year when we pulled off the "Evolution of Dance" routine after only practicing 2 times before the show! (there's a video of our performance on my facebook page) So this year, knowing it would be difficult to re-create another dance routine, we decided to go a different route...a very different route. We put together a sort of "variety show" and the audience was flabbergasted at our "raw" talent! First, a group of us performed as an air-band to the song "Funky Town", then Brandon (my fiance) did a few "magic" tricks (posing as a skilled magician), then a few more of us did what we call "Soccer Matrix", then we ended the show with Brandon sawing someone in half! It was a great night!

This is Jun--he is a senior in Maugenhard (the guys dorm upstairs) and he sang a solo!



This is a group of girls from my dorm who performed a dance to a Korean pop song. They did awesome!

And heeeeere's the RA's! This was the "Soccer Matrix" portion of our performance. Each soccer player has a pair of fake legs, and those are directed by 2 people dressed in black. The soccer ball is on a black pole, directed by another person in black. We wanted the stage lights to be dimmed so that the people in black were less noticable...but that didn't really work out. It was still funny though! ...can you find me????

I'm the one in the middle in charge of the soccer ball.

And this is the "leg-portion" of Brandon's saw-in-half trick. I couldn't find a better picture, but basically we had 2 huge boxes and SoYoung, an RA, was hiding inside one of the boxes. Then another RA, Corey, climbed in the other box. As he got inside, So Young stuck her feet out so that it looked like they were his legs!!! It was really funny!

Palmgarten Poker Night!!!

This past Friday night we spent our evening playing poker! I, along with a few others, had never played before and so Luke, our dorm dad, printed out a "cheat sheet" of possible winning combinations. I learned words like "big blind", "the river", "the flop" etc. Now I try to sound smart and incorporate them in normal conversation around the dorm. It's catching on pretty quick.

This is Lizzy--she was the dealer at my table. She fooled me with her poker face a few times!!

Here is Luke, instructing all the newbies.


And this is Eunji...yep, you guessed it! Her first time playing poker!!! :)




We played for a few hours on Friday night, continued the game on Sunday night, and then they finally finished tonight! (monday) I'm sorry to report that I did not win, BUT, at one point I got a straight flush!! This is a big deal, apparently...so we took a picture of it.




This coming weekend we have the first home soccer game and the first home track meet! I'll post some more pictures soon!

Spring Break!!

Allow me to explain this picture...

It's Easter time and for a lot of people that means Easter egg hunt!! Last weekend we hid 30 eggs in our dorm and set the girls loose to find them all! They got candy for each egg they found, and in order to raise the stakes, we hid a "special egg" that, if found, meant that the finder would be exempt from their daily chores for a day. Recognizing that these are not little toddlers with pink and blue bunny baskets but candy-starved teenagers, we knew we had to make this a challenge and so we were pretty sly in our hiding tactics. My second favorite hiding spot was the picture below where I put tape on the egg and stuck it in an empty light fixture!

But, my most favorite hiding spot was where we hid the "special egg"...you guessed it! In the hood of my jacket! All the girls were in their rooms and when we were finished hiding the eggs we yelled: "ready, get set, GO!" And they burst forth and ran screaming down the hallways like a bunch of crazed pop-star fans! It was much more of a response than I expected!

Here's Joy and Kara...

And here's Eunji...

This was Eunji's very FIRST Easter egg hunt! She didn't even know what it was and so we had to explain the concept to her many times throughout the day. Her roommate, Krystal, is behind her; she was excited too!


Me, Bonnie and Stephanie (fellow RA and dorm mom) quickly realized that our "sly hiding tactcis" were a little too sly... even after tearing apart all the furniture in a mad rush, it still took them almost 10 minutes to find the first egg! And I was conveniently strolling around, parading around as the vessel for the coveted "special egg."

Lizzy was our most skilled egg-finder. She found about 6 of the 30 eggs, attributing her success to her height.


Hannah was the lucky one who found my 2nd favorite hidden egg. This happend about 20 minutes into the search when we were starting to give hints. After 30 minutes of searching, all the eggs had been found except...the special egg. At this point, the girls all started to congregate and were at the point of mutiny because they had searched everywhere (over and over) and still could not find it! A few minutes before this, I made the stupid mistake of telling our dorm dad, Luke, where the egg was hidden (he wasn't a part of the hiding). All of a sudden, things got quiet, and at the same moment I realized I was standing in the room all by myself, I heard something like this: "LIZZY!!!!! [scream scream scream] GET HER!!!!! [scream scream scream] LIZZY!!!! [more screaming, stampeding feet] HER HOOD!!! [more stampeding feet and then the thud of my body hitting the floor as I was mauled]."

As I fell to the floor, I caught a quick glimpse of Luke slinking away with a guilty grin on his face...I'll get him back.

Meet Jersey:

Jersey belongs to Luke and Stephanie and she is just over a year old. She has quickly become the dorm mascot and there's always a lot of laughter when she's around. But this laughter is usually because she has eaten something crazy (like a ceramic tile) or is chasing (and chewing) her tail again. I can honestly say that she can be accurately compared to the stories about Marley from the book/movie "Marley and Me."

So for the next week, I volunteered for the marvelous task of dog-sitting this precious puppy. Luke and Stephanie are away for a week leading a missions trip! Every Spring Break, the school sends out about 6 teams, comprised of students and the staff, to different parts of the globe, then there's a week left of break to rest and gear up for the last bit of the school year. If you think about it, please pray for the teams; right now they're in Greece, Macedonia, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and a country central Asia.

My first few days of Break have consisted of taking Jersey for walks, cleaning up after her during our walks, "playing" chase with her around the yard because she won't come inside (while my German neighors stand and watch), and waking up every couple of hours in the night to the sound of a sick dog...if you know what I mean. Thankfully, she is over her sickness as of this morning and hopefully we can have a fresh start! haha

In addition to this, BFA is hosting an annual ACSI conference. ACSI stands for Association of Christian Schools International and the conference is ICEC: Internations Christian Educators Conference. We're BIG fans of acronyms. (BIG stands for.....hahahaha just kidding) Because my dorm is in town where the school is, our dorm is being used as a guest house and so we will have over 20 people staying with us for the next few days. They will all arrive by this evening and the conference officially starts tomorrow and ends Tuesday. It's not the most ideal thing to be "hosting" so many guests in my dorm on my break, but it has been great to meet like-minded people from all over the world.

Alright, time to take Jersey out for another walk--thanks for reading!

Beauty & Brawn

This past weekend was packed with activity!
On Saturday afternoon from about 1-5:30 we all primped and prepared ourselves for the evening's banquet. Yes, that's right--it took four and a half hours for all of us to get ready! We had 5 people doing hair, a couple of people painting nails...and I ironed dresses because I don't know how to either of the other two things. Then we all headed down to the school for the annual Christmas Banquet which consists of a sit-down dinner and a series of performances by the students. It was a great time!


This is the auditorium at school decorated for the dinner.


A few of the girls all ready for the banquet! (finally!)

Me, Bonnie and Jessica .

Football????

Wittlingen is another girls dorm, and for some reason there is an ongoing rivalry between our two dorms. So naturally, we let out this pent-up aggression through a flag-football game! In order to help you understand the potential complexity of this, let me set up a scene for you:

It's three days before our game and I sit down with a group of the girls in my dorm to talk about the rules of the game because they're different than regular football. Before I have a chance to begin, one of them (who shall remain nameless) pipes up and says, "So, what is the end goal of this game anyways? Flag footbal? Do we throw around flags or something?!?"

Growing up in Europe (and other places) these kids don't really know much about American football at all! So, we started from scratch with some of them and were able to have a couple of practices before our big game on Sunday afternoon. Luckily, our dorm dad, Luke, loves football and was even able to teach them a few offensive plays.

This is Luke coaching from the sidelines.

Our team has the blue flags on and Hannah is the quarterback, ready to launch a rocket!

At the beginning of the semester Maugenhard (the guys dorm upstairs) played in a rugby game against the other guys dorms, and we all dressed up in red and black and cheered for them. So our game was their chance to return the favor and cheer for us! They all dressed up and put face paint on (to match all of us) and yelled their little hearts out!

This is me and Dahee. Yes, we have red hand prints on our faces and yes, she is wearing a bumble bee suite. Dorm spirit!

Here's a shot of a play in action--Hannah (far left) is looking for someone to pass to while Kjersti (far right) runs to get open.
The game was pretty evenly matched and turned into a defensive battle. We scored during the first half and they came close a couple of times. But in the end...


WE WON!!!! The Maugenhard guys rushed the field and celebrated our victory with the girls. It was great!

I am glad that we had such a busy and eventful weekend because it's getting close to the end of the semester and everyone is weary and ready to go home for Christmas. Just three weeks left! This coming weekend will be busy again because it's our first home basketball game! It will be especially fun for me because this year I am the JV girls assistant coach! I'll be sure to take pictures and let you know how our first game goes!

Old and New Traditions

BFA is a school that changes a lot every year; but ironically, BFA is also a school with a lot of traditions that have been passed down for years. One of these traditions is the annual trip to Herbstmesse.

Essentially, Herbstmesse is a Fall carnival held in Basel, Switzerland. Every year at the end of October, we load all the dorm students (approx. 150 students) into charter buses and then turn them loose to enjoy carnival food, rides and games.

The bumper cars are always a big hit! In the middle of the picture is Rachel and Kara (in the white hat) in hot pursuit of Krista and Luke! (left corner)

Giant ferris wheel.

In the spirit of being a carnival, Herbstmesse has some weird booths and decorations! Above you see Mrs. Mais, ready to serve you a hot corn on the cob!


At this booth you can find "mega coole preise."

This is the overhead display at a food booth. It's hard to see, but Batman has a sausage for a thumb (a very effective thumbs up), and to the right of that is the hand of the Statue of Liberty holding a sausage...I don't know how to interpret that.

1st Annual 3-3 Basketball Tournament

The day after Herbstmesse (a Friday) is always a day off of school and this year there was a 3-on-3 basketball tournament! There was a pretty good turn out, 9 teams, comprised of students and staff. I hope this becomes a new tradition because it was really fun! My team, the Jetz, played hard for 2 games but then, sadly, we had to sit the bench...it was double elimination.


This is me trying to find an open teammate.


Here I am again, squaring up for a 3-pointer to tie the game...ha ha ha, yeah right!

This is a picture of Rachel just after shooting the ball.


This is Joy, sitting poised and ready to sub-in.

I am proud to say that the star of the winning team was Jessica! (pictured above) Her team was the only undefeated team and she averaged about 12 points per game. She scored over 20 against my team...but I let her because a good RA doesn't make her students look bad on the court, right?!?!?

Palmgarten/Maugenhard Open House

Everyone in the community has been asking for tours of the new building (with Maugenhard dorm being added on top) and so we decided to have a joint open house. The seniors of both dorms came up with the theme and planned the snack menu; all we did was buy and help prepare the food! It was great! Throughout the evening all of the BFA community traipsed through our two dorms and made themselves at home.

The theme was evolution of music and each floor of the building represented a genre of music. The basement floor was Classical, the first floor was Jazz, the third floor was Rock and the fourth floor was Electronica. The cool sign pictured above was made by Anna.

These are the dorm parents of Maugenhard with their two daughters. They were dressed up as Rock and Electronica.


These are the dorm parents of Palmgarten! They dressed up as Sonny and Cher.

Rachel, Jessica, Bonnie and Steph sporting their creative costumes.

Here are some Palmgarten girls dressed up as flappers--I'm still not really sure where they got the fake guns from...I should probably check on that, I think it's against the rules.

Here's me, Sanna and Krista. We had so much fun!