December at Palmgarten!

This month was filled with all kinds of activities from shopping in Freiburg, Christmas banquet, exams, Christmas parties and then finally…break!!!

This is the main street in Kandern decorated for Christmas!


We’ve had a good bit of snow so far this winter. Although it doesn’t stay for more than a few days, it’s really pretty! This is a view of our dorm from down our street.


Here we are getting ready for the annual Christmas Banquet, held at the school. We had a “salon” for the girls so that they could get their hair, makeup and nails done. My job was to paint nails.


Me and Jessica all set to go!


All the Palmgarten girls


We had a dorm Christmas party and as part of the festivities, the girls made gingerbread houses. Anna, Jessica, Lizzy and Shanna made a beach house instead.


Kjirsti and Esther hard at work.


Katelyn won our gift game—she was the first one able to open the present while wearing mittens.


What’s a party without food?!?!?


Merry Christmas!

The girls get back from break in one week and I can’t wait to see them all again!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A few descriptive words come to mind when I think about this year's Thanksgiving...
1. Early: because of the school schedule and other various reasons (i.e. the amount of nationalities here at BFA!) we actually celebrated American thanksgiving 2 weeks ago!
2. Massive (amounts of food): preparing food for 26 girls, 5 dorm staff and about 12 other guests was no small task!
3. Scrumptious: Turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, stuffing, rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie, hot apple cider...all made from scratch!



My self-proclaimed job for the evening was "coffee lady."



Scrumptious!



This is Les (dorm dad) carving the turkeys. We are so lucky to have a chef in our dorm! Seriously, he's a real chef.


This is me, Meghan (middle school teacher), Jessica and Katie.



Helen and Charity are enjoying the hors d'oeuvres!



Our dining room.




Lizzy, me and Kristi feeling full and happy.


Me and Anna ate too much turkey.


November is almost over and now it is officially the Christmas season! We will be decorating our dorm soon and the girls will all be cramming for exams. It really is hard to believe that the semester is almost over! The last day of classes is December 19th and all the students will go home for 3 weeks. I had originally planned to come home for Christmas, but it seems to have worked out better financially and logistically to return home for the summer instead, when I will have a longer break. So I will be staying in Kandern, resting and celebrating the holidays with friends here.
I pray for God's blessings over you all and wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

October is for pumpkins and open house.

Pumpkins!
What would October be without carving a few pumpkins?
We split up into groups and let the creative juices flow!


This is me, Katelyn and Hannah. The best group.

Our design was pretty intricate; it took a lot of concentration and precision. This is Katelyn hard at work.

The finished product! The pumpkin on the left is ours...if you can't tell, it's a carving of Perry, one of our vans!

This is the Jessica's. They are roommates and I'm pretty sure they took out their frustrations with each other on the pumpkin.


Palmgarten Open House
Each dorm has 1 open house per year where the students come up with a theme, decorate, and invite the entire BFA community over to traipse through the dorm. We recently had our turn and the girls did a fantastic job of pulling off a major event!

The theme was "The World Wide Web," and so the goal was to make people feel as if they were actually in the Internet. We decorated the halls with signs made to look like different websites, and the girls chose to decorate their rooms as a website as well.


This is Naomi. She was in charge of organizing all the decorations.
I think the stress was getting to her at this point...



This is Shanna & Dahee's room. They chose InStyle.com as their website.


We have 2 main hallways in our dorm, so each one was designated as a separate "browser"--Internet Explorer...



...And Firefox. Anna did an awesome job on these signs!



This is Bonnie (a fellow RA) with Emily & Helen. They were in charge of refreshments and chose to make cookies, in order to go along with the Internet theme. We were expecting over 300 guests, so all the girls pulled together and, over the course of 2 weeks, baked over 900 cookies!
The next few weeks are going to be very exciting and very busy! We will be celebrating Thanksgiving as a dorm this week, which means tons of good food! And the school is having its annual Christmas banquet coming up at the end of the month. Stay tuned!

It has been a full couple of months here at BFA!
Here are some pictures from the last few weeks...

This weekend me and few girls went to a "pick-your-own-flowers" field that is close to town. The flowers were gorgeous!

(From left) Rebecca, Joy, Kara, Rachel and Sooji.



Pumpkins were for sale as well. Jessica said she was excited to find one that was "freckly like me!"





We found a really tall one that could double as a baseball bat.





Krista, me and Sooji.



A very successful trip!






This is Helen & Emily on their way out to their first day of school as seniors!!!
(can you find me in the background?:))






The school hosted a Fall Party where the theme was "Black & White." This is Bonnie and Cara (fellow RA's) all dressed up for the occasion. (Can you find me?:))




Shanna & Anna were very scared of my costume.





In addition to dressing up, individuals or groups can perform as part of the show. This is a group of my girls performing their dance at the Fall Party. It was awesome!






Pyramid! We almost got 1 more on top!





This is the me with the 4 new girls in our dorm this year. I walked them to school on the first day. (from left: Lizzy, me, Emily, Krista, & Kara)





This is the staff of Haus Palmgarten--Ellie (top left) is from Canada--this is her 2nd year serving here, Bonnie (bottom left) is from Ohio and it's her first year at BFA, and Les & Elva are in their 4th year as dorm parents of Palmgarten. Their kids are Brandon (11th grade) and Brooklyn (7th grade).




...we have a lot of fun together...







I'll keep you guessing on this one...

Fall is setting in now and with that comes cooler weather, colorful leaves, and packed schedules! The Seniors can hardly contain their excitement because they're leaving this Thursday for their 10-day trip to Rome! And the Juniors are also pumped to leave for their weekend trip to Normandy! As a staff, we know that these trips will create life-long memories for them...we're so jealous!

more news to come soon!

It's picture time!


The last few weeks have been filled with new staff orientation, learning to drive in Germany, learning to speak German, getting over jet lag...I have an assortment of pictures to help explain it all...






One afternoon we all (the RA's) drove up to the top of Hochblauen--it is a mountain that overlooks Kandern (where I live), France, and the Swiss Alps! We hiked back down the mountain--it was very beautiful!

It was a clear, windy day so there were para-sailors taking off the top of the mountain!

This is Brandon, me and Sam posing for a nice pic.

Basel, Switzerland is just a 20 minute drive from Kandern. This is the Rhine river--the border between France and Germany. It's been so fun to be able to travel from country to country so easily!

This is Rachel, me, another Rachel, and Sam. The Rachels are returning RA's so they showed me and Sam all the hot spots of Basel!

Basel--it is a very old city--cobblestone streets, old churches, buildings from the 1300s.

This is Tommy--we were attempting not to look like American tourists...

This is a fountain of fresh, spring drinking water--they are all over the city (and also in Germany).

This is me drinking fresh Swiss water straight from the source that people in the States pay lots of money for...and this is the point where it was obvious that I was an American tourist.

This is the Powell family--they are from Nashville and we happened to be on the same flight out of Atlanta. They are such a sweet family and I have loved getting to know them! (Ethan, their youngest son, is not in the picture)





This is my dorm!!! It's name is Palmgarten. I am on the first floor, all the way down on the left. Every room has it's own bathroom, and a balcony. There will be 26 girls in the dorm this year, grades 10-12. I will be working with 2 other RA's, Bonnie, and Ellie--I hope to put their picture up soon. The awesome dorm parents are Les and Elva--they are from Canada and have 2 kids--Brandon and Brooklyn (grades 11 & 7).

This is my room--they gave us a lot of freedom as far as decorating goes, so I painted 2 walls brown, and 1 wall green. I love it! I bought a couple of chairs from Ikea and a small coffee table so that girls could feel free to come in and hang out. My next strategic plan is to put out a jar of candy as a bribe.

Overall, I absolutely love it here! Each day God gives me more and more assurance that serving here at BFA is what He has been preparing me for over the past months and years. Today is the day that the girls start arriving, so we have been busy with all kinds of preparation.

New students will come today, and then returning students will arrive tomorrow, with classes starting on Tuesday.

Many, many thanks for your continued prayers and support--I think of ya'll often and look forward to keeping you connected to my life in Deutschland!

Guten Tag!

Just a quick note...
I arrived safely here in Germany on Monday afternoon--my flight over was great! I landed in Frankfurt at 10:00am local German time, had a 3 hour layover and then landed in Basel, Switzerland at 1:45 local time; BFA is just a short 25 minute drive from Basel. I am just getting over jet lag. :)
My days so far have been filled with German class in the morning, and then in the afternoons we practice driving around the surrounding towns and get acquainted with the culture, many driving laws/signs, and a manual transmission. I have to give the credit to my Dad for teaching me to drive a manual shift--I have only stalled out a couple of times and I even drove on the Audubon today!
I hope to post some pictures soon--it is absolutely beautiful here!
Thank you so much for all of your prayers!