We've had a full couple of months here and I have some pictures to prove it...


In January the school had a spirit week where each day had a different dress-up theme. Crazy hair day was one of the themes. This is Naomi (from left), Emily, Katelyn and Deena with their crazy do's.


Shanna (from left), Dahee and Julia decided to go frizzy.

TEA PARTY!
The seniors did a great job planning this event: we invited Blauen over, another girls dorm, and we all dressed up for a tea party! The catch was that we were to dress up like little girls who have raided their mom's closet and are dressed in all her clothes and make up. It was so fun to scrounge around the dorm and find silly clothes to wear!


Enjoying their tea and cupcakes!


This is Kristi (from left), Kara, Naomi and Rebecca.


We had a lot of fun with this...or at least I did....
This is me and Ellie, one of my fellow RA's. She was not very impressed with my make up job and pig-tails. A lot of the girls didn't recognize me and were actually a little scared...maybe i overdid it on the eye shadow?


This is me and Vangie (RA at Blauen) sipping our tea like the little ladies we are.


VALENTINE'S DAY DINNER
For the 2nd year in a row, our girls have hosted a Valentine's Day dinner at our dorm. It's really fun because each girl secretly asks a guy to be her roommate's date! And then they don't find out who it is until all the guys actually arrive for the dinner!


This is Krista and Emily--they were very nervous to find out who their date was--I had to coax them to come out of their rooms!


The girls decorated very nicely with candles and hearts everywhere.


Here's a lively group enjoying the meal that Les, our dorm dad, prepared: Italian chicken, almond green beans, twice-baked potatoes, fresh baguettes and then chocolate torte for dessert.

Overall, it's been a fantastic couple of months! Now winter is winding down (hopefully! although we just got 2 inches of snow today!) and we're all gearing up for soccer and track season--BFA's favorite time of year! The treadmill in our dorm has been going non-stop as girls get back in shape just in time for try-outs. Making the varsity soccer team is pretty tough, even as a junior or a senior, so I've loved being able to run with some girls to help them get ready; but I'm no help whatsoever as far as soccer skills go!
I am so blessed because my parents are coming to visit for 2 weeks! They arrive in 3 days and I think that the girls are just as excited as I am because they get to meet the parents who are responsible for raising their crazy, weird R.A.!
Thank you all for your interest and investment in our lives here-more to come soon!

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!