Germany Trip Week 1

Okay so I'm going to be blogging about this trip every Saturday so I don't end up with this humongous post after the whole trip so this will be week 1. So as I said we finally got here Saturday after leaving Thursday so I'll start with Sunday.

Sunday: We went to church with Sarah and Jared of course! Madison gave a talk, it was really good and her first talk in sacrament meeting. Other than that nothing too exciting happened at church except there was a missionary from Pleasant View, Elder Session, I don't remember his first name, but he graduated a year after me. That night we went to the Kaiserslautern symphany. It was good but I always think that those things go too long, especially when they have like 6 encores. They were good and the songs were nice, and that was nice to go to something like that where it didn't matter if you didn't know German! Even after being here a week I know Donca (thank you) Bita (you're welcome, and please) Toilette (toilet, that one's important, especially when you're pregnant and throwing up) and I know a few colors too, but that doesn't really help me much when I'm out.
Monday: Being Memorial Day we went to the American military cemetary in Luxenbourg and walked around there were quite a few people there as well. Also in Luxenbourg we went to the bock casements. Before I go into what that is though I want to tell you a little story of trying to find a place to park. So the roads were kind of weird to find your way around on, luckily they have a GPS. Well Sarah saw a parking sign with an arrow pointing to the left. So naturally we turned left down a twisty hill. The roads were very narrow (all the roads here are narrow, but this one was very narrow, especially in a van) and I was getting nervous. There were also quite a few people walking right in the middle of the road! It was a while though before we thought maybe this is a walkway and not a road? We were practically to the end of the walkway where they were doing some construction and it was blocked off when we decided we should probably turn around and go back. Only problem was like i said, the road was too narrow! So we had to back up the whole way. And Louis can testify to this, I DO NOT LIKE REVERSING! It makes me so nervous that we're going to hit something. We didn't thankfully. The people on the SIDEWALK probably thought we were crazy. So anyway we reversed out and found the parking the sign was really talking about. then we went and walked aroung the bock casements which is this huge wall set into the hill with a bunch of tunnels and cannons and chambers and stuff. Natalie my niece was looking for dragons as we were in there and we decided that they must have left to get the zombies at the maginot line which we went to on Tuesday. We did a lot of walking around, but had a great time!
Tuesday: Like I just mentioned on Tuesday we went to the Maginot Line in France. The Maginot Line is a fortification that went along the French/German border. I believed it was used during WWII but I may be wrong of course. We had a tour of it and the lady giving it had a strong accent and I only understood about 1/3 of what she was saying so i didn't really get much out of it.
Wednesday: This was more of a relaxing day we went to the base and looked around the BX which has a bunch of shops and was fun to look at everything. We also went to Kaiserslautern and walked around and they have a bunch of shops. We mostly just window shopped here.
Thursday: We went to the Koln cathedral (in Koln) it's spectacular! It is part of the Roman Catholic church and it was hit 14 times during WWII but did not collapse. So now it's almost always under construction somewhere on the building. I could have walked up the 509 steps to the top, but I really didn't think I could have made it, so Sarah, Mom, and Emily went up at Dad and I stayed down and waited for them by the fountain that is right outside. They said the view was beautiful and you could see the Rhine river, but we walked by it later anyway so I didn't really care that I missed out on the view. After the cathedral we went to the chocolate factory museum. It is no longer a factory and is now just a museum where you can walk around and learn about cocoa beans and what's in chocolate and get SAMPLES and see how they make chocolate and of course buy chocolate if you want to. The first part about cocoa beans and what is in chocolate was pretty boring I'm not going to lie, I think I was hoping for more of a Willy Wonka type of factory. The part where you could see the machines and how they made chocolate and how they mold it and package it and stuff was cool though.
Friday: Friday was our day of rest. We didn't really do anything. Madison had a Spaghetti dinner fundraiser for Young Womens that night and they were also doing a dessert auction so Sarah did one of her always amazing cakes to auction off. Jared was the auctioneer for it and i think he had a lot of fun, I know everyone there had a good time and thought he was funny. The highest price a cake went for that night was $85 it looked amazing I don't remember what kind of cake it was, but one of the young women made it and it looked delicious. They also had some kareoke (did I spell that right? probably not, I don't care) and Madison did a song and Jared also did a song with the bishopric.
Saturday: We celebrated Abigail's birthday which is the 6th. She decided she wanted to go roller blading for her birthday so we all headed over to the roller blading rink on the base. Everyone did really good, or at least they improved from when we first got there, and I'll say this now, I was the only one who didn't fall down! We had a good time and played tag and they brought out a limbo bar at one point and Emily and Samantha tried it. After roller blading we went home and opened presents Abigail got scriptures because she's turning 8 and she got a journal from her Grandma Moran, and bendaroos, and a necklace, and a soccer net and ball. Jared suggested they go and set up the net out back so we headed out there and to Abigail's surprise she had one more present! There was this box looking thing covered in blankets and she took the blankets off and inside was a bunny! She was so excited and shocked. She decided to name the bunny Ashes which I think is a really good name for it. I say it because we don't know if it's a boy or girl, we don't know how to tell. If anyone does please comment! We let the bunny out of the cage inside to let it get used to the house, it spent most of the time under the couch but we did coax it out with some lettuce and it even climbed on the couch to see Maddy and then let Emily pet it and climbed onto her lap. So it'll warm up to everyone eventually. Oh and also today I bought myself a VERY cute purse/future diaper bag I am in love with it. Purses are one thing I really like and have a bunch of. Not as much as some people, but at least 7 or 8. Anyway I felt like that should be mentioned. It's really really cute and I love it.

That is all for now, it's been a great trip so far, I feel like we're running around all the time, I could barely remember everything we had done the whole week. I'm very grateful for Sarah and Jared for driving us around and making plans for us, and letting us stay in their house. It's been so fun! More on the trip next week!