Hello friends,
Happy April! I hope spring is springing faster for you than it is for us here in Kandern, but based on my brief perusals of weather.com, I think we're all pretty much in the same boat. Winter seems doggedly persistent this year. (Maybe I jinxed it by commenting in my last post that I was excited for March to turn into a lamb. Sorry, everybody.)
Here are a few snapshots from the cold and cloudy month of March:
1. Furniture for our kitchen!
I'm really only mentioning this because I brought it up in my last post, but Katie and I found a table and chairs for our RA kitchen. You could say that they're "vintage," or you could say that they're "old and scratched up and are an odd combination of metal, linoleum, and wood," but we love them because they were FREE! Wittlingen, a girls dorm down the road, has a storage shed full of old furniture that has been cycled out of the dorm and hasn't made it to the dump yet. So we poked around in there and loaded four chairs and a 3x5 foot dining table into our van and voila! Our kitchen is furnished. And you know, with a table cloth on it, it really looks nice.
2. The beginning of spring sports.
Palm hasn't had a lot of athletes participating in BFA sports so far this year. Sports teams have left to participate in weekend tournaments and we've typically been down one or two girls. But that's all about to change with the arrival of track and soccer season. We have four soccer managers, four soccer players, and two girls on the track team. We did the math, and that means that when teams leave for their away games, Palm will only have seven girls home. So weird! So Katie, Dave, Linda, and I have been brainstorming to come up with some fun activities to do with the girls who are still around on the weekends. We've got a few ideas that I'll hopefully be able to tell you about in future updates, but if you have any thoughts, let me know. :)
3. Two trips to the emergency room.
Well, it wouldn't be sports season without some injuries. So true to form, one of our juniors messed up her ankle during the first soccer scrimmage. So Katie and I drove her to the hospital that night and waited for her to get an x-ray, listened as the doctor told her it wasn't broken, but to come back the next week if the pain persisted, and then took her back the next week to get it re-checked. The end of the story is, it's not broken, but she pulled or tore a ligament or something painful like that. Carissa's been on crutches (and off the soccer field) for almost a month now. But you know, (and I hesitate to say this because it sounds terrible) I was glad for those trips to the emergency room. There's something about a car ride with just one student that enables better conversations, and I'm always glad for those chances. I just like to get to hear about her life, about her future plans, about the songs that she hates, about the teachers she likes, and about the family that she misses. So Carissa, if you're reading this, I really am sorry that you hurt your ankle. And I really really hope I get to watch you play soccer this season. But I loved getting to drive with you, and you handled that injury with an inspiring amount of maturity. Like a boss. I'm very proud of you. Let's hang out again sometime when you're NOT in agonizing pain.
4. Palm and Maugenhard's Open House.
Palm and Maug (the guy's dorm that sits on top of ours) teamed up to host a school-wide Open House. This basically meant that we were inviting every student and faculty member at BFA (about 400+ people, all told) to come and walk through our dorms, peek into the rooms, sing karaoke, and play Just Dance and have snacks in our common area. Oh yeah, and it was a themed event, so we also decorated each room and hallway to be a unique piece of the "Evolution of Music." Rooms downstairs were playing 50s music with a jukebox in the hall, the next floor ranged from Greased Lightning, Abba, Johnny Cash, and the Beatles, while Maugenhard took visitors through the 80s, 90s, 2k, and today. It was big, it was loud, it was colorful, and oh man was it an intimidating task to undertake. Oh and did I tell you that it was Dave and Linda's weekend off (planned before we knew about the Open House), so it was up to Katie, me, and the dorm subs (praise Jesus for the Jernigans! I'm 100% sure we couldn't have pulled it off without them) to clean, organize decorating (and cleaning) committees, and make enough guacamole, salsa, and hummus for 400 people. That weekend was madness. But the girls loved it, teachers and administrative staff got a chance to see where their students live, and in all, I'd count it a success.
5. Spring break= mission trips, International Christian Educator's Conference, and European travels.
Spring break began on March 28th, and several of our girls took off on week-long mission trips around the world. Others went home, and others went to visit friends, but by the 29th, our dorm was empty...for about a day. The next day, teachers from International Schools all over the world began to arrive for the ICEC conference that BFA hosted this year. We had 20 teachers stay in Palm, and we were responsible for putting out breakfast and driving them home from the school campus each night. I think in all there were 3 or 400 people from outside of BFA who came to the conference. But actually, I just made up that number. I don't really know. Once the conference was over, Katie, Katie's mom and sister, and Jessica (another RA) set out on a really sweet roadtrip: Salzburg, (for the Sound of Music tour!), Amsterdam (for the tulips!), Brussels (for the waffles!), and 25 hours of driving in between. It was a crazy week of sitting in traffic, getting lost, exploring fields with windmills, visiting chocolate shops, wandering through more tulips than I knew existed, laughing, getting lost again, sitting in more traffic, and deciding that "I'm Not Going Anywhere" is NOT the song we want to listen to when we're in a 3 hour traffic jam. I'm including some pictures because 1) words don't do a good job of describing travelling adventures and 2) this post is long enough as it is.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for praying. This break has been so good (and much needed) and I feel energized and ready for the girls to come back and blitz through the last 8 weeks we have in this school year. Please pray for safe travels as they return today, safety for our girls who are doing sports, continued energy for the staff, and wisdom to know how to help our seniors finish well.
Love from Kandern,
Amanda
Happy April! I hope spring is springing faster for you than it is for us here in Kandern, but based on my brief perusals of weather.com, I think we're all pretty much in the same boat. Winter seems doggedly persistent this year. (Maybe I jinxed it by commenting in my last post that I was excited for March to turn into a lamb. Sorry, everybody.)
Here are a few snapshots from the cold and cloudy month of March:
1. Furniture for our kitchen!
I'm really only mentioning this because I brought it up in my last post, but Katie and I found a table and chairs for our RA kitchen. You could say that they're "vintage," or you could say that they're "old and scratched up and are an odd combination of metal, linoleum, and wood," but we love them because they were FREE! Wittlingen, a girls dorm down the road, has a storage shed full of old furniture that has been cycled out of the dorm and hasn't made it to the dump yet. So we poked around in there and loaded four chairs and a 3x5 foot dining table into our van and voila! Our kitchen is furnished. And you know, with a table cloth on it, it really looks nice.
2. The beginning of spring sports.
Palm hasn't had a lot of athletes participating in BFA sports so far this year. Sports teams have left to participate in weekend tournaments and we've typically been down one or two girls. But that's all about to change with the arrival of track and soccer season. We have four soccer managers, four soccer players, and two girls on the track team. We did the math, and that means that when teams leave for their away games, Palm will only have seven girls home. So weird! So Katie, Dave, Linda, and I have been brainstorming to come up with some fun activities to do with the girls who are still around on the weekends. We've got a few ideas that I'll hopefully be able to tell you about in future updates, but if you have any thoughts, let me know. :)
3. Two trips to the emergency room.
Well, it wouldn't be sports season without some injuries. So true to form, one of our juniors messed up her ankle during the first soccer scrimmage. So Katie and I drove her to the hospital that night and waited for her to get an x-ray, listened as the doctor told her it wasn't broken, but to come back the next week if the pain persisted, and then took her back the next week to get it re-checked. The end of the story is, it's not broken, but she pulled or tore a ligament or something painful like that. Carissa's been on crutches (and off the soccer field) for almost a month now. But you know, (and I hesitate to say this because it sounds terrible) I was glad for those trips to the emergency room. There's something about a car ride with just one student that enables better conversations, and I'm always glad for those chances. I just like to get to hear about her life, about her future plans, about the songs that she hates, about the teachers she likes, and about the family that she misses. So Carissa, if you're reading this, I really am sorry that you hurt your ankle. And I really really hope I get to watch you play soccer this season. But I loved getting to drive with you, and you handled that injury with an inspiring amount of maturity. Like a boss. I'm very proud of you. Let's hang out again sometime when you're NOT in agonizing pain.
4. Palm and Maugenhard's Open House.
Palm and Maug (the guy's dorm that sits on top of ours) teamed up to host a school-wide Open House. This basically meant that we were inviting every student and faculty member at BFA (about 400+ people, all told) to come and walk through our dorms, peek into the rooms, sing karaoke, and play Just Dance and have snacks in our common area. Oh yeah, and it was a themed event, so we also decorated each room and hallway to be a unique piece of the "Evolution of Music." Rooms downstairs were playing 50s music with a jukebox in the hall, the next floor ranged from Greased Lightning, Abba, Johnny Cash, and the Beatles, while Maugenhard took visitors through the 80s, 90s, 2k, and today. It was big, it was loud, it was colorful, and oh man was it an intimidating task to undertake. Oh and did I tell you that it was Dave and Linda's weekend off (planned before we knew about the Open House), so it was up to Katie, me, and the dorm subs (praise Jesus for the Jernigans! I'm 100% sure we couldn't have pulled it off without them) to clean, organize decorating (and cleaning) committees, and make enough guacamole, salsa, and hummus for 400 people. That weekend was madness. But the girls loved it, teachers and administrative staff got a chance to see where their students live, and in all, I'd count it a success.
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| Hucky and Haley dress up as 70's rockers. |
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| Palmgarten welcomes you to the 60s and 70s! |
5. Spring break= mission trips, International Christian Educator's Conference, and European travels.
Spring break began on March 28th, and several of our girls took off on week-long mission trips around the world. Others went home, and others went to visit friends, but by the 29th, our dorm was empty...for about a day. The next day, teachers from International Schools all over the world began to arrive for the ICEC conference that BFA hosted this year. We had 20 teachers stay in Palm, and we were responsible for putting out breakfast and driving them home from the school campus each night. I think in all there were 3 or 400 people from outside of BFA who came to the conference. But actually, I just made up that number. I don't really know. Once the conference was over, Katie, Katie's mom and sister, and Jessica (another RA) set out on a really sweet roadtrip: Salzburg, (for the Sound of Music tour!), Amsterdam (for the tulips!), Brussels (for the waffles!), and 25 hours of driving in between. It was a crazy week of sitting in traffic, getting lost, exploring fields with windmills, visiting chocolate shops, wandering through more tulips than I knew existed, laughing, getting lost again, sitting in more traffic, and deciding that "I'm Not Going Anywhere" is NOT the song we want to listen to when we're in a 3 hour traffic jam. I'm including some pictures because 1) words don't do a good job of describing travelling adventures and 2) this post is long enough as it is.
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| Found some great shoes in the Netherlands! |
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| Salzburg is Mozart's hometown. (Katie is playing a violin. NOT about to shoot me.) |
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| Did you know there are NINJA tulips? |
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| In front of the Sound of Music gazebo. |
Thank you for reading, and thank you for praying. This break has been so good (and much needed) and I feel energized and ready for the girls to come back and blitz through the last 8 weeks we have in this school year. Please pray for safe travels as they return today, safety for our girls who are doing sports, continued energy for the staff, and wisdom to know how to help our seniors finish well.
Love from Kandern,
Amanda
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