Alpen Horns...these guys just starting playing while we were up on the mountain. Sounded majestic.

Hikng to the Cholerenschlucht Gorge. We drove part way there and hiked the rest of the way. The road we drove on was little wider than a goat trail!! You did NOT want to meet another vehicle along the way or you'd have to back up and not fall over the cliff.

view from our hotel.

We stayed at Hotel Hari which is actually a christian hotel. We had breakfasts and suppers included. They even pray together before supper. There was a baby grand piano in one of the conference room which had floor to ceiling windows looking out to the mountains. Tiera and I enjoyed playing on the piano and no one came to stop us, so we did this everyday. Loved it.

Caleb and Connor spent much time running through the mountains. Kind of reminded me of The Sound Of Music movie.










The mountain peak in the background is what we climbed. It was amazing standing at the peak. Reminded us of the alpine trip.











Taking scooters back down the mountain. Definitely a family favorite. 5 Km of zig zaggy paved paths all the way down the mountainside.










We stopped for lunch at Thunersee Lake in a town called Darligen. Amazing colors. This area reminded us so much of the Okanagan valley. Looked alot like the area between Penticton and Kelowna, only you could see the alps in the background.



Lake Thunersee

Hiking to the top of Mount Regenboldshorn. You can't tell from this picture, but we're standing on a very small area at the top of the peak. The rest of the mountains around kind of blend into the picture.

So much has happened over the past month. We are now more settled into what I would call a routine...as much of a routine that can actually be made. Trying to keep track of Elementary, Middle School and High School events can be rather overwhelming at times. We've finally set up a system where we can see everything that is going on and keep track of things a little easier. This is what part of our one office wall looks like. There are still other bulletin boards and filing systems located in here.









During the past few weeks we've had lots of school and dorm events taking place. The Seniors went to Rome for a week. This included Tiera. She had a wonderful time and came back with lots of pictures and stories of their time there. It had rained a bunch of the time, but it wasn't too cold. They got to go through many museums, see amazing buildings, art structures, the Vatican and Venice. Sounded like so much fun.

That same week, we had to say goodbye to one of our dorm guys as he was expelled from school for the rest of the year. This had to do with current and past issues and we were very sad to see him leave. This was really hard for us as we had already grown to love him. We are hoping that he will be able to return next year.

The Junior (gr 11) class also left for a weekend during this time to Normandy. They saw all the war sites and it left a big impact on many of them. Everyone came back exhausted but had a great time.

You would think that the dorm would be rather quiet while they were all gone, but things were happening here. The grade 10's put on this amazing coffee house in our dorm complete with a live band, and food they had made. I was so impressed. They made meringue cookies, squares and cinnamon twists (which was a bread type recipe). They made the place look amazing and even cleaned up the place so it was spotless. Quite impressive.

At the end of that week we found out that Mark's dad passed away. He was 92 and so when we left Canada, we left thinking that this might be the last time that we see him...even though he wasn't sick when we left. We are rejoicing with him knowing that he is with the Lord and so we are sad, but are happy too. We made the difficult decision to stay here and not come back for the funeral. We missed being home with the family, but feel we made the right decision. Thankyou to all of those who have been praying for us during this time. We have felt your prayers and we so much appreciate you.

Our staff insisted that we take the weekend off and so we took the kids to Adelboden for 2 nights and just spent some really great family time together. This was the first time we've been able to go away with them overnight. We explored the Alps, climbed to the peak of a mountain, took a gondola up another mountain and rode down 5.5km on scooters. This was a major highlight for all of us. We explored a gorge and hiked to a waterfall. The Lord gave us a very special time together and we are so thankful. We got back home, looked at our pictures and then next morning I went to pull them all up and they had been completely deleted! We still have some of Tiera's pics, but we were so upset that we had lost all those pictures including ones from the past few weeks with our dorm.

Thankyou to all who prayed for a van for us. I think I forgot to mention that we found one and are very happy with it. We have really enjoyed having the use of our own wheels and it seems to go on forever without having to refill it with fuel. Great for out here since diesel is 1.15 Euros. Gas is about 1.33 Euros.










We've really been enjoying our time with the guys in the dorm. It's starting to become easier as we get to know them and start sharing in each others lives. We've been noticing more and more how kids will just wander into our office and hang out with us and start talking. We hope to have more and more of these kinds of moments.

Today is our day off and we're trying to get caught up on paper work, communication stuff, and getting things finished around our apartment. Not sure if we'll be able to go anywhere today. We find that if we stay at the dorm on our day off, we end up working. It's just too hard to not start working on things that need to be done.

Muenster Cathedral in Freiburg.

We went into this catherdral and were amazed by the size of the building. We climbed up the steps in a tower to get to the top. I came back down after getting up halfway as I was so dizzy. It was like winding up a piece of thread on a spool! I waited for the rest of them in the cathedral and got to hear a mens choir singing inside. The sound was incredible.