Week 9

Not too much happened this week. I did go to the Swiss temple though! That was exciting. The temple is about half an hour away, in the Bern, the Swiss-German portion of Switzerland. It was interesting because our group was French speaking, but it seemed that most of the temple workers spoke German, but one woman in the baptistery spoke Italian. There is also this girl here named Nancy visiting from Mexico. She speaks English, but no French and she is an engineer, so we chatted. Below is the temple. It was a very cold, windy, day and it was lightly snowing.



We got a group picture of the Temple goers. This first picture is of some of us. The rest had not come out yet. Sister Hinman is on the right(alone, her husband is taking the picture), and next to her are our institute teachers. They just have one little baby. The rest is just people from the institute.


In this picture we had everyone, but I was blocked. Oh well.


I also got a calling in church this week. When they took me aside to give me a calling I was so curious to see what they came up with! What do you have a non-French speaker do? I was called as a primary teacher, in the Nursery. Exciting! There are only 3 children in there, 2 speak French and the third speaks Swiss-German. The Swiss-German boy is my friend Annie's son, so he knows me because I hang out at there house occasionally. It should be fun. There are 3 other women who work in there, so we can rotate and get to go to RS or Sunday school on occasion, and one is my friend Abby, the others I know, and they speak English pretty well.

It doesn't feel like Christmas yet, here. I don't know why. I think it might be because people and stores decorate less, and I don't hear any Christmas music. I have been trying to watch all of my Christmas movies, and any that have Christmas occur in them, like 'Little Women' and 'While You Were Sleeping'. I want to make cinnamon rolls, and I attempted to make a gingerbread house with the children. They just wanted to eat it, I don't think they have ever made one before.

That is about all that is going on. One thing that was exciting for me this week was I found this little used English book store. I bought a few books, and a few small children books, that I think I will give to them for Christmas.

We will be leaving for Christmas vacation on the 23rd. We are driving to Paris, it is about 7 hours away. So I will have much to write about that in the near future. Merry Christmas!

Weeks 7 & 8

For Thanksgiving I went on a little trip to Bamberg, Germany. It is about 45 minutes away from Nuremberg, where they had the famous Nazi war crime trials. I stayed for 2 1/2 days with my cousin Justin Brooke, his wife, and their 2 year old son. He is in the army and has been stationed there for about a year.

I had to switch trains 4 times, I was so nervous because the only time I have ridden on trains before was in Japan, and that is completely different. Luckily I was able to figure out how to look up the train platforms and find the second class cart and everything. Most of the journey (over 90%) was in Germany, which was great because more people speak English there, and more signs and announcements are in English. Also I am traveling so people don't necessarily expect me to know their language, where as here in Neuchatel people look at me like I am crazy when I say I don't speak French. Fortunately that has not occurred too frequently, most people have been very nice.

Here are some pictures from my 7 hour train ride. It was long, but interesting to see all of the different cities and villages along the way.
There houses looked very different to me, in comparison to France and Switzerland. I think it is just their shape, and lack of shutters, perhaps the colors of the roofs. I tried to take pictures, but often there are trees along the railway, and the window reflects the light even without flash and we were traveling fast. So here are some blurry pictures of Germany in late November.














I just thought the sign was funny, a guess it is a town name "Bad Kissingen".

Here is the train station in Frankfurt. It was huge, and fun to walk around and see. I tried to take a few pictures, but it was difficult to capture. I am planning a trip there in April, so that will be fun to see the actual city!The remainder of the pictures are from our walk around Bamberg.

In Bamberg we went into a little Christmas shop that is open year round. Here are some German ornaments.

Some cute nutcrackers.

And some really cool cuckoo clocks.

I love this pink house!

The front of the city hall.
The back, the brief story behind this building is that the town asked the king if they could build a city hall. He said yes, just not on my land, so they built it over the river.

There were a lot of statues of Christ around Bamberg. More than I have seen in any other city, ever.

I love the fresh produce markets here in the towns. They are just out along the streets.





Below are a few pictures from the Christmas shops they had just set up that day. I got to try a real brought-worst. It was delicious!



This concludes the Germany pictures.

The final pictures below are from this week, the alps across the lake looked amazing with the fresh snow and sunrise. I tried to capture it, but you can never quite fully capture such things. These are the best pictures taken.