Monday, June 29, 2009

Oelsnitz

***I definitely captioned all of the pictures wrong because Blogger uploads them backwards!!! I'm trying to fix it, but for now you can just play a fun little guessing game with what pictures should go with what captions!***
**I've decided to not fix it after all. It's not too confusing if you just read the text then go back and look at the pictures. Haha. At least I'll know for next time, right?**

As most of you know, I just returned from a month-long singing campaign to Germany. I started to write my ONE post about the trip and became COMPLETELY overwhelmed by how many things I needed to share. SO. I decided to do the posts by towns.
Throughout the trip, we stayed about 10 days in Oelsnitz, 3 days in Prague, 10 days in Chemnitz, and then 5 of us went to Italy for a week.
As I'm sure you can tell by the title of this post, today begins the trip with our first stop, Oelsnitz.

This is the Lutherhohe (I actually need two of those little double dot things to spell this right (umlauts??) but I don't know how to make that happen). We stayed here the entire time we were in Oelsnitz. It's basically a bed and breakfast but can also be rented out for things like weddings and parties and such.It has several outdoor ping-pong tables with very unmerciful "nets." But we played ping-pong indoors a lot on the trip. And for anyone who would understand this: I beat Andy!! So, I'm not horrible at the sport anymore (yes, it is a sport in Germany). There's also an incredibly cool indoor bowling alley thing. I'm sure there's a name for this really small type of bowling but I can't remember it and I don't feel like it's too terribly important to my post that I do. My team definitely won. (The first game, at least.)Remember the parties I mentioned? That the Lutherhohe can be rented out for? Well, one night I came back early with Stefanie and the kids and was just walking around taking pictures because it was BEAUTIFUL that night. Long story short: I ended up being invited to a German party! It was like a YMCA type thing with TONS of 10, 11, and 12 year olds and several counselors. They invited me in and we roasted bread on a stick, ate hot potatoes, and basically just hung out. It was really cool just meeting them all. Here are the few I talked to the most at the party. And here's the view out of our window at the Lutherhohe. So beautiful. That is one thing I definitely miss. The rolling hills all different shades of green. Driving to the church building every day was so fantastic. (When it wasn't raining.)
Here are a few pictures of what we did in the community of Oelsnitz. The first two are of the church. Each Sunday, one of our men would lead communion alongside one of the Germans. This is Jason leading communion the 2nd Sunday (I think) we were there. And this next one is the church from the outside. The building is incredibly well-kept on a great piece of property. It's perfect for having grills and get-togethers. (I feel like I'm trying to sell this property to you. Sorry.)Michal was just one of the amazing people at Oelsnitz. Her grandfather is the preacher there and she has an amazing maturity and faith for a 17-year-old. It was so refreshing working with and talking to her.
The Chemnitz Singers meet once a week to sing together. Throughout the trip, more so in Chemnitz than Oelsnitz, we would sing with them. The last Friday of the campaign we had a concert together. This is our first practice with them at the Lutherhohe. And this is what we spent the majority of our time doing. We would sing in schools and nursing homes during the day. In the schools, we would usually go into their classes afterwards and speak English with them. They loved having native speakers to practice English with and it gave us a good way to get to know some more German young people.
Photobucket

1 comment:

Kaylee said...

I am so glad that you told me about your blog! I loved reading your post and looking at all the pictures! Keep it up! --Kaylee