On our Monday excursion last week we went to Radolfzell with our friend Doris. It had a beautiful park on the Bodensee. Doris wanted to make sure I got a picture of the mother swan with her 6 babies because it's unusual for swans to have 6 babies. They were fun to watch, they even fought like siblings and mom had to break it up. I think it was the only day all week we had blue skies.
For our excursion this week we climbed up to Hohentwiel - a fortress on a volcano. It was quite a hike but worth the gorgeous view (if you look really close you can see the Bodensee and the Swiss Alps in the distance). The fortress was started around the year 400 AD and surrendered to Napoleon around 1800. It was very impressive. When they were building it they offered guests large glasses of wine if they had brought 40 stones with them.
We didn't carry 40 rocks with us but we found a wonderful restaurant on the way back down. Of course after a long day of hiking we needed something spectacular to eat and we got it! It was a great day - now back to work tomorrow!

 These weeks are so funny --- some days drag but the week flies by! We went to Bern, Switzerland with the young sister missionaries. The outside of the temple is being cleaned so we'll wait to post a good picture of the temple once the scaffolding is down. Our car caused us some frustration and scares - when you pass another car on the autobahn you have to mean business and go fast if you're in the fast lane. The car had other ideas and seemed to only have one speed. We're hoping to get another car in the next few months. We also spent a day in Ueberlingen on the Bodensee teaching with the young missionaries. We ran into one of our friends from Singen there (orange jacket), she's been a huge help teaching us the ways of Southern Germany. There was a lot of rain that day, hence the puddle in front of us, it rains almost every day. The week ended with a fabulous experience of watching this beautiful young woman get baptized. She has declared we are her Mom and Dad. Today she asked how all of her new brothers and sisters were doing. We absolutely love what we're doing, the people are so generous and kind but we miss our family, friends and hot Richland weather.

We found this little castle up the hill behind our apartment. Great view from up there - that's Switzerland across the lake. We also noticed this park bench in the cornfield - facing the corn. Can't wait to see what the view is after the corn is harvested. In the meantime, it's a great perch to look at the corn. The wood pile that is growing near the farm below the castle tells us it's going to be a C O L D winter. They keep adding to the pile - yikes! We couldn't find a used sewing machine this time so we HAD to buy a new one. I'm anxious to see what this little machine will do. This week we met people from Cuba, Croatia, Italy, Poland, Sierra Leone and other countries that I can't spell. We feel very international!!

Just finished our first full week in Singen. (This humidity is killing any time I spend trying to curl my hair.) We had District Meeting, found this great soccer field in the middle of a sheep pasture, got used to the traffic going up the highway right in front of our apartment, spent some time with our dear friend from Jena at the train station, and enjoyed the German architecture. We also found grocery stores, met lots of people from church, had more meetings, settled in to our apartment, found some great walking paths around the city, ate some fabulous German food and was told I (Val) need to learn German fast!! No pressure!! ;(