BACK TO SCHOOL?

September brings new missionaries to Frankfurt.  Four new senior missionary couples and about 30 new young elder and sisters.  The Frankfurt mission had a record transfer on Thursday that required over 150 missionaries to be at the main train station at the same time.  Sorry we don't have a picture, it looked like something like a flash mob.

Things have been slow in the office.  We were kicked out for a few days while they redo the air conditioning in our ceiling.  We tried to work from another office one day and attended the temple and had a genealogy lesson on another.

Lately our bicycling goal has been  to find new places to ride bikes on the weekend.  We found a little forest southeast of Frankfurt about 8 kilometers from the apartment on Saturday.

Our dear friends Theresa and Steve Heath sent Elaine these handsome and beautiful kitchen aprons for Elaine's birthday.  Elaine's is hand made, reversible and a work of art.  Mine is very manly and just vat is vanted for grillink der bratswurst.  Danke danke dear good friends.

On a recent outing to Strasbourg with our friends the Eyres we stopped at a little French town with a German name - Souffenheim. Seems its known among clay pot connoisseurs for ceramic art.  We found dozens of little shops in the town and each one had a different art style and color theme to their work.  We got to watch them a small shop in action at Ludwigs Atelier We came away with a few souvenirs which by the way is a French word meaning "to remember".

Not a very flattering picture, but a good meal at the Nouvelle Poste restaurant on Rue du Parchment in Strasbourg.  Am I really sucking my thumb in public? No, I think there is a phone in there somewhere.

The most famous building in Strasbourg is the Cathedral with its 140 meter steeple and 300 year old astronomical clock. The clock still works and tells all kinds of things about what is happening in the solar system, but is was all in French and wasted on us.

These doors rival those of Notre Dame de Paris for grandeur. (trying hard to intersperse French words where I can).  By the way, we have decided that our spelling is now absolutely shot as a result of seeing so many German, French and English words similarly but not quite spelled the same as in American and especially when we read English signs and instructions which use English spelling rules instead of American. 

The highlight of our outing was a trip around the Le Petit France portion of Strasbourg on a tour boat.  We got to experience going through several locks that are required to keep the water deep enough for navigation.

French bread is an art form, coming in many shapes, sizes and flavors.  We splurged and treated ourselves to Pistachio ice cream cones, pain au chocolat and mille feuilles.  The mille feuille reminds me of the old missionary days when we would reward ourselves with one after a hard week of tracking.

Sunday we invited two new missionary couples over for dinner,  The Jacques on the left are mental health missionaries and the Footes are Young Single Adult coordinators.  Sister Foote is holding up our visual aid we used to teach how to sort garbage into 5 different cans.

We went to the temple this week and found the gardens at their pinnacle of beauty for the summer.  In their German way, the equal of the Salt Lake temple grounds, as you would expect.
The two flowers in front may look past their prime, but they have left seeds that far eclipse them.