The Murrays Day Four-Five

After traveling by bus from Freiburg to the host family drop off points and hitting 6, yes, 6 detours, we were all very happy to meet the families and to get off of the bus. Everyone´s family met us at the meeting points and each student gave their family a small bouquet of flowers with a mixture of roses and other smaller greenery. The kids kidded that it was a bit of a reaping (like Hunger Games) because they were each called by name to come off the bus and meet their family. After the first family stop, we realized that the AC broke and so it was quit uncomfotable on the final leg of the journey but the students were in good spirits and some singing of Deutschland helped!!! There might have been a few songs sung on that part of the driving.

We stopped at the hotel and dropped off the teachers and picked up our rental car. We drove then anouther 5 hours to the northern part of Germany. We are now with friends of ours near Nordhausen. It´s about 70 km from Erfurt. Yesterday we went on a field trip with our host mother and her students. She teaches 7th grade here and they had a planned trip to go to a castle in Goslar. It was really a fun experience to see another castle, but one that neither of us had seen before. The castle was built by Heirich III in 1070 or so. This is one of the oldest castles we have ever seen. We toured the city and then went in one of the old city towers. There are a few still standing, but most of the city wall is gone. In this tower, there is a museum with Medieval armor, torture devices, and other weaponry. The best part for everyone was touching, using, and trying on the items. They had a chainmail suit with over 40,000 links, which was over 16 kg. It took two kids to help another to put it on.

They also had an old alleymaker sword, which the squires of the knights would use ahead of them to knock down the enemy in front of the knight when in batlle. It was very heavy. The kids played here for probably 45 min. We had a nice lunch in a park, which used to be the moat. The kids were then given 90 min of free time in the city to shop, get a snack, etc. We got our first spaghetti eis of the trip. It was quite refreshing since it has been 30-35 degrees C here for 3 days. We were even lucky enough to see the city´s glockenspiel play at 3pm before we headed home. Last night after the trip, we had a nice BBQ and we tried Thuringer sausages, which are almost a foot long each. It was a great night to be outside although super hot! There weren´t any flies or mosquitos. That was awesome!