Monday, June 28
Ludwigsburg castle was fantastic and the students thoroughly enjoyed the tour, as well as the Fairy Tale gardens around the castle after. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera that day, so no pics for the blog.....
Tuesday, June 29
We took the train to Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. We had a tour of the Zeppelin Museum - very interesting! Then we had some free time to look around a bit - some students rented peddle boats to go out on the lake a bit. The weather has been very cooperative so far!

Thursday, June 24
HEIDELBERG! We took a trip to Heidelberg with the German students as well. We saw the castle, with the largest wine barrel anyone has ever seen! We saw some of the downtown - what a beautiful old city - one of the only places that escaped destruction during World War II.
On Friday, the students went to school with their partners and then most of us went to the zoo - the straw hats were a zoo purchase!
The weekend was left open for the students to spend time with their host families.
Today (Monday) we are off to Ludwigsburg (built by Duke Ebehard Ludwig) after a little bit of school in the morning.

Wednesday, June 23
We had a reception at the town hall in Stuttgart - a welcome presentation and then a guided tour of downtown Stuttgart. We saw a lot of the old town. In the town hall they had a very cool elevator - open front and you step in as it moves past (I don't remember the name of it...).
After the tour we all went to a beer garden together to watch the USA game, but unfortunately the TV was only showing the England game - but Lars called us to let us know that the US had won!
The students all went to Esslingen (town nearby) to watch the Germany game at a public viewing sight.

We had an easy trip to Stuttgart on Saturday and a very warm welcome from the German students and their families! The students had Sunday with families - many of them went together to the TV tower to get a view of Stuttgart and the surrounding area. Monday was the big volleyball tournament at school (they had year-end testing going on so the students not involved in the testing had a sports day). Our USA team came in around 16th out of 18 teams, but we most definitely had the most spirit and fun. There are way too many pictures to post them all here, but a couple will give an idea.
Today the students are spending some time at school with their partners, we had an official welcome from the headmaster an and we will head to the Daimler musuem after lunch.

Well, I still can't get the pictures to upload, but........We took a boat ride along the Rhine yesterday - the weather was beautiful in the morning! We saw lots of castles and old towns along the way to Braubach. Then we hiked up to the top of the mountain / big hill to take a tour of Marksburg (a great, old castle). We watched the end of the German soccer game - not the outcome we were hoping for. We had a little time to walk around the town of Braubach - some of us chose to watch the beginning of the USA soccer game in a little pub. We finished watching the game on the boat ride back down the Rhine. We visited the Deutsches Eck - which is the corner where the Rhine river and the Mosel rivers meet. There is a monument with a statue of Whilhem I riding his horse. We played at a playground for a bit, got some dinner and headed back to the hotel.
Today the students will go on a scavenger hunt through Koblenz and then we will head to Stuttgart!
I will keep working on the pictures! Everyone is happy and having a great time - using their German all the time, which I love!

DEUTSCHLAND 2010!!!!!
Thursday, June 17
We arrived in Frankfurt at 6:00 AM. The flight was great!

Took a train to Koblenz - a beautiful ride along the Rhine river - lots of castles and vineyards!
Arrived at the hotel to drop off luggage - then walked into town to look around. Unfortunately the weather was not cooperating - we walked along the Rhein in the rain - we were all soaked and cold and tired. But, everyone kept a positive attitude. Fortunately Lars was with us - he had two great ideas - one was to go on a tour of the city in a train / wagon that was COVERED! The second was to take the bus back to the hotel instead of walking. We all rested for a couple of hours and then headed back into town for a little shopping and dinner - it had stopped raining and it was much more pleasant.