Joy

My Dad picked me up from the airport last night and I've never been so happy to be home and to hear people speaking English. I tried really hard to actually speak German while I was there and my head hurt after ten days. When I landed, I got a couple texts from Janelle about our new Japanese exchange students that made the 20 hours of traveling completely worth it.

- "They made us krill for dinner."

- "Saki talks like a baby kitten."

I cannot wait to play with these girls before they leave. I've heard they are a riot. Anyways, back to my Dad. As we caught up on the drive home he told me about his week. He had finished his 'last' ward conference and I asked him what topic he chose. He said Moses 5:10 which reads:

"Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgressions my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God."

He focused on the line 'in this life I shall have joy'. I love that. As I laid in bed with crazy jet lag I couldn't help but think about how lucky I am and how much joy I have in my life. Sometimes I get tricked into feeling sorry for myself but then I realize that I have the greatest life I could possibly ask for.

Traveling is something that makes me very happy. I was so excited to go play in Germany with my little munch-kins. They are crazy, literally, but I love them with my whole heart.

They get the award for 'the most un-photogenic humans I've ever met'. This first picture was the 11th shot. It took that long to get all of their eyes open and smiling.... well sort of.

I got there the first day of carnival. It is a local holiday where everyone dresses up and gets drunk and stuff. When Cheryl and I drove to pick these two girls up from school there were two boys standing in the road with a rope strung across. They made you pay to get across! Genius. Why didn't I do stuff like that when I was young? People actually pay too. Punks.

Olivia is such a little diva. She loves her 'lederjacke' (leather jacket) and so I decided to bust mine out to join her cool club.

BERLIN:

After 8 hours of listening to an extremely rude GPS lady, getting stuck in a time warp (literally) and taking a wrong turn causing us to make the same wrong loop 3X in a row we finally made it to Berlin. It is a pretty cool city. It still has a communist feel to it but they are fixing up a lot of the city and it is becoming quite nice. My uncle Micheal said, "Gosh, this city was a lot more exciting twenty years ago when the soldiers were still patrolling the streets with machine guns." -which he said dead serious in his beautiful Arnold Schwarzenegger accent. ha. He was right.

This is the Reichstag. It is the parliament building. It suffered quite a bit during the war and wasn't completely restored until after the reunification of Germany. Now it is all fixed up.

Brandenburger Tor

Berliner Dom

Here it was in all its Third Reich glory.

After the war.

Now. It was so beautiful inside.

Berlin has 170 museums. We went to 1- The Pergamon. It was awesome. These are actual walls from Babylon. If you are interested in history at all this museum is a must see.

Lovely little market.

Our residence in Berlin. A.k.a.- The Cube.

Charlottenburg Palace.

Checkpoint Charlie.

Inside the cube.

Berg Schloss.

Germans love dipping their fries in Mayo. Gag.

Gosh I'm gonna miss these girls.