Bodenseehof!

As many of you know, only two days after arriving at my new home, I packed up, yet again, and headed to Lake Constance for a week of family camp at Bodenseehof! Bodenseehof is a small Bible school that runs family camps over the summer and it was so much fun!!

The schedule was pretty simple with a breakfast buffet from 8:15-9:00 each morning followed by a session at 10:15 that lasted for about an hour. After lunch families had the afternoon to themselves to explore the area, go swimming at the beach, sailing on the lake, or another of the many activities in the area. Dinner was at 6:30 and at 8:15 there was an evening session.

And yes, for all who are wondering--it was ALL in German! Thankfully the two main speakers were from the U.S. so because of their accents they were a bit easier for me to understand and were more than willing to translate for me....but three weeks of German could only get me so far. At the beginning of the week I just sat there nodding my head with a blank stare on my face but by the time Friday rolled around I could understand the main points, just not all little details:-) At one point I was so proud of myself because the speaker was telling a story and I could follow it.....well, then came the punch line and I still have no idea what exactly it was. *sigh*

I will always remember my week at Bodenseehof as a wonderful beginning to what I'm anticipating will be a wonderful year! It was such a relaxed setting to get to know my host family in and the many English conversations I had with the Americans helped me ease into the German language instead of being dropped into complete immersion! One of my favorite parts of the camp was each morning at 7 a.m. when my mom and I would drag ourselves out of bed and walk down to the lake for a morning swim. waiting for us on the beautiful lake were usually over 50 swans enjoying their morning swim. Cold? Yes! Refreshing? Extremely! Fun? Absolutely! And Beautiful? Well, looking across the lake, the Swiss Alps stretched as far as the eye could see and far off in the distance to the left were the peaks of the Austrian Alps--that's a YES! :-)

 

We spent many of our afternoons at the lake canoeing, swimming, or in my case, just laying in the wonderful warm sun! But we had two afternoon outings that were particularly fun :-) Tuesday, my family spend the afternoon playing a very relaxed but fun game of mini golf...definitely not one of my talents but I enjoyed it anyway. Thursday afternoon flew by as we went to "adventure park" and spent four solid hours making our way through a series of high ropes courses. Oh, sooo fun!!! It was only my second time on a high ropes course but I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm pretty sure I was fairly entertaining to watch too!

I am so grateful to my family for taking me with them on this awesome week of family vacation! It was certainly a wonderful ending to my summer and amazing start to my year with the Weihing family :-)