Beachcombing Belgium

On our way to catch the ferry in Calais, France, we visited a lovely stretch of beach in Belgium. It was a chilly, sunny day - sounds of seagulls, surf rolling itself at our feet again and again like a mantra. It was wonderful to walk on sand again, to sink into sand dunes, our bodies avalanching to the glossy glow of beach below. 

Hunting for empty razor clam shells -  they look like old Chinese men's fingernails stretching outward  from beneath the sand. Hours later we boarded the ferry with pocketfuls of them.

This is the North Sea, close to the English Channel. Across the water, England. Our new home.

Akychame and Daddy: reminds me of the "Footsteps" poem. 

We watched the barnacles poke out for meals, then hide in a wink.

Little miss celebrity in Hello Kitty bathrobe and "bling"-ful shades.

Windswept, barren loveliness everywhere. Everything buried and unburied by sand and sea.

Fun at the Burg Nanstein Medieval Fair in Landstuhl, Germany

Wir Lernen Deutsch Zusammen!

Here's our wonderful German Level 4 class, minus a few people who are on holiday. Even the dog is an honorary student - in Germany, you take your dog with you everywhere! 

It's such a great opportunity for the kids to be in this class. Technically, since it's a college-level adult continuing education class, everyone is supposed to be 18 or older. Our teacher Briggitta suggested that I buy the kiddos textbooks and bring them to every class with me. So we do! Every Tuesday and Thursday night from 5-7. The girls participate just like anyone else in class, and their comprehension is dynamite! We have just one year left before we leave for England-we really want to learn as much German as possible before we leave!

Meine Töchter sind Genien mit Sprache! Sie lernen schnell, aber ich lerne sehr langsam. Neben ihnen, Ich fühle leider wie ein echte Dummkopf! Ich wunsche, dass ich konnte als gut als ihnen werde.

My Hipster-Knitters

A Celebration of Nature

Letters to God at the Church in the Cliff at Idar-Oberstein, Germany

The village of Idar-Oberstein lies about 45km up the Nahe River from Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg. It's a long, twisting drive from Kaiserslautern, a little over an hour through forests and mountains. We had heard so much about this quaint village, the church built into the side of a cliff, and the one-of-a-kind jewelry created on-site, that we absolutely had to check it out. For a weekend "quickie" trip, this was a lovely adventure!

Idar-Oberstein was once a mining center for precious stones and minerals, but when the industry exhausted its resources in the 1800's, the little town became renowned for jewelry craftmanship. This is where people go to find cutting-edge gemstone jewelry.

From Oberstein's Marktplatz (where most of the unbelievably artsy and wonderful jewelry boutiques are located, tucked into little corners here and there, and spilling out into the cobblestone alleyways), 230 steps lead up to the late fifteenth-century Felsenkirche, a late Gothic church set in a grotto about halfway up a steep rockface. Amazingly, you have to walk through a cave to get to the front door of the church! What a thrill...the drip, drip, dripping of water from the rock ceiling above us, the dank smell of minerals and forest, the darkness...

Inside, the church is clean, bright, and modern. One would never guess that it was built into a cliff over 600 years ago! Imagine our delight when we found a winding walkway through a side door of the church that led us between the church and the rock face, up to the bell tower and a little wooden lookout! We could see the entire town laid out beneath us. As if to celebrate this discovery, the gigantic metal bell sang out...what serendipity!

Before we left the church, we found a little nook overlooking the cliff. On a table, what we thought was a magnificent guest book lay open inviting us to read and to leave our impressions of our visit. When I began reading the entires, mostly auf Deutsch, it became clear that this was no guest book. It was a book of prayers to god! Each entry was different; the handwriting, color of ink, length of the entries,language, and the prayers themselves were all unique and beautiful the way they were arranged on the pages like a quilt of ink and hope. You can see Lvov writing a letter to God in this picture:

The church was so exhilarating, we wanted to keep exploring despite the sheets of rain. So we found a path that leads up from the Felsenkirche to two feudal castles, from which you can see views of Oberstein and the Nahe valley. Burg Bosselstein was built in 1196. Schloss Oberstein was built in the early fourteenth century and remained intact until it sustained severe fire damage in 1855. The Schloss, or castle, seems to grow organically out of the rockface, similar to the "church in the rock." The path led through old growth forest, the stuff of fairy tales, and across little foot bridges to the Burg and Schloss. Along the way we collected leaves, heart-shaped rocks, seeds with crimson tongues just poking out, and all sorts of treasures.

Before going home we bought a few crystals (I bought some "wands" to use on pressure points for massage) and then we stopped at a little restaurant in the village for a wonderful, sleepy dinner. Our family adventures make me so happy.

Akychame's Surprise

A Typical Home-School Snapshot (when we're not outside exploring)

Our Lovely Paris Vacation: A Poetry Reading, Burning at the Notre Dame Cathedral, and a Midnight Picnic on the Left Bank

There are pigeons and love-birds all around Paris' famous Notre Dame Cathedral. Oh, look, here's a couple of love-birds snuggling in front of the wood and calligraphic metal door of the cathedral. Can you hear them cooing? Can you hear the mighty organ reverberating ecstatically through the stone walls of the gothic cathedral?

Inside, the cathedral is glowing with candles and faces turned to god, burning passionately. Everything rises. Far above us, in the pocket of heaven tucked into the angles of the cathedral ceiling, our prayers took wing in the dark warm spaces. A little bit of this hallowed atmosphere entered our lungs, then released itself back into the respiratory system of the cathedral, each of our bodies a minute bronchi in the breathing in and out of this great stone spirit.

This was a brilliant day and night! Oh man, it's the stuff of dreams! We spent time at the legendary Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore, where we saw a poetry reading and where the kiddos curled up on an old couch with the resident puppy. Then, just literally a hop, skip, and a jump across the river and voila! We were at the Notre Dame cathedral!

We visited the cathedral in 2005 too, but it was closed...so we hung out with backpackers, tourists, and all sorts of colorful characters late into the night watching street artists and fire jugglers. This time, though, oh man...not only was the cathedral open, but there was a midnight mass in progress (serendipity - my true religion!!!) when we entered, replete with organs and the sound of many voices raised like wine to god. After this heady experience, we had a scrumptious picnic while watching a street performer juggle and blow fire. Every time I look at this picture (above), it evokes these memories.

On a sophomoric note: in this picture (above) Phil's backpack looks like a futuristic jet pack, the twin "jets" of the French bread about to propel them across the Seine. It cracks me up!


With full hearts and souls and bellies we strolled around the Left Bank as long as we could before collapsing. It's a sacrilege to waste time sleeping in the city of lights...so we traded a bit of sleep for a bit of Paris that we'll have in our memories forever. A dream for a dream.

A Handful of Muses: Matisse, Chagall, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Gibran, Kahlo, Warhol, Kandinsky, Rousse

Strawberry Picking in Landstuhl

Last week the girls and I went strawberry picking with a local homeschoolers' group in Landstuhl. It was sunny and the strawberries were bursting ripe! Our fingertips were stained red, and by the time we got home the car was sticky and full of little green strawberry leaves. On the way home we stopped to feed carrots and grass to domesticated deer. Their antlers are so fuzzy, they don't seem real.

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