School is out and the weather is beautiful, so Kirsten and I decided to try out a new little ice cream place in town. It is self-serve and extremely delicious.

And then Erika and I headed out to Columbus for Memorial Day Weekend. Erika, Daniel and Elizabeth had to train for their race and I decided to demonstrate motivation and go with them to the park. This is what I did while thay were running.

Mature trees in the park!

Look at these happy runners after a practice run in the blistering heat and scorching sun! Now that the race is actually over (pictures on the other blogs) I am really proud of you guys for doing it in spite of limited training!!

In Columbus we also met up with the Rudy Gang for some Greek food!! (Daniel felt like being patriotic)

Good food and fun times! Thanks for hanging out :)

And on the road again... to Marion with Erika.

Fun times at Erika´s school finishing up the school year. Congrats Erika for finishing year 2!!! Judging by this picture, the school and the kids have definitely made a lsting impression on you!

Food Fun with Freya!!

Today is an exciting day at the Varner's! While the basement continues to be worked on, Freya baked four German cakes. One of the boys from church needs them for a 4-H project and so we had to taste some to make sure they were good. I decided to document the endeavour so as to have something to post on my blog. This first one is a chocolate and cherry cake.

Getting started with recipes and prepping the doughs.

Lena liked looking into the camera. And Henry and I were making pirate faces. Pirates have been very popular recently, due to one of the books we were reading.

And here is the cherry cake with the cherries and the Streusel. We decided Freya deserved the name "Master Crumble."

And here the Zitronenkuchen (lemon cake). It tasted very good.

And now to my personal favourite: the Zwiebelkuchen!!! (onion cake). First step was chopping onions. It definitely helps to be able to chop fast. Hut ab to Freya!

And finally the apricot cake. With parts containing chocolate and hazelnuts this was a very tasty treat!

Chopping more onions.

And the three "desert" cakes all baked and ready for consumption!

Henry had recieved a red balloon at the bank and so Freya had to take a little break to blow it up for him.

And back to the onions... (I'm sorry these are all a little out of order)

Lena liked to help as well and figured out how to avoid getting burnt by the pans. She also decided it would be fun to sit in the middle of the kitchen floor and read a book.

Finishing touches and the first cake is ready to be tested. Lena was eager to get some, too. And rightly so, since it tasted wonderful!

And now the Zwiebelkuchen is ready, too! It took me back to the Schwabenland and to memories of fun times!

An excited Max before the cake testing.

Needless to say, all the cakes tasted great! They were very German and it was so nice to have a good treat like that, so thank you Freya for putting your skills to use for us to enjoy as well!!

End of the Semester!

After spring break the first year has gone by in the blink of an eye :)

Here are just a few images from the end of this past semester. This is Leah and I right before the string studio concert. She was my accompanist for the semester and it was really fun working together with her. Check out the new dress I got for performing purposes. (You can kind of tell what it looks like).

This is the gym at school. I was inspired by the great achievements of some of you guys, to take up running in the last several weeks of the semester. Since it is "free" to use the facilities at school it was convinient to go any time I had a chance. Luckily I had a good friend, Kirsten, who joined me and had about the same pace I do. Now that it is the summer, I haven't been keeping up with running very well, but I hope to get started again when I'm back in school.

Spring Break!!

After hearing that some people were going to delete me from their blog lists for lack of posts, I decided to finally update again. I was told, it´s ok to share random things, so here goes...
After a great visit to the Varner´s I went back home loaded with many new and FRESH!! foods :) Thank you guys so much for the supplies. I am open to suggestions about fun things to do with these ingredients. I am still new and very unversed in the culinary arts.
Also one of the young ladies at church, after we talked last week about missing home, gave me some goodies from Germany! I was so excited, especially because somehow she knew exactly what the best coffee is.

And today, Monday, I made my way to school for a lesson. The trip is getting more and more enjoyable as the weather is getting warmer. Today I could hear and see a lot of birds. These are some of the mature trees right outside my door. Soon there will be lots of flowers and leaves out! I can´t wait!

Even though I am on Spring Break this week, Mr. V and I will be spending quite a bit of time in one of these rooms in the basement of the school, far away from the sunlight. I have a lot of different things I am working on right now, but I hope I will have a chance to relax a little.

This, by the way, is the practice room area of the school, for anyone who hasn´t been down there yet. It is limited to Music students and for some reason, when you get down there, there is not much sign of any Spring Break :) The couches in the corner is where we usually hang out when we have breaks. We also have a little fridge and microwave so we can keep and heat up food.

This is what I was slaving over today! It can be very frustrating! :)

Concert!

Last weekend I had a wondeful, unforseen opportunity to attend a concert at Notre Dame. One of my friends happened to have an extra ticket and invited me to go see the Philharmonia Quartett Berlin. This quartet was founded by the principal strings of the Berlin Philharmonic and all except one of the founding members still play in it now. They played Debussy, Schostakowitsch and Beethoven. We had great seats and it was a great way to get motivated for the upcoming semester :)

Germany and a New Year!

Hello everybody! Happy New Year from me as well! Since my time in Germany was covered by several other blogs I will not repeat all the details of my trip. I will only say that I had a great time, although I did discover that my travel luck is not the best :) But now I am safely back in South Bend and mentally preparing for the semester ahead, which starts tomorrow! Here follow a few very random pictures from Germany.

Zach had fun with my camera! This was our train ride to see Steffi and Dietmar.

New Year´s Eve traditions!