Wishing Friday was tomorrow

Perhaps I should expound upon the previous post. In 6 days I'll be meeting up with Jessica and her family in Germany and then traveling to Wintersheim. I began this experience almost 10 months ago and she was the last person I saw, being the person who dropped me off at the South Bend airport. I think I can safely say that in our 2.5+ year relationship, this is the longest that we've gone without seeing or visiting each other.

Our itinerary looks something like this:

They actually fly out tomorrow (Sunday) and arrive in Amsterdam on Monday morning. I meet up with them on May 29, when they pick me up at the train station in Bingen, on the Rhein River. Then we make the short trip to Wintersheim and my first placement with the Dettweiler's. We'll walk through the vineyard's, go to Worms, and see the vineyard operation. There's also a wine fest across the street on one of the nights. From W'heim, we go to

Langnau im Emmental. We'll stay with the Kipfer's. Near the Emmental is the Frutigen Valley, where some family history of Jessica's mom is. Hopefully the weather will be nice and we can see some of the Berner Oberland. From Langnau, we head to

Hemberg. We'll do some light hiking, visit some cities and maybe even a cheese factory. On Saturday the 6th, they head to Madrid and I'll stay here on the farm to do some work. But wait, I'm not done!

On the 10th I'll head to Munich. There I'll stay with Stief, the guitarist from Phil's band, Trivial. On the 11th, I pick up Jess from the airport and we'll see Munich sites. The next day, the 12th, she and I board a train in the late afternoon and head to

Prague. Ondra, who is a Czech/friend from Goshen will be our host from Friday to Monday morning. On Monday morning, the 15th, we fly to

Amsterdam. There, we stay with Dutch Committee Member Sarah. We haven't done much planning for these three stops, so it should be a fun improv-ed time together!

If anybody wants a more detailed itinerary, leave a comment with your email and I'll try to get one sent to you.

I spent some of my Saturday purchasing train tickets and an airplane ticket to get to places I need to be when they are here. I also spent 5 hours doing odd jobs, like turning dirt in the garden and making a new fence for the cows. We also loaded up some wood and marinated turkey and went into the forest, made a fire, and grilled. There also happened to be a small nature preserve nearby with marshes, so we also went mud jumping.

On the next blog post: Jeff is visiting, explaining making new fences for the cows, and other subjects yet to be determined.

What's that?
Jon