Only in Germany..

I received this email from the HR department of BFA yesterday..  Too good to not share : )

Good Afternoon Staff Team,

This is to let you know that tomorrow, Saturday December 3rd, is a time many of the local wooded areas/walking paths will be closed for wild boar and deer hunting.

Please obey all posted restrictions you see along paths and leading into the woods. 

Adventures in Mongolia

On Saturday 18-June I landed in Chinggis Khaan Airport in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to begin 9 days of adventure!

I am officially a millionaire!!!  The currency is the Mongolian Tughrik, and the USD equivalent below is approximately 740 : )

Mongolian Parliament.. 

On Monday 20-June we began our four night, five day trek into the Gobi Desert.  

We spent the night on the 20th in a Ger owned by a family off the main road.  

On Tuesday morning we set off for Yoliin Am (Eagle's Mouth).  

Yoliin Am is known for having ice many months out of the year.

Traveling through a gorge is not for the faint of heart, this picture does not tell the complete story; but I could have reached out the car window and touched the cliff wall.

Roads?? Where we're going we don't need roads!  This is the drive to Khongorilin Els (Singing Sands)

This is me, I am riding M.C. that is what I named him (her?).  It stands for M.iddle C.amel.  He (she?) smelled REALLY BAD, like REALLY BAD..  it has given me a new basis of comparison in which to judge all other bad smells!

FUN IN THE SAND:

Angel

Greetings

While we didn't hear any singing, the dunes gave us much to look at.

Poor guy!  (or gal!)  The sand claims another victim!

The shoe of the above??  Actually if you look at the back of the shoe you will see our little desert friend : )

On Wednesday 22 we drove to Bayanzag (Flaming Cliffs), once again roads are optional

Bayanzag

The sun dries and peels up the top layer of mud

Uh-oh.. another one bites the dust!!

Fun in the mud

So we decided to go looking for dinosaur bones (what this area is known for), needless to say we did not have success.. however we did have success finding something.  I saw what looked like a sign on top of a hill, up the hill we went; assuming to see directions to these talked about fossils and finds.  Needless to say it was not a sign, and all I could think when we stumbled on this was 'only I would find a car part in the middle of the desert!'

The Ger camp we stayed at for our last night.  The man who owned the place was VERY excited about his turtle building, he also has an elephant building and a museum.  

Fun times

The 2015-2016 Black Forest Academy Track and Field Team

English Camp March 2016

Just another Sunday bike ride : )  

Graduation 2016

Construction begins to renovate and add a floor for the Middle School

The current view from my office : )

Unified Berlin

Section of the Berlin Wall, picture taken standing next to a building that has been called The Ministry of Aviation, The Ministry of Ministries and is now the seat of the German Finance Ministry:

Buildings in the Bebelplatz, Berlin

Berlin State Opera House:

The Bebelplatz:

St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale built by Frederick the Great:

On May 10 1933 students from 34 University Towns around Germany burned an estimated 20.000 books.   This exhibit in the ground of the Bebelplatz depicts the empty library shelves left behind.  There is a plaque next to the exhibit with a quote from 1820 that says "That was only a prelude, there where they burn books, they burn in the end people":

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in the words of the Architect, "The stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate ... Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from nostalgia ... We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present."

 The graffiti of Rosenthaler Strasse 39:

 Cosmonaut Mural by Victor Ash

Pink Man Mural by BLU:

 Shrouded in night and fog, the Berliner Fernsehtrum:

 The East Side Gallery (longest open air gallery in the world), "The East Side Gallery is a special place, where art has become the expression for a unique point in time of the history of a separated Germany.  It is a meeting point that talks about an old Berlin and a new Berlin, a separated and a unified Germany."