Busy 24 hrs.

Mood: quiet, relaxed, tired, and probably a few other things to boot
Stage notes: Martin playing the standard pre-bedtime children's songs on his guitar

Yesterday afternoon I went to Troisdorf to see a track event (although if it is on cobble streets I'm not sure that you can still call it that) with the Bonnets. I found out that Heike was the German national champion for four years in the 400 and 800 meter races. I'm trying to convince her that she should enter the race next year. In Germany schools do not sponsor competitive athletics. Instead geographical regions have teams that you can pay to play on. Because of this, in addition to the adults racing, there were also a lot of children's races.

Clowns were there to entertain the children, and they painted all of our noses red. In German this is a common thing to do as a fundraiser. On 'red nose' day people give money to charitable causes and in return their noses are painted. In Germany all young people are required to give a year of service to the State. They can choose to either join the military or do civil service work. Martin Bonnet worked for two years at a children's center (the term of required service was longer then). He was in charge of the magic shows, and still had his unicycle and juggling equipment in the cellar.

In the evening Heike and I went to Portz to see the fireworks. It is the largest fireworks show in Europe and a million people came to the city to see it. The fireworks display we saw was one of the smaller pre-shows, but it was still very good. Heike and I had a delicious dessert called Reibekuchen mit Apfelmus. It was something like hashbrowns with diced onions in the potato mix. It was served with fresh apple sauce.


Today I gave my testimony in church. It went well and everyone seemed to understand even though I had to use Timothy Goering to translate. They laughed quite a bit (I have a suspicion he translated liberally :). Afterwards we went to KFC for lunch with about 20 people.