I don't know of any other school that has had an exchange programme which has run for as long as ours. This was our 32nd annual exchange with our partner school in Germany! It is largely thanks to this guy...Friz, the founding father of the programme which started in 1981. Every year he comes out of retirement to spend some time with us. Last Sunday, we met at school at 3.15am!!! (I know) to get the mini bus to the airport and fly to Frankfurt. It was on Tuesday that the kids had what Aoife called "the full Fritz experience) as he took us on a guided tour of Frankfurt. You can see how the kids hang on to his every word. I love this pic of two of them laughing with him.
We were treated to a boat tour on the Main. It was unusually chilly for Germany in June, but we enjoyed it just the same.
On Wednesday we went to Bad Homburg, which was a cute little town with a park rather like Hawkstone Park, full of interesting follies, such as this giant chess game.
For this day our tour guide was Sanela, who came to London with us last Spring. We found banana beer and curried chicken and potatoes for lunch. Yummy!
In the afternoon, we went to a reconstructed Roman village, Saalburg, where we learned archery. The instructor was actually hiding behind me because I had just almost hit her with an arrow. Germany seems to be free of some of the h&s restrictions we suffer from in England!
Hence we also got to run with spears and throw them. Enormous fun!
That evening, the headteacher treated us to a meal in an Italian restaurant. (Dieting in earnest now I am home!)
It was good to catch up with Mareike, who is always our house guest when the Germans come to us.
Thursday was everybody's favourite day...the trip to Hessen's answer to Alton Towers, Hassloch Holiday Park. It had had something of a face lift since our last visit. But the good old Teufelsfässer (devil's barrels) were still there. We got wet. It didn't matter. It was raining anyway.
Amongst other interesting things, we saw a waterski show, which incorporated pirates, gangsters, Evis, Lady Gaga, James Bond, Darth Vader on fire and ...wait for it....a waterskiing dog!!!
We only took 8 kids, but there were almost twice as many Germans involved. This was the whole gang and they were all awesome.
I wanted to bring home this front door, reminiscent of a hobbit hole.
I had a truly great week, loved speaking lots of German and learning new words, making new friends and seeing old friends. I am proud of the friendship shared by our schools and felt very blessed to have taken such a great bunch of kids. I am also enormously grateful to Sue and Stefan, who are always such fantastic hosts.
Having said all that, there's no place like home xx
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