How Many More Sleeps?

Kleinsasserhof in Austria

June 10 - the countdown officially begins today. Another two months exactly and I'll be on a plane to Europe! (In case you missed my first post about how all that came about click here.)

Before our course in Hannover starts, we plan on touring some historical sites for Hutterites. This has been one of my dreams for many years and it's still hard to believe that it's actually happening!

When I was in Europe ten years ago we did a bit of touring in Austria after our course at Goethe Institute in Berlin. One of the places we visited was Kleinsasserhof, which today is a beautiful tourist resort in the mountains. It was originally owned by Hutterites, hence the name, Kleinsasser. We had a short, but lovely time with the owner, Trudy Gasser, who has since passed away. Her relatives now own the place.

Planning this trips makes me think of my dad a lot. Ten years ago he was almost more excited than I was about me going to Europe. He made sure everybody knew about this venture - I wonder how often I heard, "Linda's going to Germany." with obvious pride and excitement in his voice. He saw me off at the airport with the rest of my family and waited for hours there on my return. Our plane had been delayed, and for the longest time they couldn't find out what was going on, so they just waited and waited and worried, till someone told them about the delay. Alas, this time dad will only be here in spirit, as he passed away in 2004, about a year after my trip.

As I said in my earlier post, I will try to blog from the other side of the ocean, but, of course will first have to see how that will work out. Or maybe I will just have time to tweet. If you don't want to miss that, just follow @HuttWriteVoice.

Anyway, enough dreaming for now...there's a lot to be done till August the 10th, especially with school winding down. (will make time go faster:) Friday will be very busy, it's our K-3 Multi Colony Track and Field Day. So the students are practicing for that. And I had better go get some real work done now... like watering the flowers I planted here at the school.