Today, I missed home.

Another Berlin favorite - detailing on the Gates of Ishtar in the Pergamom museum.

This is a two-day post, sorry! We got behind on our Berlin trip, so we're using today to catch back up.

SUNDAY

After the weekend in Berlin, Sunday morning came too quickly! We met at 9:30am to go to the Leipzig English speaking church. It was about a 30 minute walk from the apartments, which gave us plenty of time to wake up.

Church was great! The songs were mostly new to us, but we did sing "All in All," which most of us knew. The pastor was speaking about family, and his sermon was very interesting. After church was the best part though - it is common across Europe to have a time for fellowshipping after church. They set out snacks and drinks (the boys were lined up practically before the "Amen" of the closing prayer) and we just talked to the members for about half an hour. I made a friend! Her name is Anna, and she is a Romanian Theology student at the University of Leipzig. We talked for about 20 minutes, and she invited Jenny and I to go shopping with her and her flatmate, Sara sometime in the next few weeks. Sara is an English studies major, and she is "keen" on meeting English-speaking people. Needless to say, Jenny and I can't wait to get to spend more time with them!

Lindsey talking to the lady with the baby, Albert. (I can't remember her name!!)

This is my new friend Anna!

Brad, Rebecca, Laura, Jenny, and Jennifer enjoying refreshments after church.

The beautiful Leipzig Church building.

Our group in front of the building.

On the way home from church, we found a slide hidden away in some trees. The boys tried all sorts of different ways of standing up and going down the slide, including with shoes, without shoes, and with jackets under their feet. The girls opted for the safer method of traditional sliding - sitting down. I'm sure we'll be back there several times on this trip!

Jennifer sliding down the slide - the normal way.

Moms, close your eyes...

This is Sterling being a little riskier. (sorry its sideways)

Jenny, me, Lindsey, Nancy, and Miriam. We were onlookers of the sliding, not participating.

Jenny and I went to lunch with Rylan and Catherine Shewmaker. They are so precious, and we will miss them! (They left us today.) Good thing we all live in Abilene.

The afternoon was catch-up time for resting, and we met together for a devo tonight. Of course we had to make some cultural adjustments for communion, so we had the grape juice out of plastic shot-glasses! It was the closest thing the Winegeart's could find to traditional communion cups - and we were impressed to find anything at all on a Sunday afternoon at the train station! I wish I had a picture, but I'm sure you can imagine. :)

After the devo some of us went out to see what the "night life" is like in Leipzing. We found out that its pretty slow on Sunday nights, so we just ended up hanging out in a restaurant. We had to run to catch the train to make it home in time, and that was probably the most thrilling part of the nightlife that we experienced!

MONDAY

Today we began research for our marketing project for the Leipzig women's basketball team. We met as a group this morning for about an hour. We had an International Business lesson, and talked about the value added tax (the VAT) which is 19% in Europe. This explains why a lot of items in Europe are more expensive than we can find in the US.

After our IB lesson, we split into two groups to begin researching for our project. The first group stayed in the apartments and did web research. We analyzed about 20 sports websites, comparing and contrasting features as well as user-friendly aspects to see which teams had superior websites. The other team headed out "into the field," and went with camcorders to interview Germans around the city about their knowledge of the team. Most Germans did not want to be filmed, and the general consensus was that most people don't even know that Leipzig has a women's basketball team. But we're here to change that!

By the end of a long day, we have broken up the project into our four teams:

Group 1 - Build a brand

Group 2 - Who is our market?

Group 3 - Promotional Events

Group 4 - Sponsorships

We'll be working on this project for the duration of our trip, so look forward to more updates.

Today was the first time I really, really missed being home. Jenny and I planned on cooking again tonight, and the guys were thinking that Mexican sounded great. We headed to the grocery store in search of ingredients for Enchiladas. Bad news though, there are no tortillas to be found in Leipzig! The Mexican restaurants here have to buy weekly from a tortilla wholesaler, so they don't sell tortillas to customers.  I couldn't believe it, and that was probably my first real sad moment here in Leipzig. If anyone would like to overnight us the necessary items for enchiladas, we would greatly appreciate it! So pasta it is tonight. We'll have to do a little more research before we do Mexican.

Family Dinner #2: Pasta, Zucchini, Bread, and Cheescake

Disclaimer: Grant is not sticking up his middle finger. This was about the 4th picture we took on self-timer, so everyone was being goofy.

We just found out that we'll be touring BMW tomorrow! I wish I was getting all of my souvenirs there...I bet you do too! 

I miss tortillas.

-Sylvia