To England....and Beyond!!!

those famous telephone boxes!

the countryside

my cousin and uncle!!! (ruth and john)

me and joyce :) she's so cool

the winndddmillll....hehe creepy ;)

Hello to family and friends, greetings from the UK!

I’M NOW IN....ENGLAND! It’s dead exciting and the beautiful accents and countryside and being in Blackpool (yes belle....Blackpool!! argh!) is somewhat overwhelming. I’m off to Scotland tomorrow and I’m not going to have time to answer your lovely emails till after I come back so I thought I’d write this quick blog post just to keep you up to date. So far I’ve been to Lancaster, Blackpool, the Lake District and all around Lancashire and St. Annes in Lytham which is where I’m staying with my ‘aunty’ (family friend) Joyce (she’s awesome...the coolest over 70 year old I’ve ever met). My actual uncle John also got in contact when he heard I was here so I’ve met him and two of my cousins which is just incredible coz I didn’t think I’d get to meet any of my family. But it turns out they really wanted to see me and John is really lovely. Generosity and kindness just comes so naturally to him and he’s treated me to some awesome pub lunches and showed me around the beautiful green rolling hills and countryside that surrounds the place I’m staying in. It feels very special to be in the place and see the houses where my Dad lived and grew up and where my parents came when they were here with me when I was one.

It has been incredible weather, today being another sunny blue sky day, it should be raining, but I’m certainly not complaining, hopefully it’ll hold out for Scotland. I’m really having a fantastic time, everyone speaking English is fantastic and I love watching the English telly :)

To everyone at home, I love and miss you all and really hope that life is great, if not then pop over to England and I’ll try and cheer you up :D hehe.

Hugs and giraffesSofiexoxoox

Paris Pics (batteries ran out second day)

hall of mirrors

the gardens

and again

Nortre Dame

k. so the rest of the photos are gonna have to wait till i come back :( coz soph and eleanor have them.

Paris

Hi Everyone!

Just a short blog and some pictures to let you know what I’ve been up to :) I’m going to the UK on Tuesday and have been here for 3 months. STILL cannot believe it really. It’s been a full house the last couple of weeks with me, Helmut, Eva, Eleanor, Sophie, Rach, Jessie, and of course Octaveo all together. Though recently Jessie has moved out coz she finally found a place to live in Heidelberg, which is where she’ll be studying for three years. The biggest thing that’s happened is we (me, Eleanor and Soph) went to Paris for three and a half days! J It was beautiful, and full of American tourists with their unfortunate accents. There were some people from England though, which I followed around and grinned like an insane person when I heard them. (Berri, I really do need you to come and restrain me in UK, pretty pleasseee?).

So, the checklist for Paris - We stayed at a bed and breakfast and had an amazing breakfast every morning and the place was lovely. We visited the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Versailles (inside (incredible and completely overwhelming) and the gardens - classical music playing through speakers hidden in the hedges, it felt like I was in Pride and Prejudice, ok the gardens were pretty different from ‘English’ ones but still very grand, very big, very gorgeous), La Sainte Chapelle, tunnel where Diana was killed :( We visited The Louvre but didn’t get nearly as much time as I would have liked. It was pretty amazing though, the only disappointment being the Mona Lisa, I dunno if anyone has seen Madeleine, but in one episode they go to the Louvre and the Mona Lisa gets stolen and they find the culprit and all is great. Only, the ML is HUGE in Madeleine and when I finally got to the room where it’s displayed in all its ‘glory’ with a guard and lots of Asian tourists around taking photos of themselves with it I stopped dead in my tracks coz it’s tiny. I LOLed and said “it’s TINY!”....Eleanor said “yes, but we all knew that”....i tried to explain Madeleine and how awesome it was in that, really should have just kept my mouth shut hah :( There were lots of other things amazing there though and the ML outrage was soon overcome by all the other beautiful and old and famous paintings, sculptures and rooms..

Other stuff...We went Heidelberg to check out the castle there, went on an overnight hiking trip in France where we were up quite high and lots of lovely views. Been on some other walks with randoms to check out even more castles and forests and places :) Went to the border of Switzerland yesterday, but it was the town next to it we were looking at, it was raining though and a little depressing as we spent over 10 hours on the trains getting there and back.

Sorry none of that is in much detail but I know you’re all busy and I actually want to be able to tell everyone someone new when I come back. I really love you all so much, cannot believe I’m off to the UK tomorrow! Missing you all, thanks for the emails/letters etc people have sent, they’ve made it so much easier to be in a strange country. Hugs and giraffes,

Sofie xoxox

Photos

Jessie, Rach, Me and Octaveo in the forest :D me and Jessie being 'drunk' on apple juice

in Heilelberg, the lovley houses on the riverside

in Mainz, the Dom

most of the windows were like this in the church :)

rach's youth group 'Deeper' had a 'casino' night, good fun, everyone dressed up :)

on our hike, all i could think of was 'Stairway to heaven' lol

Sophie (rach's host sister) and the ladder to the top of the rock!

me and 'Little Sophie' which is what she's called to avoid confusion, doesnt do much help as she's HEAPS taller than me lol

the ruins of the castle on our hike :) so pretty.

Winter is Coming!!

Hey all :) ‘Ein Bissen’ update for ya. Three more people have joined our household. Jessie – a girl from Peru that stayed with the Lomps a couple of years ago on exchange and is now studying in Germany and needed somewhere to stay till she finds a room. Eleanor and Sophie – rachel’s host mum and sister from Australia have also come just a few days ago. Helmut is still away so there’s now 6 women in the house! I’ve been to Heilelberg with Jessie to book her into her school. It’s a really beautiful place but we got lost (of course) didn’t stay long. I’ll go back later with Eleanor and Sophie to the Autumn markets. I went on a trip to Mainz near Frankfurt. The ‘tour’ was advertised in the paper and Eva said it’d be good for me to go. It was ALL old people, but the bus was heaps comfortable (better than our one for the 24 hour bus trip to Sweden!) and while putting in my form we’d met some people who were going and Eva asked them to look after me, so it was nice to know a few people. We visited the ‘parliament house’ and sat where all the politicians sit and debate and stuff. It was a really beautiful building. I then went off by myself and found the ‘Dom’ which was awesome and this church with these incredible windows inside. That was nice just wondering around and trying to follow the map. Though (I’m realllyyyy sorry lucy) i left my favourite scarf on the bus L I haven’t lost anything else yet and I’m hoping that’ll be the last!! Since Eleanor and Sophie came we’ve been on a hike up to this old castle and then the next day there was a ‘food and wine’ festival. You walk around the whole day just going to station to station and eating and drinking, was great. And it was in the middle of all the vineyards and the mountains in the distance and was perfect weather. *sigh* Now though, i am in bed at 1pm typing this coz I’ve got a sore throat, headache and running nose *sigh* L I’m missing out on going to Bamberg then Nuernberg and then Augsburg (!!) with Eleanor and Sophie for a few days which I’m heaps annoyed about coz I put off going places so I could go with them when they came!! Gahhh... Getting sick was bound to happen sometime though, just hope I’ll be all better for Paris! What’s happening in Adelaide? Anything at all exciting? Haha. Love and missing you all!! Sofiexoxoxox

Food Glorious Food!!!

lunch one time when it was still really walm, we had a BBQ Something Eva's made quite a bit, cherry cake with crumble on top

Pasta salad that Elisabett made

tomato salad. tomatoes cut in half and filled with this cheese stuff, and then fetta (?) cheese and chives

CAKKEEE!!! :D

Half was cherry, half was apricot.

saladd...

this was so amazing....blueberries (that we'd picked!) and cream all wrapped up...ahh

blueberry pancakes

something terribly naughty eva made us lol. icecream and this blue liquid stuff hehe

Yeh i'm on the blog again but it's been pretty crappy weather and Rach is sick in bed so i'm not going anywhere lol. Those are a few pics of the food, i thought i had more but evidentally not! The food is AWESOME here i just love it...especially the bread and susuages, but i dont have any pics of them...:(

Life and Fotos :D

these sweetcorn fields are everywhere along the bike tracks came around the corner and this aweomse site presented itself :)

NO HANDS!! haha i'm just really proud lol

The Queen Kings concert

The Beat Brother's concert

Forest :D i love this place

ZKM from the outside.

one of the things inside. go into this black room with 3D glasses on and all these videos are spinning all around you right in front of your face, so cool, bit like 3D movie, but you're WALKING around it it, then you could use this remote to point to one and it's come out really big.....so amazing!!!!

Hey big hugs, smiles and love to you all!!

I cannot believe I’ve been here 2 months now! That seems like an awfully long time but has absolutely flown by. Haven’t been up to too much since the epic adventures of Koln and Sweden but there’s still some stuff to write about so....

With Rachel at school I’ve spent my days bikeriding, walking and exploring. I caught trains to Karlsruhe by myself which i was quite pleased with, seemed so scary the first time, now i can’t believe I thought the map didn’t make sense! I went to the media museum ZKM, which was brilliant, and thanks to Eva I got in free (she’s always looking out for free concerts, promotions etc and the month of August all entrance was free). It was completely amazing, there was some of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen in there. It was all set up really cool and there was lots of things to look at, werid movies, pictures, interactive stations, walls, pictures, music, all pretty swish, wish more of the descriptions had been in English though coz a lot of it was so random and I had no idea what it was lol.

In Kandel there was a festival over the weekend with music and food etc. Me, eva and a family friend and her husband went twice. On Friday we saw the ‘Beat Brothers’ – a cover band of the Beatles, they were awesome, it was a small stage, but packed with people, we were right up the front, unfortunately by the end there was a huge group of completely drunk guys on a buck’s night, 2 of them got on the stage and started singing in one of the band’s mics, got so ridiculous lol. But they had mad guitar skills (the band not the drunk loonies) ohh and lucy (sister) - one of the band looked just like the guy out of ‘Across the Universe’!! Then on Sunday we saw ‘The Queen Kings’, who were, dahh... a cover band of Queen. They were great as well and had even madder guitar skills. I love going to these festivals, there’s been about 4 now. Wish we had stuff like this in Adelaide coz it’s free, the music is fantastic, heaps of people. Because Rachel wasn’t there (studying for school, they’ve heaped a crapload of stuff on them for year 13 and it’s only like the 2nd week!) I walked around by myself for a while, and sat on a fence for the entirety for the concert, which was a great view. I felt so old, couldn’t go too near the front coz it was just too loud, and didn’t reallyyy want to dance with eva and her friends lol. The other day I rode my bike to Karlsruhe, it’s a half an hour car ride so quite a bit by bike. Took about 6 hours there and back by the time I actually found the route, by accident. It’s cool though, I’m getting to know the bike tracks and I’ve got my favourite ways to go now and can just ride along (no hands of course haha) and enjoy the weather. I cannot express how incredible it is to have all these flat surfaces and great roads to ride bikes on, it’s one of the things I’m gonna miss the most I reckon, whenever, I can just grab my bike - which I’ve finally decided is called Jezzy, and go along and guaranteed on either side they’ll be a forest or fields or a crop of sweet corn or sunflowers, and hardly anyone else on the tracks, it’s just gorgeous. And then I went to Karlsruhe again yesterday with Eva and then wondered around, shopping (got a bag J) and looking at all the discounted summer clothes, SO weird clothes shopping by myself but I liked it. It’s been getting steadily cooler the past couple of days, I’m happy though, I love the cool weather as long as it doesn’t rain, but I know it will

That’s about it except for some gardening and hauling wood from their random small paddock out the back, eating some fine food and reading. I’ve now consumed most of the English books they have in their house, except a couple of sci-fi ones ek. As usual I’m loving it here, it’s a quiet village, quite similar to where I live really, but completely different of course. But quiet (except when roosters are crowing or the darn church bell is ringing every hour haha) and homely and beautiful. I miss you all of course, I’m really enjoying myself though and the time has gone so quickly. Thankyou for you emails, every one brought a grin to my face and made my heart SING!! Hehe so thanks :D

I love you all!!! Many greetings, giraffes and grins, hope Adelaide is coping without my redheaded awesomeness....Oh my gosh Berri guess what!?!? – The Neverlands is having a meeting of redheads this weekend, and people are coming from heaps of different countries and they’re all gonna...i dunno what, can’t read German and it was in the newspaper, but how exciting is that!??!!? Wow. God bless,Sofie xoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxox