DIVISION CHAMP!!!!!!!!!!!

17 Jan - The Kaiserslautern Kingfish hosted the Division Championships today here at Ramstein. The teams in the division are Berlin, Kaiserslautern, Stuttgart and Heidelberg. Jamie swam the opening 50M in backstroke for the mixed relay. She improved 4.27s and moved up to within 2.6s of qualifying for Champs. If 2 other swimmers qualified this weekend, Jamie will swim 50M in Berlin. Jamie then swam the 100IM where she finished 4th. She swam neck and neck with a friend. Jamie fell behind after backstroke by about 6 feet then she pulled it together and caught the other girl and passed her in the last 15 feet of the freestyle. REALLY great race. She improved 1.4 s and just miss qualifying for champs by 0.38s. She is currently ranked 17th so she will most likely swim this event at Champs. Next she was the 200IM for the first time!!! She did great swimming the event in 3:45.64. That is only 5s from qualification times. She swam beside a friend and they both were neck and neck for 175m but Jamie pulled ahead in the last leg of freestyle and beat her for 4th!! Then the GREAT swim. Jamie swam the 50M breast that she qualified in last week. She was the #1 seed for the event for her age and she lived up to the challenge. She tied with a girl from Stuttart with her fastest time ever 50.41s. This means Jamie is the RHINELAND DIVISION 50M BREAST CHAMP!!!!!!!!!! Then Jamie swam lead off for the 200M relay but was slightly slower so she did not improve. Overall it was a GREAT meet and Kaiserslautern won by over 200 points!!!!

We'll find out this week how the other swimmers did at the other three divisions this weekend and we'll know what Jamie will swim at Champs. We know she will swim 50M Breast and two relays. It is possible she can swim the 50M free, 50M back, 100 IM and the 200 IM

The Official Score Sheet - Jamie #1

Jamie with her 1st Place and two 4th place Medals!!

Spelling Bee

15 Jan - Jamie competed in the Vogelweh Elementary School Spelling Bee. There were 16 total kids competing from 3rd to 5th grade. Jamie finished 2nd!! Her best finish in her 4 years of Spelling bees. She misspelled Karaoke. The young boy that won finished 2nd last year, won the year before and 2nd the year before that. With all that Jamie has done with swimming, the holiday visits, tutoring and girl scouts since she got the practice list, we did just not have time to study the challenging words which were REALLY challenging. We are VERY proud of her. She learned alot during the practice and spelling bee about work ethic and practice.

Christmas #3 and #4

We opened the gifts from our favorite Korean daughter and Favorite Slovak daughter.

From Ahyuong and her family we received some outstanding Korean snacks and candy, really nice coffee mugs, a really wonderful traditional Korean drink from plums, Jamie got the most - a blanket, some socks with designs and some CRAZY ear muff/headsets you see below!! and a really nice korean boy and girl figurines in traditional clothes - of course it is in our display case but the boy is 6 inches from the girl - BOYS ARE EVIL!!

Perfect for her iPod and the cold winter in Germany!!

Thank you Kim Family!!!

From our Favorite Slovak daughter and her family!! We received some nice potpourri, Jamie got some purple socks, purple candles with seashells from the best beach in Slovakia and snowman candle holder!! James got a bottle of a wonderful traditional Slovak drink with honey - smooth and OUTSTANDING from Tina and some SARIS beer from his daughter's Favorite Slovak Dad!! Tina gave Kim a scarf, some nice slippers and a classes case that is just really cool - it rolls open and changes colors!! It freaked James out the next morning when it was blue and not red from the night before!! Tina also included Kim's Birthday gift - a photo album with photos of Tina and Kim; Tina, Jamie and Kim, and room for Kim to put photos of Ahyoung and Kim so Kim will have an album of all HER daughters!!!! Very nice and very touching!!!

Jamie and Kim with Tina's gifts!!

Many thanks to ALL our "kids" and their families for their kind gifts but we already had the greatest gift from them - the honor and pleasure of sharing their daughters & son with our family and including us in theirs.

LOVE YA!!! Thanks!!!

SAH RANG HE!! Kam Sah Me Da!!!

우리가 사랑하는 당신은 !!! 감사합니다 !!!!

Wir Leiben Du!!!!! Vielen Dank!!

Máme ťa radi!!!!!!! Ďakujem

Valkenburg and Aachen

10-11 Jan - After Jamie's swim meet, we spent the rest of the weekend diong some quick touring around the Southern Region of The Netherlands called South Limburg. We visited the Netherlands American Cemetary where many US Soldiers are buried - most of the 8300 buried here are those that died in Operation Market Garden. It is a very pretty cemetary with all the snow. http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries/cemeteries/ne.php Jamie and James at the Netherlands Cemetary We visited Valkenburg, NL. This is an unusual town. It has a long history from 900AD with a very nice castle and ruins. The altstadt (old town) is rather unusual in that 90% of the buildings are RESTURANTS. I've never seen so many resturants and you know us and resturants!! There must have been 50 resturants in a space of about 100 yards!! We ate some good chow - mussels, pork satay with peanut sauce and some good beer!!! As Ahyoung would say - AHSAAA!! To end our trip, we stopped in Aachen, Germany - the city of Charlemagne - Emperor of Germany in the 700s. We visited the church he built in the shape of an octagon. REALLY pretty. The adjacent treasury houses some of the many treasures of Charlemagne, Charles IV and other religious relics. Really interesting http://www.sacred-destinations.com/germany/aachen-cathedral.htm

The Picture Says it All!!!!

Jamie with her new Champs Qualifier Cap.

10 Jan - Jamie had a swim meet in Brunssum, Netherlands. This was probably her best swim meet this year. She dropped 2.4 seconds in her 50M Breaststroke and qualified for the European Championships in Berlin in February!!!!!!! We are very proud of her. Also in the meet, she dropped 2.3 sec in her 100M IM and is only 1.2s from qualifying in that event. She dropped a little time in her 50M free and is only .8sec from qualifying in that event. Jamie earned 18 points for her team and K'town won the seven team meet by 200 points!!! GO KINGFISH!! She finished 3rd in her 100IM and the 50M Free and 4th in the 50M Breaststroke. Her 200M Freestyle relay team and 200M IM relay team won those two events as well.

She has one more meet at Ramstein 17 Jan. It is the Divisionals Championships. It is a medals meet so they will win medals and not ribbons but only down to 3rd place. Hopefully, Jamie will keep this fire she has to do well this weekend and drop a little more time.

Trip to Nativity Scene Museum

4 Jan - Today we traveled to Sankt Wendel a small town about 45 minutes away from our home. They have a large collection of nativity scenes from ALL over the world. They currently have over 450 different Nativity scenes that show the nativity from the point of view of many countries in the world. There are ones from Africa, Italy, Phillippines, etc - places the Church and mission has sent missionaries. Below are some of the scenes - really unusual to see the nativity in Germany, Africa, or a cactus in Mexico or an Igloo!!!! It was also interesting to see the Virgin Mary wearing a Korean Hanbok just like Ahyoung's!!!!! They were made from wood, clay, glass, straw, metals, corn husks, etc. Yep, it was really interesting. One of the exhibit Halls Alaska From Africa From Korea From Slovakia

3 Jan Swim meet

3 Jan - Ramstein. Jamie had another swim meet. She did OK after not swimming for 3 days following a small surgery to remove a bump on her lip. She did not improve in her 100IM so she remains 3.85 sec from qualifying for Champs, she swam the same time in 50m Butterfly but she improved .91 sec in her 50m Breast and is now only 0.60 sec from qualifying in that event. She did finish 4th in the 100IM and the 50 Butterfly and finished 2nd in the 50M Breast for the event earning her team 6 total points. Kaiserslautern won the swim meet.

Jamie has 2 more swim meets to qualify for Champs - Brunnsum Belgium 10 Jan and Divisionals at Ramstein on 17 Jan. She can do this she just needs to get that fire in her belly. She was very upset at herself for being so close to qualifying so that is very good and shows she is realizing that it is hard and she has to make that extra effort. We worked one day during the break on her technique - something they don't do in practice - go figure - Anyway, we worked on turns so Jamie applied that and improved her time.

Jamie getting ready to swim Breaststroke - Yep that is James Timing!!!

Jamie swimming breaststroke - GO JAMIE.

New Years Day (Neu Jahr Tag)

1 Jan 09 - FROEHLICH NEU JAHR!!! We stayed at home to celebrate the new year. Since we are 6 hrs ahead of the US, we were not able to watch the Time Square Ball Drop like everyone else. AFN did not show anything from Berlin or anywhere else. German TV probably did but we don't have it! Jim is ready for the New Year!!! We pulled up a clock on the laptop, wore hats and blew horns at the click of midnight on the screen!! Then the fun started!!! New Years Day is the only day that Germans can use fireworks (feuerwerks) so the whole town fired them off. It was really exciting. They were going off all over town and since our house is at the end of teh valley, we can see the next town 2 miles away that had lots of fireworks as well. This lasted for 30 minutes. We are not just taking bottle rockets here - these were nice fireworks and ALOT of them all around and over the house!!!! It was really quite nice - running from room to room to see the fireworks all around town and down the valley!! For Lunch, we invited our landlord's daughter and her family to have a traditional Southern American New Years Day lunch. Germans don't eat a big meal on New Years Day. We told them ahead of time it would be a different meal. They really enjoyed it and went back for seconds and thirds!!!! We had pork roast, collard greens, black eyed peas, candies carrots, coleslaw, maccaroni and cheese, cornbread, and for dessert (nachspeissen) - banana pudding and sweet potato pie. They enjoyed it especially the dessert. The kids (14, 6 and 3) enjoyed the dessert. They had never tried any of these before which is why we invited them for the meal to share our culture with our German hosts. Below is the photo of our lunch. We asked Lena, their daughter, to be a tutor for Jamie in German starting in mid Feb after Jamie finishes swimming. Should be a good for Jamie to help her with vocabulary and simple conversation because she is not getting enough German in school. Traditional Lunch - Food, Family and Friends!! Our guest are Annette. her husband Mathias, Lena, Anna Sophia and Valantine